Hit List Read online

  Karen grimaced at the wet clothes. “I think I should get extra for this.”

  Ash pulled her clothes on, took a fifty and a twenty from the secret pocket inside the jacket’s lining, and held them out. Karen took the money, and said, “Pleasure doing business with you,” before taking another cigarette out of her purse and lighting it.

  “Don’t stay here too long,” Ash said. “Go onto the campus and try to look lost. Otherwise they might realize you were never with the group.”

  “Unless you’re offering me more money,” Karen said, “I’ll do what I want, thanks.”

  Ash rolled her eyes. She’d been trying to help, but if Karen wanted to get herself in more trouble, it really wasn’t her problem. The worst Karen could tell anyone is that she’d met a teenage girl who wanted to see the inside of the Googleplex – no one would guess she was planning a rescue. They’d assume she was just a prankster, or a vandal.

  Her phone was ringing. She turned away from the bus and started walking towards the road as she answered it.

  A security guard saw her, looked her up and down, and moved on. He would be looking for a girl in uniform – she was safe.

  “Yes?” she said.

  “It’s Hammond.”

  “Hi, Mr. Buckland. I’ve planted the bag—”

  “We have to go,” Buckland said. “Right now.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Someone’s made a new post on the Ghost’s website. Something they want him to steal.”

  Ash frowned. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “It’s Benjamin. Someone has sent the Ghost after Benjamin.”

  A Place to Hide

  An icy fist closed around Ash’s heart. Benjamin, she thought. Targeted by the Ghost.

  “Why?” she demanded. “Why would somebody do that?”

  “I’m not sure,” Buckland said. “But the post is already an hour old. He could be very close already. We have to find somewhere for Benjamin to hide.”

  Ash grabbed her bike, the one she’d left outside the Googleplex when she arrived. She jumped on and started pumping the pedals, headed for the hotel they’d checked into. She said, “And then what? Just wait for him to give up?”

  “He won’t give up.” Buckland’s voice was grim. “He always gets what he wants.”

  “Then what can we do? How do we stop him?”

  “We make sure we’re the highest bidders.”

  Sweat erupted along Ash’s brow. “Have you got enough?”

  “I...I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “I can beat the current price, but it depends who wants him, and how badly.”

  This is crazy, Ash thought. People bidding on the life of my best friend.

  “And if we win,” she said, “then what? We just let the Ghost take him, and trust that he’ll be returned alive?”

  “The Ghost’s smart. If he knows the buyer and the target are already together, he’ll do nothing. It’s not the first time something like this has happened.”

  “We need a safe house,” Ash said. “We can’t just wait on the street and hope that you’ve got the money to save us.”

  “There’s an HBS International Bank on Castro Street,” Buckland said. “I don’t control it any more, since I’m legally dead, but I still know how to get you in. You can hide in the safe-deposit box vault – he’ll never find you there. You’ll be protected, at least until they unlock the vault in the morning.”

  “And what then?”

  “I don’t know, Ash! I’m thinking.”

  “How do I get to the bank from the Googleplex?”

  “Um, head east on the Amphitheatre Parkway,” Buckland said, “then south along North Shoreline Boulevard until you cross the Central Expressway, and then you’re on Castro Street. It’s about twenty minutes by bike.”

  “I’ll see you in ten,” Ash said, pedalling harder.

  Eight minutes later she was screeching to a halt in front of HBS International, where Buckland was waiting with two large suitcases. He’d changed disguises – he now wore a pair of rimless glasses and a stick-on goatee. The bank loomed behind him, looking reassuringly solid.

  I saw the guards vanish in the blink of an eye, the Ghost walk towards the wall, walk through it, and walk back out.

  Ash shivered. “Where’s Benjamin?” she asked.

  “Hi, Ash,” Benjamin whispered.

  Ash looked around. “Where are—” Her gaze fell on one of the suitcases, which looked more full than the other. “Oh, I get it.”

  “Don’t look at it,” Buckland said. “I don’t think he could have found us yet, but we can’t be too careful.”

  Ash raised her eyes. “And how is Benjamin being in there going to protect him? Is that a bulletproof suitcase?”

  “It’s going to get you two into the vault for the night.” Buckland lifted the empty suitcase. “This one’s yours.”

  “Damn, Benjamin,” Ash said. “How did you get us into this?”

  “I have no idea,” he said miserably.

  They walked to a secluded park around the corner, Buckland dragging Benjamin’s suitcase behind him. The wheels rumbled along the pavement.

  They stood in the shade of a sprawling tree, invisible to anybody behind the windows of the surrounding skyscrapers, or watching through one of the hundreds of satellites that whirled around the earth. Ash looked around. There were a few people in the park, but no one appeared to be looking her way.

  She dropped the suitcase, unzipped it, stepped in, and curled into a ball. She felt Buckland shut the lid above her and zip it closed. Claustrophobia arose immediately, despite the flexibility and porousness of the material. She sucked in a few deep breaths and felt a little better.

  There was something large and hard and flat inside the lid, shaped like a small tabletop. Maybe Ash’s guess about bulletproof suitcases hadn’t been too far off.

  The case lurched up, and started to roll across the grass. Ash realized that Buckland must be dragging both her and Benjamin, and felt a rush of gratitude. The original agreement had been that he would give them the hit list, and they would give him ten per cent of the rewards. Flying them both to California, purchasing Benjamin from a thief, and lugging them both around in suitcases was more than he’d signed on for.

  Assuming, of course, that that was what he was doing. Ash felt her chest tighten. Would Buckland really spend all his money saving Benjamin from the Ghost? What if he was just saying he would? What if he saw an opportunity in this? He could sell Benjamin to the Ghost, or to the buyer, or use him as bait to lure the Ghost out and get his emerald back...

  Where was he taking them? Surely the bank wasn’t this far away.

  Ash wondered if she could get out of the suitcase. The tag for the zip was on the outside, but maybe she could get a pin out of her watch and use that, or just stretch the fabric until it tore. Buckland could probably overpower her, but they were still on Castro Street, where there’d be lots of people to hear her scream.

  The angle changed; the suitcase was rolling up a ramp. Ash tried to remember if HBS International had had stairs. Where are we going? she thought.

  She heard some automatic doors slide open and closed. A voice said, “How can I help you today?”

  “Hi, my name’s Henry Bridges,” Buckland said. “I called earlier about opening a safe-deposit box? I know the bank’s about to close, but—”

  “Certainly, sir,” the woman said. “I’ll just need to see some ID.”

  “No problem.”

  Ash felt relieved, then guilty. Her faith in Hammond Buckland had collapsed after only minutes of discomfort.

  Maybe he’s trapping us here so the Ghost can get us, she thought. And then she realized that was hardly reassuring.

  “Right this way, sir.”

  “Thank you.”

  The suitcase started to move again. Ash had been in several HBS banks since Buckland’s “death”, and each one had had a framed pictur
e of Buckland on the wall next to the counter. It’s impressive, she thought, that a pair of glasses and a fake beard is enough to stop the receptionist from recognizing him.

  “Just here, Mr. Bridges. Push the buzzer when you’re done.”

  “Thank you.”

  Ash heard something large and heavy clank closed, and then Buckland unzipped the suitcases. Light poured in. “Okay, guys, you can come out now.”

  Ash sat up, tilting her head from side to side, loosening her neck and joints. Most safe-deposit box vaults she’d been in had resembled post offices, the walls gridded with safes the size of shoeboxes. But this vault looked more like a high-school locker room. The boxes were tall and wide, designed to hold art as well as cash.

  There must be so much money in this room, she thought. Then she caught herself. Most of it was probably where it belonged.

  “Aren’t there cameras?” she asked.

  “We’re in a blind spot,” Buckland said. “But it’s visible from the door, so you’ll have to set up those mirrors before the woman comes back.”

  The flat object in the suitcase made sense now. Ash unzipped a compartment in the lid to reveal a mirror, brand new, the surface dulled by protective plastic. Ash stood it up in the corner at a forty-five degree angle between two perpendicular rows of boxes.

  “It’s not tall enough,” she said.

  “I’ve got one too,” Benjamin said, removing an identical mirror from his suitcase. “We can put one on top of the other.”

  Seeing him for the first time since learning of the threat, Ash noticed how shaken he looked. He kept rubbing his sweaty hands on his jeans, and the tiny mole on his cheek, normally a cheery pink, had gone white.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  “I’m fine,” he said.

  They propped up the two mirrors, creating a triangle of floor space in which they would be invisible, and huddled behind them.

  “I’ll come back for you in the morning,” Buckland said. “Hopefully I’ll have managed to outbid everyone else by then.”

  “What if you haven’t?” Ash asked.

  There was a dark look in Buckland’s eyes. “Then we’ll have to find another way out,” he said. “Maybe we can find the top bidder and...persuade him or her to contribute to our bid.”

  “So what do Ash and I do?” Benjamin asked. “Just sit here?”

  “If I were you,” Buckland said, “I’d spend the time figuring out who wants you, and why.”

  “I’ve been trying,” Benjamin said. “I don’t know!”

  “Try harder,” Buckland said, and pushed the buzzer.

  Ash heard the door unlock and the woman come in. “Is everything to your satisfaction, Mr. Bridges?” she asked.

  “Perfect,” Buckland said. “Thank you very much.”

  Ash heard Buckland’s footsteps retreat out the door. The woman stayed.

  Has she noticed the mirror? Ash wondered. Can she tell we’re here?

  The woman’s heels clicked away, and the door closed. The lights in the vault flickered off, pitching the space into darkness.

  The house was ordinary. Boring, even. Cheap and small in a cheap and small neighbourhood. It was so unremarkable that Peachey could hardly believe his eyes.

  Ashley Arthur can’t live here, he thought. No way. Whoever she is, she’s got resources – money, equipment, intel. She has major backing from major players. What would she be doing in a place like this?

  It had to be a fake address. He’d wasted his time coming here.

  Either that, said a voice in his head, or you were beaten by a poor, everyday teenager.

  Peachey clenched his teeth. He didn’t have anything else to go on. If Ashley wasn’t living here, he might have to abandon hope of finding her and go after Buckland some other way.

  I need to know for certain, he thought. He walked up to the door and pushed the bell.

  He heard it ring inside.

  He waited.

  No one came.

  There was a security screen door in front of the main one, so he couldn’t use a credit card or a knife to get inside. But a door is only as strong as its hinges. Peachey picked up a rock from the garden with the intention of cracking them open—

  —and saw a key on the ground.

  Spare key under a rock? he thought. Seriously? This can’t be the place.

  He went inside anyway.

  The house was cramped and dark, the curtains closed. He stood still just inside the door, gun drawn, and listened.

  No voices, no scuffling, no breathing. Ashley, or whoever lived here, wasn’t home.

  He wandered through the house, looking at the old books and the small TV and the battered tables and shelves. The couch was scarred by cat claws, but the house had no litter tray or food bowl, probably meaning that the furniture was second-hand.

  He soon found a bedroom that looked like it belonged to a teenage girl. The bed was short and narrow, there was a stack of textbooks on the dresser. A lava lamp gurgled in the corner. Peachey opened the wardrobe and found a row of jeans and tank tops folded on shelves.

  But something about the space struck him as artificial. No posters covered the walls, advertising romantic comedies or pop singers or heart-throbs. No novels lined the bookshelves – it was all non-fiction, mostly history and popular science. There were no speakers to attach to an mp3 player or radio.

  Peachey was looking at the room of a very serious – perhaps even sad – girl.

  Who cares? he thought. The point is, it’s empty. So do I wait for Ashley or whoever to come back, or is there something here I can use to find out where she is?

  He didn’t like the idea of waiting. Sooner or later the phone he’d been given would ring, and he’d be asked to go somewhere and do something. His mysterious benefactors probably wouldn’t respond well if he said, Sorry, I’m busy at a stakeout. I’ll kill your target once I’m done here, okay?

  And it wouldn’t just be a matter of enduring some harsh words. They would want to punish him. They’d track him down using his phone, follow him here, and he’d have to—

  Wait. Back up. Track him down using his phone.

  I can track Ashley using her phone, he realized. If I can find the number.

  He went out into the kitchen, where the landline phone was sitting on its charger. There was no address book near it, so he scrolled through the list of recently dialled numbers. There were two mobile numbers which appeared several times – probably the occupants of the house calling one another. Peachey grabbed a pen and wrote them on his hand.

  He’d seen a computer in the other bedroom, which he guessed belonged to a single middle-aged man. The bed was longer, but still narrow. A flannel shirt and some corduroy trousers were crumpled on the floor. There were some novels on the shelves this time, mostly ageing crime fiction. There were some books about computers and web design as well, some instructional, some historical. When Peachey had entered the room before, he’d just been checking that it was empty. Now that he was looking more closely he noticed the picture frames on the bedside table, atop the bookshelves, mounted on the walls.

  Almost all of the pictures were of Ashley Arthur.

  I’m in the right place, he thought.

  Many of the pictures also featured an older man – probably the occupant of the room, possibly Ashley’s father. Glasses, greying hair, a vague Where was I? smile.

  One of the frames was face down on the dresser. Peachey picked it up. It was a snapshot of a woman who looked similar enough to Ashley to be her mother or her aunt. She looked vaguely familiar to Peachey, like maybe he’d seen her on TV or been served by her at a restaurant, but the exact memory eluded him, so he put it back down.

  The computer looked old, but booted up quickly – the insides might be newer than the shell. No password. Peachey opened the web browser, went to Google®, and typed how to track a mobile phone.

  He knew there was a service called Google® Latitude that allowed users to see the locations of their
friends (or their friends’ phones) but that required permission. Instead, he scrolled down until he found something called SpouseCatchers.

  He clicked the link and scanned the splash page. Is your wife or husband acting strangely? Coming and going at odd hours? No need to hire a PI – track their phone.

  Perfect, he thought.

  He typed in the numbers from the credit card he’d been given. There was a disclaimer on the site that said SpouseCatchers would bear no responsibility for misuse of the service, and that tracing someone’s phone without their consent was a violation of the Surveillance Devices Act which could result in two years’ imprisonment or a $26,000 fine.

  Isn’t the lack of permission the whole point? Peachey wondered. He clicked I accept, and was in.

  The first phone number he tried produced a Google® map with an arrow pointing at a spot not far from the house. It was the HQ of a web-design company. Peachey thought of the computing books and figured that the number probably belonged to Ashley’s father, and that he was at work.

  Peachey tried the second number. Another map came up. Mountain View, California. What the hell?

  The arrow pointed to a bank – HBS International. Hammond Buckland’s bank, Peachey thought. What a surprise.

  He wrote down the address and was halfway through booking a plane ticket when his phone buzzed. His benefactors must have noticed the activity on his credit card already.

  It was a text message: Michael. How are you enjoying your freedom?

  Peachey raised an eyebrow. Not the tone he’d expected. He typed, Wondering who to thank. Then he hit send.

  The reply came almost instantly. The messages were probably being typed on a computer rather than a phone. Soon. After you do a little favour for me.

  Me, not us. Was he talking to the boss? Peachey replied, What favour?

  Again, the reply was immediate. I need you to go to California and protect something that belongs to me.

  Peachey didn’t believe in coincidence. Where exactly?

  The Googleplex, in Mountain View. Interested?