Golden

by Mary Victoria Johnson

  “YOU’RE BLEEDING,” JANUS NOTED, NODDING AT Hera.

  “What? Oh.” She glanced at her fingers, where her nails had been bitten down beyond stubs.

  “And Lou-Lou over here looks like he’s about to vomit.”

  “Lewis.”

  “Inconsequential. Does anyone have gum? I want gum.” Janus leaned his head into the aisle and yelled, “Oi, any of you lot have gum?”

  “I have hard candy,” Jess called back. “Lemon, caramel, or lobster flavor.”

  Janus raised a perfectly manicured eyebrow at us. “Lobster? This, I think, requires further inspection.”

  With that, he sauntered over to her row and left Hera and me stewing in our nerves. It had been over an hour since the Forest Service cleared the tree. We were mere minutes away from Quesnel, and as far as I knew, still had no plan whatsoever about what we were going to do when we arrived. The simplest thing would be for me to kick both Hera and Janus off the coach and feign innocence, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Quesnel was the only town for kilometers, and if they were barred from entering, then they’d be trapped up here. Even in the heat of summer, the northern interior wasn’t exactly a forgiving place.

  “Are we nearly there, Lewis?” Doug called, impatient as ever. The storm had subsided to nothing more than an unseasonal downpour, and now the excitement of being in danger was over, people were starting to get antsy.

  I checked my phone. “Eight minutes thereabouts.”

  Janus, who had slipped back into his seat, nearly choked on his candy. He spat it into his glove. “Excuse me? Eight minutes?”

  “Um, yes.”

  “Then what’re you still doing here?” he exclaimed, none too quietly. “Do you want to be arrested?”

  Hera glared. “So you do have a plan?”

  Janus glared right back, then stood up and shouted, “Stop! I think we just hit a rabbit!” Sergio stopped, everyone ran to the rear window to have a look, and he continued, “Now, get out. Lay low for like, a couple of hours, and I’ll come looking. Try not to get eaten by wolves or bears or whatever.”

  “You’re not going with her?” I asked, incredulous.

  “Nah, mate,” Janus mimicked my accent. “I have to make sure a certain someone doesn’t end up where he doesn’t belong. You, I mean. In jail. Since my attempt to be a knight in shining armor apparently wasn’t satisfactory, I’ve been reassigned to civilian protection duty.”

  “You’ll be okay?” I said to Hera, a twisted feeling in the pit of my stomach.

  Before she had a chance to answer, people began complaining that there was no rabbit, and Janus had to forcibly throw her off the bus before anyone noticed. It was silly to think nobody had picked up on her disappearing and reappearing, but all we could do was hope they kept their mouths shut about it.

  Quesnel greeted us with a sign shaped like a gold pan, looming out of an area so flat it could’ve been the prairies Hera had described. It was weird thinking that we were nearly six hundred meters above sea level.

  Relief was palpable as we pulled into the hotel parking lot, nearly three hours behind schedule. That relief turned to apprehensive murmuring when everyone noticed the police cars parked outside.

  “Again, I apologize for the delay, guys!” I said, forcing a beam. “Don’t worry, our planned activities will still be taking place after you’ve had a chance to check into your rooms. Sergio will take care of baggage, so make sure to reconvene in the lobby at four o’clock.”

  “Why are there cops?”

  I promised to find out for them. The second I stepped off the bus, no fewer than five officers rushed over.

  “Mr. Crake?”

  “Yes?”

  A woman, petite under her bulletproof vest, craned her neck to scan the ogling tourists behind me. “We’re going to need to ask you and your customers some questions.”

  “I’m just the guide.”

  Officer Price, with his unmistakable blond moustache, scowled at me. “We’re aware.”

  I tried a different tactic. “Look, we’re all exhausted. I don’t want their vacation ruined by . . . whatever’s happening over here. Does this really have to involve them?”

  Price’s eyes narrowed and he muttered something to the woman. She gave a barely discernible nod and turned away to speak into her radio.

  “All right. You may offload, but make sure no one leaves the city without checking in with us first, understood?”

  Single file, the seniors shuffled off the bus with curious frowns aimed at the police. Janus didn’t even try to sneak past, giving the officers a sweeping bow before being immediately taken aside and questioned. Sergio, on the other hand, began unloading bags without being given a second glance. Much to my alarm, Robbie and Perle were pulled over after Robbie jokingly asked if they were here to finally nab him for his past crimes.

  “Let’s get right to it,” the woman, Officer Barnes, said. “Do any of you know who Hera Wilson is? The name is an alias—”

  “Told you,” Perle muttered.

  “—but we know she has been using it for a while. Seventeen years old, distinctive blue hair, mixed Caucasian and South Asian descent, five-foot-five, roughly one hundred and thirty pounds. She was registered for your tour, I believe.”

  “I have the list,” I said, calm as possible. “There’s no one registered with that name. I’m sure I’d have known her if I’d seen her, as Officer Price pointed out yesterday.”

  “Golden Tours’ secretary confirmed for us that a girl with that name did provide payment to the company.”

  “Rachelle? She still thinks the sun revolves around the Earth. You can check the system, ma’am. There never was a Hera Wilson registered.”

  “Had it been any other crime, Mr. Crake, I’d be more inclined to believe you.” Barnes sighed. “Perhaps we’d be better off doing this somewhere more private. All of you, come with me.”

  The room was duller than I’d expected. A florescent light bulb made up for the lack of windows, and a portable fan whirred from one corner in a vain attempt to cool the place down. Aside from a single poster outlining rights to legal aid, a table, and six chairs (the cheap ones often found in school gyms and community centers), it was barren. Totally generic.

  “I cannot believe this,” Perle said for the umpteenth time. “We are supposed to be on holiday, but because you cannot keep your thoughts to yourself, we are arrested.”

  “Detained,” Janus corrected, yawning. “Relax, my dudes. The only person here they could actually lock up is me. And I’m not worried.”

  “It’s a story to tell the grandchildren.” Robbie reached for his wife’s hand, but she batted him away with an expression like stone.

  “What? That their grandpa is a—”

  The door swung open. Price and Barnes entered, the former holding a steaming mug of coffee that made the entire room smell like a café.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Deslumane, can you come with me?” Price asked. He sounded as tired as he looked.

  They shuffled out one after the other, Perle still shooting daggers at Robbie, and Price shut the door again behind them. Barnes came to sit opposite Janus and me, an impressive stack of papers straining to fit onto her clipboard.

  “I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt, Mr. Crake,” she said. Her voice sounded too husky for such a small person, and I wondered if perhaps she’d been a smoker. Nervous as I was, such details were much more apparent than usual. “We’ve done a background check, and we’ve decided it’s highly unlikely you know quite what you’ve gotten yourself into. You, however,” she glanced at Janus, “appear not to exist in our system. So for you, I’m going to assume the opposite.”

  Janus maintained a perfect poker face. “Why interview us together, then?”

  “This is Quesnel.” Barnes cracked an almost-smile. “We’re not exactly spoiled for space. Also, I’m hoping you may be so kind as to correct me if I go wrong explaining our situation to Mr. Crake.”

  Janus mime
d drawing a halo, checked his watch, and soured.

  “Are you familiar with the term ‘cybercrime’?” Barnes asked me. When I nodded, she continued, “Most teenagers are. It’s seen a substantial spike in the past few years. We were alerted to a suspected ring of cybercriminals based out of Vancouver a couple of years back, but unfortunately, they were very good at covering their footprints. No traces. No hints. Just coordinated cyberattacks and IDs that lead to dead ends.”

  It made sense. The mysterious clearing of the hotel bookings in Barkerville; how she’d known about Chrissy; how she’d been able to add and remove herself so easily to the tour registration . . .

  “Hacking can be much more serious than leaving funny Facebook statuses on strangers’ accounts,” Barnes went on, as though I was twelve. “This particular ring is thought to be responsible for the disappearance of millions of dollars and the leaking of confidential corporate information. Hera Wilson is the first name we’ve ever managed to attain. She also completed one of the largest attacks yet, stealing more than ten million dollars as well as files not intended for the public eye. The VPD tracked her to her house, but lost her. Then she resurfaced in your tour company’s database.”

  “How’d you get the name?” Janus asked, casually. If I wasn’t mistaken, a flash of surprise had darted across his expression when she mentioned the stolen money.

  Barnes ignored him, focusing on me. “You see, Mr. Crake, it is absolutely vital we recover both Wilson and the materials she stole. We need your cooperation.”

  “I already told you,” I managed to say. “I don’t know anything. The youngest person on my tour is sixty-five years old.”

  “And him?”

  “He was stranded in the storm.”

  Barnes studied Janus, taking in the designer clothes, the diamonds, the lordly cockiness. The fact that the Forest Service were still puzzling over the wrecked Lotus probably wasn’t helping his cause. “What’s your real name?”

  “Courtney Branham.”

  Barnes asked him to spell it, then rose to her feet. “I’m going to run your name through our system. Have a think, Mr. Crake, if perhaps you forgot anything. I wouldn’t want to have to double check with your guests.”

  “Are we off-the-record?” Janus demanded. When she nodded, he relaxed and waved her away like she was a clingy servant.

  “Courtney?” I said when the door clicked.

  Janus chuckled. “Yeah. I forget what he churns up, but it usually keeps them busy for a bit. If they get my name, they get the code, and the ring will have my backside.”

  “Code?”

  “Classical god for a first name, common W surname. Helps us recognize each other.”

  Divinity and mundanity rolled into one name. I’d never made the connection.

  I twiddled my thumbs and listened to the fan, acutely aware of how stuffy the room was. I hadn’t felt this brain-dead since taking my eleventh-grade calculus exam. Either I told them the truth and betrayed Hera, or I lied and risked deportation. I couldn’t see an easy way out.

  “Listen.” Janus grabbed my upper arm. When I made eye contact, he was uncharacteristically serious. “We don’t do this for fun, okay? We’re not criminals, we’re . . . what’s the cool term for it . . . hacktivists. Some company was negotiating to remove the protective status off a chunk of the Great Bear Rainforest because it was directly in the way of their pipeline, so Hera was trying to bring it to public attention. People have the right to know about this stuff.”

  “Ten million dollars, though?”

  For the first time, Janus faltered.

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “The guy we work for, Pater, is hugely strict about that sort of thing, and Hera never . . . ” He sighed. “She must have had good reason.”

  But the law was the law. Details like these wouldn’t matter when it came down to it.

  Janus must’ve sensed my hesitation, leaning in closer and insisting, “Hera came from the gutter, Lou-Lou. Her parents were killed when she was a kid, and no one came forward to help her. We were all unwanted, one way or another. Kids who fell between the cracks, who could either disappear or make ourselves disappear so we could get on with our lives on our own terms. If the ring hadn’t seen our talent and picked us up, we’d be nothing. Sure, we work for hire, but that’s just so we can eat and sleep comfortably. We’re veritable angels, trust me.”

  “You stole a sports car.”

  Janus chuckled again, darker this time. “I tend to take on more, well, let’s just say ‘gray area’ commissions than the others. I can pay the guy back many, many times over. But it isn’t me we’re trying to save here.”

  “No.” I let my head fall into my hands. “Thank goodness.”

  He pushed his chair back, turned the fan onto a higher setting, and sat cross-legged on top of the table while rolling his shirtsleeves up to his elbows. “So. I’d guess we have a few minutes still before Barnsey comes to tear me apart. Want to hear my plan?”

  “Depends. Is it very good?”

  Janus winked. “I said I had a plan. Let’s leave it at that.”

  SANDWICHED BETWEEN AN INDUSTRIAL ESTATE AND a patch of newly replanted forest, I found the group clustered around a trough with tin trays clutched in their hands. The shadows were long this late in the evening, the sun still partially covered by the retreating storm clouds that hadn’t been burned away by the heat. Even the local guide fell silent when I approached, pausing halfway through a gold-panning demonstration.

  “Where were you?” Doug demanded.

  “There was a bit of trouble with my computer,” I said tiredly. “I’m sorry.”

  Perle and Robbie held my gaze for a moment longer than everyone else, their eyes dancing with questions, only looking away when I gave a tight shake of the head.

  I sat back and watched as everyone swished their silt-filled pans in the trough, groaning in disappointment whenever they found nothing but rocks. Jess gave an excited shriek when she thought she’d come across a nugget, and didn’t calm down even after it was pointed out to be just a shiny pebble. When they were engrossed enough to lose any interest in me, I slipped away to find Sergio. He sat on a bench eating a hot dog, greasy fingers sifting through a bucket of semi-precious stones he’d bought from the gift shop.

  “Crake?” He did a double take. “You were gone hours. I thought they’d actually nabbed you for something.”

  “What did you hire her for?”

  Sergio blinked, tongue running along his lower lip in search of stray mustard. “What?”

  “Hera. She said you were a client.”

  “Ah. My license expired, and she fixed it for me. No charge. I was just supposed to help out whenever I could.” He paused, confused. “Where’s the other kid?”

  “Janus?” I gave a hollow laugh. “Awaiting his trial date. He claimed he was the one responsible for pretty much everything.”

  “They believed that?”

  I nodded, sitting down beside him on the bench. My head was still ringing, and I couldn’t imagine facing the tourists with a cheery face tomorrow. Now that all my nerves had fizzled out, I just felt drained. Like I was back in the apartment with Cole again, and the world was dull and heartless and both too big and too small at the same time.

  “You saw him,” I sighed. “He could pass for a girl no problem. Claimed Hera was an alias of his, that he’d since dyed his hair, etcetera. Their description was only based on a tip-off, so . . . ”

  “They took it,” Sergio finished for me. “Wow. That was selfless of him.”

  I bobbed my head, but didn’t reply. Whatever sort of debt he owed Hera, I’d still been surprised that someone as self-absorbed as Janus would sacrifice years of freedom on her behalf. Besides, Hera had claimed he’d been an excellent escape artist, and as far as I could see, turning himself in wasn’t exactly a brilliant escape plan. Still, I was off scot-free, and I supposed that counted for something.

  “What about the girl? She’s stranded out of t
own, isn’t she?”

  Don’t go back for Hera, okay? Stick to your itinerary, finish the trip as planned. Don’t go back for her.

  “As far as we’re concerned,” I said as coldly as possible, “Hera Wilson doesn’t, and never did, exist.”

  Bright and early the next morning, the bus was once again loaded and prepped for our two-and-a-half hour journey southward to 100 Mile House. We were retracing our steps now, heading to towns we’d already driven through to see things far less exciting than what we’d already seen. Williams Lake became a blip in the scenery as we passed through it, and I was reminded of how things had changed since then. How odd to think it was only three days ago.

  100 Mile House made every other town so far look like a bustling metropolis. There was an eerie silence when we unloaded at a ranch, with only the distant chirping of birds and gurgle of a creek for background noise.

  “I mean, given the name, I never expected much else,” Grace noted.

  “It’s quaint,” William nodded.

  “Yes. Very provincial.”

  “Gets me all nostalgic.”

  “So laid back.”

  “What do people do all day?” Robbie gestured to the empty plateau, incredulous. “I would go mad!”

  “This is a ranch, not the town itself,” I reminded them. “But I’m sure during the gold rush, it was booming.”

  Our rooms were in a log cabin perched between the stark contrast of the dark, dense woodland and sweeping tawny meadows. The only other visible building was a stable, easily bigger than the cabin, surrounded by dozens of horses and a few creatures I took to be alpacas or llamas. The property owners were right out of a storybook, both wearing denim, plaid, and heavy leather boots. Our bags were taken and we were herded over to the paddock and sized up.

  “Has anyone ridden before?”

  A few people raised their hands.

  “I was once a professional jockey,” Robbie said. Perle didn’t scoff at him, making me think he was actually being serious. “When I lived in England.”