October (3 page)

I had to stop myself from laughing!

I looked back over at his truck and saw an opportunity to sneak a ride. In the soft glow of the rear parking lights, I could see a corner of the canvas on the back of the truck was loose, flapping in the breeze.

I ran to the opening and heaved myself under the loosened canvas flap.

I was in.

I crawled to my feet in the darkness and felt around, wondering what this guy was
transporting
.

As my eyes adjusted, I could not believe what I was seeing. I was surrounded by crates of clear plastic cylinders, filled with …
water
!

A truck full of
water
! I was in the back of a bottled water delivery truck!

The driver had returned to the cabin now and as he kicked the accelerator and the truck lurched forward I almost fell into a crate behind me. As I steadied myself and greedily used my knife to pop the cap off one of the big bottles, all I could do was grin.

As soon as the water delivery truck began
slowing
alongside a big office building on the outskirts of the city, I jumped out the back. The driver had unknowingly delivered me practically all the way to my destination.

‘Is Winter OK?’ I asked Boges, as soon as I’d found a public phone.

‘She’s fine, she’s fine, but what happened to you? What did they do to you? Where are you?’

‘I’m back.’

‘Back from where?’

‘The dead,’ I said. ‘Or, at least, that’s where I would have come from if everything had gone
as planned
,’ I said, thinking not only of the crooked old prospectors, but also of the evil Oriana de la
Force. ‘Did Winter give you the handbag with Oriana’s fingerprint on it?’

‘Not only did she give it to me, but I’ve already been practising cyanoacrylate enhancement, in preparation.’

‘Sounds fatal,’ I said, happy my friends were so reliable, even when I wasn’t around. We were lucky the bug we’d planted had caught Oriana talking about the Riddle being ‘lodged’ with Zürich Bank in the city, but now we had to pull off some very complicated biometric hacking. We had to fool Zürich Bank. How realistic were our plans? We were just a bunch of kids going up against a huge international financial institution.

‘Do you reckon we can meet up at Winter’s place?’ I asked.

‘Dude, I can only—’

‘Hello?’

The phone had cut out. It beeped in my ear before the line went dead. I hung up and searched my pockets for more coins.

I was carrying a small fortune in gold
nuggets
, but I didn’t have enough change to make another phone call! I had to find somewhere to charge my mobile phone.

On the opposite corner from the phone booth was a petrol station. I scanned the area,
searching
for a toilet sign.

Bingo! Down the right-hand side behind the tyre pumps and ice freezer was a bathroom door swinging open. I walked in hoping no-one would notice me.

The immaculate bathroom in the beachside mansion I’d come to love flashed into my mind as I took in my current petrol-station toilet
surroundings
. There were two toilets overflowing with toilet paper and who knows what else, the tiled floor was wet and muddy—or, at least, I hoped it was mud—and high on the graffiti-covered walls hung a dozen daddy-long-legs spiders.

I pounced on the power point under the sink and plugged my phone charger in. When I stood up, a dusty, sunburned face looked back at me from the mirror. For a guy who’d been left for dead in the desert and then barely escaped the clutches of two bounty hunters and their dog, I didn’t look that bad.

I shook my hair out and washed my face, then as I lifted my hoodie off, something strange
tightened
on my neck. When I reached in to feel what was pulling on me, my fingers touched a piece of fabric. Curious, I pulled it out.

It was Oriana’s leopard-print scarf, the one she’d almost strangled me with! Somehow it had become caught around my neck and down the back of my hoodie, and had been there ever since!

My initial instinct was to ball it up and throw it in the bin, but then something seemed to tell me to hold on to it—that it might come in handy. I bent down and shoved it in my bag, brushing the leg of my pants in the process.

‘SDB 291245’ stared back at me from my exposed ankle. I rubbed at it again, but the marks wouldn’t shift. What on earth could it mean?

Winter burst through her door and ran to me as soon as I reached the top of the stairs. She’d been busy studying with Miss Sparks, her tutor, and I’d been waiting downstairs for them to finish up. I was almost falling asleep against a brick wall when I finally saw Miss Sparks step onto the street with her bulky bag of books over her shoulder. As soon as she drove away in her little yellow hatchback, I headed upstairs.

‘Cal!’ said Winter, hugging me tight. ‘I’m so sorry I couldn’t let you in any sooner—Miss Sparks only just left.’

‘Yeah, I know, I just saw her.’

‘And I’m so, so sorry,’ Winter added, ‘I didn’t know what to do when Sumo grabbed you. I hardly managed to get away myself—’

‘Let’s take it inside,’ I said, grabbing her hand and leading her back into her flat. ‘You did exactly what I wanted you to do. You protected the
handbag
with the fingerprint. Besides, you’ve saved me plenty of times already—it was about time I looked after myself. And here I am, safe and sound. Sort of,’ I added, rubbing my throat. It was still aching from Oriana’s attack and my struggle with Snake.

Winter ran to the couch and began picking up scattered textbooks that were flagged with tiny tabs of brightly-coloured papers, along with
high-lighters
, black markers and notebooks. ‘Here, sit down,’ she said, gesturing to the cleared space, while awkwardly carrying everything over to her desk.

I grabbed a pillow from her bed and collapsed onto the couch. Immediately my eyes wanted to close. I tried to fight it and pay attention to what Winter was saying, but her voice was fading.

2 OCTOBER

91 days to go…

‘What’s that smell?’ I asked, wincing in disgust. I struggled to sit up, wondering not only what the revolting smell was, but also what time it was.

‘Boges, the boy wonder, has transformed my place into a laboratory,’ Winter explained, looking up from a book she was reading.

‘Boges? He’s been here?’

‘It’s after eleven, Cal. You pretty much crashed out as soon as you stepped through my door last night! Boges turned up really early this morning and within ten minutes he’d turned my kitchen pantry into a fume cupboard. He’s been
experimenting
with his own fingerprints and some foul-smelling glue.’ Winter stood up and opened a window.

‘Where is he now?’ I asked, looking around the small place.

‘He ducked out to get more superglue. He’ll be back soon.’ Winter suddenly stopped what she was
doing and peered at me strangely. ‘Oh my god,’ she said, covering her mouth to stifle a laugh.

‘What is it?’

‘Oh, Boges,’ she said, shaking her head.

‘What is it?’ I repeated.

‘Go to the mirror.’

I jumped up and wandered to the bathroom, flicked on the light and stared at my reflection.

‘I’m going to kill him,’ I said, when I was met with not only a sunburned face, but a sunburned face with a black-marker curly moustache on my upper lip. ‘It’s not funny!’

After I’d cleaned up my face, Winter began
taking
me through the progress Boges had made so far. ‘That’s his own fingerprint,’ she explained, pointing to the whorls and ridges of a fingerprint etched on a soft, malleable, transparent page. ‘He put it through the process and came up with this.’

‘It’s awesome,’ I said, lifting one of the
transparent
pieces and rubbing my forefinger over the print. ‘I can actually feel the little ridges,’ I said, looking up at her. ‘They’re pretty distinct.’

‘Boges says it’s good enough to fool the
scanner
on his computer.’ I gave Winter a dubious look. ‘However,’ she added, ‘the scanners at Zürich Bank may not be so easily convinced.’

A sound outside made us both jump.

‘It’s OK,’ she said, looking out the window. ‘It’s just Boges.’

Winter opened the door and Boges stepped in with a parcel under his arm.

‘I see you’ve shaved,’ he joked, stroking his upper lip, and indicating the red strip on my face where I’d scrubbed off the moustache he’d drawn on me.

‘You’re lucky it washed off,’ I said, thumping him playfully on the back. ‘Unlike this,’ I said, pulling up my jeans and pulling off my socks to show them my ankle.

Boges and Winter stared at the letters and numbers on my skin.

‘What is it?’ asked Boges.

‘Wish I knew,’ I said. ‘All I know is that after I was captured, Oriana wanted me dead. She ordered Kelvin to dump me in Dingo Bones Valley, which he did, but he obviously couldn’t follow through on the “murder” part of her order because I woke up in the desert, alive. Then I
found this on my ankle. I can’t get it off. It’s some kind of indelible ink—almost like a tattoo. I don’t know why, but Kelvin must have done it.’

‘SDB 291245,’ Boges repeated. ‘A phone
number
?’ He pulled out his mobile and pressed the buttons. He put on the loudspeaker function and held up the handpiece.

‘The number you have called is not connected,’ recited the tinny voice. ‘Please check the number and try again.’

‘Could it be a birthday?’ Winter suggested. ‘Do you know anyone born on the 29th of December, 1945?’

I shook my head. The date meant nothing to me.

‘Why would Kelvin mark you?’ asked Boges, jotting down the letters and numbers in his
bulging
little notebook. ‘It had to be him; unless some wandering desert nomad came across you lying unconscious and decided you needed cataloguing. But why?’

‘I don’t know, but the only reason I’m alive is because of Kelvin. He’s a bad guy, don’t get me wrong, but not a killer. Oriana’s so cruel to him. Treats him like a dog. Worse than a dog,’ I
corrected
. ‘I don’t know why
she
didn’t finish me off when she had the chance.’ I reached for my bag and pulled out her leopard-print scarf. ‘She almost strangled me with this.’

Winter scrunched up her face as she took the scarf from me, holding it out at arm’s length, like it was harbouring an infectious disease.

‘So,’ I said, turning to Boges, ‘what do you have for us?’

‘More glue,’ he replied, sitting down and
emptying
the paper package. A couple of tubes fell onto the table. He picked up the soft,
transparent
paper with the print Winter had shown me. ‘I did an impression, enhanced it with superglue to build up the loops and whorls of the
fingerprint
, and then I took a photo of the enhanced fingerprint and printed it off with really heavy contrast—to build up a thick layer.’

‘And that process gives you the positive
version
again. Ready to press down on a scanner,’ I said. ‘Winter tells me that it’s good enough to fool your PC, but will a copy of Oriana’s fingerprint fool the scanner at Zürich Bank?’

Boges shrugged. ‘Sounds crazy, but it’s worth a try. We’ll trim it down to size, then you need to wipe it over your skin for a moment or two, to pick up some body oil, then all you do is wear it over your own finger and press down on the scanner. It should work. In theory, at least.’

‘I hate to be a downer, guys,’ Winter
interrupted
, ‘but even if the print works, we still have to get
into
the bank and access the scanner
unchallenged.
And
, not only that, but we don’t even have Oriana’s personal identification
number
to get the security box open. Everyone has a PIN that they punch in to access their box in the vaults. The door won’t swing open unless you have the right combination. Somehow we need to get Oriana’s PIN.’

We stared at each other.

‘We could capture her and torture her,’
suggested
Boges, breaking the silence. ‘Force her to tell us the number.’

‘Torture her?’ scoffed Winter. ‘Stoop to her level? Seriously, Boges, tell me you don’t mean that?’

He shrugged.

‘Don’t forget the Piers Ormond will,’ I said. ‘It could have information in it that we need. We could still try and get our hands on that.’

‘How do you propose to do that? Sheldrake Rathbone has doublecrossed you once already over that document. There’s no way he’ll just hand it to you. That’s if he really even has it.’

I thought of my failed meeting with Rathbone at the funeral parlour, and the unknown assailant who’d jumped up and knocked me out, like some deadly jack-in-the-box. Rathbone was a dangerous enemy.

The three of us looked at each other hopelessly. I leaned on my knees and bumped my bulging
pocket. ‘Oh, yeah,’ I said, digging deep into my jeans. ‘I have something that should cheer us all up …’

Boges and Winter both leaned in, curious to see what I was about to show them. I pulled out a handful of gold nuggets and carefully let them fall on the table.

Boges blinked and Winter’s hand flew to her mouth.

‘What the?’ Boges said, confused.

Winter picked up one of the gold pieces and glared at it closely, before turning to glare even more intensely at me. ‘You have some serious explaining to do,’ she demanded with a shove.

‘Yes, dude,’ Boges agreed. ‘Before we
spontaneously
combust out of curiosity.’

‘Not in here, thanks Bodhan,’ said Winter, threatening to poke Boges with a fork. ‘There’s been enough combustion going on in my place this morning, thanks to you.’

Boges sprawled at the table and Winter sat cross-legged on her chair while I told them
everything
that had happened in Dingo Bones Valley. Boges’s eyebrows almost touched his hairline as he listened. Winter seemed spellbound as I described how I got away from the demented prospectors, who planned to kidnap me and hold me until the cops came, all for the price on my
head. I even added the bit about the rats in my room, and the bone I found that I suspected was human. When I told them about Sniffer, allegedly the best nose in the nation, and how he hadn’t given me up, they were stunned into silence.

‘There was a struggle in the kitchen,’ I explained. ‘Snake attacked me when I was
trying
to sneak out. He was going to rope me when the kitchen table came down on top of us,
sending
these guys,’ I said, grabbing some of the gold, ‘flying everywhere! He must have been counting his gold before I showed up downstairs. I grabbed as much as I could. They’d told me the gold had dried up.’

‘Not true!’ said Winter, examining one of the biggest pieces.

Boges shook his head. ‘I’ve gotta tell you, man, you are one lucky dude!’

‘Lucky? Me? Are you kidding? What about everything that’s happened to me in the last nine months?’

‘Boges is right,’ Winter said, dropping the gold and sitting back in her chair. ‘Well, I don’t know if I’d call you “lucky” exactly, but while heaps of bad things happen to you, just as many good things happen! I mean, why didn’t Kelvin kill you in the desert? Or why didn’t Oriana strangle you to death? And how come that dog let you go? It was
a
dog
. Can a dog really know right from wrong? Good from bad? And now you’ve returned with pockets full of gold! Someone’s looking out for you. Someone’s definitely looking out for you.’

‘The Ormond Angel?’ Boges suggested.

‘I don’t know about that,’ I said. I didn’t agree with what they were saying, but I couldn’t help thinking of the water delivery truck that had appeared on the road like a mirage. That was pretty incredible.

Winter pulled a small, velvet pouch out of her drawer and tossed it to me. I started collecting up all of the gold from the table and the rest from my pockets.

‘So anyway,’ I said, ‘what should I do with it?’

‘I know a gold dealer,’ Boges said. He took the pouch from me and weighed it up in his hands. ‘Palladium Metal Traders. Uncle Vladi deals with them from time to time. A lot of people from the old country like to buy and sell gold. They don’t trust money. I reckon you have about four
thousand
dollars’ worth here. At least.’