February (7 page)
Authors: Gabrielle Lord
With my hoodie pulled right down over my face, I risked making my way back to Sligo’s car yard. I’d tossed and turned about it for a couple of nights, but had no choice; I didn’t know where else to start looking for Winter, and I had to speak to her. Time was ticking.
I hid behind some bushes across the road from the main entrance and although I saw people coming and going, including the stocky guy with the red singlet who had tossed me in the tank, I didn’t see any sign of her.
It was a much bigger establishment than I’d first realised. Most of it had been in darkness when Sligo had captured me. I’d only seen the office and laundry area and the
closely-surrounding
yard under light. Everything between there and running for the gate was a haze.
Deeper into the lot there were long lines of cars under tarpaulins and a number of small sheds filled with engine parts and engine blocks.
I was about to leave, after an hour or so of monitoring the place, when a sudden movement caught my eye. Over in the left-hand corner of the yard, near the road, someone was scampering up and over the fence. I sat up, alert. Someone was sneaking into Sligo’s car yard! They must have been pinching spare parts! The thief was safe with me—there was no way I’d be running to the boss to tell him about it. I could see the figure more clearly as he quietly made his way further in; it was a kid wearing boots, jeans and a dark brown hoodie, and he seemed to be creeping along the rows of covered cars, looking for something in particular. As he lifted the tarpaulins, one by one, I could see that many of the cars had been in bad crashes, their bumper bars crushed, wheels and axles bent at odd angles. I guessed the kid was looking for a part from a specific make and model.
It was an unusual feeling being the quiet witness for once instead of being the one trying to get on with business without being caught. The kid jumped down from a car not too far from me and when he stood up … I saw that he was actually a
she
!
Her slim figure quickly dropped to the ground again and off she went, crawling along the rows of cars, lifting tarpaulins, dropping them and then proceeding to the next wreck.
As I stood up to leave, she must have noticed the movement and swung around to see who was watching her. I was quicker and dropped back down behind my cover, peering once more through the bushes.
The girl frantically scanned the street and then, satisfied that no-one was there, she continued with her search.
Slowly I got to my feet and backed away, completely puzzled.
What on earth was Winter Frey doing creeping around Sligo’s car yard?
Winter had been on my mind even more since I spotted her at the car yard. What was she doing there, sneaking around? Did she have a little side business of her own—stealing spare parts from Sligo and then selling them elsewhere? I’d wanted to call out to her—I’d gone there to find her—but I knew she would have just run away from me. And she would
not
have been happy about being sprung …
I looked at her number in my phone, frustrated that I could never reach her on it. I shoved it back into my bag.
It had been a few days since I’d last seen Boges and I hadn’t been able to get a hold of him either.
‘Boges!’ I said, after practically diving across the room to answer my phone before it stopped ringing.
‘I know, I’m sorry, I haven’t been able to talk the last couple of days, but anyway, dude, I have some news.’
‘Has something happened to Mum or Gabbi?’ I asked, my chest pounding.
‘Gabbi, I’m sorry to say, is much the same,’ said Boges. ‘Your mum’s fine, but …’
‘But what?’
‘She’s moving into Rafe’s place.’
My heart sank. I knew it was probably going to happen sooner or later, with our house already up for rent, but I’d been hoping some sort of miracle would solve Mum’s money problem before any decisions like that’d have to be made.
‘I knew you wouldn’t be happy about it,’ said Boges, ‘but, hey, I checked your blog and it looks good—you have some messages now.’
‘Really?’
‘A few people are having their say about you. Yeah, you have your regular dose of crazies in there, but some are definitely on your side. Well, two, at least. Real hotties; Tash and Jasmine.’
I felt a smile creep up on my face. Cute names, I thought.
‘What did they say?’
‘Just that they could tell you weren’t a bad guy, and that everyone should be innocent until proven guilty,’ he said.
I nodded to myself, feeling great that two girls I didn’t even know believed in me.
‘And then,’ continued Boges, ‘they said that they thought you were pretty hot and that they’d like to protect you from the real bad guys …’
‘What?’
‘I’m serious! That’s what they said. It’s amazing what a life of crime can do for a guy!’
Boges fumbled with the phone for a moment. ‘If you were here you would see that I’ve got my hand up and I’m waiting for a high-five. Come on, don’t leave me hanging!’
We both cracked up laughing.
‘I think it might even be helping
my
popularity,’ said Boges. ‘Madeleine Baker sat next to me in the art studio this morning.’
‘No way!’
‘First she said that she really liked my metal spider sculpture from last year, at least until I designed that program for it and it got away …’
‘Yeah, right out the school gates and under a bus!’
‘Then Maddy said that it must have been so
hard on me, finding out that my best friend was …’ Boges hesitated.
‘Was what?’
‘… a psycho.’ I could hear Boges shuffling about uncomfortably. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to bring that up. I told her that it didn’t bother me a bit—you weren’t a psycho, and that it would just be a matter of time before everyone else understood that.’
I hated hearing that, but it wasn’t surprising. I knew very well what everyone was thinking about me. My own mother thought I was a monster.
‘So she ended up sitting somewhere else?’ I asked.
‘No, she didn’t actually. We’re now paired up for a photography project. We’ll be sitting together all term, whether we want to or not!’
‘If you were here you’d see that my hand’s up and ready for a high-five, Boges. Come on, don’t leave me hanging!’
We both laughed again.
I wanted to see the blog comments for myself. Maybe even add some of my own. I decided I’d check it all out at an internet café as soon as it was safe.
‘I think this whole blog thing is great, but it’s also caused a lot of flak,’ said Boges. ‘The Police
Commissioner was on the news last night saying that they wouldn’t be shutting your page down. They’re hoping to trace you. To luck onto information that will lead them to you.’
‘I’m not going to slip up and give anything away. But can they trace me electronically?’
‘It would be very hard to do. I’ve done a lot of fancy footwork to make it near-impossible.’
‘You’re a legend Boges. Thanks.’
I could hear the distant sound of hundreds of kids fooling around in the schoolyard coming down the phone line.
‘I think I’ve given up on Winter,’ I said. ‘Her phone’s still switched off.’
‘Might be just as well,’ said Boges. ‘She’s part of Sligo’s mob. How do you know they’re not a team? You know, like playing good cop, bad cop.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘I’ve been thinking about it. That whole thing in the oil tank could have been a set-up. Sligo pretends to try and kill you, then she pretends to save you when all seems lost, so you tell her all your secrets out of gratitude. But all the time she’s reporting back to the big guy.’
‘Boges, I really don’t think so. I was seconds away from death when she stopped the oil pump.’
‘Don’t you see?’ Boges asked. ‘That’s what
they want you to believe. You start to trust her and let your guard down and then you open up all about the drawings, your dad’s letter, the empty jewel case … and they add all that to what they already know … It works heaps better than drowning you in sump oil.’
I thought about it for a moment. Boges could have been right. And I hadn’t even told him about spotting her snooping around the car yard.
‘But we don’t know what they might know already,’ I said.
‘Exactly,’ said Boges. ‘And that’s why you have to be extra cautious.’
There was a sudden sound out the front of the house. I dropped to the floor. ‘Gotta go,’ I whispered. ‘There’s someone outside the house.’
The sound came again—a ripping, tearing sound. Someone was wrenching the boards off the front door, trying to get inside!
I swore down the phone. ‘Boges, I’ve gotta go!’
Not caring how much noise I made, I grabbed the folder with the drawings inside and stuffed everything into my backpack, then pushed it through the hole in the floorboards. The sound of splintering wood filled the air.
I took a quick glance around, and hoping I hadn’t left any incriminating material lying
about, I dived through the hole in the floorboards, twisting back to pull the carpet off-cut back into position over the opening.
Panting, I crawled under the house, making my way through the dense growth to where Boges had made his escape earlier.
I drove myself through the jungle of leaves and branches, launched over the back fence, swung myself over into the neighbour’s yard, and hit the ground running.
There was yelling and shouting behind me but I just kept ducking and weaving, putting street after street between me and the St Johns house.
I stopped running in the west of the inner city, near the railway. Sweat poured down my body as I squeezed through a fence into a deserted area where old railway sheds and rusting carriages stood, separated by thick grass growing high between them. I practically collapsed on the ground, hidden under an old carriage, hoping that the intruders had not been the cops.