Out of Control

by Sarah Alderson

  ‘He doesn’t live in Trump Tower.’

  ‘Close enough.’

  ‘How are we going to get on the subway? We don’t have any money.’

  ‘Trust me,’ he says with a touch of impatience.

  ‘Stop asking me to do that,’ I say, equally as impatiently.

  We glare at each other for a second before a smile starts to curve his bottom lip, though it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. ‘Then at least stop doubting me,’ he says.

  I don’t even know you, I want to yell. Instead I let him walk ahead of me down the stairs and I follow, albeit dragging my heels.

  It’s hot as a sauna in hell down in the subway. Jay has stopped at the bottom to tie his shoelace. Except he’s not really tying his shoelace, he’s casing the ticket hall for uniforms. I slump beside him, leaning against a wall as tides of people push past me. My body decides to speak up and declare mutiny. It’s had enough of walking and being dragged through one-hundred-degree heat. It’s had enough of running and adrenaline cranks and being tossed around like a garbage bag. It wants a bath and a rub down with Deep Heat and my shoulder is begging for some liberally applied ice.

  Jay glances up at me, shaking out the change from his pocket and counting it up. ‘OK, we got enough for one ticket,’ he says.

  He strides to the machine and inserts our change. I force myself to ignore the aches and pains and tiredness which want to drag me to my knees, digging deep to find whatever energy remains. I push away from the wall and head over to join Jay by the machine. He hands me the ticket that it spits out. ‘After you,’ he says motioning to the turnstile.

  I slit my eyes at him. If this is going to end in us having to run anywhere while people chase us, I’m not sure I can take part.

  ‘Just walk through. I’ll be right behind you,’ he urges, his hands on my shoulders. I shudder. Last time he had his hands on my shoulders like that, a man was after us with a gun and he was trying to get me to run faster.

  I slide through the turnstile gate and, once through on to the platform side, I look back. Jay is over by the exit turnstiles. He glances once over his shoulder, then places a hand on the turnstile and hops it, graceful as a panther. He takes my hand as he strolls past me, whistling, and pulls me after him down the stairs two flights to our platform. No one yells. No whistles or alarms ring. I yank my hand free so I can keep my arms crossed over my chest and I let out a deep breath.

  We wait at the far end of the platform beside a group of fourteen-year-old Russian girls wearing what can only be described as clothes inspired by a Victoria’s Secret runway show, a fact that Jay seems oblivious to. He’s too preoccupied with scanning the platform, eyes darting in every direction, his body angled closely into mine, as though he’s trying to shield me from view, and I find myself leaning ever so slightly in towards him too, until I realise what I’m doing and shift away, edging more towards the girls.

  I can pick up a few words here and there, though I’m far from fluent in Russian. My mother only spoke it on the phone with my granddad and quit trying to teach me when I was about nine and he died.

  Jay might not have noticed the girls, but they have noticed him and are talking about him in a way which I’m sure would shoot his ego into the stratosphere if he understood what they were saying – something about wanting to know what’s under his shirt and inside his . . . I frown then wrinkle my nose. Oh God. Since when did fourteen-year-old girls get so precocious?

  ‘Come here,’ Jay suddenly says, jerking his head at me.

  I stare at him.

  ‘Come here,’ he says again, reaching for me and pulling me towards him.

  I resist but he’s stronger than me. He has one arm locked around my waist and the other reaches behind my head and for one totally crazy, surreal moment I think he’s going to kiss me and my heart starts to beat like it’s trying to drill a hole through my ribs, but all he does is yank my hair-elastic free so my hair falls down around my shoulders.

  ‘What did you do that for?’ I ask, annoyed. He’s still holding me around the waist and I can feel my face flushing.

  He lets go of me, but his other hand strokes my hair gently, positioning it over my cheek. ‘There,’ he says, ‘covers the scratch. Makes you less noticeable.’ His gaze falls to my legs, which no amount of spit-scrubbing could get clean, and he pulls a face. ‘Kind of.’

  The train tears into the station and we push on board. It’s busy – rush-hour commuters filling up every inch of available space. The Russian girls squeeze on behind us. Jay reaches up for a handrail and I stretch almost so I’m en pointe and take hold too. At least the air conditioning is ratcheted up to a degree just south of a cryogenic lab so I can luxuriate in the feeling of sweat evaporating off my skin finally, goosebumps rippling in its wake. With so many people pressing in on us I actually feel safe, shielded, hidden. I glance up at Jay, who’s swaying in rhythm with the train, the shadows under his eyes looking like bruises in the halogen strip lighting, and for the first time I start to believe that maybe we can make it through twenty-four hours. Could I say the same if I was alone?

  ‘If I’d have known that it was Lingerie on the Subway Day today I’d have worn my best Calvins,’ Jay murmurs suddenly in my ear. ‘Between you and them,’ he says, indicating the Russian posse giggling and swaying purposely into his back, ‘I feel kind of overdressed.’ I feel his eyes skimming the top of my breasts.

  ‘Yeah, you’re hating every second of it. I can tell. Eyes up, Moreno.’

  He grins over the top of my head. ‘Oh, it’s Moreno now, is it?’

  I shake my head. ‘How can you smile?’ I whisper as the train grinds to a halt in a tunnel and I’m thrown irritatingly against him. ‘With everything that’s going on?’

  He shrugs as I find my balance again, but his smile fades as though I’ve taken an eraser and wiped it clean off his face and I feel my own body react as though someone’s pulled the plug out of the power supply to my muscles, and my mood dips instantly. I didn’t realise how Jay’s upbeat humour was actually getting me through this, was carrying me along like a tidal force.

  When we reach Lexington, I let Jay push a way past the giggling, hair-flicking Russian girls wearing only their underwear and follow him off the train with a tightening sensation in my gut. We switch to the 6, heading uptown to 77th Street. Emerging back into the light I’m tentative, like a prairie dog peeking out a hole. It’s like we’ve entered a whole new city, one that’s buffed and polished to a high sheen – a Gossip Girl set poised and waiting for someone to yell Action!

  The sidewalks are wider and cleaner, the traffic moves more fluidly. It even smells better. You can take a breath without being hit by a waft of burning pretzel, diesel fumes and hot dog grease. Jay makes that whistling sound through his teeth as he checks out the smart awnings bridging the sidewalks, each one manned by a doorman in a uniform. A lady in quick-clicking heels wearing mutantly-oversized sunglasses and walking her mutantly-undersized dachshund, gives him a very wide berth, clutching her designer handbag tighter against her body. Jay gives her a smile that reveals a deep dimple in his right cheek, though a flash of anger lights his eyes like a stone striking flint. I’m surprised the woman doesn’t set her dachshund on him.

  From the tiny pull of muscle at the edge of Jay’s eye and the tension in his shoulders I can tell that he’s as on edge as I am though – and not because of the looks he’s getting. What if he’s right and they’re here waiting for us?

  ‘OK, this is it,’ I say as we approach the corner of 80th and hover outside a gourmet deli admiring the watermelon selection.

  ‘Is there anyone else in the apartment?’ Jay asks.

  ‘Like who?’

  ‘I don’t know. Your mum? A housekeeper? A butler?’

  ‘My mum and dad are divorced. She’s still in Oman.’ With Sven the pickled herring gynaecologist. ‘And no. There are no staff. The cleaner comes Mondays and Thursdays.’

  Jay mutters under his breath, shaking his he
ad in what I guess is disgust. I wonder what he’d say if he knew how many staff we had in Oman. My mum has two nannies just to look after my half-brother Oscar and then there’s the cook, driver, housekeeper and gardener as well.

  ‘So how exactly do we case the place?’ I ask quickly.

  ‘Well, you’re going to stay out the way and I’m going to check it out, see if there’s anyone sketch hanging around outside.’

  ‘Sounds foolproof,’ I say drily.

  ‘Would you just trust me?’ he snaps, glaring at me.

  I narrow my eyes. Trust is a commodity as rare as unicorn horns, Felix used to say. If someone has to ask you to trust them, generally speaking it’s best not to. Like all Felix’s advice, I’ve tattooed it on my brain. There was one time I ignored it, with my ex-boyfriend Sebastian. He told me to trust him – that he knew exactly what he was doing. After it became clear that he really did not have a clue what he was doing, I decided to never make the same mistake again. But as I study Jay, who’s still busy glaring at me, his nostrils flaring like a horse, I remember the fact that he’s a car thief. And a gang member. Checking things out, casing things, is probably his day job.

  ‘Give me that,’ Jay suddenly says, pointing at my chest.

  ‘What?’

  He grabs the sweater from my hands before I can argue and shakes it out. I stare at him indignant, crossing my hands over my chest.

  ‘What are you . . .?’ I stop when I see he’s pulling it on over his T-shirt.

  He rolls down the sleeves that I’d rolled up and then offers me that trademark grin of his. ‘How’d I look?’

  ‘Like someone in a really lame cop disguise.’

  He grins some more and, with a flourish, pulls something out the back pocket of his jeans. I think he’s going for the gun and throw myself forwards, grabbing his wrists and pushing my body against his, trying to hide it from view. We’re on a street. Is he a complete asshat? He cocks his head at me in amusement, glancing down at my chest pressed against his and smiling. Then he nods to his hands, which are crushed against my stomach, and shows me not the gun but a police department badge and ID.

  ‘Where did you . . .?’ I break off once again and draw in a guttering breath. He took it from the same cop he stole the gun from. The dead cop, that is. I stare at it like it might be contaminated. The boy has balls. And he knows it. Right now he looks as pleased as if he’s just won a grand slam. He probably wears the same expression when he manages to put his underpants on the right way round.

  Seeing the ID in his hand spins me right back to the cop station. For the last hour I’d managed to stuff the memories into the far recess of my brain but now the stream of images from last night blasts me again in a full-on military-style assault – dead bodies, streams of blood, the rat-tat-tat of heavy weapons fire. I swallow rapidly, trying to force the grotesquely frozen stills of bullet-ridden bodies and a pair of ice-blue eyes out of my head.

  After the attempted kidnapping in Nigeria, I stopped talking, I was trucked off to a therapist who gave me some techniques for managing the panic attacks and flashbacks that I was having. I learned to concentrate on my breathing, to focus on a totally innocuous object and start describing it in my head until I stopped freaking out. Often I run through ballet steps. This time I choose the spire at the top of the Empire State Building, which is just visible if I crane my neck backwards. I picture myself climbing it. I try to imagine what it would feel like up there with the wind sawing at me, the spiralling view down to the sidewalk below – people as ants, noise just a memory. My pulse starts to race. But in a good way. In a way that’s not connected to fear.

  When the playback of the night before fades I turn back to Jay. ‘What are you planning on doing with your fake cop costume?’ I ask.

  ‘Hey, these are bona fide cop props,’ he answers, plucking at the NYPD sweatshirt and shooting me a hurt face. ‘And to answer your question I’m going to walk into your fine apartment building and tell the doorman I’m an off-duty cop.’

  My eyebrows raise another half inch. ‘Because off-duty cops walk around the city wearing sweatshirts advertising they’re cops all the time, never mind it’s a hundred degrees outside. And never mind you look like the youngest cop ever recruited in the history of policing.’

  He tsks at me. ‘Have you never seen 21 Jump Street?’

  I close my eyes and take a deep breath.

  He carries on, shoving the ID back into his pocket. ‘I’ll tell them I’m investigating some suspicious activity a member of the public alerted me to.’

  ‘Suspicious activity?’

  ‘Yeah, maybe an attempted burglary. There a back entrance?’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘To the building?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘There’s a fire escape that leads into a little square at the back. But it’s locked.’ I feel the need to gain control of this situation. And fast.

  ‘I’m going to open it,’ he tells me. ‘You’re going to be waiting out there. And you’re going to sneak in when I distract him. Got it?’

  Actually, it’s not a bad plan. Considering it’s the only one we have. ‘OK,’ I say, grudgingly.

  ‘What apartment number?’ he asks, brusque now, down to business.

  ‘Twenty-five. Twentieth floor.’

  ‘I’ll see you up there. Wait for me in the fire escape.’

  ‘How are you going to get up there?’ I ask.

  ‘I’ll figure that out. Don’t worry.’

  Don’t worry. Up there with trust me.

  ‘No,’ I say, not willing to leave this all in his hands, ‘I’ll figure it out.’

  14

  Five minutes. Ten minutes. My foot taps and a teardrop of sweat trickles its way down my spine, soaking into the waistband of my shorts. Where is Jay? Why hasn’t he let me in yet? I’m crouching down behind the garbage and recycling bins in the yard area. The stench of rotting food fills my nostrils, and my stomach, which had been growling with hunger fifteen minutes ago, roils now with nausea.

  Jay circled the block before on his own, eyes open for anyone suspicious – or anyone in a cop’s uniform. We figured that whoever is after me may have caught a glance at Jay when he pulled up alongside me and threw open the car door, but not for long enough that they’d recall him.

  After he had cased the block for anything sketch and was satisfied it was all clear, we walked down the side alley and Jay gave me a boost over the gate that leads into the yard before he headed on around to the front modelling the NYPD sweater and a swagger straight out of Miami Vice.

  This was a bad idea. I stare at the back door willing it to open.

  As I squat amid the recycling, waiting, I try to wrap my head once more around what’s going on. Is this another attempted kidnapping? I press the heels of my hands into my eyes, trying to force some clarity of thought through the spongy mess that is my brain. It doesn’t feel right. Most kidnappers wouldn’t keep coming after the first attempt failed. That’s not just relentless. That’s Terminator determined. Shit. Think. Think it through. Why would someone be trying to kidnap me? My father’s wealthy, but he’s no Bill Gates, so money doesn’t seem like much of a motive. Which leaves love, lust or loathing – they’re the only motives behind any crime, according to my dad, though I think he stole that particular saying from Hercule Poirot. I think it’s safe to discard love and lust as motives, which leaves only loathing.

  So, either someone hates me or . . . the wheels spin . . . they hate my father. There are a couple of people who probably would put their hands up and admit to hating me – but Oscar is only three and hates everyone who dares tell him ‘no’, and my ex-boyfriend Sebastian may post vicious slander on Facebook but I highly doubt he’d go this far.

  A lot of people, however, do hate my father, including but not limited to my mother, though I discount her automatically. Could it be something to do with my father’s new job? With this gang task force he’s heading up? That doesn’t make sense either though. If there
was any risk whatsoever to my safety my father would have assessed it and would never have left me alone, not even to go to the bathroom, never mind out of his sight for a week in New York.

  For a split second I hear Felix, his voice a whisper behind me. I spin around, half expecting to see him there, crouching down behind the garbage bins alongside me. There’s nothing of course, except some trash bags spilling their guts. I try to imagine what Felix would do in this situation, but the fact remains that I’m not an ex-SAS soldier, trained in military tactics and survival.

  Work with what you got, Felix used to say. I glance down at my polka-dot pyjama shorts and scratched-up hands and legs. That’s not that helpful, as advice goes. But then I realise that I do have something. I’ve got my brain. And everything I’ve ever learned from my father and Felix, which might not make me Nikita, but it’s not like I’m totally helpless either. And I’m not alone – I’ve got Jay, that has to count for something.

  For the first time since all this began I realise that I’ve been letting everyone else call the shots and I’ve just been reacting – letting shock and panic rule me. I need to lock those down, push back the fear. I need to be smart. I’ve been worried about playing by the rules, but there are no rules any more. For an instant I get a hit, similar to the one I get when I stand on the edge of a building and feel the wind pummelling me. The sense of empty air, dead space all around, stars flying through my bloodstream.

  My head tips backwards then, taking in the bulk of the building. There’s more I can work with up there in my dad’s apartment. I just need to get in.

  So where is Jay? What is he doing in there? Asking the doorman on a date?

  I get up, intending to scoot closer and see if I can peer through the small pane of glass set high in the door, when all of a sudden it flies open and Jay appears. My heart rockets into my mouth and I fall back on to my haunches, ducking down behind the bins once more.

  ‘Yes, sir, you’re right,’ Jay says over his shoulder to someone. ‘There’s no one out here. Good to be sure though.’