City of Saints & Thieves

by Natalie C. Anderson

  “Tiny, stop messin’ around,” Bug Eye growls.

  I don’t answer.

  “What’s she doing?” Ketchup asks.

  I take a deep breath. Focus, Tiny Girl. Dirt, money, blood.

  I slide open the top desk drawer and lift out a slim laptop. Then I reach farther and close my hand around a metal box the size of a deck of cards and pull it out.

  “That’s it,” Boyboy says breathlessly. “That’s got to be his hard drive.”

  Ketchup shouts, “Yeah, boy!” in my ear, and Bug Eye again tells him to shut up.

  “Now what?” I ask Boyboy.

  “The hard drive is probably wireless. Put it next to the computer, then plug the USB adapter I gave you into the laptop.” Then he quickly adds, “But don’t turn anything on yet.”

  I press the earpiece, trying to make sure I’m getting all of his instructions. Once I’ve done as he says, I hear the faint clicking of computer keys. It would be so much easier just to steal Mr. G’s external hard drive, get in and get out. That was the plan I proposed to Bwana Omoko originally. But the Goonda boss didn’t want to leave traces. He wanted me in and out. He thinks it’s better if Mr. G doesn’t know he’s been robbed until we’ve moved on to part two of the plan, money, and it’s too late.

  “Is it working?” I ask, after a long pause. The USB is supposed to relay data from the computer and hard drive to my phone, and from there back to Boyboy.

  “The signal is terrible,” Boyboy grumbles. “I told you those thick walls were going to be a problem. Put your phone closer to the adapter.”

  I reluctantly pull it from my bra and set it on the desk next to the computer. “Better?”

  “I think so. I’ve got a foot in the door, but there’s a crazy mzingo-crypto I need to break before we’re good.”

  We all wait in tense silence, seconds ticking by like little lifetimes until Boyboy finally says, “All right . . .” with a lot less confidence than I’d like.

  “Did you get through?” I whisper.

  “Only one way to find out. Turn it on.”

  If this thing works like it’s supposed to, we should already be into the computer and the hard drive. If not, Boyboy will have to walk me through hacking them. It will take forever, and any mistake could trip an auto-delete switch. In Boyboy’s worst-case scenario, the whole hard drive gets wiped, and a signal goes out to the black-ops guys to come and get me.

  My heart is pounding as I open the screen. I press the power button. For an awful second, nothing happens and I think it hasn’t worked, that I’m too far away for the transmission to come through, that silent alarms are already ringing, that guards are descending on me, but then I see a cursor blink and hear a luxurious chime.

  My ears fill with excited whispers. The hard drive blinks to life.

  Boyboy lets out a big breath of relief. “We’re in.”

  Greyhill’s computer has nothing on it. Boyboy already tried hacking it from afar, but it was basically empty. He was the one who bet that Mr. Greyhill kept all his business transaction data separate, offline, probably in an external hard drive like this. I have to smile at the tiny box. It doesn’t seem possible it can hold so many dirty secrets.

  I sit back. Now all I have to do is wait. I can hear Boyboy clicking away. I watch as the computer screen shuffles from one window to the next all by itself.

  “How long’s it going to take?” Bug Eye asks.

  “A few minutes,” Boyboy says.

  I let myself enjoy a smug thrill. I did it. I got us in. Soon all of Mr. G’s data will be floating out to Boyboy. Boyboy figures it will still take maybe a week for him to decrypt it all, but that’s nothing. I’ve waited five years already; I can wait another week.

  I open Mr. G’s desk drawers, prowling out of habit. The first is pretty empty. I flick past a couple of pens, a paper clip, and one of those balls you squeeze for stress. I pull the next drawer open and freeze.

  A handgun lies on the mahogany like a coiled snake. It is sleek and gleaming, with the words PIETRO BERETTA MADE IN ITALY NO. II on the side of the barrel. Is it the same one? I almost pick it up, but then close the drawer so quickly that I hear the gun thud against the wood. I take a deep breath so my voice won’t shake. “How much longer?”

  “Hold your horses,” Boyboy says. “The signal still sucks.”

  The screen continues to fill with code that I don’t understand, white chicken scratch on black. I have no idea what he’s doing, but windows keep popping up, full of files.

  I’m about to stand, feeling the need to get up and move, when one of the files catches my eye, and I have to blink to make sure I’m seeing it right. ANJU YVETTE, it’s labeled. My heart starts to pound. I hesitate. I know I shouldn’t mess with the computer while Boyboy’s doing his thing, but my hand is moving before I can tell it not to.

  When I click on her name, a photo opens.

  “Hey! What are you doing?” Boyboy’s typing trails into silence. “Oh my God, is that . . . ?”

  I can’t answer. I can’t move. I recognize her face immediately, even though the photo must be twenty years old. My vision blurs.

  Under normal circumstances, I like to think I would have noticed the change in the room’s air pressure. I would have felt the draft, or smelled the faint odor of dirt and damp. I would have heard the door open behind me where there was no door. But instead, it takes the metallic churning of small, precise gears to get me to finally look up from the glowing screen.

  I don’t turn around. I know that noise.

  The cold muzzle of the gun gives me goose bumps where it presses against my neck.

  FIVE

  I swallow, careful to not make any sudden moves.

  “Get your hands up.”

  Everything speeds up as I take stock. It’s a boy’s voice, unfamiliar. Not Ketchup or Bug Eye. No one is double-crossing me. Security? The voice sounds shaky, like telling me to put my hands up is something he’s only ever seen people do in movies. And young. Not security. If he were, I’d be on my way to a helicopter already. I glance at the drawer with Greyhill’s gun in it, but I’ll never be able to pull it open and turn on him in time. I raise my hands.

  “I’m turning around,” I say, trying for my best calm, in-charge voice.

  The gun comes away from my head and I slowly swivel in the chair. He’s breathing hard and his bright green eyes are wide. Still, he’s aiming with a military stance. Even if he’s never shot a living, breathing human, he’s practiced. He knows how to hold the gun, how to aim it, how to keep his body loose to absorb the kickback.

  He’s standing before the bookcase, which has opened on hinges. It’s a door that would never show up on a city council house plan. An escape route. I should have known. All snakes have one.

  I turn my attention back to the boy.

  Of course. Who else could it be?

  “Hi, Michael,” I say. “Been a while.”

  • • •

  Rule 6 is, of course: Don’t get caught.

  • • •

  Once when I was about nine, my mother discovered me on the Greyhills’ firing range, learning from a security guard how to shoot a hole in the center of a paper man’s chest. I was using a gun just like the one in Mr. Greyhill’s drawer. Every time I squeezed the trigger I was in danger of being knocked onto my butt. I loved it. I felt like there was a tiny monster inside of me, and the explosions made it howl with glee.

  Mama waited until I had handed the gun back to the security guard and then grabbed me by the shoulder. I could feel her hand trembling. She hauled me up to the servants’ cottages, instructing the guard through clenched teeth to never let me near a gun ever again, at pain of her getting him fired. Or worse. My mother was a small woman, but her temper was legendary, her memory long. She didn’t look at the boy beside me, who had, of course, instigated the shooting l
esson. She may have been tough, but she was still his maid.

  I waited a year until the boy was good enough to be allowed to shoot without the security guard hovering directly over him, and then had him teach me.

  And he was good.

  This boy who’s pointing a gun at my chest.

  • • •

  My greeting has its intended effect.

  “Ti-Tina?” he stutters.

  I nod slowly, force my mouth to curve upward in a small smile. Time has made him tall like his father, thick with muscle that didn’t show up in the hallway photos. I tell myself not to get distracted looking for my sister in his face, in his pale eyes or the set of his lips.

  His brow furrows with confusion. The gun wavers as he unthinkingly moves it away from my chest, and at that instant I lunge. I go for the gun with one hand and jab his windpipe with my other fist. He gags but keeps his hold on the gun, so I settle for pushing his arms to the side and hooking his ankle with my foot to unbalance him. He tries to grab me, but I twist out of his reach and scramble backward over the desk, snatching my phone as I go.

  It only takes him a second to recover from my hit; he’s quicker than I figured he would be, and I hear him coming over the desk. I’ve sprinted halfway across the room when his arms wrap around me and we slam face-first into the carpet. My phone falls from my hand.

  I try to squirm free, kicking and elbowing, gnashing my teeth toward his bare hand. I manage to scrape the side of my foot down his shin and hear a satisfying yelp. But then he yanks my arms up and presses his knee into the small of my back. I start to fight, but the pressure sends a streak of pain up my shoulder.

  “Ow! You’re hurting me!”

  He hesitates but doesn’t loosen his hold. “Is that really you? What are you doing here?” he croaks, lapsing into coughs.

  “Let me go!”

  “Tina! Stop fighting!” He keeps coughing but still doesn’t release me.

  “What are you doing here?” I shout.

  “What?” He sounds genuinely confused. Of course he does. This is his house.

  I stop thrashing but don’t answer. Half my face is up against the Persian rug, and all I can see are elegant patterns winding away from my line of sight. I can feel the earpiece pressed into my chest, which I managed to shove into my bra while I ran. I’m breathing hard, and my arm is on fire, but all I can think is, how much of the data did Boyboy get? Did it transmit? Was it enough?

  “You’re not supposed to be here,” I say through my teeth, more to myself than him. He’s supposed to be tucked into bed in his Swiss boarding academy. I checked already to make sure there weren’t any school holidays.

  “What are you talking about?” He tightens his hold on my arms. “What am I doing here?”

  I wipe my running nose against the carpet. “Let me up.”

  He doesn’t move.

  “Let me up. I’ll explain.”

  I feel him hesitate, but then his weight shifts and he lets my arms go. I slowly stand and turn around to find the gun leveled at my chest. I straighten my shirt, using the few seconds to debate whether to try and take him out again. I’m close enough that I could grab the gun’s muzzle, pull him off balance, and hit him again in the neck, where I’ve already hurt him. Probably. But he’s quick, and now he’s expecting it. So instead I raise an eyebrow at the gun, focusing all my energy on trying to look more in charge than I feel. “Can you put that thing down?”

  He doesn’t lower it. “I won’t kill you,” he says, after a pause. “But I will shoot you in the leg.”

  His face tells me he’s not lying. He’ll put a bullet in me. So I’m not the only one who’s changed in the five years since we’ve seen each other. I thought it was a softy Swiss boarding school, but maybe it’s a military academy his parents have got him in. That would explain the muscles. It would also make him ready for any dirty move I might throw at him. My fighting repertoire basically consists of unbalancing my opponent and going for an N spot: nose, neck, nuts, or knees. It’s not pretty, but it’s effective, and like Bug Eye said when he taught us, fighting pretty’s overrated.

  As we stand there, I realize Michael’s looking me up and down the same way I’m checking him out. He’s taking in my face, my tattoos. I scowl and feel some of my confidence come back with his blush.

  “I’m going to sit down,” I say.

  Without waiting for an answer, I lower myself into one of the leather chairs. I watch him, but I don’t think he notices me kick my phone under the chair as I sit. I wonder if the Goondas can hear me through the earpiece. Is Boyboy still able to transfer data? How long before they have to move the van? The neighborhood security drive-by happens every hour. We must be getting close. They’ll have to leave me, circle around, and come back.

  “How did you even get in here?” Michael steps behind his father’s desk, keeping the gun trained on my chest. He looks from the computer to me, then back, his eyes wide.

  I hold my breath. Hopefully the screen doesn’t show what I’ve been up to.

  “Are you crazy?” he asks. “You’ve been on Dad’s laptop? Do you know what he does to people who mess with his things?”

  And in that wide-eyed moment, I see him, the friend I once knew. He is still the same little boy, terrified and in awe of his father, tiptoeing past his office door, watching him leave for work with a look like a dog pining after his master. That look makes me want to hit him again, and suddenly I can’t stop the wash of memories that rear up and crash over me: We are seven, and Michael and I are screaming with laughter as we cannonball into the neon-blue pool. We’re nine, making shadow puppets on the kitchen wall during a blackout. We are ten, making a fort in the mango tree in the backyard, discovering a nest of baby bulbuls in the process, getting chased by the mother, who flapped and pecked at our heads.

  One memory after another, like they’ve been pent up in a cage in the back of my mind, and someone’s opened the door. I was the chosen one, Michael’s best friend. I knew all his secrets and fears. I was allowed free rein whenever I was with him, and shooed back to my mother’s quarters when I was not.

  And then all the images grind to a stop.

  I’m eleven, and Michael is nowhere around. It’s just me and my mother, her eyes open and staring past me, blood painted in a delicate line from the corner of her mouth to her chin. Her braids fall over the hole in her chest. By the time I saw her, her life had already poured out onto the expensive furniture in this very room.

  All the anger and pain and hurt comes surging back, hot and red. For a moment it blinds me.

  He must know why I’m here, why I don’t care how angry his dad would be, or whether I get hurt in the process. He must. I press my hands into trembling fists and stare at them.

  Michael is waiting. “So? What were you doing on his laptop?”

  “Nothing.”

  He pulls the USB adapter out of the computer and shakes it at me. “What is this? Were you copying files?”

  When I stay silent, he comes around from the desk, and then he’s right up on me, hauling me to my feet and pawing over my body, searching while he keeps the gun at my temple. He is rough, and I feel flimsy under his hands, but I don’t want to give him the satisfaction of seeing my fear. Instead I clench my teeth and stare past him until he finds my knife and then the earpiece. He pockets them both.

  “You enjoy that? Groping me?”

  For a few long seconds we don’t move, just stand there, hackles up, ready to rip into each other, waiting for an opening.

  “So now what?” I say finally. “Are you going to turn me in?”

  The question jolts him. “Shonde,” he curses.

  “What?” I ask.

  He tears his gaze from me to glance at the office door. “Security will be here any second. I hit the alarm.”

  I can’t help it; my knees go weak and my
throat dries up. I have to swallow to speak. “They’ll kill me, you know.”

  “I know.” He hurries to the office door. The gun stays pointed at me while he checks the peephole. I use the moment of distraction to crouch and retrieve my phone from under the chair. I slip it up my sleeve.

  “Let’s go,” he says. When he turns, his expression has hardened into something unreadable. He grabs my arm and pushes me toward the still-open bookcase door. I resist, but then I hear something. A thumping. It’s growing louder and louder: boots. Not at the door yet, but coming at us fast. Lots of them.

  He gestures at the tunnel with the gun. “It’s me or them; which do you want?”

  I eye the dark opening in the wall, and for a second I feel like I’m looking into my grave. The footsteps halt outside the office. The doorknob rattles. This will not take long.

  “I don’t know,” I say, but I plunge into the tunnel. Michael closes the bookcase behind us as I hear the first boot slam against the office door.

  SIX

  I can’t believe I’m doing this,” Michael says.

  I don’t answer. I can’t believe I’m doing this either, following him into a dark wherever. I start to shuffle forward, but he grabs my arm. “Wait. There are stairs.”

  There’s a click of a switch, and a fluorescent bulb above our heads stutters to life, like the start of a horror movie. It illuminates steps that recede steeply into the earth. The concrete walls of the tunnel are rough, with rusty water stains dripping from the ceiling like dried blood. I watch Michael press buttons on a small screen on the wall. When it turns on, we see a video feed of guards bursting through Mr. G’s office door, swarming until they fill the room, guns bristling.

  My breath catches. Not because of the guards but because there is a camera in the office.

  I am frozen to the spot, watching the screen.

  A camera.

  Recording everything. But it must not transmit like the other CCTVs to the guard station. It, like the tunnel, doesn’t show up on any of the plans or security documents Boyboy hacked. How long has it been there? Was it there five years ago? A camera. I’m practically paralyzed thinking about what it might have recorded.