Money Run (6 page)

Beads of icy water from Ash's hair trickled down her spine. She opened her handbag, took out the chilled foundation, and started painting it on her face. Her nose stung from the cold.

A minute later she looked in her pocket mirror. Her mascara had run, her hair was slicked against her skull, and she was wearing so much foundation that her skin looked plastic. She looked like a Bratz doll. It'll take a million paper towels to clean this up, she thought. It had better hide me from the camera.

She slipped the mirror back into her handbag and removed a miniature pair of bolt cutters. She held them in one quivering hand as she stared at the guard.

At the far end of the corridor, a woman was looking for the other bathroom, having followed the arrow on Ash's sign. The adhesive tape stuck to her shoe when she stepped on it, and as she walked, the elastic thread stretched behind her.

Crash!
The bin toppled over, spilling all the items Ash had filled it with onto the floor. The guard's head snapped towards the source of the sound. Ash slipped into the corridor, now outside his peripheral vision. She raced towards the locked door as quickly as she could without making a sound.

Keep looking, she thought. Come on, you big dumb security guard; keep watching the distraction. Just long enough for me to get behind you.

Five steps to go. Three. One.

There! Ash stood perfectly still, sandwiched in the 60 centimetres between the guard's back and the locked door. The guard's cotton and polyester shirt was only centimetres in front of her eyes. She breathed as silently as she could. Her blood thumped in her ears.

Seeing the woman pick up the bin and start to put the rubbish back in it, the guard turned back to his former posture. As he moved, Ash's hand snaked forwards and wrapped itself slowly around the keys beside his hip.

Ash was still for a moment. The guard showed no sign that he knew she was behind him, or that he'd felt her grab the keys. She eased the bolt cutters forward with her other hand and waited.

Having returned the bin to an upright position, the woman started walking again; only to have it fall over behind her a second time. She hadn't yet noticed the sticky tape attached to the bottom of her shoe, or its invisible link to the bin. As a second crash rang out through the corridor, Ash squeezed the bolt cutters, and with a soft
click
, the guard's key ring was shorn through.

Ash paused again. The guard still hadn't seemed to sense her presence. She slipped the key she wanted off the ring. Then she slowly inserted it into the lock.

She glanced up as she worked. The guard was watching the woman clean up the mess for the second time. Ash had to hurry; right now she was shielded from the woman's view by the alcove around the door, but once the woman removed the tape and walked a few metres closer, Ash would be spotted.

Pressing the folds of her soggy jacket over the keypad to muffle the clacking of the keys, she pushed the buttons through the fabric: 72269. Then she moved the jacket to the handle, and turned it very slowly.

The woman straightened up the bin and started walking again. She shot the security guard an embarrassed
aren't-I-clumsy
smile.

With a gentle shove, Ash eased the door slightly open and slipped through the gap. When she was all the way in except for one hand, she used the hand to withdraw the key from the lock, and placed it gently on the ground beside the guard's feet. When he saw it on the ground, he would see that his key ring was broken and, with luck, he would believe it had simply fallen.

Ash pressed the door shut behind her, turning the handle so the lock didn't click. Then she fell to her knees and took in a huge gasp of air. Her hands quivered with leftover adrenaline. She pressed them against her face, wiping wet foundation off and squeezing her eyes shut.

“Ash! Is everything okay?”

Still panting, Ash got to her feet. “I'm in,” she said.

“What?” Benjamin demanded, astonished. “No way! Seriously?”

“Piece of cake,” Ash said, slowly regaining her even breath. “Let's see what Buckland's hiding in here.”

Peachey stood on the edge of the roof, staring down at the city streets with the wind rustling his hair as he contemplated his next move. Cars the size of chewing gum pellets trundled silently back and forth below.

Peachey kicked some of the dust at his feet over the edge of the roof, and it evaporated into the void beneath him.

There was no question of surrender. Even if it weren't for the threat the government posed to Peachey if he didn't complete his task, it was obvious that Buckland himself knew far more than he should. He knew who Peachey was. He knew what he looked like. He had somehow known that he was coming. The whole thing was supposed to look like a terrorist assassination – but if Buckland spoke up before Peachey found him, that cover was blown.

Buckland had to die.

So now it was a question of finding him. Only minutes had passed between the girl leaving his office and Peachey entering, so assuming that Buckland had actually been in the office with the girl, he couldn't have gotten very far. A trapdoor in the ceiling was out, because that would have led him up to the roof, and he wasn't here. Peachey couldn't see any signs of a trapdoor, either. He had examined the walls, and fired bullets into them – they seemed solid. That just left the floor, and while Peachey didn't think that Buckland had had time to roll back the carpet and lift the lid on a hidden passageway, there were no other options.

Buckland presumably thought Peachey was unconscious in his office, and that there was no more risk. Once he emerged through the trapdoor down to the 24th floor, he probably wouldn't be in a rush to leave. Trouble was, while Buckland was probably still somewhere on floor 24, Peachey had no way of finding out where, or for how long he would stay there. Not to mention the fact that Buckland might have a backup plan.

Peachey's phone vibrated. It was a Nokia 7250; one of the most widely sold models in the world. Another facet of his bland, unmemorable appearance. The caller ID was blocked, but he had a feeling he knew who it would be.

He put it to his ear. “Yeah?”

“Is Buckland dead?”

Peachey stared out across the skyline. “No.”

Tania Walker's voice was icy. “Why not?”

“He knew I was coming. It was a trap. You've got a leak somewhere in your organization.”

“You're wrong.”

“I'm not,” Peachey said. “He knew who I was. He knew who'd sent me. And now I don't know where he is.”

“Then the deal's off. You won't get another cent.”

Okay, Peachey thought. Time to put my cards on the table. “You fire me, you're not going to find anyone else who can do the job… Ms. Walker.”

There was a long silence.

“Did you hear that?” Peachey asked.

“You think you can blackmail me?” Walker said coldly.

“I'll complete my assignment. You will abide by the terms of the agreement as they stood yesterday. Deal?”

There was a pause. Peachey glanced at his pocket watch. It was quarter past five.

“Don't break any more rules, Peachey,” Walker said finally. “You're in deeper water than you realize. Find Buckland.”

“Can you hack into the CCTV on floor 24?” asked Peachey.

He assumed that the HBS security cameras were not linked to any sort of modem anywhere, because that would compromise their security. However, he also assumed that the government had at least one agent on the inside. This person would probably be capable of accessing the security footage – but Walker probably didn't want Peachey to know too much.

“Yes,” she said finally. “I can get it.”

“Buckland was in the room directly below his office five minutes ago,” Peachey said. “When you find him, send his location to my phone. I'll take care of the rest.” He hung up.

The lift was on the other side of the roof – a block of concrete with several sets of gleaming chrome doors embedded in the side. Peachey slid his knuckles across the yellow cube as he walked past. The colour was strangely hypnotic up close.

He pushed the button to call a lift, tugged his jacket straight, and smoothed his ruffled hair. He took a cigarette out of his pocket, neatly chomped off half of it, and spat it out onto the ground. Then he lit what was left, but didn't put it between his lips. If someone was in the lift when the doors opened, Peachey could pretend he'd just gone up to smoke – he wouldn't be given a second glance.

Ping
. A minute later, the doors slid aside. There was someone in the lift; a man in his forties, with a cigarette already in his hand.

The man walked out and Peachey walked in, dropping his apparently finished cigarette on the threshold and grinding it into the concrete with his shoe. He pushed the button for floor 24.

“Those things will kill you,” the man mumbled around his own cigarette, pointing down at the butt Peachey had dropped.

Peachey smiled, but said nothing. The doors slid closed.

Ash opened another drawer. No sign of the money. The tray was stuffed with documents about a jewellery company that HBS had bought a few years back. She slammed it shut. The next drawer was full of permits and ownership statements related to the HBS building. Another held shares in a South American mining corporation. Another was for tax documentation.

Ash shut the last drawer. That was every filing cabinet in the room thoroughly searched. No sign of anything worth $200 million. She allowed her mind to rest momentarily on the figure. Enough to pay off her dad's mortgage and keep the phone connected and pay for school fees and buy petrol for the car and even retire on, someday – if only she could find it!

She wasn't giving up yet. She still hadn't searched the room itself – the floor, the walls, the ceiling. Anything that might have a hidden compartment.

“Any luck?” Benjamin asked.

“Not yet.”

“Damn. So you got cold and wet for nothing, huh?”

Ash glared at the wall. “And how's all that staying home and pretending to be sick going?”

“Ouch.”

I shouldn't be mean to him, Ash thought. He's always been there when I needed him. Two years ago, before she had ever stolen, before her life included something beyond homework and visits to the movies, before she realized she was any good at anything, she'd come home to find her bed missing. And Benjamin had been the one who helped her get it back.

She remembered staring at her bedroom floor, baffled. At first she couldn't work out what was wrong. The dimensions of her room had looked incorrect, somehow. It was like looking in a funhouse mirror.

Then she saw her computer was missing, and that shattered the illusion.

Her first thought was that her dad had moved her stuff. Then she remembered he was out of town for the weekend. She ran out to the dining room, and saw that the TV had gone. And the DVD player. And in the kitchen, the microwave and the blender left gaping holes, exposing walls she'd never seen.

The house looked
clean
. Like someone had snuck in with a giant vacuum cleaner, big enough to ingest furniture.

Most people have been robbed at some point in their lives. Ash knew girls at school who'd had their houses burgled. But her
bed
was gone. What kind of rotten, greedy burglar steals a bed?

The phone had been snatched from the charger, perhaps as a final afterthought. She took out her mobile to call her dad. But as she was dialling, she thought about how much it would cost to replace it all. Thousands of dollars, tens of thousands. Ash didn't know how much money her dad had. She didn't know how well insured they were. But she had a feeling that this would be permanent damage. They might have to move house, somewhere cheaper. Her dad would have to work more hours, unless he could find a job that paid better.

She hung up the phone. She couldn't give her dad that news. No way. She felt like she'd swallowed a tombstone. Part of her wished that she could somehow arrange for him to find it first, pretend she hadn't been home since it happened.

But she'd rather he came home to find everything as he'd left it.

She lay down on her couch, which the burglar evidently hadn't been able to steal. And she did what every girl does in a crisis – she called her best friend.

The missing phone was the key, Benjamin told her. You can't track a missing bed. TVs and microwaves had serial numbers, but they were of little use for finding and identifying stolen goods. But a phone is a transmitter.

All Ash's stuff wouldn't have fitted into an ordinary sedan so Benjamin hacked into the Department of Motor Vehicles database and looked up the names and addresses of every van owner in the city. They eliminated anyone too old to carry a TV, anyone who lived too far away from Ash, and anyone living too close, figuring a burglar wouldn't work too close to his home. Since the robbery had taken place during the day on a Friday, they ruled out schoolteachers, public servants, bank tellers. People who were likely to be missed if they left work to rob a house.

They had twenty-eight candidates left. Ash's dad had taken the train, leaving his car at home. He had his keys with him, so Benjamin showed her how to hotwire it. He'd read it in the
Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook
.

Ash was behind the wheel, for the first time in her life. They drove slowly, but not so much as to be too conspicuous. They pulled over at each address, Benjamin in the passenger seat with the charger of the stolen phone plugged into the power source. He dialled Ash's home number on his mobile and got a “sorry, no service” message every time.

The call would never connect – unless the charger was within range of the stolen handset.

It was the twenty-third house. Scummy shingled room, curtains all drawn – ordinary and boring and empty-looking. A white van was parked in the driveway. The phone rang once before Benjamin hung up. They kept driving, parked the car a few houses down, and went back on foot.

The backyard was overgrown; spider-web strands of grass stuck to Ash's socks, rocks fallen from the potted plants scraped her soles. No animals. The curtains weren't drawn on this side; she could see her TV through the window. Her bed was propped up against the wall behind the couch.

She beckoned to Benjamin, who was coming around the other side of the house.

“That's my TV,” she whispered. “That's my bed. This is the place.”

Benjamin squinted in through the window. “Do we have enough to go to the police?”

“Forget the police,” Ash said. “Unless they have enough for a warrant, he'll be able to destroy the evidence before they get to it.
My stuff
. Even if they do get inside, and he doesn't run, he could claim he purchased it at a pawn shop. And even if that doesn't hold up in court, he's still only busted for this burglary. A slap on the wrist, and his other crimes go unpunished.”

“What else can we do?”

“Beat him at his own game,” Ash said.

They found an unlocked window at the back of the house, leading to a study. Ash climbed through, and found both her laptop and her microwave on the floor. Under the desk, there was a garbage bag with all her dad's DVDs in it.

A quick search of the house revealed that the burglar wasn't home. He must have had two cars. Ash and Benjamin found some clothes baskets in the laundry, and put the stuff in them. Then they went to the lounge room to get the TV and the bed.

It was weird how
not
weird it was, breaking into a stranger's house. Ash's heart was beating faster, but not in a bad way. Her fingers didn't tremble, her palms weren't sweaty. But it was like the tension of the situation had fine-tuned her senses, intensifying reality until nothing escaped her attention. She could hear the hum of the burglar's fridge, feel the minute sweeps of air from the conditioner, and see individual leaves rattle outside the window.

“What do you think he'll do when he gets back?” Benjamin whispered as they carried the mattress through the backyard.

“I kind of doubt he'll call the cops,” Ash replied. Then she said, “How are we going to get this home? It won't fit in the car.”

“Well, I've been thinking about that. You didn't get your phone back, did you?”

“Is that worth going back for?”

“No,” Benjamin said. “So, maybe we trade.”

A grin spread across Ash's face. “My phone for his van.”

“Seems only fair,” Benjamin said solemnly.

She took the van, Benjamin drove her dad's car. As she watched the other cars trundle by on the highway, headlights shaving away the shadows, she was in the best mood of her life.

The man, the burglar, was – according to the DMV records – unemployed. So presumably he stole for a living. But she'd been able to take all her stuff back in a matter of minutes. If she'd wanted to, she could have taken all his stuff as well as hers.

She left the van parked a few streets from her house, unlocked, with the keys in the ignition. It would be on the other side of the city by morning, and never linked to her.

She was good at this. Really good. Better than the burglar, and he was a professional.

Ash had finally found her calling.

As she was searching the north room at HBS, Ash reminded herself that she had Benjamin to thank not just for finding her bed, but also for her career.

“Found anything yet?” Benjamin was saying.

“When I find something, I'll tell you,” Ash said. “Okay?”

“Okay.”

Ash shoved one of the cabinets aside, looking for a floor safe. Nothing. Solid wood, no seams. She moved all the furniture in the room. The floor was clean.

“It's just that the suspense is killing me,” Benjamin said.

Ash rapped her knuckles on the wall. Solid. Another metre across. Solid. Up high, and down low. She tapped her way across the whole perimeter. All solid.

She climbed on top of the filing cabinets, and pushed up one of the ceiling panels. There was a hollow space up above the room. She poked her head through.

Nothing but cobwebs and dust.

“Looks like you can cross this room off the list,” she said.

Benjamin sighed. “Where next?”

Ash's eyes were drawn to a chute hugging the wall. “Where does the air duct go?”

There was a pause. “Down,” Benjamin said. “There's a hatch on the twenty-third floor. You want to leave that way?”

“Why didn't I come in that way?” Ash asked exasperatedly.

“Because you would have had to climb a 9-metre vertical tunnel, 25-centimetre radius, with sheer walls of thick iron.”

“Right. Got it. But I can just drop down that now, right? Is there room to get out at the bottom of the shaft?”

“Yes,” Benjamin said impatiently. “It tapers outwards towards the bottom – that's the other reason it's unclimbable.”

Ash wrenched the hatch off the air vent. A cool breeze made her shiver; she was still damp.

“So where do you want to go next?” Benjamin asked again.

“The bathroom,” Ash said. “I'm hoping they have a warm-air hand dryer, but I'd settle for some paper towels.”

Peachey squinted into the darkness. What the hell?

Walker had sent an MPEG of the CCTV footage to his phone, which showed Buckland leaving the room underneath his office, wandering through the corridors of the 24th floor for a few minutes and then going through the door Peachey had just opened. The video ended there. And now Peachey could see why – there was no light in this room. The cameras couldn't see. He couldn't see either.

They'd sent a blueprint of the room to him, but it was disappointingly blank. He could see where the walls were, but almost anything could be in the open spaces. It looked like this:

No sound emerged from the blackness. According to the cameras, Buckland had walked in but not out again. That suggested that he was still somewhere inside.

However, according to the same schematics, Buckland's office also had only one door, and he'd escaped from there easily. Peachey gritted his teeth. Who knew how many trapdoors or false walls or air vents were concealed in the darkness?

This was a bad situation. If Buckland was in there, it could be a trap. And if he wasn't, Peachey would have to fumble around in the darkness trying to find Buckland's escape route so that he could follow him.

It's possible that he thinks I'm out of action, Peachey thought. Either unconscious in his office or splattered in the alley outside, depending on whether or not he knows that I broke his window. But I can't count on it.

Peachey pulled on his gloves, which looked like black imitation leather. But they had a Kevlar memory skeleton that hardened at the joints around his middle and ring-finger knuckles if he flicked a switch near the wrist. The force of a punch is the weight of the blow divided by the surface area of the fist. These gloves meant Peachey could hit people with just two knuckles without injuring his hand, thereby trebling the force of the impact.

He hadn't expected to need these gloves today. But he'd been forced to abandon his gun in Buckland's office. For now, he would have to do all his work with his hands – but at least they wouldn't be bare.

There was no point standing outside the door to the dark room. Peachey walked inside, and closed the door behind him.

His breathing echoed in the darkness. He opened his mouth wider to lessen the hissing. He listened carefully, but heard nothing. There was no indication that anyone else was in the room.

The floor was tiled rather than carpeted. Peachey walked slowly and carefully, short steps, heels first.

His knee bumped against a chair, and he froze. He'd made a noise. Had anyone heard it?

Click.
A noise came from somewhere in front of him. It wasn't a safety catch on a gun. He knew what that sounded like. This could be anything from a door handle turning to a sticky-soled shoe lifting off the tiles. Or it could be nothing at all.