by Suki Fleet
Not wanting to crush Soph’s mood, Loz went for diversion. “Heard there’s a sterling chippy over on the estate. Thought we could walk that way.” Loz hated how much it felt like lying.
“Can’t.” Soph shook her head emphatically and showed Loz the text from Cai, asking them to meet him at the library in town. Shit. Heading into town was exactly where Michaels would expect them to be heading.
“Fancy a walk? We could go the long way?” If they walked out the back of the school and through the allotments, they could reach the other side of town and approach the library from a direction Michaels wouldn’t expect.
Inclining their head, Loz took a step towards the gap in the fence that led out onto the estate beyond.
Warm fingers brushed the inside of Loz’s wrist, effectively stopping all progress and all thought.
Soph said, “What’s going on? Why don’t you want to go out the main gate?”
Loz pulled a face. Sometimes the truth could only be expressed with a reluctant expression. “I saw Michaels’ car out front.”
Soph’s hand tightened on the frayed strap of her school bag. Her smile vanished. “Okay. Let’s go.”
Even though Loz now felt crap for spreading the mood of gloom, Loz loved that Soph didn’t ask for an explanation, that Soph trusted Loz didn’t want to speak to Michaels and that was enough.
They squeezed through the gap in the fence, then headed along the rain-soaked pavements away from school. They’d only been walking a few minutes when a low rumble warned of a car creeping along behind them. Without turning to look, they increased their pace. The allotments were up ahead—the metal gates padlocked but climbable. The car sped up as they did. Michaels was turning into such a creepy bastard if he was trying to get underage persons to do his damn work for him and then taking to following those underage persons around.
They reached the allotments and easily scaled the gate, then sprinted up the main track before turning down one of the overgrown walkways between the lots.
Running in the rain was gloriously exhilarating, and they didn’t stop until they were lost and couldn’t breathe. Freakily tall ears of corn and sticks of bamboo towered above them on either side of the narrow path and effectively hid them from view. It felt like another country, another world.
“Think we lost him?” Loz asked with a breathless laugh, looking around.
The rain was still pelting down, the plants swaying noisily. Everything in rushing motion.
“What if he parked his car up and followed, though?” Soph looked honestly spooked by the whole situation, which sobered the adventure vibe instantly.
Through a gap in the bamboo stems, Loz spied an old allotment shed. The roof looked buckled but climbable. “I’ll go to higher ground, take a look to see where we are.”
Loz doubted Michaels would have stopped and got out of his car. That would come across as a bit threatening, and although he was definitely exploring dodgier behaviours following them around, he hadn’t so far been out-and-out scary.
Checking for definite that they weren’t being followed, then finding their way out of the sprawl of allotment jungle and getting to the library by the quickest means possible was now The Plan.
The bamboo stems creaked as they pushed their way through them. All the allotments in this area seemed to have been abandoned. Exotic-looking plants shedding their giant green leaves grew side by side with the razor grass, long gone to seed cow parsley and dying, heavy-headed poppies. Loz picked their way carefully across to the shed, noting the faint alcoholy smell of rotting fruit and watching where they stepped. The wooden sides of the shed were slippery to touch but luckily there was an overflowing water butt that could be used as a climbing post, and the tilted roof was covered with grippy bitumen.
Once up on the roof, Loz stamped a few times, encouraging the shed to collapse now if it was going to collapse at all, instead of lulling everyone into a false sense of security. It shuddered but remained stubborn and upright. Hugging herself, Soph looked around with a tense expression. Loz lay down on the roof and held out a hand. “Come on up. We’ll be kings and queens of the world.”
“I don’t like heights.”
“Then don’t look down.”
Soph shouldered her bag and warily took hold of the top of the water butt. “You make it sound so easy,” she said, rolling her eyes.
“That’s because it is.” It wasn’t. Loz was scared of lots of things, but fear liked to talk about itself—liked to think it was winning.
From the top of the shed roof they could see all the way down to the road they had just pegged it away from. They’d run a fair distance, though they had more than half that distance to go again to get to the other side. The allotments stretched across a bigger area than Loz had thought.
After scanning the nearby pathways a few times, Loz was satisfied Michaels in his long grey coat wasn’t wandering creepily down any of them and although, weirdly, there was now a car parked by the gate, it wasn’t a grey saloon.
They needed to get going. Loz took one last look towards the gates and shook their head. Some detail about that waiting car nagged, but they could worry about it later.
“Think that car’s a Jag?” Soph asked with an expression that said, please tell me it’s not.
Trying to ignore a horrible sinking sensation, Loz took another look.
“It looks really similar to that car on the CCTV, don’t you think?” Soph carried on. “There must be lots of those cars around though, right? And dark red is a really popular colour. There’s no reason for it to be here, is there?” She looked pleadingly at Loz.
The scent of the rain was clean and electric.
Loz knew how much Soph wanted to hear that of course it was probably a different car, that there was no way that the car that was seen driving away from the flat fire was here, and was following them. Because why the hell?
Over to the right a bush moved in the opposite direction to the wind. They were being watched.
“Fuck,” Loz breathed and grabbed Soph’s hand. “I think we should run. Now.”
The scramble from the roof was a desperate, messy tangle of limbs. They needed a Plan, but there was no time to think. Someone was on the overgrown path, barely metres away. Loz could hear the crunch of their steps, sure it wasn’t just the rain.
The playing fields of another secondary school bordered the edge of the allotments nearest to them. Go that way. Loz’s self-preservation kicked in, and wrapping their arms around Soph, they dived through the dense overgrowth behind the shed, crushing the dense thicket of plants and getting torn to pieces by brambles in the process. Who needed skin anyway? They struggled out onto a path and they ran.
They threw their bags into a bush, and then they ran faster. The pathways opened out onto emptier allotments. Beyond them they could see the green of the playing fields and the grey buildings of another school. They were going to make it.
No. They weren’t.
Loz slowed.
A twelve-foot-high chain-link fence, topped with a spiral of razor wire, barred their way. Allotmenteers didn’t want school kids messing with their veggies. Loz couldn’t really blame them, but The Plan was quickly falling to pieces. They needed to get somewhere safer and more populated, quickly. Or they needed to hide. But Loz hated hiding. Hiding was letting go of control, and control was power. Without it what was left? Two scared teenagers waiting for their fate in an old garden shed? No fucking way.
A flash of red moved through the plants behind them. Whoever was following was watching them. Waiting for their next move.
“Shouldn’t we call the police?” Soph asked softly, her fingers brushing over the shape of the phone in her pocket.
“Yeah, but first, this way.” Loz took off down the narrow space between the back of a shed and the fence.
It was a mistake. A big one.
The fence wasn’t constructed in a straight line; it was crooked, like an impenetrable border to a country they couldn’t e
nter, and it cut them off. They were trapped there. Whoever was following them was too close behind, and it was too much of a risk to go back. Soph’s breathing was a mess. The first sharp edges of real panic threatened to make everything feel lost and out of control, but Loz was not giving in to it. Gritting their teeth, Loz tensed, then jumped, stretching up and scrambling up onto the roof of the shed they were trapped behind. The shed swayed. The rain pissed down. Lying low on their stomach, Loz looked down at the allotment below them and their heart stopped.
A guy stood in the middle of a two neatly harvested rows of tomato plants, his head cocked to the side, watching Loz. He was tall and broad, built like Cai, though older. Forties or fifties maybe. Most of his hair was tucked away beneath his red baseball cap. His jeans were splattered with mud. Loz tried desperately to be a camera, but apart from his build nothing stood out about him. His face had a blankness that suggested it would be easily forgettable, and apart from his hat, his clothes were plain. He met Loz’s gaze and his features were transformed drastically with a beatific smile. There was something missing in his expression and the loss of it terrified Loz.
“Loz? Loz?” Soph hissed. Her fingers stroked Loz’s ankle, skin on skin above the sock. But Loz was made of stone. Granite. Something hard. Something ancient. Something that wouldn’t break easily.
“I’ve come for Sophie,” the guy said, speaking through his teeth and still smiling as though he was offering them a free pizza.
“She’s not going anywhere with you.” Loz tightened their grip on the roof edge, needing to think past this moment. Needing to think full stop.
Neurons fired sluggishly until Loz’s brain finally kicked into gear.
If they headed back towards the road they had more of a chance. This guy was unlikely to do whatever he was going to do with Soph with an audience. But how were they supposed to get back to the road from where they were? Soph was stuck behind the shed. Loz was on top of it. He could reach them easily and likely easily overpower them. They needed a distraction. If Loz could distract him, then Soph could get away (Loz hoped Soph was busy calling the police right then). The guy wasn’t interested in Loz—though that also meant he would probably have no qualms about hurting Loz. Where the hell was the detective following you around when you needed him?
“Why did you start the fire at the flat?” Loz asked.
The guy’s smile slipped for a moment. He seemed surprised, but he assimilated it quickly. Despite his blank expression, there was a calculating look in his eyes. The look of someone whose face did not match their feelings.
“You’re nosy,” he said cheerfully and took a step closer. “You shouldn’t be so nosy.”
He’s going to kill me, Loz thought with absolute certainty. And then he’s going to kill Soph. Maybe Soph was who he wanted all along and that’s why he set fire to the flat. Perhaps he thought she was in there. But then, what the hell did all this have to do with Nicky? Because it had something do with him if this guy was driving a car that had belonged to Lance. Loz didn’t believe in coincidence. But it wasn’t the time to try to figure everything out. It was the time to get out of there. This half panicked speculation was headache inducing.
The element of surprise was the only Plan Loz had. And it wasn’t a very good one. But thinking like that never got anything accomplished, and it more than likely got a few people killed. Why give up before you’d started? Why do anything?
With their heart beating so hard, feeling dizzy with it, deafened, Loz readied themselves.
“Run, Soph,” Loz shouted, bringing their knees up and launching themselves powerfully off the roof.
The force of Loz’s body smacked into the guy’s rock of a left shoulder and sent them both tumbling to the ground. The impact of the fall seemed to knock the wind out of him and he lay on his back, still and stunned, among the crushed plants.
“Run!” Loz shouted again, not daring to look back to see if Soph had gone.
It had been a poor landing and an agonising pain shot down Loz’s right side as Loz tried to roll away. Now would be the time to run, but even struggling upright took every ounce of willpower. Loz crawled forwards across the mud, looking around, desperately searching for some sort of protection, anything, that might provide a useful defence. There was a bunch of flimsy bamboo canes propped up next to the shed door, which would make a shield about as useful as a grass skirt. But there had to be something. Anything.
Behind, there was the sound of a body shifting, heavy breaths being taken.
Fuck.
Wait. Something blue and plastic-looking stuck out from the ground down the side of the shed—a garden tool?—Loz couldn’t quite see, and trying to stand was agony. Loz squeezed their eyes shut. It was probably a bucket anyway. All Loz wanted to do was lie down and curl up. The rain was cold and heavy. Loz touched their side and winced. Broken rib? God, Soph better have gotten a long way out of there and gone for help, called Cai, or Michaels, or someone.
The guy was on his feet. Loz could just sense it. There was little point in turning around. “Are you going to hurt me?”
“Just for a moment.”
The fist slammed into the back of Loz’s skull so hard the world exploded in lights, and then the sky flipped to night. The last sound Loz heard as they faded from consciousness was a scream.
You were supposed to run, Soph.
The sky was still flipped when Loz opened their eyes. The world smelled of mud and rain, and it was cold, so cold. The wet clothes plastered to Loz’s skin felt heavy and stiff. Feeling as though two rocks were squeezing their skull, Loz rolled onto their back, then yelped. Rib pain and head pain—what the hell was going on? Above, the dark was pinpricked with tiny lights. Carefully, Loz sat up. There was a shed behind, plants all around. Everything had the vaguely familiar look of a dream. Soph. Soph.
“Soph!” Loz called weakly.
Knowing something was futile didn’t stop you needing to do it.
Phone. I have a phone. Hope surging, Loz patted their wet trouser pockets and pulled it out. But it was dead. Dead. Dead. A single sob was all that was allowed. Swallowing down the rest, Loz shakily got up. Movement was exhausting. After shivering for hours, every single muscle protested.
With gritted teeth, Loz staggered towards the fence, and partly using it as a guide and partly as a support they made their way towards the road.
Minutes passed like hours. Every step was painful. A few times Loz came close to passing out and they had to stop and hang on, fingers gripping the icy links of the fence as the world narrowed and then expanded coldly.
The fence curved and the gate came into view. The red Jag long since gone, even the tyre tracks had now been washed away by the rain. Perhaps someone had seen the guy taking Soph, perhaps someone had called the police. It was a foolish hope. But it was all Loz had.
The gate was hard to clamber over. Loz slipped and landed in a heap and for a moment the pain was too great to move. If Loz had just gone and spoken to Michaels after school, instead of avoiding him because Patsy had grown suspicious (“Been talking to the police, Lauren? How you are a part of this family, I don’t know”) and then refused to talk to Loz at all, none of this would have happened. They would have met Cai at the library and they’d all be safe. Together and safe. Soph would be safe. This was Loz’s fault.
Making a fist, Loz punched the ground. Stop it! Not helping!
There was no way to make what had happened unhappen, but there was a way to do something about it, and Loz would come up with Plan after Plan after Plan until things were fixed. Giving up simply wasn’t an option. You fought with everything you had until you closed your eyes for that final time and shuddered your last breath. Loz struggled to their feet and, after stumbling across the road opposite the allotments, hammered on door after door after door until someone called the police.
Gun club/Claudette
“Lower the gun, Nicky.”
Nicky wasn’t about to do anything of the fucking sort.
He didn’t even care who this grey-haired woman was or how she knew his name, or even how she’d got in the house. She’d shot Cai like he meant nothing, as though he was a worthless object that’d got in her way, instead of a person full of hopes and ideas and kindness and laughter.
The absence of air in Nicky’s lungs made the world grow suddenly dim.
He inhaled sharply.
Inside he was fire. And the fire was going to consume him. And then it would consume everything.
All Nicky wanted was for Cai to not be—he blinked, his eyelids were burning—to not be crumpled up and unmoving on the floor. The awful sound whined in his throat again. If he gave himself over to it, he knew he wasn’t going to be able to stop himself keening.
Carefully avoiding looking down, he stepped around the bottom of the stairs. Tears streaked Fox Mask’s cheeks, but she didn’t look away from him. Nicky’s rage was an inferno that wanted to be released from the cage of his body. He just needed a direction in which to point it and everything would burn.
Somewhere behind, a picture dropped from the wall and landed with a thunderous crack on the tiles, dislodged by Nicky’s frantic tearing at the wallpaper. Nicky barely flinched—his eyes were on the grey-haired woman in the flimsy-looking dressing gown. She’d removed herself from Fox Mask’s side and was crouched on the far side of the stairs. As he stared, she rose to her feet. On ground level it was doubtful she was tall enough to reach his chin (and Nicky’s stature wasn’t legendary to say the least) but halfway up those stairs, she towered.
“You took my money. Put it back,” she spat.
This was about the money? For a moment Nicky couldn’t catch his breath. “So why didn’t you fucking shoot me? Why did you shoot him?” His voice broke. “He had nothing to do with it.”
“No one touches my money. I should have come down and shot you in your sleep weeks ago. I never wanted you in my house.”
The soft gasping sound Fox Mask made into her hands could have been a laugh or a sob. Nicky didn’t care. At that moment, he didn’t care about anything—living, dying, truth, lies. Any of it. None of it mattered any more. The inferno burned, and all Nicky wanted was to destroy something. He could do it. He could pull the trigger. He could start a fire. He hated both of them. He hated everything.
