February (4 page)

‘Durham and Sligo were friends a really long time ago but now they’re mortal enemies. I can’t be caught having anything to do with anyone even remotely connected to Durham. Sligo would disown me. My life depends on it … well, my allowance depends on it.’ Winter leaned forward and peered around the bushes towards the house. ‘I probably need Sligo now just as much as he needs me.’

‘Pocket money?’ I asked.

She stifled a laugh. ‘You could call it that. Anyway,’ she added, ‘it’s easier doing it this way. To cut a long story short, my locket ended up with the bodyguard’s girlfriend. I’ve been inside plenty of times before, and I know exactly where it is.’

The word ‘locket’ sent the hairs on the back of my neck prickling up. Sligo had asked me about a piece of jewellery—and someone had stolen jewellery from Dad’s suitcase. Was this just a coincidence? Had this girl somehow got hold of it?

‘And the locket’s yours?’ I asked her.

‘That’s what I just said. My mum and dad left it for me, for my tenth birthday.’

‘So you didn’t get it recently?’

‘No!’ she said, rolling her eyes. ‘Do I look
like I turned ten yesterday? What is this, an interrogation, or are you just a really bad listener? Anyway, the problem we have right now is the bodyguard … He’s probably out working … but I’m not sure of that.’

‘So we’re breaking into Toecutter’s bodyguard’s house and he could be in there waiting for us?’

Winter nodded. ‘Who’s a clever boy?’ she said in her mocking way. ‘That’s
exactly
it. Enough chitchat, let’s get this thing over with.’

We were slowly approaching the huge double front doors, creeping up behind the bushes that lined the long driveway, when Winter tugged my arm, pulling me back. ‘Not that way,’ she hissed. ‘Follow me.’

She led me around the side of the house, past huge curtained windows, until we came to a short flight of steps leading to a smaller door. She pulled out a credit card, slipped it between the door and the lock, gave it a deft tweak, and silently pressed it open.

I was impressed. Maybe I could learn a thing or two from her.

We crept into the house and stole down the
hall. I could hear the sound of a TV and I tapped Winter’s shoulder. She turned to me, finger on her lips, and gestured ahead.

In the lounge room that opened up at the end of the hallway, a man—the bodyguard, I guessed—was sprawled on a black leather recliner with his back to us, in front of a huge plasma screen. On the thick, white rug at his feet, slept the girl, curled up like a cat.

Winter pointed to the door on the other side of the room. We were going to have to sneak behind them and cross the room to get over there.

The guy was watching some war movie with lots of loud explosions, gunfire and shouting. I wondered how the girl was sleeping through it. He seemed engrossed in the action but I didn’t want to think about what he might do if he turned around and found two young intruders in his house.

Using the volume of the TV as cover, Winter and I pressed close against the wall and snuck through the lounge room, step by stealthy step. We slid our way along, silently passing only a metre or so behind the guy watching the movie. We had almost made it to the other side of the room when he suddenly turned—luckily not our way. Instead he glanced down the empty hall
way we’d just crept through. Had he heard something?

Terrified that he would look round and see us, we froze, but a child’s scream from the movie ripped his attention back to the screen.

After passing the last part of the wall we slipped through the door and up some stairs. I trailed Winter along a dimly lit, carpeted corridor, passing several closed doors and some huge urns with spiky plants growing out of them. Winter seemed to know exactly where to go.

After ducking into one of the rooms, Winter quickly closed the door behind us and then switched on a lamp. The light revealed a very girly bedroom. The walls and curtains were a soft pink, and the lace-white bed was covered in cushions in every shade of pink you could imagine. Gabbi would have loved it.

Winter went straight for the dressing-table, which was topped with a delicate glass-framed mirror. She opened the top drawer and pulled out a red velvet music box. Within seconds, she’d silently lifted out a small, silver,
heart-shaped
locket on a long chain. With a look of triumph, she pocketed it, nodded to me, switched off the lamp, and carefully opened the door again.

We hurried out of the room and back down the staircase, treading softly on the carpet. We didn’t need to go back through the lounge room, so I hoped getting out of the house was going to be easier than getting in.

Winter opened the front door, but it slipped from her grasp and a gust of wind banged it against the wall behind.

‘Who’s there?!’

‘What is it, hon?’ came the girl’s voice, dazed and sleepy on the rug.

‘Someone’s in the house!’

I didn’t hesitate. This time
I
grabbed Winter and dragged her out the front door, down the path and out number 113’s gate as fast as I could, only letting go of her wrist when we’d reached the street.

Her footsteps flew beside me as we raced along the road, taking left turns, then right, then left, until finally, when it was safe, we both fell exhausted onto the grass of a tiny moonlit park.

We both puffed and panted, looking up at the sky.

‘That damn front door!’ she said, sitting up. ‘I forgot it slams!’

She buried her hands into her skirt pockets
and pulled out two chocolate bars. She waved one around in front of me. I sat up and snatched it from her and started tearing off the wrapper.

‘Thanks, where’d you get these?’

‘Let’s just say I know where my
friend
keeps her chocolate stash, too,’ she replied with a grin.

‘It was pretty clear you’d been in there before.’

‘I grew up in that house,’ she said.

I remembered how she’d described her rich family before. ‘Really?’ I said. ‘I’ve got an uncle who lives in this suburb, too.’

Winter’s mobile rang, and she jumped up and took it out of her bag. I watched her move away to take the call and wondered who was ringing her at this hour.

‘I’m getting a drink,’ I said as Winter returned. I stood up on my aching legs and stumbled over to a bubbler in the middle of the park. I had a long drink and splashed water over my face and neck, trying to cool down. As I straightened up I found myself wondering how I could find out whether her story about the locket was true. Her sad eyes seemed so real, but there was something untrustworthy about her. I took another drink before heading back to where she
sat on the grass, determined to find out more. In the light of the tall park lamp, I found Winter sitting there sifting through my backpack!

‘Hey! Stop it!’ I shouted, hurrying towards her. ‘What are you doing? You can’t do that! Get your hands off my stuff!’

Everything was scattered all over the grass, including Dad’s drawings and the transparency I found in his suitcase with the words ‘G’managh’ and ‘Kilfane’. I furiously started snatching my stuff up from the ground, when I noticed that she was sitting there quietly grinning. She held one of the angel drawings in her hands.

‘Give me that!’ I tried to grab it out of her hand, but she jerked it out of my reach.

I was about to give her a piece of my mind when I noticed her eyes. For the first time, they seemed alive and shining. She pointed to the angel, and pointed to my dad’s letter.

‘Where did this come from?’ she asked. ‘Do you know him too?’

‘The Angel?’ I asked. ‘You know about the Angel?’ A sudden surge of excitement smothered my anger.

‘Of course I do! I know where he is. I’ve seen him lots of times!’

What was she talking about? Everybody in the whole freaking world seemed to be asking  questions about the Angel and this girl was claiming she knew all about him!

‘How long have you known about him?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know about him, I just have this picture that my dad drew. Why? What do you know? What does it mean?’

I didn’t like the way Winter was handling Dad’s drawing as if she owned it, so I snatched it away from her.

Winter’s face resumed its usual cool, superior, stuff-you expression.

‘Please,’ I urged. ‘Tell me everything you know about it.’

‘Why? What’s it to you?’

I sat back down on the grass again. ‘My dad drew that angel not long before he died.’

The atmosphere immediately changed between us.

‘Your dad’s dead?’ she asked.

I nodded.

Winter carefully pulled the locket out of her pocket. ‘Now you understand,’ she said in a softer voice, ‘why this is so important to me.’

I did. I understood the way she clutched the locket, like it was the final word from a lost friend. It was the way
I
held Dad’s drawings.

‘You lost your dad, too, didn’t you?’ I asked.

Tears began to fill her eyes. She looked away without speaking … but I had my answer.

I wasn’t lying when I said I knew how she felt. What kind of accident took the lives of both her mother
and
her father? I also knew that now wasn’t the time to try and find out.

She remained silently turned away from me for a few moments, then she took the locket, opened it, and passed it to me. Inside were two tiny photos. One of an Asian man with black hair—whose intense eyes tilted up in the same way as Winter’s, and opposite that, a photo of a fair-haired woman who had the same delicate chin as Winter.

‘You look a lot like both of your parents,’ I said, turning the locket over.

‘Really?’ she asked. ‘It’s hard to look like one or the other when your mum’s so fair and your dad’s Chinese.’

On the back of the silver heart were the delicately engraved words ‘Little Bird’ beneath a Chinese character.