October (18 page)
Authors: Gabrielle Lord
Shock made me blind for a minute. I read the words again. There was no denying them.
Mum was marrying Uncle Rafe! Confusion followed shock, leaving me speechless. I tried to process all the thoughts that were bouncing around my head.
I knew Rafe had been very good to Mum,
helping
her through my dad’s death and all the mess that followed. He’d even offered to mortgage his house to pay for my legal defence—I knew he meant well even though I found him hard to get on with. But this wasn’t right—it was too soon. No-one could take Dad’s place.
Boges looked at me nervously. ‘I’m sorry, dude.’
Then I read the printout. Now there was another addition to my confused feelings—fear and terror. I had to read it again, trying to
control
my racing emotions and mind.
‘What is it?’ Winter’s voice cut through my confusion. I handed her both pieces of paper.
‘Your mum and uncle are getting married? On Halloween?’ She raised her eyes to mine. ‘That’s just days away.’
‘Read the other bit—the printout.’
Winter started to read aloud. ‘I have
information
from a very reliable source that a contract killer will be at the chapel. During the wedding, the groom—’ She looked up at me and then at
Boges. ‘Is this for real or somebody’s idea of a sick joke?’
‘Keep reading,’ I said. ‘Decide for yourself.’
‘The groom,’ she continued, ‘is the target. The groom?’ Winter repeated. ‘Rafe?’
‘I just called Leporello,’ said Boges. ‘He insisted that according to his underworld contacts, this is no idle threat. Rafe is in danger.’
The three of us looked at each other, exhausted by this news.
‘He has to be warned,’ I said.
‘I already did that,’ Boges said. ‘Told him I saw something about it online.’
‘And?’ asked Winter.
‘He just laughed it off. I told him about
Leporello
being a well-known police informant and your uncle said I’d been watching too much TV. He’s not taking it seriously at all. He insists
nothing
will frighten him out of marrying the woman he loves.’
Hearing those words made me feel so
uncomfortable
. I wanted Rafe to care about my mother, but I didn’t want him to marry her!
‘This is serious,’ I said. ‘Maybe he’ll listen to me.’
‘You’re kidding,’ said Boges. ‘Dude, get real. If he wouldn’t listen to me, what makes you think he’ll take any notice of you? He thinks you’re deranged.’
‘Why would Rafe be on the wrong end of a contract killer?’ I said aloud, half asking myself. I remembered the gun I’d found in his bedside table, and remembered how he’d almost been killed in the January break-in.
Rafe knew he had enemies.
I had to get out, on my own, and clear my head.
I walked along the beach, the waves roaring and crashing beside me. I hunched against the wind, my hands gripping the straps of my backpack, head down, fighting a sickening mixture of fear and anxiety.
Guilt gripped me as I knew it wasn’t only the fear of my uncle’s murder that was troubling me. Somewhere, deep in my heart, I still carried the hope of me and Mum and Gabbi living happily together again back in our house. It was this image that had kept me going all these months. It wasn’t just solving the mystery of Dad’s death and the DMO. The biggest reason I was trying to do this was so that I would have something to give to my family. Even without the threat of a contract killer, this wedding meant the end of my idea of home.
But if anything happened to Rafe, how could
Mum survive another sudden loss? She’d lost Dad, then me, then she’d almost lost Gabbi, and now came a very serious threat to another
member
of our family. The crazy guy had been right. The Ormond Singularity had caused nothing but death and destruction to my family. I had to do something to save Rafe.
I pulled out my mobile and dialled my mum’s number. My hands were sweaty and hot.
‘Hello?’ she said.
Hearing her voice, a voice I hadn’t heard for so long, hit me hard. ‘Mum, it’s me.’
‘Cal? Cal, darling, is that you? Is that really you?’
I looked around as the lights along the
esplanade
suddenly came on, shining like stars in the grey light of the evening.
‘Where are you? Are you all right? Cal, I’ve been so worried. You don’t know what I’ve been through.’ In her voice was the strange tone I’d noticed before, somehow flat, not like the voice she’d once had, which sounded full of life.
‘I sent a photo to you—Ryan Spencer. And I asked you a question.’
‘Ryan?’ She asked, in a shaky voice. ‘A photo of Ryan? Who’s that?’
‘Ryan Spencer. I sent you his bus pass … He’s the boy who looks identical to me.’
‘Identical?’ My mum gasped, then the phone line fell silent.
‘You there?’ I asked. ‘Did you get the bus pass?’
‘What bus pass?’
She was stonewalling me. I didn’t have time for this just now. I went straight ahead with what was on my mind.
‘I just heard the news,’ I said. ‘That you’re marrying Rafe.’
‘Come home, Cal. Hand yourself in and we can talk about it.’
‘I don’t want you to marry him, but that’s not it. I’m really worried about Rafe. Someone I know—a reliable informant—has told me that Rafe’s life is in danger. That someone will make an attempt to kill him at the wedding.’
My mum gasped again.
‘You mustn’t go ahead with the wedding,’ I pleaded. ‘You mustn’t go to the chapel. Please
listen
to me for a change.’
The phone line was silent again.
‘Mum?’ I asked.
This time she’d hung up on me.
I slumped against a rocky ledge. She must have thought I was calling just to stir trouble. The pain in my chest was overwhelming. I let my head fall between my knees and closed my eyes.
You have to stop them, said a voice in my head, as a seagull squawked above me.
I didn’t have much time. A sniper needs a nest—a firing platform. I had to check out Chapel-
by-the
-Sea. I had to find the sniper’s firing platform.
I headed off for Chapel-by-the-Sea, and on the way called Boges. ‘Boges, ages ago you were working on something and you wouldn’t tell me about it—something about invisibility?’
‘It’s still in the development stage. I haven’t worked on it for a while. You’re talking about my Disappearing Dust?’
‘That’s the one. Tell me about it.’
‘It’s a combination of chemicals, stored
separately
in a large capsule, but with the help of a little ignition device they come into contact and explode, creating a dense, impenetrable
smoke-screen
. It works like a smoke grenade except it’s a whole lot smaller and easier to hide.’
‘That’s what I need. I need to be invisible and I need to create a diversion.’
‘Dude, I don’t know how safe it is. I’m still working on the right amount of explosive for the detonation.’
‘I have to stop the wedding,’ I said. ‘I have to save Rafe from the hitman. Somehow.’
‘The detonator for Disappearing Dust is still very, very experimental.’ Boges argued. ‘I haven’t tested it. I’ve been working on the Caesar shift code-breaker.’
‘Boges, I have no choice. I need it. Please get it ready. The code-breaker will just have to wait.’
Chapel-by-the-Sea was a small, old-fashioned timber building famous for having the bell of a shipwreck in its tower. It sat on the headland surrounded by national park.
I’d been past it heaps of times whenever we’d driven with Mum and Dad along the coast. Once we’d even stopped there, and wandered inside the historic church, Gabbi and I climbing up into the choir loft to look down from high.
By the time I got there it was quite dark. I’d never broken into a church before and I wondered how I was going to do it until I noticed that the door was wide open. Cautiously, I moved inside. A woman was arranging flowers in vases on the altar, and she turned as I came in.
‘I have to lock up in a few minutes,’ she said.
‘That’s OK,’ I answered. ‘I won’t be staying long. I have a school project,’ I said quickly,
whipping
out a notebook and pencil, ‘On historical church sites in my area.’
She didn’t look completely convinced. ‘You only have a few minutes before I lock up,’ she warned, turning back to her work.
I looked around the church. There were some places to hide—shadowy niches with statues in them, the small side altar that was partly screened off. But it was much more likely the
contract
killer would just mingle with the guests, do the job, and escape quickly through the shocked congregation.
I turned around and looked behind me and up to the choir loft. The killer might wait up there, hidden behind the organ, only stepping forward to make the vital shot.
How was I going to prevent this from
happening
? And get out of there alive myself?
‘So the big day’s tomorrow,’ said Winter, as the three of us sat around, checking out the combat creations Boges had brought over for me.
‘Tomorrow night, actually,’ Boges corrected. ‘It’s an evening ceremony. It doesn’t start until eight. There aren’t many people going, but we were invited,’ he said, explaining to me. ‘Me, Mum and Gran. I figured we should go—it would be good for you to have me there—so I can keep an eye on Gabbi and your mum. Make sure they don’t get caught in the crossfire.’
‘I could come, too,’ said Winter. ‘I have this cream-coloured hat that I could wear—it covers half my face—so no-one will know who I am.’
‘It’s too dangerous, Winter,’ I said. ‘I think it’s too risky at this stage for you to be recognised by someone. Who knows who’ll be there. And you
have your own family mystery to concentrate on.’
‘That doesn’t mean I want to quit helping you.’
‘I know, but I’ll feel better knowing I have one less person to worry about, OK?’
Boges handed me two objects cased in light metal, each about the size of a small carton of milk. ‘Dude, please be very careful with these. I haven’t completely figured out the explosive charge. If one went off near or against you, you could be badly injured. The idea is to throw them—like a grenade—and ideally not into anyone’s lap. On impact, the chemicals combine and combust. The smoke is dense and almost instantaneous and covers a large area quickly. So you throw and you run—in the opposite direction, otherwise you’ll get caught up in it too and you won’t have a clue where you are. Or where anybody else is. Got that?’
I took them carefully from him and put them inside my backpack.
‘And take this as well. It’s another thing I have in the development stage—Special FX. I’m just not sure how much magnesium it needs. It works on similar principles as the Disappearing Dust, but this one makes a bit of a show with a big bang, big flame up and big smoke, but it won’t hurt anyone. It might come in handy.’