TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
No Way Out is a work of fiction. All characters appearing in this work are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright 2010 © by Melanie Jackson
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication, reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the proper written consent of the publisher – or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency – is an infringement of the copyright law.
Published by Midway Press
A Division of Playfort Publishing
www.midwaypress.ca
Cover design by Otto Pfannschmidt
Printed and bound in Canada
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Jackson, Melanie, 1956-
No way out / Melanie Jackson.
ISBN 978-0-9813164-4-4
I. Title.
PS8569.A265N6 2010 jC813’.6 C2010-906422-4
To Bart
CHAPTER ONE
The lights shut off just as I was closing my hand around the wallet. The drone of the air conditioners faded and died. The background music stopped in the middle of You Are My Sunshine.
Power outage.
My first thought was, too bad for Rafferty’s Department Store. I bet lots of people were coming into Rafferty’s just to escape the prairie heat, which had blistered up past 38 degrees Celsius. People would shop just to stay inside.
One of them had dropped this wallet on the floor. I’d spotted it while looking for a new pair of runners. Not that I needed a new pair. I’d come in for a breather from the company of my mom and stepdad, Alvin. They were waiting outside, on Portage Avenue, in Alvin’s shiny new Bimmer. Rather than turn off the Bimmer’s air conditioning, he was idling the car. Typical Alvin. Too arrogant to obey the no-idling rule.
And, even if a cop showed up, Alvin would get away with it. Now the owner of a security business, my stepdad was an ex-cop. He had lots of buddies in the Winnipeg Police Department.
I was stuck with Mom and Alvin for the whole summer. Dad was travelling on business.
I lifted the wallet off the floor. Inside was a photo of a guy about my age, with dark hair curling down over his forehead and a sulky expression. Maybe the camera had just caught him like that, or maybe that’s the way he was.
Whatever the case, he’d be missing his wallet, and soon. I’d turn it in at one of the cashier counters up front.
Who knows, I might get a reward for finding it. I’d put the money toward the improv group I led at my high school, at home in Vancouver. We were always trying to raise money to go to competitions. Our group was pretty good at improv – that is, improvising, or acting out roles and situations on the spot, with no prep. We’d already won a British Columbia regional medal.
That was another reason I felt bummed out about being in Winnipeg. The other kids in the group were taking a summer drama course together, not to mention washing cars and mowing lawns to fund-raise. I was missing out.
There was a crash at the rear of the store. A plump, bald man had bustled out of his glassed-in office so fast he’d knocked over a Lego display.
“Can I have everyone’s attention!” he yelled, waving his arms. “I’m the storeowner, George Rafferty. I apologize for the power outage. It’s an old building, and this sometimes happens. I’m hoping we can fix it soon. But till we do, I gotta ask all of you, including staff, to leave!”
I glanced around. Other customers were like me, too surprised by the sudden dimness to move.
“It’s a matter of safety and security – you gotta leave,” Mr. Rafferty shouted.
A boy in a security guard’s uniform stood behind Mr. Rafferty. The kid in the wallet photo! He wore the same sneering smile now, so I knew the photo hadn’t been a fluke.
Chomping on a thick wad of gum, the boy tugged at the curly dark lock of hair that fell over his forehead. I wondered how many tubes of hair gel the kid had to go through every morning to get the lock to dangle just so.
Grumbling, customers shuffled to the front doors, and the killer heat that waited beyond. Cash-register drawers slammed as cashiers prepared to follow them.
“I’ll round up the stragglers, Dad,” the boy announced, and swaggered off.
So Mr. Rafferty was his father. I’d wondered how someone barely sixteen got a gig as a security guard.
A sales clerk from the nearby camera department shuffled past me. “C’mon, buddy,” he sighed. “Let’s go bake on the sidewalk.”
I thought of Mom and Alvin, waiting in the illegally idling Bimmer. I thought of how they’d whisk me back to their monster house in Winnipeg’s most high-end ’hood, Tuxedo. I hated that house, crammed with overpriced furniture, appliances and the framed blobs that Mom and Alvin took for art.
Speaking of bad taste, Alvin wore a chunky gold chain necklace that was so flashy I felt embarrassed to be around him. That, and the fact that he liked to brag in a loud, booming voice about his super-successful security company.
My stepdad boasted about his cop days, too – how he’d outwitted and caught criminal after criminal. You’d think the guy was Wyatt Earp.
I didn’t walk extra fast to the front of the store.
“But Mr. Rafferty,” objected a cashier. Pale-blonde and pale-skinned, she cast worried glances out at the white-hot sidewalk. “Couldn’t staff stay inside?”
“Nope!” the storeowner snapped. “Security reasons. Out, Muriel!”
I got it. The outage had shut down the security cameras along with everything else. Mr. Rafferty didn’t trust his staff.
I was approaching Mr. Rafferty to turn in the wallet when I heard a creak behind me, way back in the camera department. Then, a click. A door shutting.
Maybe whoever it was had decided to wait out the power outage in hiding. Why not? The store would stay cool for a while. Anything was preferable to stepping out on to Portage.
I started to speak to the storeowner. But he whirled around to scold a guy in overalls, with keys and tools hanging from a work belt. Mr. Rafferty’s custodian, I took it.
Reaching for a box of tissues from a display stand, Mr. Rafferty tore it open, grabbed a whole bunch of tissues, and mopped at his forehead. “I hired you to make sure nothing like this ever happened,” he fumed.
The custodian shrugged. He was a young guy, with shoulder-length, sun-streaked sandy hair. “Must be a general downtown outage,” he drawled. “The fuses were fine this morning. I checked.”
Mr. Rafferty whipped round and stalked past the cash registers to the glass front doors. He surveyed Portage Avenue up and down.
With a triumphant snort, he whipped round and charged back up to the custodian. He jabbed a stubby forefinger practically up the guy’s left nostril.
“I saw lights on in The Bay, buddy,” Mr. Rafferty snarled. “Didja hear that? Lights on. People are shopping at The Bay, spending big-time, because their custodians are on the ball.”
Alvin had pointed out The Bay while giving me the Winnipeg grand tour. The six-storey Bay, a gleaming sand-colour w
ith stone mouldings of leaves, dated back to the 1930s. Alvin had waved a big hairy hand at it. “Classy, huh, kid?”
From where I was, I couldn’t see The Bay. I could see a doctor’s office across the street, though. Maybe Mr. Rafferty should think about dropping in there for some high-blood-pressure pills. He looked like he was ready to pop.
“I don’t get it,” the custodian said, puzzled. “Everything was working fine this morning.”
Finally Mr. Rafferty noticed me. He glowered at me. “Whaddya been doing, kid? Sleeping? I ordered everyone OUT.”
He turned back to hassle the custodian some more.
I began to explain about the wallet.
A hand clamped around my elbow.
“You aren’t going anywhere – thief,” the security guard snarled in my ear.
CHAPTER TWO
Mr. Rafferty and the custodian stared at me. My face burned. I slammed the wallet down on the nearest cashier counter.
The guard crammed the wallet into his back pocket. “Nice try, buddy.”
“I was handing it in,” I objected. “And maybe, buddy, you should watch where you leave it.”
Before I realized what was happening, he’d yanked my own wallet out of my jeans back pocket. Flipping it open, he scanned my I.D. “Our thief is Sam Jellicoe. From Vancouver.”
The guard spat out the last word, as if Vancouver was some kind of cesspool. I wanted to punch the sneer off his face. But that would get me into genuine trouble. Right now this was all a stupid misunderstanding.
Grabbing my wallet back, I looked squarely at Mr. Rafferty. “I’ve never stolen anything in my life. I found the wallet and was about to give it to you. That’s the truth.”
Sighing, Mr. Rafferty shrugged. “Okay, kid. Go. Get outta here.”
“NO.” The guard grabbed my right arm, twisting it up behind my back. “The guy’s a thief, Dad. I saw him lift the wallet. You know what our policy is. Thieves will be prosecuted.”
I wanted to yelp with pain, but I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. Instead, I looked at the storeowner for help.
“Where you gonna put him, Jon?” Mr. Rafferty demanded. “In a short while, this place is gonna be broiling. It’s not humane to – ”
“This Jellicoe kid – Jelly, we’ll call him,” the guard snickered, “shoulda thought of that before his fingers turned twitchy. I’m gonna take him to the office till we can get hold of the cops.” He shoved me ahead of him.
He had me in an agonizing grip. I couldn’t escape – for now. I’d wait till he relaxed his hold slightly, which he had to do sooner or later. Then, I’d make a break for it. I might just wallop him in passing.
The custodian flipped his eyebrows at me as if to say, Tough luck, kid.
Jon noticed. “Not amusing, Rick. Not so amusing, either, that you let the power blow. You’ve laughed yourself right out of a job.”
The custodian bit the side of his lip, probably to stop from telling off, or even belting, the boss’s son.
Mr. Rafferty began, “C’mon, Jon, it’s bad enough … ”
But Jon pushed me away from them, down the aisle heading to the glassed-in office. He wrenched my arm higher at every opportunity.
He shoved me past a cosmetics counter with some tester boxes of loose face powder, and several oval mirrors.
Jon paused to smirk at himself in one of them. Maybe also to check that the carefully oiled lock of hair was still positioned just so over his forehead.
Our gazes met in the mirror, and Jon laughed. “Why dontcha blubber, Jelly?” he invited. “I’d like to see you bawl. I’d like to see you beg.”
He’d relaxed his grip.
“I’d like to see you take a powder,” I said. Grabbing a box of the loose face powder, I dumped it over Jon’s head.
Stunned, Jon let go of my arm. He gasped and choked on the powder. His eyes streamed.
“Jon?”
It was a girl’s voice. The owner of it stepped around a display of lipsticks. She had short, dark red hair, wide brown eyes, and lips like plums. She wore a white smock with a badge that read, Gina Manetas, Cosmetician sewn in red handwriting across the top.
“Cosmet-what?” I said.
“Make-up specialist,” the girl said shortly. She turned away from me with an abrupt movement that made her silver hoop earrings dance.
She handed Jon a damp towelette out of a box on the counter. “What happened?”
“This goon attacked me. He’s a thief,” Jon snarled.
Gina switched her dark-eyed gaze back to me.
“Hi, I’m Sam Jellicoe,” I said. “And, by the way? Don’t believe our sneering friend here. Think: liar, liar, pants on fire.”
She frowned and looked away again.
Jon was wiping the towelette over his face. All it did was create flesh-coloured streaks in the white powder. The effect was to make his face look like it was behind bars.
I massaged my arm. I could make a break for it – but I was having trouble ungluing my eyes from Gina the make-up specialist. “Do you wear this guck?” I asked, gesturing at the products around us. “If you do, you should be arrested for defacing art.”
Jon threw his towelette on the floor. “YOU!” he shouted at me. “DON’T TALK TO HER. YOU’RE A THIEF, REMEMBER?” Jon crashed his fist down on the cosmetics counter, making the other boxes of powder jump. His nostrils flared like a bull’s.
Mentally I filed this image away. I might be able to use it some day in improv.
“Hey,” I said to Gina, “how come you didn’t leave the store when everyone else did?”
Gina still wouldn’t look at me. She started tidying up the lipsticks display, putting colours back where they belonged. “Jon told me I could stay.”
Gina wasn’t looking at raging-bull Jon, either. Maybe I wasn’t the only person she found objectionable right now.
Jon snapped, “Gina gets to stay because she’s my girl.” He punctuated that remark by shoving me forward. “If you got any ideas about stealing her, thief boy, you’re outta luck.”
Gina had stopped fiddling with the lipsticks and was watching me. When she saw that I’d noticed, she looked away again.
“Sorry about this,” I told her. “Honestly, the whole thing’s a mistake.”
“Move,” Jon ordered.
I raised a fist. “You touch me again and I’ll slam you one faster than you can say ‘hair gel.’ ”
Jon reached into the inside pocket of his security-guard jacket. He pulled out a switchblade and waved it at me.
I’d missed my chance to scram. I walked ahead of him, into his dad’s glass office.
Still with the knife pointed at me, Jon edged behind his dad’s desk, to a huge phone console crammed with buttons and lights. It could’ve passed for the dashboard in a jumbo jet. He pressed a button.
“Dad?” he said hesitantly.
Jon’s voice echoed at me from all directions. He was talking over the loudspeaker. “Yo, Dad,” Jon growled. He was enjoying himself.
Down the aisle, Mr. Rafferty strode over to one of the cash registers. He reached over and pushed something beside the register. His voice then blasted through the console speakers and into the office.
“What’re you doing, Jon? I need to let Rick check the building from outside, but I don’t want to be alone up here. People are at the doors, wanting to know what’s going on. Forget about the Vancouver kid. I need you.”
“Be right there, Dad.” Jon’s smile widened. I guess he didn’t realize how much powder was still stuck to his face. He could’ve subbed for Heath Ledger as the Joker.
I told him impatiently, “If you really think I’m a thief, call the cops.”
The police would straighten this out, I was sure of it. I couldn’t understand what Jon
was waiting for. Savouring the moment, sure. But this moment was turning into a month.
He backed away from me to the door. “No, I’m not gonna phone the cops yet. And neither are you, Jelly. I’m gonna let you sit in here and sweat.”
Stepping out of the office, Jon slammed the glass door shut. He removed the key ring from his belt. He stuck one of the keys into the lock. With a final sneer through the glass, he twisted the key.
And the thought came to me: Jon hadn’t called the cops because he knew very well I wasn’t a thief.
What was he up to?
With the door shut and no air circulating, the temperature in the glassed-in office started inching up like a caterpillar on a tree. It didn’t help that I was mad at Jon, and madder at myself. I could’ve run for it, out there in the cosmetics department. But noooo. I had to try and impress a girl.
I looked around the office. The other three walls were solid. Against the back wall was a row of TV security screens, now blank because of the outage.
There was no way out.
If I could remember Alvin’s cell-phone number, I would phone him – but I couldn’t. I’d made it a point of pride to ignore everything about him. In frustration, I smashed the palms of my hands against the glass a few times.
The glass didn’t break, though. It was thick and tough. I glanced around and saw why. There was a big gray floor safe in the corner.
I leaned against the glass and got hotter and more frustrated.
Then I realized I could see straight down to the front of the store. I could see Mr. Rafferty, Rick the custodian, Jon and Gina.
And someone else, just coming in one of the front doors.
I pressed my forehead against the glass and squinted.
It was a stocky guy, a few years older than Jon and me, in scruffy T-shirt and jeans, holding a guitar case.
Mr. Rafferty turned and yelled at Jon – for not having locked the front doors against newcomers, I was guessing.
Shrugging, Jon went to every one of the front doors and locked them. The last door, though, he held open, for the scruffy guy to leave through.
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