January (11 page)

Eventually, I came to a familiar main road, which led me home.

Everyone was still in bed by the time I got back. I crept to my room and made a few notes, jotting down the names of streets and buildings I could remember passing. There’d been a little church at an intersection not far from the house, a primary school and a carwash.

Then I pulled out Dad’s drawing of the giant angel. I studied it hard, trying to find something in it that would give me an idea of why I’d been kidnapped and interrogated. What is it about you, I asked the stern figure, that everybody wants to know? What secret do you guard?

It was then that I noticed that the commando angel had some sort of fitting beneath the gas mask that hung around his neck—it looked like a
decoration. Some sort of … medal? How could I have overlooked this before?

Maybe one day I’d find out the secret, then I could go back to that place on
my
terms.

I woke up and last night’s terror started to smother the nightmare I’d had again. The
darkness
of my dream—the freezing cold, the fear, the white toy dog, and somewhere, a baby crying—was overshadowed by the memory of the closet I’d been locked in.

What was I going to tell Mum? I was sure she’d be mad at me for not coming home last night, but there was no way I could tell her about being abducted. Not after all the things she’d been through. I knew that somehow I’d just have to keep it to myself. For now, anyway.

There was a strange atmosphere in the house. I got out of bed and headed down the hall.

Gabbi and Mum were both in the kitchen, Mum on the phone with her back to me, taking down notes with a pencil.

‘What’s happened?’ I asked, wondering if they’d somehow found out about where I’d been.

‘What is it?’ I asked again.

‘It’s
all
gone,’ Gabbi whispered. ‘All of it!’

‘What? What’s gone?’

Mum dropped the pencil she was using and it rolled on the floor. Slowly she put the phone down. When she turned to look at us, I gasped with shock. She almost looked as sick as when she’d heard the news about Dad’s illness.

Gabbi turned to me. ‘All our money’s gone, Cal! Dad withdrew just about everything when he was in Ireland!’

I looked to Mum as if to say, ‘Tell me it’s not true!’

‘She’s right,’ Mum whispered. ‘There were only six months’ worth of house repayments left in the account. There’s nothing now.’

I couldn’t speak. I stood watching Mum comfort Gabbi, holding her close, smoothing her hair, telling her it was going to be all right.

Without money, how would Mum be able to pay the mortgage? Until last year, she’d worked full time for an architect but had to take a lot of unpaid leave when Dad was sick. Now she just worked a casual job.

‘It’s all gone,’ said Mum. ‘Gone. Over one hundred thousand dollars has simply vanished. Our entire life savings. There are nineteen dollars left in the account.’

The only sound was Gabbi’s stifled sobs. I wanted to say something, but I had no words. I knew the mortgage payments on the house were
automatically deducted every month from Dad’s account. But what would happen now? Mum barely earned enough to pay for the groceries. We’d lost our father, I’d come close to losing my life, and now, it seemed, we were going to lose our house.

Who was doing this to us
?
Any lingering notion I might have had about telling Mum what had happened to me last night evaporated. There was no way I could load her up with more worry. She was so stressed that she didn’t even ask me where I’d been.

‘I’ll have to call Uncle Rafe,’ said Mum.

‘We won’t lose our house, Mum. I can get a job,’ I said. ‘I’ll leave school and look for work.’

Mum grabbed me and held me in a hug. ‘You will not! Somehow we’ll find a way through this. Thank God for you kids,’ she said, ‘I don’t know how we’re going to manage, but at least we’ve got each other.’

It was hot on my bike—it must have been almost thirty in the shade.

As soon as I got to Boges’s we went down to
his room and I threw myself on his old beanbag. I told him all about the night before and then filled him in on the news from the morning.

He sat there scratching and staring at me in disbelief. Again.

‘You nearly drowned. You get kidnapped. And now your house is on the line. Is that what you’re really telling me?’

‘Right,’ I said. ‘I didn’t think things could get any worse.’

‘Plus, your dad makes some massive discovery and warns you of danger, just before he gets really sick. And then some lunatic on the street chases you down trying to tell you that your dad was murdered.’ Boges started laughing. ‘Man, this is all insane!’

‘I know!’ I laughed back. ‘It is insane, but true!’

I couldn’t believe it myself, but I was living it. A year ago my biggest concerns in life were maths exams, football, girls, my little sister pinching my things, and Mum and Dad not letting me stay out late enough. How did everything change so quickly?

‘You have to go to the cops,’ said Boges. ‘Cal? Are you listening to me?’

‘I can’t. Boges, I just can’t.’

‘Why the hell not?’ he said, like I was crazy.
‘This is massive. Dude, you were kidnapped! Thrown in the boot of a car! Locked in a closet! Knocked unconscious!’

‘I can’t, all right!’

I knew it sounded like the most logical thing to do, but I didn’t want to involve the authorities. That guy on the balcony told me to keep my mouth shut.

‘They don’t want me to talk. Believe me. I don’t trust them. What if they know where I live? They weren’t afraid to hurt me, Boges. Any of us could be in danger. And Mum,’ I continued, ‘she can’t handle this—not now. It’s too much. She’s already on the edge.’

Boges shrugged. ‘I really hope you know what you’re doing. Anyway … your dad must have had a breakdown and then taken out all of the money. Maybe it was the virus?’

I nodded, glad he wasn’t pushing the cop thing. ‘But what could he have done with it all?’

‘I don’t know, but the quicker we can work out what’s going on, the quicker we can sort out this mess.’

He was right.

‘I keep wondering,’ he continued, ‘about your uncle. Maybe
he
took the money. He
is
your dad’s identical twin. It wouldn’t have been hard for
him to pose as your dad.’

I shook my head. ‘The money was withdrawn in Ireland.’

‘OK. But he
did
lie about the drawings, remember? Why would he do that?’

It didn’t take much thought. ‘Obviously, he doesn’t want anyone to know about them.’

‘My thoughts exactly,’ said Boges. ‘Seems he doesn’t want anyone to even know about the
existence
of the drawings. Which means they are crucial—important enough to pinch, and important enough to lie about.’ Boges swivelled around on his chair to face me. ‘It means,’ he continued, ‘that Rafe knows those drawings mean something. He knows something about the Ormond Riddle thing, too.’

My mind felt like mush. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to concentrate again. Too many things were happening to my family and they were all bad.

‘Last night,’ I said, ‘that’s all they were going on about. What do you know about the Ormond Riddle? What do you know about the Ormond Angel? What do you know about the Ormond Singularity? I kept telling them I don’t know anything! Except that for some reason they all have our family’s name stuck to them! Then they started going on
about a map. Did I know anything about a map? Had Dad given me a map? On and on! I had nothing to tell them, but they didn’t believe me. I don’t know what might have happened if I hadn’t got away …’

‘They wanted to know about a map?’ asked Boges. ‘How do you think they even know about these things?’

‘They were at the conference in Ireland. I could hear them talking about it. I guess they found out whatever Dad did about our family.’

‘Your dad said there was going to be danger,’ said Boges, ‘He was right!’

I hadn’t realised until last night just how dangerous this might be. Hide out, the man on the street had said. Lie low until midnight, the 31st of December, this year.

‘And I don’t know how much Rafe knows about all of this,’ I said. ‘Ever since the day of Dad’s funeral, he’s been so …’ As I recalled moments of that terrible day, I put my hand in the pocket of my hoodie.

‘Boges! I’ve just remembered!’ I held up the key with the black tag. ‘I know what it opens and I know where the drawings are!’