Hit List (7 page)

“I’m really keen on you,” he said, and then immediately looked embarrassed. “Okay,
that
was rude. I’m sorry. Let me make it up to you by taking you
to—”

She cut him off. “My name’s Ashley Arthur – email me your number through the school network, okay? But right now I’ve really got to go.”

He nodded. “Sure thing! I’m Liam, by the way.”

“Nice to meet you, Liam,” she said, meaning it. And then she ran out the door, where Benjamin was waiting for her.

“Who was that?” he asked, pointing.

Ash knew who he meant, but looked anyway. Liam was in the middle of some kind of victory dance, but stopped abruptly when he saw Ash staring. He jammed his hands into his pockets, trying to look
casual, and failing.

“Uh, tell you on the way,” Ash said.

The city library was swarming with police. There were cops standing impassively beside the yellow crime-scene tape, cops shouting into phones on the library steps, and cops
striding in and out the front door. An ambulance was parked on the grass just inside the tape, lights whirling atop it behind coloured plastic. Blue and red spotlights flitted across
bystanders’ faces.

It was all for appearances, Ash knew. They’d already classified the explosion as accidental. But because it was a very public disaster, the local government would want a very public
investigation. When the voters picked up tomorrow’s paper, they would see photos of numerous competent officers taking charge, doing everything that needed to be done.

Ash wondered how many people were being mugged and assaulted and killed elsewhere in the city while these officers were busy with their show of force. And then she remembered that she was a
professional thief, and told herself not to be such a hypocrite.

“Wait – you said yes?” Benjamin sounded perplexed. “You’re actually going on a date with this guy?”

They were in a car parked on the opposite side of the street from the library. They’d broken into it, but not to steal – it was just a convenient vantage point. Ash had checked the
parking meter while she chained Benjamin’s bicycle to it, and there were six hours left on the timer. The owner wasn’t coming back any time soon.

“He seemed nice,” Ash said, staring at the cops. A fake ID and some decent acting might have fooled that mine guard, but it wouldn’t work on these guys. She was going to have
to get past them without being spotted.

“What about me?” Benjamin was saying. “Don’t
I
seem nice? What about the hundreds of times I’ve asked you out?”

“Thousands,” Ash said. “But that’s different.”

“It sure is. I’m a guy who’s been loyal to you for ten years. Whereas he’s a total stranger.”

“It’s different because you do it as a joke,” Ash said, becoming annoyed. “And he’s not a stranger. I know his name, I know what school he goes to, and I know he
thinks I’m pretty.”

“Pretty?” exploded Benjamin. “You said yes to him because he called you pretty?”

“You’ve never said that the whole time we’ve been friends,” Ash pointed out, surprised by how hurt he sounded.

“No, I haven’t. I’ve said you were smart, I’ve said you were brave, I’ve said you were generous and reliable and one of a kind. But I guess none of that can compare
to ‘pretty’, can it?”

“Will you just drop it?” Ash demanded. “We have work to do.”

“Fine,” Benjamin said, his voice bitter. “But for the record, I was never joking.”

Ash looked away. They had been friends for way too long to attempt a romantic relationship – ten years, as Benjamin had just pointed out. Two-thirds of their lives. Couldn’t he see
that?

Had he really been pining after her since he first asked, when they were twelve? He’d never had a girlfriend, but Ash had just assumed it was for the same reason she’d never had a
boyfriend. They had been way too busy for dating.

“You’re not going to be able to talk your way past those cops,” Benjamin said finally.

“No,” Ash said, relieved that he’d changed the subject. “I was just thinking that.”

“So you’ll need a way to get inside without them seeing you. Which means I need to provide a distraction.”

Ash shook her head. “That’s a twenty-metre gap between the tape and the building. It’ll take at least five seconds to cross it, in which every single cop and reporter and
bystander on that side of the library would have to be looking the other way. I don’t think ‘Hey, look over there!’ will do the trick.”

“I know. I’ve got something else in mind.”

Two paramedics and an ambulance driver were leaning against the bonnet of the ambulance, eyes on the library, probably waiting for the police to tell them they could
leave.

Benjamin watched Ash weave through the crowd towards them, trying to look as though her direction was random. She doesn’t need to worry, he thought. Everyone out here is looking at the
library. Everyone except me.

He scuffed the dirt with his cross trainers.
He thinks I’m pretty.

How could she fall for that? Ash was the toughest, cleverest person he’d ever met – but this Liam guy had turned her into such a...such a
girl
.

Benjamin knew he should let it go. He shouldn’t have made her feel guilty. But how could she do this? Why would she choose some random boy over him?

Some random
good-looking
boy, said a voice in his head. With bright eyes and broad shoulders and big muscles and perfect teeth.

Benjamin scrunched his hands inside his pockets.

Ash was now standing as close to the ambulance as she could get without crossing the yellow tape. She’s in position, Benjamin thought. He took a deep breath, and waited for the signal.

Ash looked across at him, and nodded.

Now!

Benjamin threw himself forwards, plunging through the throng of bystanders. Someone said, “What the hell?” as he ducked under the tape and sprinted towards the library.

He could feel the eyes of the crowd on his back. The yells and gasps became more and more distant until he couldn’t hear them over his own furious panting.

The cops reacted quickly, running towards him only a half-second after he’d crossed the tape. “Stop right there,” the nearest one roared. Benjamin only ran faster, heart
thundering in his chest.

He almost made it to the steps before they got him. He felt a massive hand grab his shoulder, and another one close around his opposite forearm, and then he was being wrestled to the ground, one
arm twisted behind his back.

“Stay down,” one of the cops growled. Then, to the others, “I got him.”

Don’t screw this up, Benjamin told himself. Ash is counting on you.

“Let me go!” he screamed. “I have to find him! Let go of me!”

He felt handcuffs closing around his wrists. That was quick, he thought. I figured they’d just put me back behind the tape.

“Please, let me go!” he begged. “I have to help my grandpa!”

“This is a crime scene,” another officer said. “What the hell are you trying to do?”

“He needs my help,” Benjamin sobbed. “I need to find him!”

“Slow down, son. Who are you trying to find?”

He could hear the change in their voices – they weren’t thinking of him as a teenage prankster any more. They thought they were dealing with a crazy person.

“My grandpa,” he said. “I told you. Get off me!”

He was hauled to his feet. “Your grandpa’s not here, kid,” a policewoman with a pointed nose said. “Can we uncuff you, or are you going to make more trouble?”

“He’s in the library,” Benjamin wailed. “He phoned me, he’s trapped, he needs help! Please!”

The police officers looked at one another. One of them said, “Get the paramedics.” Then, to Benjamin, “Did your grandpa say where he was trapped?”

“Bottom level,” Benjamin said. “The military history section. He said there was an earthquake or something, and a shelf fell on him.”

The policewoman turned away and started talking into her radio. A stubbled cop with a thick neck said to Benjamin, “Come with me.”

As Benjamin walked, he glanced over at the ambulance. Ash had vanished. He hoped he’d given her enough time.

It’s up to you now, gorgeous, he thought. Good luck.

Ash watched the floor of the ambulance slide away, to be replaced by tyre-tracked grass. The legs of the gurney, emergency-yellow, unfolded in front of her until the wheels
were resting on the ground. And then, with a clatter, she was on her way.

She felt horribly exposed, lying face down underneath the mattress, supported only by the frame of the gurney and the straps designed to restrain patients if they were seizing. She was pretty
sure the two paramedics couldn’t see her – her presence made only a slight lump in the mattress – but she was terrified of the police and the crowd of onlookers.

How would she appear to them? A dark shape, barely visible behind the frame and easily mistaken for part of the gurney? Or a completely visible teenage girl, strapped to the underside of it?

Turning her head, she couldn’t see anyone else, just straps and bars. So they probably couldn’t see her either. Probably.

Suddenly there was concrete under her rather than grass, and the gurney lurched and tilted so the blood flooded to her head and the straps bit a little tighter into her torso and thighs. She was
going up the wheelchair ramp. If the paramedics were going to notice the gurney was forty-five kilos heavier than it should be – she’d removed the fifteen-kilogram defibrillator kit
from under the frame to make room – it was going to happen now.

She clenched her fists by her sides. A while ago Benjamin had made a network of tubular balloons to go inside Ash’s clothes, attached to a canister of compressed hydrogen sewn into her
pocket. When she hit a switch on the canister, the balloons would inflate, halving her weight, doubling her jumping height, and increasing her running speed – as well as making her puff up
like the Incredible Hulk. Unfortunately, hydrogen was extremely flammable, and the bulging clothes made her an easy target. They’d tried helium, but it was only half as effective.

Despite these drawbacks, Ash wished she was wearing the balloons now.

The journey up the ramp seemed to last an eternity. But the two paramedics didn’t notice the extra weight. Each one probably assumed they were doing most of the work, while the other was
slacking off. Ash felt the gurney level out as it reached the top of the ramp. The concrete changed to tiles, the noise of the crowd outside faded, and then she was in the library.

Good plan, Benjamin, she thought. I’m inside.

“This way,” one of the paramedics said, and Ash felt the gurney change direction. The lifts must have been knocked out by the power failure. They were headed for another ramp.

The gurney lurched again – this time she was descending, feet first. The vault was on the bottom level.

“Do we know whereabouts on the bottom floor the guy is?” the paramedic asked.

“Yeah,” the other one said. “Military history section.”

The first one swore as the gurney reached the bottom of the ramp. “How the hell are we supposed to know where that is?”

“There’s a sign. Right there.”

The tiles changed to carpet. The gurney swerved, crashing through some double doors, and jolted to a stop. The wheels ceased clattering.

There was a second of silence. Ash held her breath.

“So where is he?”

“Damn it. Wrong section, or wrong floor?”

“I’ll check this way, you check that way.”

Footsteps receded away from the gurney to the left and right. Ash waited until they were very quiet, very distant.

“Mr. Fields?” one of the paramedics called. “Can you hear me?”

She triggered the release catches on the buckles holding her up – legs, then chest. She thumped to the ground, louder than she’d intended, and froze.

Silence.

“Hello?”

“Thought I heard something.”

“Yeah, me too. Hello? Mr. Fields?”

Ash scanned her surroundings. Books, shelves, desks with built-in chairs. A couple of the bookcases had, she saw with surprise, fallen in the explosion. Benjamin’s story about a trapped
grandfather was more credible than she’d expected.

She couldn’t see either of the paramedics, but she could hear one of them approaching. She ran in the opposite direction, ducking between two bookcases and crouching behind a desk.

She saw one of the paramedics – a heavy-set man with frameless glasses – reappear near the gurney. “Can you hear me, Mr. Fields?”

Ash held still. The paramedic’s eyes swept across the shelves and seats. She wasn’t entirely concealed by the desk, but he didn’t seem to see her. He was looking for an old man
trapped beneath a bookshelf, not a teenage girl crouched under a desk.

He turned away, and jogged down another aisle. Ash let out a lungful of air, half-stood, turned around—

And saw the other paramedic approaching.

She dropped to the floor and scuttled away from the desk, heading for a dim triangular hollow beneath a bookcase that had toppled against the adjacent one. Then she realized that a fallen
bookshelf was exactly what the paramedic would be searching for, but it was too late to change direction. She scampered into the darkness, palms flat against glossy covers, feet crushing open
pages.

“Can you hear me, Mr. Fields?” the paramedic called. From his tone, Ash couldn’t tell if he’d seen the movement or not.

She emerged out the other side of the tunnel, swerved left, and ran down another aisle. The vault was just ahead – she could see a glint of steel between the rows of books.

Do I keep trying to dodge the paramedics until they go back upstairs? she wondered. Or do I try to crack the vault so I can hide in there?

She ran a quick risk-calculation in her head. The vault’s door was carbon steel with a dual-control analogue combination lock, designed to be operated by two people, each knowing half the
code. One hundred million possible combinations, 99,999,999 of which were rigged to sound the alarm. The walls were steel-reinforced concrete panels, thick and dense. The consistency of concrete is
measured by its “slump” – how far it sags in the drying process. The greater the slump, the weaker the concrete. This stuff, Ash knew, had a slump of zero. It had been packed into
the moulds rather than poured, and vibrated for hours to remove all air pockets. It was about as close to indestructible as human-made substances got.