December (3 page)

Winter paused and let out an exhausted breath.

‘Then he changed,’ she continued. ‘As quickly as he’d blown up, he calmed down. He started laughing like he suddenly thought it was
hilarious
. He said I was as smart as he was–maybe even smarter–and that I should channel my talent and become a partner in his business. He promised to give me the money owing to me as long as I kept my mouth shut, and as long as I sat beside him at his New Year’s Eve ball like a perfect princess. He also said he was on the verge of making a whole lot more money.’

‘A whole lot more?’ I asked, instantly
panicking
about him unravelling the DMO before us.

‘He said he “had to” reach the Ormond
Singularity
before the end of December,’ she explained, confirming my fears. ‘By that time I’d realised how much danger I was in, but I was all alone. No-one knew where I was. I didn’t have backup.’

Her words hit me hard.

‘I decided to play along, pretending that I was seriously considering his offer. I walked around as if I was deep in thought while he threw the
shards of broken glass from his desk in the bin and poured himself another drink. He offered me a juice, and I nervously sipped on it as I paced the room.’

‘Did he say anything else about the Ormond Singularity?’

‘The Ormond Singularity?’ Griff was
muttering
to himself, clearly confused.

‘Sligo kept raving on about how he needed to crack it so that he could display the Ormond Jewel around my neck at the ball and make his name as a great medievalist and antiquarian. I could be his “equal partner”. He said the entire world would be at
our
feet. I was pretending to be impressed but the whole time I was planning how to get out. I excused myself to go to the bathroom, then I bolted. I was on my way to the police station when I started to feel really weird–all weak and floppy. Every sound around me was fading and my vision was going blurry. I sat down on some steps, thinking it must have been the heat. Then I remembered the fruit juice–Sligo had put something in it! Next thing I know, Bruno’s dragging me off the street into the car. I kicked as hard as I could, but I couldn’t stop him!’

‘That’s when I saw you,’ said Griff.

‘Sligo made a final phone call to your mobile,’ I said. ‘He didn’t realise I’d picked it up from the
road. He said enough for me to guess you’d been taken to the car yard. When we got here and I saw the container, I was pretty sure you’d be in it. Then Bruno and Zombie Two sprung us–’

‘And locked us in here with you,’ Griff
finished
for me, feeling around the container again. ‘We’re all up to speed now, so how about we focus on getting out of here?’

Griff’s suggestion was met with stifling silence. Clearly, none of us had any good ideas.

Outside the container and beyond the deserted car yard, the sounds of distant traffic hummed almost inaudibly.

Griff spoke again. ‘We’re better off trying to escape now, while we at least know where we are. If this truck moves us, we could end up stacked like bricks in concrete on a container ship in the middle of the ocean. We’d die there, for sure.’

‘I’m scared,’ whispered Winter.

I stood up and started pacing the length of the dark space of the container. If only there was something I could do. If only I could find some way to connect with the outside world. With Boges or–

‘The distress beacon!’ I shouted.

‘The what?’ said Griff.

‘The micro distress beacon Boges gave you!’
Winter shouted, excitedly. She jumped to her feet and awkwardly hugged me.

‘I have a distress beacon stowed in my shoe,’ I explained to Griff. ‘My mate Boges gave it to me, for use in an emergency!’

‘And you’ve only just thought of it now?’ he said in frustrated disbelief.

‘I’d almost forgotten all about it, but
who cares
?! It means we’re getting out of here!’

I sat back down and wrenched my shoe off. ‘Once he realises we’re missing, he’ll check the tracking program to see if we’ve activated the beacon. Then he can follow the signal to this container.’

‘But what about the police?’ asked Winter. ‘They’re watching him. What if they follow him here?’

‘Boges will be vigilant. He knows how important our freedom is. But let’s not worry about that right now, I have to get this beacon activated.’

With shaking fingers, I pulled up the inner sole from my sneaker and started to rip away the tape. I located the beacon and pressed the tiny switch.

It didn’t make a sound, but I had to believe it was working.

If Boges didn’t activate his tracking system
before this container was picked up and shipped out, I didn’t like to think what might happen to us. Griff was right–we needed to get out before they moved us.

Now we had to play the waiting game.

‘Who’s that?’ hissed Winter, grabbing my arm suddenly.

I froze and listened carefully. I could hear footsteps and the murmur of a voice approaching.

‘Do you think it’s Boges?’ Griff whispered.

‘Shh,’ I said, straining to hear whether the voice outside was familiar or not.

As it became louder, I recognised who it was.

It wasn’t Boges.

It was Zombie Two.

‘In the container,’ he said, loud enough for the three of us to hear. ‘We both come back
tomorrow
morning to remove.’

We all shuddered as his voice moved away. Finally we heard a car driving off and hoped that meant Zombie Two had left again.

‘Your friend had better get here before
they
do,’ warned Griff.

The day blended into the night as the three of us
huddled for hours and hours, anxiously waiting in the darkness of the container. All of us would jump at the slightest sound, hoping it was Boges, coming to our rescue, while fearing it was Bruno, Zombie Two or Sligo, back again to
remove
us.

But no-one had come.

Eventually, Winter and Griff fell quiet and I could hear Winter’s steady breathing beside me. The air inside the container was getting thicker and thicker.

I couldn’t fall asleep–I was tormented with horrible thoughts. What if Boges didn’t think to check up on his tracking program? What if the three of us were left here to die–from thirst and starvation–without anyone but the people who put us here ever knowing? What did Sligo plan on doing with us tomorrow morning? I didn’t want to stick around and find out.

The way I’d felt when I’d held Winter in my arms earlier, thinking she was dead, wouldn’t leave my mind either. I needed the chance to make a lot up to her. She’d been through so much and she’d been so brave. And now, just when she had the evidence she needed to get Sligo right out of her life forever, and claim what was
rightfully
hers, she was trapped.

Guilty. I felt so guilty.

Because of me, Boges had been picked up and
questioned by the police. For all I knew, they could have arrested him by now. Because of me, his future was uncertain. On top of that, I’d only just realised that I’d forgotten his birthday.

2 DECEMBER

30 days to go
…

‘Hey,’ said Griff, shaking me. I must have finally dozed off to sleep. ‘There’s someone outside! They’re here! That big guy’s come back like he said he would!’

I sat up, alert. He was right–I could hear footsteps.

‘Can’t you hear it? Winter, wake up!’ Griff shouted. ‘They’re here!’

‘Shh!’ I hissed. ‘If it
is
Sligo we don’t want him knowing we’re all still alive!’

That quietened him. He crouched down silently.

‘Someone’s here?’ Winter asked in a low voice, only just waking up.

‘Sounds like it,’ I whispered. ‘Zombie Two said they’d be back in the morning, so if it’s them, then the minute the doors are opened we all need to charge out as fast and as hard as we can. It’s our only hope. If we all charge together, one of
us might make it past them and be able to get help. OK?’

‘OK,’ agreed Winter and Griff.

‘Ready?’

‘Ready!’

We braced ourselves, ready to spring, as we heard the clanging and creaking of the heavy container doors opening.

As fresh air gushed towards us and daylight shone in, I squinted and flew at the two silhouettes before us.

I took down the first guy, knocking him hard to the ground. Bodies thudded and struggled beside me, too.

‘Hey! Easy, dude, it’s me!’ Boges shoved me off him.

‘Boges!’ I said. ‘Man, I am so sorry!’

‘Get off me!’ I heard a familiar voice grunt beside me. It was Nelson Sharkey. Griff and Winter had both tackled him and pinned him to the ground.

‘We didn’t know whether the distress beacon would work!’ exclaimed Winter, helping Sharkey to his feet, before running over to hug Boges. ‘We’re so glad to see you!’

‘You should never have doubted my
craftsmanship
,’ scoffed Boges, dusting off his notebook and straightening his shirt.

My eyes were slowly adjusting to the light as
I scoped the car yard. Sharkey’s car was parked just outside the entry gates. I couldn’t see any sign of Sligo or his goons, but I knew they could turn up at any moment.

‘Let’s get out of here,’ I said, hauling up my backpack.

We crawled, one after another, through the
opening
in the fence that Sharkey had made with bolt cutters, then piled into his car and took off, skidding and screeching.

‘As soon as I realised you were both MIA,’ said Boges, ‘I immediately opened the program for the distress beacon. The second I saw your signal I called Nelson. He picked me up and helped me trace you. It didn’t take us too long to track you down to Sligo’s car yard.’

Sharkey pulled the car over to drop Griff off, not too far from his aunty’s hotel near the docks. We’d driven past a huge Christmas tree
decorated
with tinsel and golden boxes tied up with gleaming ribbons that had been set up in the park nearby. I could hardly believe it was almost Christmas. That meant the end of the year was way too close for comfort.

‘I’ll call you,’ said Griff, as he climbed out of the car. ‘But not too soon, OK?’

I understood–Griff and I were both guilty of bringing trouble to each other, but without him I never would have found Winter.

‘Thanks!’ I shouted out as he ran away into a crowd of shoppers.

‘OK,’ said Sharkey, from the driver’s seat. ‘Where to next?’

Winter looked at me apprehensively from the front passenger seat. She opened her mouth to say something and then stopped.

‘Your place?’ Sharkey asked her. ‘I think I remember where that is.’

Winter shook her head and it hit me. Now she was like me. She couldn’t go back to her flat. She didn’t have a home any more. Neither of us did.

‘Let’s go to Lovett’s?’ Boges suggested, like he was reading my mind.

I nodded.

He gave Sharkey directions while I wondered if I could ever pay my friends back.

‘Boges,’ I said quietly. ‘Sorry I forgot your birthday. Next year will be different, I swear.’

Sharkey dropped the three of us off on the road that led to Luke Lovett’s place. Before he drove
away, I asked him, ‘Nelson, when you were
working
on a tough case in the police force and you ran up against a brick wall, what did you do?’

Nelson leaned his elbow on the window ledge. ‘I began again, Cal. Went back to the start. The PLS.’

‘The PLS?’ I asked, aware of Boges and Winter listening attentively beside me.

‘The Point Last Seen. If it’s a missing person, you go back over the investigation. You go back to the place where they disappeared. You
re-interview
people, you ask for other witnesses to come forward. You hope to find fresh clues that maybe you’d overlooked before. Walk-throughs are really helpful because memory is state dependent.’

‘Meaning?’ Winter asked.

‘You know when you’re in the house and you’re walking to a room to get something and by the time you get there you forget what you were
looking
for?’ Sharkey continued.

‘Yep,’ we all answered.

‘Then you retrace your steps to where you were standing or sitting when you first got the idea, and then suddenly it pops back into your head again–it’s like doing that,’ said Sharkey. ‘Now are you guys right? I have to keep moving. I’ll look into flights for us all and get back to you, OK?’

‘Cool. Thanks again,’ I said as he drove off, leaving just the three of us, dishevelled and relieved.

‘Winter, you’d better hang with me until you’ve organised another place Sligo doesn’t know about,’ I said as we all crept towards the back of Luke’s place.

I saw the strain and exhaustion in her face. The happiness that had shone in her eyes as we were freed from the container was long gone. I’d been living rough for almost a year now, but she’d been living on a razor’s edge, keeping her secrets and suspicions from Sligo, for the last six years. All while practically living in the dragon’s den.

‘It’s OK, Winter,’ I began, reaching for her shoulder.

‘It’s not OK,’ she said, shaking my hand off. ‘All my stuff is back at the flat and I can’t go back and get it. I’m used to being alone, but now I have nothing. Nothing. My bag was smashed on the road when I was hijacked, I don’t have a phone and we have to get to Ireland and it’ll be freezing there. I have no clothes and I’m filthy!’

‘I have your phone,’ I said, digging it out of my backpack. ‘It just needs charging.’

She took it and we continued walking.

‘Cal and I will break into your flat,’ said
Boges, bravely. ‘We can try and pick up your stuff for you.’

We pushed through the bushes that formed the back boundary of the Lovetts’ property and hurried over to the massive tree at the back, huddling together under its wide canopy. I reached up and yanked the rope down from where it had been thrown up out of the way over a low-lying bough.

Winter sighed as she climbed the rope. ‘Here I go again. Gorilla girl and the monkey boys. So where’s the bathroom?’ she asked, once at the top.

I pointed to a tap near the back fence.

‘You’re joking.’

I shrugged.

Boges hauled himself up into the treehouse. ‘Peaceful hideaway, leafy aspect. Open plan for easy living. Carpeted throughout. Bright and airy. Loads of character.’

‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘Not so bad.’

‘
Character
is a word real estate agents use when a place needs to meet a wrecking ball more than a new tenant.’ She sat down cross-legged on the bench and tied her hair back with an elastic from her wrist. ‘I have to go back to my flat. I have to get my passport, at least, otherwise going with you guys to Ireland and cracking the Ormond Singularity will be nothing but a dream for me.’

‘Like Boges said, we’ll watch your flat and if it’s safe,’ I said, ‘we’ll retrieve your things for you.’

The colour suddenly drained from Winter’s face. ‘The money! I don’t have the money!’

‘Where is it?’ Boges asked, alarmed.

‘Back at the flat! What if Sligo’s already found where I’ve hidden it?’

‘Where’d you hide it?’ I asked, hoping it wasn’t just in a drawer or something.

‘Inside the sofa. It’s not the best hiding spot, but maybe he won’t look in there unless he’s
realised
the cash from his scram bag is missing …’

‘We’ll find out soon enough,’ said Boges. ‘We’re gonna have to go there tonight.’