KILLER T

by Robert Muchamore

  The bathroom was small, with a powerful UV bulb and a smell of disinfectant. A clear box stood inside the shower tray containing four towels plus a sealed pack of toiletries and a giant yellow bottle of anti-viral gel. The mirror over the sink was half covered with a sticker giving instructions on the proper way to wash your hands after using the toilet.

  The disinfectant stuck in Charlie’s throat, but she felt good. It was way nicer than her tiny room in the trailer home, or the cell she’d had to share with another inmate at White Boulder. But while the building had a cosy vibe Charlie reckoned some residents in Independent Living would be light fingered, and dashed to grab her stuff from the lobby.

  Charlie took the first two bags together, but the third was heavier. As she got out of reception, the bottom tore out of the black sack and books spewed over the hallway. She was on one knee, piling up some of the larger books, when she sensed movement.

  ‘Little help?’ a guy asked.

  Charlie was startled when she looked behind. She hadn’t been around many men in the past two years, and this one was exceptional. He looked about eighteen and he’d strode from his room in CK briefs that left little to the imagination. He had a square jaw, black hair still damp from a shower, huge hairless chest and biceps like giant mangos.

  ‘I’m Brad,’ he said. ‘Need a hand with those?’

  ‘I’ll manage,’ Charlie said, going red because his bulge was right in her eye line.

  But he grabbed a book anyway and read the title aloud. ‘Elementary principles of Aeronautical Engineering.’ Brad studied more titles before making an observation. ‘These are college level, but you don’t look much over sixteen.’

  ‘I’m almost sixteen,’ Charlie said awkwardly, feeling like her tongue had swollen. ‘My teacher at White Boulder got me permission to do some online college-level courses. I’m basically a total science geek.’

  Brad shrugged and looked thoughtful. ‘Why apologise for being smart?’

  Charlie noticed how he got a six pack when he bent over. I bet he could throw me in the air with one of those big arms. I spend half an hour looking in the mirror worrying that my butt is a weird shape, but this confident ass steps up to a stranger in his CKs.

  Is he hitting on me? I’m nearly sixteen, so I’m not a kid any more. But why would someone this good-looking want me?

  Brad carried a dozen textbooks books down the hall to Charlie’s room. ‘Sixteen A, right? We’re neighbours!’

  Brad made another trip, before Charlie dumped the last books on the bare mattress.

  ‘I know where to come if I need a math tutor,’ Brad said as he waggled a Get Set For College math primer.

  Charlie smiled. ‘I helped a couple of girls at White Boulder.’

  ‘You’re sweating,’ Brad observed. ‘Would you like a cold Coke?’

  Charlie nodded. ‘Proper Coke? You don’t get that inside.’

  Brad’s room was across the hall from Charlie’s. She stood in the doorway nosing as he opened a mini-fridge covered in rock band stickers. It was a typical boy’s room, strewn with dirty socks, barbells, a guitar amp and a picture on the wall showing Brad with two younger girls.

  ‘My twin sisters,’ Brad explained as he threw the Coke.

  Charlie noticed trays of meat crammed in the bottom of Brad’s fridge. ‘Is that, like, protein for bodybuilding?’

  Brad shook his head. ‘Comes off my uncle’s ranch in California. I work up there sometimes. He raises cattle. All organic. Mostly sells to restaurants in LA, or here on the strip.’

  ‘I love steak,’ Charlie said. ‘But we could never afford it back home, and the only meat you get inside has been through a grinder …’

  ‘Tell me ’bout that,’ Brad laughed as he opened his cupboard and miraculously retrieved a dented frying pan and a stand-alone induction ring.

  ‘The lady wants steak?’ Brad said, grabbing a tray of meat out of the fridge. ‘Two minutes per side, medium-rare?’

  ‘No!’ Charlie said, covering her face and laughing noisily. ‘You don’t have to.’

  Brad plugged in his cooking ring, shoving coins and a wallet aside to make space on the corner of his desk.

  ‘Sixty-day dry-aged rib eye,’ Brad said, glancing around until he found a little bottle of oil on the window ledge. ‘Cost you seventy bucks in a restaurant on The Strip.’

  After putting some oil in the pan, Brad reached up and stretched a shower cap over his smoke detector.

  ‘Stop lurking in the doorway,’ Brad said. ‘Have a seat.’

  The bed looked grungy, and Charlie flicked grass-stained shorts out of the way before straightening the duvet and perching on the edge.

  ‘So you don’t go to school any more?’ Charlie asked, but felt dumb because he’d mentioned math tutoring.

  ‘Only work for my uncle weekends and holidays,’ Brad said, unwrapping the steak as the pan started to sizzle. ‘I landed a three-day suspension from school for fighting. Guy riding my back all day because they don’t like OIL kids.’

  Charlie looked confused. ‘OIL?’

  ‘Obama Independent Living,’ Brad explained. ‘Not proud I lost my temper, but I couldn’t take his shit.’

  Charlie nodded sympathetically, though it was the kind of line people always used to justify fighting. She thought no more, because Brad dropped the steak into the pan and started yelling.

  ‘Jesus, holy mother of …’

  Charlie was baffled as Brad hopped into the bathroom and blasted cold water.

  ‘What happened?’ Charlie gasped, standing up.

  ‘Hot fat spattered my chest,’ Brad explained, emerging from the bathroom smirking and rubbing beautiful abs with a damp towel. ‘Wow, that hurt!’

  ‘You want to put this on?’ Charlie asked, laughing as she picked a balled-up Barcelona soccer shirt off his bed.

  ‘That’ll do, sure,’ Brad said.

  Charlie caught a whiff of BO as she threw the shirt. It was a smell that would be gross if it came off some old guy on the bus, but sexy coming from Brad.

  ‘Steak for madame,’ he said, presenting the meat one-handed on a cardboard plate, with a knife and fork he’d retrieved from a manky coffee mug and rinsed in the bathroom.

  Charlie didn’t give a damn about SNor prevention as she balanced the plate on her knees and started to cut. It was bloodier than expected, but she smiled when she tasted it.

  ‘Good?’ Brad asked, a touch anxious.

  ‘Best steak ever,’ Charlie said.

  She wouldn’t have been rude if it had tasted rank, but it was genuinely amazing.

  ‘When you hang beef for two or three months, all the proteins start to break down and it gets super tender,’ Brad explained.

  ‘Murr eeee yum mar,’ Charlie said, then swallowed and tried again. ‘Melts in your mouth.’

  ‘Any plans for tonight, Charlie?’

  She shook her head. ‘My friend Harry is coming tomorrow. I guess I’ll sort out my books, read the rules and stuff.’

  Brad shook his head. ‘On your first night of freedom? No way! There’s a group of us here. We head out most Fridays.’

  ‘Where do you go?’

  ‘Weekend curfew is eleven strict and none of us is rich,’ Brad said. ‘But we usually find a way to have fun. Are you with us?’

  ‘I guess,’ Charlie said, nodding as she swallowed another mouthful of steak and gave a thumbs-up. ‘Dead cow and Coca Cola. This is what freedom tastes like!’

  16 CHEF CHANNING

  Kirsten had bought a seven-bed house in Jaguar Heights, one of Vegas’s poshest developments. Set on a three-acre hillside lot, there was a four-car garage, basement home cinema and an infinity pool jutting over the hillside, giving clear views towards Charleston Peak.

  Harry often felt the contrast with the little three-bed terrace he’d shared with his aunt in London. Especially when he remembered a sleepless night, a couple of weeks after his eleventh birthday.

  He’d come downstairs at 3 a.m., trembling
from a nightmare where he’d been trampled by a bull. He’d found Kirsten wrestling her accounts at the kitchen table, with tears streaking her face.

  Kirsten Channing’s restaurant in London’s Primrose Hill had won awards and was always busy, but the sums didn’t add up after the landlord hiked the rent. Harry overheard talk of Kirsten selling her house to raise money and of having to go live with his grandparents in Devon.

  Then Kent Clark stumbled into Kirsten’s restaurant on a trip to London. The Vegas-based billionaire liked the food so much he bought a half share in Kirsten’s business, on condition that she moved to Vegas and opened a restaurant inside his new casino.

  Kirsten’s old London restaurant sat twenty-eight guests; Channing’s at the Algarve Casino Las Vegas cost $14 million to fit out and could seat four hundred. It won Best New Vegas Restaurant the year it opened and Best Overall the year after that.

  While many tourists never left the mega-casinos and tourist traps on the gridlocked four-mile stretch of Las Vegas Boulevard known as The Strip, locals steered clear. But Harry and Matt decided to drive The Strip a couple of days after Harry got his licence and he welled with pride when he saw a glammed-up version of his aunt on the Algarve’s two-hundred-foot-tall video billboard, dressed in her chef whites and tossing a pan of fancy seafood.

  After three years in Vegas, Kirsten had started building an empire. There was Channing’s English Pub, for casino guests with more modest budgets, a copycat Channing’s in Kent Clark’s Macau casino, while her original London restaurant had reopened inside a five-star Chelsea hotel.

  Plans for a fourth Channing’s in New York had been put on hold, because fear of catching SNor had dented the restaurant trade, but Kirsten regularly made TV appearances on Chef Challenge and Gourmet Chef Secrets and had signed a deal for three recipe books.

  When Harry came home early Friday evening, he had three bags from the shops at Summerlin. Kirsten was barefoot in the kitchen, wearing a sequinned black dress and a chunky gold neck chain worth a stupid number of dollars.

  ‘I thought you loathed that necklace,’ Harry said, striding across an enormous black quartz floor to raid a $30,000 Sub-Zero refrigerator.

  ‘Kent Clark bought it for me when we won Best Overall,’ Kirsten explained. ‘It’s too bling for my tastes, but it’s his seventieth birthday, so I’ve gotta wear it …’

  ‘Have they fixed the pool?’ Harry asked, grabbing a dish of shepherd’s pie. ‘Is this still OK?’

  Kirsten nodded. ‘It’s today’s batch from my pub. Pop it in for thirty-five minutes. Please try to eat the vegetables with it. And the pool guy says they don’t have the parts in stock to fix the filter.’

  Harry turned his nose up at a dish of cauliflower and broccoli, then shut the fridge and turned on the oven.

  ‘Is Chopper Bill going with you?’ Harry asked, smirking because his aunt’s latest boyfriend was a perma-tanned tourist helicopter pilot twenty years her junior.

  ‘You like Bill,’ Kirsten reminded Harry sharply. ‘He’ll be here to pick me up in a bit. Why have you bought girls’ knickers?’

  Harry looked round, and saw his aunt nosing inside his shopping bags.

  ‘Charlie messaged me her size,’ Harry explained. ‘All she’s got is manky prison issue.’

  Kirsten had a special look of disapproval for when Charlie’s name got mentioned.

  ‘Is that a laptop?’ she asked, peeking inside a Fry’s Electronics bag.

  Harry tutted and spoke in a mocking tone. ‘Thank you so much for asking, Auntie. My friend Charlie got out of prison today. I spoke to her after school and she seems to be doing great.’

  ‘Was that expensive?’ Kirsten asked, ignoring the sarcasm.

  ‘Like, three fifty,’ Harry said. ‘And it’s my money, from my job that paid for it.’

  Harry showed his anger by making the shepherd’s pie crash on to the oven rack.

  ‘The top won’t get crispy if you don’t pre-heat,’ Kirsten warned.

  ‘Don’t care,’ Harry sulked.

  ‘So where are you driving off to see her tomorrow?’

  ‘North Vegas,’ Harry said. ‘When you meet Charlie, you might find that you like her.’

  Kirsten opened her mouth like she was going to say something, sighed, then said it anyway.

  ‘I know you don’t want to hear this, Harry. But I worry about you doing so much for Charlie. I mean it’s cool that you’ve taken an interest in this poor girl’s life. But, let’s face it, you’re almost seventeen and you’ve not had a proper girlfriend. I’m worried that you’re heavily invested in a girl with a troubled past, who you barely know.’

  ‘That’s the whole problem,’ Harry said sourly. ‘People like you never give people like Charlie a chance.’

  Kirsten scoffed. ‘People like what exactly?’

  ‘Oh, you know,’ Harry said, holding his arms out to the designer kitchen and the twinkling infinity pool out through the sliding doors. ‘The six-million-dollar house. Your Bentley. Flying to publishers’ meetings in New York in Clark Corp’s executive jet.’

  ‘Hard work got me where I am,’ Kirsten said irritably as she fiddled with an earring. ‘I’ve employed young offenders and drug-rehab kids in my restaurants. Dealing with people like that can be rewarding, but a lot of the time it’s bloody hard work and they throw everything back in your face. So I don’t think I’m crazy to worry when I see you running her errands and buying expensive gifts.’

  ‘She’s a science geek,’ Harry explained. ‘She’ll need a laptop for schoolwork. If people help Charlie, she could get into an Ivy League college.’

  ‘You’ve got a good heart, Harry,’ Kirsten said as she cracked a slight smile. ‘And I guess some girl’s gonna break it sometime, no matter what I say.’

  17 MAD BOMBER

  After more than two years inside, everyday details felt like strange adventures. Pulling on a skirt, paying for Snickers ice cream and sunscreen in 7-Eleven, crossing a road, plugging her cell into a charger and seeing long-forgotten apps and games when it fired up.

  Obama Independent Living was eighty per cent boys. Some released from lock-up, but mostly sixteen- to eighteen-year-olds who’d been booted by parents, or caused trouble in foster homes.

  Charlie was one of the youngest, and felt intimidated when the high-school bus dropped off, filling her eight-room corridor with Friday-happy lads blasting tunes, banging doors and mercilessly tormenting a kid called Jamal who had a club foot and a stutter.

  Brad introduced the only other girl on the corridor. Juno was black, with a stocky build and neon nails. She donated Charlie a couple of tops to go with the stuff she’d rummaged from the unit’s spare-clothes cupboard, and a pair of cheap beach sandals that still wore shop tags.

  Charlie felt a connection when she spotted Juno’s shelf of high-school math and science books. Juno was seventeen and explained that her plan was to join the US Navy scholarship programme to pay for college. She’d already had the interview and passed the academic requirement, but was swimming regularly and dieting to lose fifteen pounds, because she had to retake the physical.

  ‘Just naturally got a big fat ass,’ Juno said, laughing noisily as she slapped a thigh.

  Charlie decided it was time to share some of her story. ‘I was up at White Boulder,’ she began.

  ‘Everyone knows who you are,’ Juno cut in, smiling. ‘The shit you did was on every news back in the day. People said you was probably coming here. I even googled Deion Powell. He’s started playing college ball, but his face is wrecked …’

  Charlie twisted uncomfortably. On her first day at White Boulder, an inmate warned her not to go around claiming she was innocent, because the staff will write it on your file and the early release panel might say you’re in denial and not truly sorry for what you’ve done.

  It felt like yet another way the system was rigged against the innocent. But, over time, Charlie got used to having friends and cellmates who thought she was guilty and she got bu
llied less than most, because even the baddest girls feared making the Mad Bomber snap.

  But while Charlie could handle nicknames, or friends speculating that Deion must have raped or beaten her to push level-headed Charlie over the edge, she detested people thinking she’d done something so cruel.

  Deion had lost over seventy per cent of the skin on his face and torso. The other victim’s burns were less serious, but she’d lost sight in one eye and endured painful operations to rebuild a shattered jaw and cheekbone.

  ‘Got no family?’ Juno asked.

  ‘Just a twelve-year-old brother,’ Charlie said, which wasn’t a lie because Fawn was dead to her. ‘He had a brain injury in childbirth. He’s in an institution.’

  ‘Gonna visit?’

  ‘My friend Harry found where he’s at,’ Charlie explained. ‘I left messages saying I wanted to see him, but nobody called back.’

  Brad knocked on Juno’s half-open door and poked his head round without waiting for a response.

  ‘Everyone’s heading out,’ Brad said. ‘You sluts ready?’

  Juno flipped Brad off and mouthed something foul. It was past seven, but it was December, so it was already dark with a bite in the air. Charlie stared at the full moon in the lot out back, realising it was the first time in two years that she’d been outside after dark.

  The ride was a mangled GMC pickup, driven by an older guy. Brad and their driver’s younger brother filled the cab, leaving Charlie, Juno and a muscled little black guy nicknamed Dodge to ride on the open rear platform.

  ‘Hang tight back there,’ the driver yelled as he set off, then deliberately slammed the brakes.

  Charlie’s elbow scraped the rusty pick-up bed as Juno pounded on the cab’s rear window. ‘You do that one more time and I’ll cut you!’ she yelled, as the guys seat-belted inside the cab laughed hysterically.

  Charlie felt cold and none too safe, linking arms with Juno so that they didn’t get thrown about. The ride was too scary to be fun, but the dark sky and the blast of cold air was exhilarating.