Leverage

by Jeffrey A. Ballard

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Also by Jeffrey A. Ballard

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2016 by Jeffrey A. Ballard

  All rights reserved.

  Cover designed by Ravven (www.ravven.com/)

  This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without written permission from the author, except for brief quotations in a book review.

  If you want to be notified when Jeffrey A. Ballard’s next novel is released, and receive free short stories and occasional other perks, please sign up for his newsletter here. Your email address will never be shared and you can unsubscribe any time.

  www.jaballard.com

  CHAPTER ONE

  EXPLOSIONS ARE QUICK dirty things, over before you realize they’re even happening.

  I’m midair about to hit the frigid churning water of the English Bay below me when I realize it was an explosion that threw me off the upper deck of the sightseeing boat Puo and I were on.

  It’s December. In Vancouver.

  I hit the water and all I know is pain. Icy coldness stabs me, scorches my upper right back.

  Burning flecks of saltwater bite my throat. I can’t stop gasping.

  Saltwater attacks and stings my eyes as I flail around.

  My soaked, heavy winter clothes pull me down. My heart thuds in my chest.

  Puo! Where’s Puo? I look around for his honey-colored down jacket on the waves. I can’t see him. The sightseeing boat behind me is already halfway under, flames rippling from the top. Thick black smoke surges into the overcast afternoon sky.

  A multitude of partially submerged buildings rises up out of the English Bay around me, like a petrified forest of steel and concrete. I force my shaking limbs to start swimming toward the nearest one, fifty or so feet away. I’m shivering uncontrollably. My fingertips ache. I don’t know how long I have before hypothermia sets in. My feet already feel like leaden boots, like dead weight I’m forced to carry around with me.

  Puo and I were on a scouting trip on the Underwater Vancouver City Tour. We were the only two goobs stupid enough to be standing outside on the upper deck in the near-freezing cold. Everyone else on the tour, all eighteen souls, were down below in the heated underwater observation deck watching the ghostly visage of old Vancouver glide by below them.

  Mostly families. Now they’re probably all dead.

  The sheer steel wall of the nearest building rises up to tower over me. Several of the windows are thankfully broken at the sea surface level—I can get into the building and climb up to get out of the water.

  I glance back, looking for Puo; the boat is already three-quarters of the way under.

  I finally gather enough breath, “Puo!” I have to pace myself before managing another, “Puo!”

  He grunts somewhere to my left. It’s not a healthy sound.

  I work up to being able to shout, “Make for—” I have to catch my breath. “—building. Through the broken window!”

  He weakly grunts back.

  I can’t feel my hands anymore. But my arms and legs continue to obey the will to survive and drunkenly paddle me through the nearest broken window. I barely register that I should be careful of broken glass, but it’s all I can do to get through the window.

  It’s an office of some kind, with an open door. The desk and chairs are pushed up against the far wall. White ceiling tiles are missing. A fluorescent light box hangs down by its wires.

  I’m able to stand, but the water comes up to my chest. I can’t stop shaking. My back burns, stings to the point of tears in my eyes.

  I turn around and see Puo’s honey-colored coat making its way toward me. He’s pushing a piece of flaming wreckage in front of him. Thank God! At least one of us has their wits about them.

  “Puo!” I call out, “through here!” I wave my hand out of the window and grimace at the pain it creates.

  Puo’s black Samoan eyes lock onto me through the waves. His face is grim.

  Something’s wrong. I can see it in his eyes. More wrong than just being blown up and thrown into near-freezing water.

  I wade over to the office door and pull it open. My right leg doesn’t feel quite right, but it’s hard to tell through the growing numbness. There’s got to be stairs here somewhere that lead up and out of this water. It’s dark in the wide office space populated by cubicles. I can only make out the details of the cubicle walls near where other office doors are open.

  Hallways. The stairs have got to be near the end of the hallways.

  “Isa,” Puo says weakly from behind me in the office.

  I turn around and rush to help him.

  Puo’s pulling himself through the window. Puo is a three-hundred-pound, six-foot Samoan man; pulling himself safely through the window is way more of an issue than for me at a lithe five feet nine inches.

  I pass by the piece of flaming wreckage floating in the middle of the room, its heat alluring me to stop and try to warm up, but I press on.

  I get to Puo and help him through, making sure there’s no broken glass. As he stands up, I say, “C’mon, we need to get upstairs and start a fire.”

  Puo’s unsteady on his feet, but slowly moves forward. “Go ahead,” he says. “I’ll catch up.”

  “What?” What a dumbass thing to say. “No, let’s go together.” I push the flaming wreckage toward the door. Fire—heat and light, what a wonderful invention.

  Puo gulps. His face is snow white, which is quite a trick for his complexion. “Just go, Isa.”

  “What—?” I stop near the door.

  “GO!” Puo manages to roar.

  “What the fuck is going on, Puo!” I shout back. “We’re wasting time!”

  “There’s nothing you can do. Just go.”

  “Puo! I swear to God—!”

  Puo stares at me; his mouth is open, hot white breaths escape into the room. “Heart attack,” he says softly.

  Oh, no.

  “I’m having— I’m having a heart attack.”

  “Okay,” I say way more calmly than I feel. I wade back over to him and slide his heavy, sopping arm over my shoulder, supporting him the best I can. Cold water dumps down my neck, stinging my back; I resist the urge to scream. “Let’s go.”

  Our teeth chatter in concert together, and we exit the office. I push the flaming wreckage in front us.

  “I never could get you to listen to reason,” Puo says between shudders.

  “If it’s reason to leave you behind,” I say through chattering teeth, “then why don’t you let go?”

  “I think I would, if I could feel my arms.”

  I laugh at the absurdness of it, the absurdness of our situation. What the hel
l happened? It’s not a question my brain lets me dwell on as we both continue to shake.

  At the end of the hallway is salvation: stairs. We push into the stairwell and climb our soaking bodies out of the water, shedding our wet, heavy outerwear. I think the air is colder than the water, but convection is a worse heat transfer method than conduction.

  I lay Puo down on the closest stairwell landing and place the flaming wreckage near him before scrambling up the stairs like a numb, drunken, injured person to find a better area for us to set up a fire near a window to signal the first responders.

  “Aspirin,” Puo calls out after me.

  I stop and stick my head out over the railing. “What?”

  “Aspirin,” Puo says, “I need aspirin.” He has his pocket tablet out and unfolded, searching the internet.

  “Your tablet works!” I shout in surprise. “Call for help!”

  “So does yours,” he says weakly. “And I am.”

  “How does your tablet work?” I can’t stop myself from asking, while shivering uncontrollably.

  “Go,” Puo says, his face gaunt. “Just go, I’ll explain later.”

  This time, I decide to listen.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE SOUND of the copter’s whoomp-whoomp-whoomp coming out to rescue us is one of the best sounds I’ve heard in a while, quickly followed by one of the worst sights I’ve ever seen: airlifting a very pale, scared-looking Puo in a stretcher.

  The authorities descend on us like angels from heaven, bringing gifts of thermal blankets, warm drinks, chemical heaters to huddle around, and even these weird one-size-fits-all dry, meta-material clothes to keep us warm. They’ve earned my gratitude. The first responders are kind and know their business.

  But once we make it to the hospital, and I realize that I am, in fact, going to be warm again in my lifetime, and that Puo is getting the attention he needs, then the real fear sets in.

  Puo and I are underwater reclamation specialists, a special breed of criminal that makes their living recovering objects out of federally protected underwater heritage zones. When the mega-quake hit eighty-six odd years ago, the earth’s coasts were remade. Cities and entire countries and states were quickly swallowed up—that’s a whole lot of loot for reclaiming.

  Our livelihood depends on anonymity. Letting the authorities capture your image in connection with a crime effectively ends your career. You have to avoid all government surveillance and municipal camera systems, which is pretty much impossible.

  So when the two Canadian cops walk into my single-occupant hospital room that evening, I visibly stiffen, lying on the bed.

  “Everything all right?” the female cop in the lead asks. She has shoulder-length frizzy blond hair and a wide mouth whose upper gums peek out as she tries to smile at me. She’s wearing a navy-blue pantsuit and black faux-dress shoes with no heel.

  I say faux-dress shoes because they look dressy, but really they’re made for running and kicking ass and knocking down doors—trust me, I know. You can’t put too high a price on ass-kicking shoes that pull double duty as stylish (and hers fail).

  “Yeah,” I say, “just a little jumpy, I guess.” I remind myself that I’m a victim here. I’ve done nothing wrong—just a victim. I slip into the victim role like putting on a fresh pair of clothes, like I’m running a game on them.

  I shift slightly on my bed to take the pressure off the bandages on my back that are beginning to itch. My back caught the worst of the shrapnel from the boat, but the doctor informed me even that wasn’t terrible considering that I was on an exploding boat—that I was lucky. Because lucky people get blown up—jack ass. Lucky would’ve been not being on that boat.

  “That’s quite understandable,” the female cop says. Her tone is a mix between trying to be sympathetic and wanting to get straight to the point. Her rubber-soled shoes squeak as she walks across the linoleum-tiled floor over to my bed.

  My single-occupant room is small, half a room, really. The windows that line the out-facing wall reflect the interior of my well-lit room against the already dark evening outside. The soothing yellow walls and holographic display screens give a nice, cheery, death feel to the room. The once-warm dinner of hospital food adds a gross, meatloafy smell to the proceedings.

  She continues, “I’m Detective Staff Sergeant Silvia Myers of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.” She flashes me a badge from under her hip, under her suit-jacket. “And this is Detective Sergeant Hollis Beauregard.” The male cop behind her pulls the same badge-bearing move.

  I didn’t need to see the badges to know they were cops. The way they walked into the room coupled with their clothes gave them away. Cops walk into a room like they own it, like they’re the most important person ever and expect everyone to do exactly as they say—it’s annoying as shit. The problem is they don’t make a lot of money, so they shop at department stores, look for deals. The result is that their clothes look nice to someone who doesn’t know clothes, but to those of us that do (quickly sizing a mark up and their wallet size is a requisite skill for us), they look like someone trying to project an image above their station and failing due to a limited budget. In other words, a detective type of cop.

  “Is it okay if we ask you some questions, and record your responses?” the male cop asks, tapping the recording pin he’s wearing on his lapel. He’s short with a weak chin and a narrow nose. And he’s old. Both of them are mid-forties, maybe? Puo and I are twenty-six, twenty-seven respectively.

  I nod in assent—it’s what every other victim would do in this case. My pearl necklace that doubles as a digi-scrambler is turned off and on the side table, but I’m just a victim here so recording my image won’t enter into the criminal database governments share with each other. Besides, saying no here, or requesting a lawyer, is only going to make me about a thousand times more interesting to them.

  The female cop says, “They say your boyfriend is going to be just fine.”

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” I say without thinking. The response is so automatic it’s out of my mouth before I realize it. Puo’s my best friend, my brother, my comrade-in-arms all rolled into one, but we’re even closer than that. He’s simply my Puo. We’ve been together since we were kids. “We’re like brother and sister,” I explain. “But thank you.”

  I already knew Puo was going to be okay. The nurse attending me went and found out Puo’s status after I wouldn’t answer any of her questions except with the same question asking about Puo. But it’s the standard textbook interrogation opening—show compassion and empathy, build a friendly foundation to elicit information from. Next she’s going to tell me that I’m lucky to be alive.

  “You’re lucky to be alive,” the male cop says.

  One point to Isa! I keep the grin off my face that wants to form. Although I had it pegged to the female cop. They’re going tag team.

  “Don’t feel lucky at the moment,” I say. “Luck would’ve been missing the boat.”

  They both give me the lower lip-bite and head nod of not knowing how to bridge the gap in the conversation to what they really want to ask. Eventually, the female cop just goes for it, “Can you tell us what happened?”

  I explain to her about standing on the upper-level deck when there was a loud noise that hurt my ears and suddenly the sea surface was rushing up to greet me.

  “Why were you outside?” the male cop asks.

  “There was a—” I take a genuine deep breath. “There was a woman with her kids; she wore way too much perfume. We went outside to clear our noses, to look at the buildings.” The perfume is a lie. But having to pause to take a deep breath was real—there were kids down in the underwater observation deck. Families. Just on vacation. Just trying to get away. Create memories. Now they’re all dead—

  “That perfume saved your life,” the male cop says, interrupting my thoughts.

  I look between them, knowing the answer, but asking anyway. “Are we the only survivors?”

  “It’s to
o early to say, but we think so,” the female cop says. There’s sincerity in her voice that wasn’t there before.

  “What the hell happened?” I ask. I have been trying to think it through. An accident of some kind? Or was it deliberate?

  “We don’t know yet,” the female cop says. “Is there anything that stood out to you? Anything suspicious? Packages? People?”

  “You think it was a bomb,” I say, reading their expressions. Holy shit.

  “We’re not ruling it out,” the male cop answers. “So anything you can tell us would be helpful.”

  Were we the target? But no one knows we’re here. We came to Vancouver a week ago to confront Winn, the ex-third member of our team, and the only man I’ve ever loved. He left me four months ago.

  “Are you okay?” the female cop asks. “You just went white.”

  “Sorry,” I say. “It’s a lot to process.” Both the bomb and losing Winn all over again.

  “Take your time,” the female cop says.

  According to Puo, who wouldn’t shut up about it while we were in Europe the past two months, Winn’s leaving has had a detrimental effect on my psychology. We came to Vancouver so I could get closure. Winn, the bastard, left the morning after I finally said the words “I love you” to another human being and meant them. I woke up to an empty bedroom and Winn was just gone.

  But now that I’m here, I can’t bring myself to actually confront him. What would I say? Would he be happy to see me? Mad? It was a never-ending, paralyzing cycle of questions that I couldn’t force myself to break out of. So Puo and I started scouting a job as a distraction.

  But who knows we’re here? We were only home in the Seattle Isles long enough to pay off the rest of the last partial payment to the Citizen Maker and ask some discrete questions about Ham the Cleaner running into us in England—he’s the Cleaner we stole the Cleaning software from. Our questions didn’t turn up anything. We even wisely chose not to pay off the Citizen Maker in full, since that would look suspicious right after the British Museum job. We played the whole thing perfectly.

  And who would want to kill us? That last question is the baffling one. Someone connected to the Eli Hayes, Christina Chavez business several months ago? Someone connected to the British Museum job? And why in Vancouver?