First Drop

by Zoe Sharp

  Even so, I wouldn’t allow myself to give up all hope. I couldn’t allow it.

  ***

  As the light started to drop we grabbed some food in one of the crowded barbecue places on the main strip, squeezing into a booth to share a table with a group of kids who’d driven down from Georgia just for the weekend.

  Trey livened up enough to chat to them over a meal of burger and fries but I could see the effort it was costing him to act normal. When he thought nobody was looking his eyes had begun to carry a haunted, hunted edge. He’d picked at a hangnail on the side of his thumb until he’d peeled strip after strip of skin away, making it bleed. He was worrying at it now, I noticed, as unconscious an action as a nervous twitch.

  He couldn’t, I realised, go on like this much longer. He may be an irritating brat with the usual modern teenager’s blasé attitude to danger, but faced with its constant reality he was starting to suffer. What had begun as a live-action version of one of his computer games had turned into a nightmare he couldn’t just pull the plug on when things got tough.

  Whatever I was going to do about the situation, I needed to do it fast. Before he came apart at the seams.

  Sixteen

  It was just as we were leaving the barbecue joint that Trey’s mobile rang. He dragged the phone out of his pocket and looked at the display almost fearfully.

  “It’s Xander,” he said, not making any moves to pick up the call.

  I let it go two more rings, then sighed, lifting the phone out of his hands and hitting the receive button.

  “Hi Xander,” I said, careful to keep my tone neutral.

  “Oh, hi Charlie,” he said, sounding just as cautious, just as low-key.

  “How’s Scott?”

  He hesitated and for a second I feared the worst, but when he spoke I realised he’d just wanted to make me sweat. “He’s outta surgery. His mom and dad are with him,” he said grudgingly. “The doctors still aren’t sure if he’ll, like, be able to walk real good, but at least he’s gonna make it.”

  Trey, not having wanted to take the call, was hovering at my shoulder, trying to listen in but the passing traffic made it hard for him to hear. Instead, he plucked at the sleeve of my shirt and mouthed, “How is he?” at me.

  I gave him a tentative thumbs up and pushed him away. “That’s good news,” I said to Xander, stalling. There was a tightness in my chest as I worked myself up to asking him about Henry’s hard drive, knowing how crass it would make me sound. In the end, I didn’t have to.

  “Anyways, Aimee said you needed to know what was on that hard drive so’s you could nail the bastards who shot him,” Xander went on.

  “That’s right,” I said, surprised enough to push my luck. “When do you think you might have the chance to have a look at it?”

  “Already done, man. I looked at it soon as I got home from the hospital. Soon as my mom and dad were done chewing me out, anyways. You want the whole thing or just the highlights?”

  “Whichever,” I said faintly. “Can you tell who he contacted?”

  “He sent the first one just to the security department at the company Trey’s dad works for. It was kinda mysterious, y’know? Henry just kinda asked them if they’d lost something and what kinda reward was on offer for the person who, like, found it.”

  Some “negotiation on our behalf”, Henry, I thought bitterly. “Did you manage to find the replies?”

  “‘Course,” he said, a little disdainful. “It wasn’t encrypted or nothing. I just had to hook the drive up and go look in the In and Outboxes. You don’t even need a password. It was a real cinch.”

  “So what did they say back to him?”

  “Well, there was some messing about backwards and forwards while they goes, ‘What have you found?’ And Henry goes, ‘What have you lost?’ In the end it was Henry who goes, like, ‘You wanna do a deal or not?’ and that’s when they cut the crap.”

  “I’ll bet they did,” I muttered. “I don’t suppose they did anything stupid like signed a name, did they?”

  “Didn’t have to,” he said. “Henry’s original mail mighta gone just to security@, but the reply came from jwhitmarsh@.”

  I nodded. No surprises there, then. “So what did Whitmarsh say?”

  “He wanted some kinda proof that Henry had gotten hold of Trey for real, so Henry spills it about you and Trey changing your hair colour and stuff.”

  Bastard. I remembered the lack of any real surprise on Whitmarsh’s face when we’d come out of the house and he’d seen our changed appearance. Now I understood why.

  “What then?” I asked, keeping my teeth together with the effort of not breaking into a fit of cursing at Henry’s obvious duplicity. He’d died terrified and I pitied him for that, but the fact that he’d never had any intention of helping us took the edge off my sympathy.

  “Whitmarsh, he goes, ‘OK, I’ll go check with my superiors about what we can offer you.’ And then, like a coupla hours later he comes back on line and goes, ‘I’m authorised to go to five grand.’”

  “Five thousand dollars?” I echoed. Not even thirty pieces of silver plus inflation? It seemed such a measly bounty to pay on somebody’s life. Two people’s lives, when I thought about it. In fact, it was actually quite insulting to have so low a value placed on me. Two for the price of one. It made me feel like a supermarket special offer. “How did Henry react to that?”

  “He went kinda nuts, man,” Xander said, “really lost it. He accuses Whitmarsh of taking him for some kinda fool who don’t know what’s at stake. How he knows that without Trey they got zip and how they should be talking about five hundred grand.”

  “I bet that went down well,” I said, unable to keep the irony out of my tone.

  “You’re kidding me!” Xander said, missing it entirely. “So Whitmarsh comes back with, ‘You’re bluffing. You don’t know what you’re talking about.’ And Henry goes, ‘Oh yeah?’ and he launches into a load of bullshit about how Trey’s been teaching some intelligent software all about how to figure out Wall Street. Is that right, man?” he finished uncertainly.

  I glanced at Trey, who’d given up unsuccessfully trying to eavesdrop. He was now sitting on the railing near the door into the diner and blowing bubbles with his gum. He got too adventurous with the last one and it burst all over his face. He tried to peel the exploded goo off his nose and cheek but only ended up sticking his fingers together and increasing the mess. As computer geniuses went he seemed pretty unlikely, I had to admit.

  “Yeah,” I said. “That’s right.”

  “No shit,” Xander said in wonder, and I could almost hear him shaking his head.

  “Did they ask Henry for his address?”

  “No, but it wouldn’t have been hard to find out. He was mailing out from his own website – y’know, the conspiracy theory one we told you about? It was kinda dumb of him if Whitmarsh’s got pals in the cops. They’d be able to trace him easy.”

  “Was there anything else?”

  “No, that was it. D’you reckon this guy Whitmarsh is the one killed Henry?”

  “Could be,” I said, even though I knew it wasn’t quite as straightforward as that. “I’m still trying to work it out.”

  There was a pause, then Xander said, “Look, man, tell Trey I’m kinda sorry I blew up at you guys at the hospital. I was just kinda worried about Scott, y’know?”

  “We all were.”

  “Yeah, well, I know that,” he muttered. “Anyway, I gotta go. I’m not really supposed to be on the phone. My folks have gone kinda ape-shit at what’s happened. It’s really freaked them out. I am so grounded.”

  “Thank you for doing this, Xander,” I said, meaning it. “It helps a lot.”

  “Yeah, well, you’re welcome,” he said, embarrassed. “Oh, one more thing, you guys. Don’t go back to Scott’s place. It’s not just that his folks are back, but the cops are all over it.”

  “OK,” I said. “Thanks for the warning.”

  “No sw
eat,” he said. “You could come stay here but, like I say, I think I’m grounded ‘til I’m, like, twenty.”

  He made twenty sound both a long way off and an extremely advanced age. I was around twice as many years past twenty as Xander still had to go to get there in the first place. It made me feel suddenly very old.

  As I ended the call Trey hopped down from his railing. “So what did he say?” he demanded.

  “Well, Gerri seems to be letting Whitmarsh do the talking for her but—”

  “Not that!” he interrupted, scathing at my mistake. “About Scott! What did he say about Scott?”

  “He’s out of surgery,” I said. Trey heard the ‘but’ in my voice and made an impatient, get-on-with-it movement with his hands. “There might be some doubt about how much mobility he’s going to regain.”

  Trey stared at me for a moment with his mouth open. The misery spread across his face like a window cracking in slow motion. He slipped his hands into his pockets, hunching his shoulders forwards, and turned away from me.

  I let him get halfway across the car park before I gave in and hurried after him. He didn’t want to look at me, wrenching away when I tried to catch hold of his arm. I tired of this game faster than he did. Eventually my temper frayed far enough for me to catch a flailing wrist and twist a lock onto it. The action brought him up short with a startled cry.

  He turned a reproachful, tear-riven face in my direction, staining me with guilt. I pushed it aside.

  “Stop it, Trey,” I said, snappy as he struggled ineffectually against the lock. “We don’t have time for self-pity. It’s a luxury we can’t afford. So Scott’s badly hurt. That’s terrible, but there’s nothing you can do to help him right now other than doing your best to get to the bottom of this. Giving in and throwing a wobbly makes a mockery of what he’s going through. It makes it all for nothing.”

  He stilled and was quiet for several seconds. I could see his chest rising and falling as he took a couple of deep breaths to steady himself. Then he said, with a surprising dignity, “Would you let go of my arm, please?”

  I complied instantly, ready to catch him again if he ran, but he didn’t move.

  We stood like that for a time. Above us, the sky had taken on that dramatic pinky blue tinge as day fled into evening, leaving a masterpiece of shape and colour spread across the heavens. Below it, oblivious to the beauty unfolding overhead, traffic sped by along Atlantic Avenue.

  It was only when a bright yellow drophead Mustang full of noisy kids turned in a touch too fast off the road and swung in our direction that we moved. Trey was docile now, allowing me to lead him across the road, jogging obediently alongside me through the gaps between the cars. The light was dropping more quickly and they all had their lights on. We walked down the nearest beach ramp and out onto the sand.

  It was only then that the boy cleared his throat. “So,” he said, “what did it say?”

  I didn’t need to ask what he was talking about, but I searched his face as if to check that he really wanted to know this time. There was no trace of sarcasm there.

  I gave him the full report of what Xander had told me. When I was done he was quiet again, frowning. Henry’s duplicity, I considered, must have been hard for him to take. Trey was learning some tough lessons about trust lately.

  “So if it was Mr Whitmarsh he was in contact with, how did that cop, like, get to hear about Henry?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “The only explanation that occurred to me was that perhaps they were working together.”

  He stared. “But Lonnie killed that guy . . .”

  I nodded. “I did say ‘were working together’, but maybe that all went out of the window when Henry let it out of the bag that you could make the program work. Maybe they’ve somehow got hold of a part-finished version when your dad left and now Whitmarsh realises he’s got the opportunity to make some serious money out of it – if they can get hold of you alive. It would explain the abrupt about face.”

  Trey was still frowning. “How did Mr Whitmarsh know right off that Henry was talking about me when he wanted proof he’d got a hold of me?” he said slowly. He looked up. “That was what he said, right? But if Dad’s disappeared too, how did they know Henry wasn’t talking about him?”

  “My God, I think you’re right,” I murmured and found it was my turn to stare. I’d completely missed the significance of that but the more I thought about it, the more significant it became. Trey was quite right. Whitmarsh had assumed – no, more than that, he’d known – Henry was referring to Trey.

  So how could he have known?

  He couldn’t. Not unless Keith was controlling this whole thing from behind the scenes. I did some mental shifting to see if that fitted and it did, after a fashion. But for what purpose?

  “Did Xander say anything else?” Trey asked.

  “Only that he’s grounded until he’s an old man, and that we can’t go back to Scott’s place.”

  As the full consequences of that piece of news hit him Trey’s face grew mournful. “So that means . . .”

  “Yeah.” I raised a tired smile and waved an arm to indicate the sands all around us. “Looks like we’re back to sleeping on the beach again.”

  ***

  It was dark before we knew it, the inky blackness above us spangled with stars. It gave the sky an illusion of a boundary it didn’t have, dropping straight down into the sea at the far horizon.

  We weren’t far away from the area where we’d slept out on that first night, near Walt and Harriet’s place. I suppose I needed time to get my head round the idea of asking for help, but first thing in the morning, I promised myself, we’d go and take Walt up on his offer. With any luck, another of Harriet’s breakfasts would be part of the deal.

  We weren’t the only people who’d decided to spend a night out in the open air. The beach itself, as it had been last time, was crowded with kids, half of whom seemed to be courting couples. They grappled with each other in the shadows, tucked up under the walls of the apartment blocks and hotels that edged the seafront, intent on ingraining sand into the most uncomfortable places.

  Every now and again we’d get a silvery moonlit flash of naked flesh as we moved past. It was hard to get an adolescent like Trey to concentrate on putting his feet one in front of the other and keep walking. As it was he was so busy ogling that he nearly tripped up twice.

  “What d’you want to do?” I muttered eventually, “Give ‘em marks for style?”

  “It’s all right for you,” he groused when we reached a quieter stretch. “I bet you’ve, like, done it loads of times.”

  “‘Done it’?” I queried. He should have taken the stinging tone as a warning but he had a thicker skin than that.

  “Yeah,” he ploughed on, discomfited but persistent. “Y’know – fucked.”

  “I don’t ‘fuck’, as you so elegantly put it,” I bit back.

  “No way!” Trey said. “Mr Whitmarsh said you were fucking Mr Meyer. He said—”

  “Sean and I have slept together, yes, but that’s not the same thing,” I cut in, not wanting to hear Whitmarsh’s cruder description of what Sean and I had shared. Especially not now. I didn’t want to hear Trey talk about it, either. He didn’t even begin to have the right to bring up something so private.

  “Why isn’t it?” Trey wanted to know and I suddenly realised why you heard so many parents answer awkward questions from their kids with the waspish phrase, “Because I say so, all right?” through firmly gritted teeth.

  Instead, I strapped down my irritation and made an attempt to explain. “Because just fucking somebody is very different from making love with them, where you have a bond, a connection. Fucking implies little more than an all-out, selfish, I’m-using-you-for-my-own-gratification kind of act.”

  Trey was at an age where his squirm at the mention of the word “love” was almost a reflex action. Then he just shrugged. “Yeah – and your point is?”

  The str
ap broke and my temper let fly. I rounded on him, almost unable to see his face for the starbursts going off inside my head. “You asked me once why I left the army. Well, shall I tell you why?” I threw at him, not waiting for an answer. “I left because four of the men I was training alongside, four of the men I was supposed to know and trust, got drunk one night and decided they were going to fuck me, regardless of what I thought about it.”

  Trey tried to flinch away but I grabbed his arm and spun him back to face me, not letting him escape my bitter words. Some part of me knew he didn’t deserve this but now I’d started I couldn’t stop, it just spilled out and kept coming. “And because there were more of them than me, and they were bigger and stronger than I was, that’s exactly what they did. They had to beat the shit out of me to do it, but they did it, just the same. And when they were done, they stood around and actually had a discussion about how it might be best to kill me, just in case I decided to kick up a fuss. It was like to them I wasn’t even human any more.”