Every Second Counts

by Sophie McKenzie

  I knew that Charlie was driven by revenge for her mum and, though she wouldn’t admit it, a desire to find out the truth about her dad, but just getting rid of Riley wasn’t enough for me. Mum and Dad were always saying all politicians were useless. I had thought Riley was different, but in fact he was worse.

  I shook myself. I didn’t have time to think about all this now. Aaron and Jas were waiting for me to tell them what to do next, their expressions anxious and expectant.

  ‘We need to move,’ I whispered.

  ‘Right.’ Aaron nodded. ‘Let’s find the nearest road and—’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘That’s what Riley will expect us to do; he’ll send men to find us. We need to keep to the woods. We head west, then south. Once we’re away from here, we’ll hitch a ride to London, stay away from the main transport routes. Come on.’

  Jas and Aaron hesitated, then Jas nodded.

  ‘Er . . . you were brilliant back there, Nat,’ Aaron gushed.

  I shook my head. ‘Don’t congratulate me yet. It’s all been too easy so far.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Jas frowned. ‘It didn’t seem easy to me.’

  I opened my mouth to point out that it had been strange that there’d been no guard on the front door, but before I could speak Aaron took Jas’s hand.

  ‘Don’t worry, babe,’ he said. ‘I told you, we’re safe.’

  Irritation filled me, though whether from Aaron’s breezy self-assurance, the hand-holding or the fact that he had just called my sister ‘babe’ again, I wasn’t sure.

  ‘Just try and make as little noise as possible,’ I muttered.

  As I sped off, I went over what we needed to do next. Once we were safely out of these woods, I planned to head for London. I had to bring Jas back to Mum and Dad, get them to take her away. If she was hidden from Riley then she’d be safe. And if she was apart from Aaron, that wouldn’t be a bad thing either.

  Charlie

  The Operation Neptune folder contained notes on its aims and likely impact. The strategy was simple – and very daring: Riley, as leader of the Future Party, was going to host an early-evening drinks reception at a London hotel and invite members of all the opposition parties. This would be presented as an informal get-together, a way of bringing potential coalition partners into the same room for a drink and a chat. But really the entire thing was a cover allowing Riley to set off a bomb at the reception and frame the government for the explosion.

  Through this single operation, Uchi had written, leading members of one key opponent are killed, maimed or reduced in effectiveness while members of another rival become embroiled in scandal and discredited to the public.

  It made sense. A month ago, Riley had pinned everything on the League of Iron. This was just a new scapegoat.

  I searched on, trying to find more details. Though I couldn’t locate an actual date, the time and place of the bombing were given – seven-thirty at the Almeida Hotel – as well as a diagram of the building with an underwater passage from the river into the hotel’s basement marked entry route. A shiver slid down my spine. This must be the route by which the bomb would be smuggled into the building. And the fact that it was underwater suddenly – and horribly – made sense of the training I’d been doing with Spider. Clearly we were the ones who were supposed to carry and place the bomb.

  I scanned the next sheet of paper, hungry for more information including the date of the party and details of who would be attending. But just then a floorboard creaked outside the office. Someone was there. Heart pounding, I jumped up, shoved the papers back in the folder, stuffed everything into the drawer and locked it.

  Footsteps padded across the hall. I held my breath. Whoever it was, was walking away from the study. I heard the kitchen door open and shut. Presumably one of the other people in the house had gone for food or drink. I needed to get out of here before they came back to the hall.

  I hurriedly pressed the key back into the Blu-tack on the underside of the computer keyboard, checked that both desk and chair were as I’d found them, then sped across to the door and eased it open. Light seeped out from under the kitchen door across the hall. Moving as quietly as I could, I left the office and closed the door silently behind me. I had to press on the catch as it closed, then release. The thud of the lock resetting itself seemed very loud in the still night air. Holding my breath I raced across the hall and started up the stairs.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  I jumped. Looked round. Spider was standing in the kitchen doorway, dressed in sweatpants and a T-shirt. His dark eyes glinted in the light that shone from the room behind him.

  ‘I couldn’t sleep,’ I lied. ‘What are you doing? Spying on me?’

  Spider glared at me. ‘Don’t make this about me – you’re the one sneaking about in the middle of the night.’ He paused. ‘Your dad will be interested to know you’ve been down here.’

  He walked towards me, his loping frame sinister in the shadowy light. I wanted to back away from him, but instead I made myself step closer, right into his space.

  ‘Don’t tell Uchi. Please.’ I looked up into Spider’s dark eyes, sensing that pleading was my best option right now – if nothing else, because he would not be expecting it.

  He blinked rapidly, clearly surprised. Even in the soft light I could see his cheeks growing red. Was that because of how close we were standing? I wondered how much time Spider had actually spent with girls. If he was shut up in a boarding school most of the year, maybe he wasn’t used to being around them.

  Still resisting the impulse to pull away, I bowed my head before him and whispered: ‘Please, Spider. I wasn’t doing anything. I just couldn’t sleep.’

  He hesitated. I was sure he was softening. And then the front door opened. We both turned together. The guard whose shadow I’d glimpsed earlier was still outside. I’d thought it had been the guard who’d been in the house earlier, but it wasn’t.

  It was Taylor.

  ‘Charlie?’ he said, his green eyes glinting.

  I gulped. The last time I’d seen my former cell leader he had just tricked me into kidnapping Aaron Latimer, claiming it was for his own safety. It still hurt to think how much I had admired Taylor. He had trained us for several months, teaching Nat, George, Parveen and me how to fight, to escape, to move undetected and much else besides.

  We had trusted him and he had betrayed us.

  ‘I found her sneaking about, sir,’ Spider said.

  Taylor didn’t take his eyes off me. ‘Go to bed, Spider,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Spider slunk off past me up the stairs.

  Taylor came over. ‘Turn out your pockets,’ he demanded.

  I did as he said in silence.

  ‘What were you doing down here?’ Taylor asked, patting down my arms and legs. I gritted my teeth and submitted to the brisk search.

  ‘Getting a glass of water.’ I deliberately didn’t say ‘sir’, a term which Taylor had used to insist on.

  I thought for a second that he was going to pull me up on it, but instead he just studied my face. I looked back at him, trying to keep my gaze level and cool. Now wasn’t the time, but one day I would get my revenge on Taylor for conning us – and for leaving Nat to die – and for brave George, who had died.

  ‘Right.’ Taylor sounded sceptical. ‘Okay, then get it quickly and go back to your room.’

  I did as I was told without speaking. Taylor watched me all the way up the stairs. As I went into my room, I thought back to what I’d discovered about Operation Neptune.

  I had to contact Nat and tell him what I’d found out. I had memorised his number. All I needed was a phone. There might not be any landlines in the house, but everyone here surely had a mobile, I just had to work out how to get hold of one. Fast.

  Nat

  It took us all of the next day and the following night to get to London. I insisted that we hitched rides the whole way: after our recent brush with Riley I didn’t want to risk being spotted
on public transport. If any of us had been travelling alone, we would probably have reached London faster, but I didn’t want to leave Jas and she refused to leave Aaron, so there wasn’t much choice.

  Our longest hitched lift was down the M1 in the back of a transit van being used by a young couple moving flats overnight. It wasn’t the most comfortable journey I’d ever had, but at least we weren’t out in the cold.

  The van driver dropped us off at a motorway service station near Watford at about three a.m. It was raining, so we darted inside for cover and found a row of seats near the entrance. Jas and I sat down while Aaron went off to the toilets. After a moment, Jas wrapped herself in Charlie’s sleeping bag then curled up beside me. She looked shattered. Neither she nor Aaron were used to sleeping rough like I was and, though they hadn’t complained, it was obvious that being on the run was really getting to them.

  Jas had asked – for the tenth time – if she could call Mum and Dad, insisting they would be really worried about her by now. I had said no – also for the tenth time. For a start, I was sure our phones were bugged – it was the only explanation for them having been left out, right by the front door of the ops base. And we couldn’t use payphones to call home, as it was entirely possible both the landline and Mum’s and Dad’s mobiles had been bugged too.

  Aaron had also asked if he could call his dad. I said no to that even more firmly. Quite apart from the fact that Mayor Latimer’s phone lines could easily be bugged too, the man hadn’t lifted a finger to defend us before and I still didn’t trust him.

  ‘But my dad would help,’ Aaron had insisted. ‘I know he looks like he supports Riley but I keep telling you it’s just a cover.’

  ‘Mmm,’ I’d said, unconvinced.

  ‘Mr Latimer’s really nice, Nat,’ Jas had ventured hesitantly. ‘I mean I’ve met him quite a few times now.’ She smiled shyly at Aaron. ‘And he’s always really sweet to me, you know, putting me at my ease, teasing Aaron in a nice, dad-ish way, like our dad used to with Lucas’s girlfriends.’

  I shook my head. As far as I was concerned it seemed highly improbable that Latimer was as sound as Jas thought. She tended to see the best in people, and was as likely to have been fooled over Aaron’s dad as I had been over Roman Riley himself.

  ‘Nat?’ Jas’s voice brought me back to the present. I looked down at her pale face peeking out from Charlie’s sleeping bag. ‘Please let me give Mum and Dad a ring.’

  ‘Sorry, but no.’ I sighed.

  Jas looked close to tears.

  ‘We’ll go straight home once we reach London,’ I said, trying to pacify her.

  ‘But we’re still on the motorway and we don’t have our next lift yet,’ she said, her voice all shaky.

  This was true, and I felt bad that Jas was upset, but it was still too big a risk to call our parents.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ I asked, hoping to distract her. We hadn’t eaten since a lorry driver had shared his sandwiches with us at about five o’clock the previous afternoon.

  She shook her head. I sighed. Jas had got even skinnier since I’d been away from home. She only ever picked at her food at the best of times. I wondered, though I didn’t ask, if she’d been eating properly at all. Surely Mum would have made sure she was, now I wasn’t around?

  ‘Well, I’m starving,’ I said. I left Jas on the plastic seat just inside the service station entrance and wandered away to the fried food concession next to the mini-arcade. No one was around as I took the remaining coins we’d scraped together from our pockets and bought the three of us a burger each. By the time I got back to Jas, Aaron was with her again, his arm around her shoulders. Jas was snuggled in close to him. They looked blissfully happy. I handed them their burgers then wandered outside, feeling like maybe I was a bit in their way. It was a clear night, and the moon cast a ghostly glow over the deserted car park.

  I sat on a step and ate my burger. Up until a few months ago life had made sense. There was family and school and work and friends. Sometimes bad things happened, of course, like Lucas being in his coma, but the world – the background to my life – was a fixed, steady thing that you could be sure of: the police were there to protect you and the vast majority of adults had your best interests at heart. Now I knew that all that was an illusion. Now nothing made sense.

  Nothing except Charlie. She had seen and experienced the same things as me. She understood.

  I missed her so much that it hurt.

  I finished my burger, then wandered around the car park, licking my fingers. I stayed outside for about thirty minutes. So far I hadn’t seen anyone to even ask if they would give us a lift into London, but maybe there’d be more people inside. Perhaps Aaron had even found someone already in the service station. I headed back. Aaron and Jas were still sitting where I’d left them, both now huddled under Charlie’s sleeping bag. Jas was asleep, her head resting on Aaron’s shoulder. He looked up at me as I approached and put his finger to his lips to warn me not to wake her.

  I was about to look in the café to see if there was anyone about to leave who might give us a ride, when the service station door flew open, letting in a gust of cold air. I glanced around.

  To my horror, Latimer was striding inside. His eyes lit on Aaron straight away. I froze, watching as Aaron extricated himself from Jas, laid her carefully down on the sleeping bag and stood up to give his father a hug.

  Fury surged inside me. Before I knew what I was doing I had raced over.

  ‘Hey!’ I tugged at Aaron’s arm. He stepped back from his dad.

  ‘Nat, this is my father, Jason Latimer.’

  Latimer held out his hand. His face was familiar from TV and the memorial service for the bomb victims I’d gone to last year.

  ‘Hello.’ I shook Latimer’s hand reluctantly, then turned back to Aaron. ‘You rang your dad? I thought I told you not to make any calls,’ I snapped.

  Aaron’s cheeks flushed. ‘I used the payphones by the toilets, not my mobile.’

  ‘It’s fine, Nat,’ Latimer said quickly. ‘You’re right to be careful, but I have the home phones and our mobiles checked for bugs every week. And I’m glad Aaron rang. His mother’s been frantic. And now I can help you. I only got back from my trip a few hours ago. I came straight here, as soon as Aaron called, to pick you guys up.’ He glanced at Jas. ‘Is she okay? Are you all okay?’

  ‘We’re fine, Dad. Thanks for coming.’ Aaron gave his dad a beaming smile. ‘Is the car outside?’

  ‘Yes.’ Latimer turned to me. ‘I came alone, Nat. I thought it was safer.’

  ‘Right.’ No way was I getting in the man’s car. He’d probably take me straight back to Riley.

  Aaron turned back to Jas, shaking her gently awake.

  ‘I understand why you’re wary of me, Nat,’ Latimer went on. ‘I know you must have wondered why I didn’t come forward and tell the world that you helped Aaron escape from being kidnapped.’

  ‘You did worse than that,’ I muttered. ‘You said the League of Iron had done the kidnapping, that Charlie and I must work for them. You backed up all their lies – and because of that, Charlie and I are wanted by the police and Riley, and can’t go home.’

  ‘I know.’ Latimer sighed. ‘I know, it was a terrible choice to make. But it felt like the only way to convince Riley I was – am – on his side.’

  I stared at him. He certainly seemed sincere. There was an openness in his face that I saw in Aaron too.

  ‘Please come with us, Nat,’ Latimer said. ‘I’ll take you wherever you want to go. I’ve been wanting to talk to you ever since Aaron told me how you helped him last month. And now you’ve helped him again – and Jas.’

  ‘She’s my sister,’ I snapped. ‘Of course I helped her.’

  ‘Of course,’ Latimer echoed, his voice soft and soothing. ‘Look, I don’t know what I can say that will convince you I’m working secretly against Riley, but there are plenty in the resistance who will tell you that I’ve helped them over the past few weeks, pr
oviding information and equipment.’

  I stared at him, remembering how Lennox and Julius had indeed told me just that. ‘So how undercover are you?’ I asked. ‘Do you know what Riley’s planning?’

  Latimer shook his head. ‘I’m not in the inner circle, but he thinks I’m loyal.’

  ‘But really you just want a chance to get power for yourself.’

  ‘No – well, of course I want a chance to make a difference, to have some influence over our country; but not by bombing innocent people, or framing and blackmailing others to take the blame.’

  I folded my arms, still unconvinced.

  Latimer looked over at where Aaron was helping Jas to her feet. She stumbled as she took a step; her face was drawn, her skin almost grey with exhaustion. ‘Nat, I know it’s hard to trust me, but look at your sister.’ Latimer lowered his voice. ‘She can’t go on like this, I have to take her to your parents. And if you don’t come with us, she’ll worry.’

  I shrugged. I still felt uneasy, but Latimer was right about Jas.

  ‘Okay . . . we’ll come with you – but any sign I get that you’re really working for Riley and we’re out of here.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ Latimer said, with evident relief.

  We got into his Bentley. Aaron sat next to Jas in the back seat. She was asleep again within seconds and Aaron himself started snoring about two minutes later. Latimer drove silently along the motorway for a bit, then cleared his throat.

  ‘Is Charlie alright? Did you leave her at the safe house?’

  I stared at him suspiciously. Was he fishing for information? Surely if he was in deep with Riley he would already know Charlie was with him. Still, he had said he wasn’t in Riley’s inner circle.

  ‘Charlie’s fine, as far as I know,’ I said, staring out at the moon overhead.

  ‘Good. That’s good.’ There was a pause, then Latimer spoke again. ‘I don’t want Riley to get away with what he’s done. And not just because I’m afraid of what he’ll do in the future. It’s just wrong. Undemocratic.’