Hit List (10 page)

“Don’t insult me. She kept my team distracted while you were hunting Buckland, and then she was with you when you killed him, standing nice and close so my sniper couldn’t drop
you. Plus, I saw you say something to her on your way out.”

Peachey clenched his hands into fists behind his back. Buckland’s puppet, he thought. The one who knocked me out, and ran me over in a stolen car. Wright thinks she was working for me.

“I don’t know who you’re talking about,” he said.

“No?” Wright didn’t look convinced. “Brunette, young, hell of a liar. Calls herself Ashley. Ring any bells?”

Ashley
. Peachey smiled. Now I know your name. When I get out of here, I’ll get you. I’ll make you lead me to Buckland, and then I’ll kill you both.

“Sorry,” he said. “Don’t think I know her. Did you get a last name?”

“Tell me where she is,” Wright said, “and I’ll get them to take off
ten
years. With good behaviour, you could be out of here by the time you’re
fifty.”

“I thought you said you’d found her.”

Wright flung his coffee into Peachey’s face so fast he didn’t have time to blink. He gasped as the fluid stung his skin – not hot, but ice-cold. Wright had been drinking a
frappuccino.

“Last chance,” Wright snarled. He was on his feet, reaching out, grabbing Peachey by the face and squeezing. “Where is the girl? Who is she? How do I find her?”

The coffee was trickling down Peachey’s collar. He tried to bite Wright’s hand, but couldn’t – the palm covered his entire mouth.

Wright pushed Peachey against his chair, stepped back, and waited for a response.

“You’re third,” Peachey said, panting.

Wright said nothing.

“First Buckland,” Peachey continued. “Then Ashley. And then you.”

Wright didn’t ask what he was talking about. “Before too long,” he said, “you’ll realize how many enemies you have among the prisoners, and how many friends
I
have among the guards. You’ll wonder if you’re even going to last thirty years.” He shrugged into his coat. Buttoned it up. “And you’ll wish you’d taken
the deal.”

He turned and walked out the visitors’ exit. The door boomed closed behind him.

Peachey turned to look at the guards who’d brought him in, suddenly suspicious. Was Wright bluffing? Would he really try and have Peachey killed in prison?

The guards were gone.

He twisted his head left and right. The room was empty.

Peachey stood. Shuffled away from the chair, his movement restricted by the chains. He crouched for a moment and pulled his cuffed wrists under the shackles so his hands were in front of him,
although he still couldn’t raise them higher than his waist. Then he kept going towards the door. He didn’t know why the guards were gone, but it might be an opportunity to escape.
Wright may not have locked the doors on his way out, expecting them to auto-lock or thinking the guards would do it. And if the guards were gone...

“Hey! Hold it!”

Peachey stopped. He couldn’t outrun anybody with these shackles biting into his ankles. He turned to see the guards had returned.

They were dragging two dead bodies.

Peachey stared. “What is this?”

The corpses belonged to other prison guards. One of them Peachey had met, though he didn’t know her name. The other was unidentifiable – he’d been shot in the face, and he was
missing his shirt, trousers and shoes. Both bodies bore numerous bullet wounds to the chest, dark circles ringed by singed fabric.

The two live guards arranged the bodies so they were sprawled just inside the door. The balding one pulled on some gloves, drew a pistol from a holster under the dead woman’s arm, and
advanced on Peachey.

Peachey staggered backwards, preparing for a fight. His heart was pounding. Headbutt, then jump, he thought. If I squat, I should be able to grab the gun – but can I hit the other guy with
my hands trapped so low?

The guard turned away from Peachey, and fired two rounds into the wall beside the door. The shots reverberated around the room like the strikes of a timpani. The gun’s slide locked back,
revealing the hollow chamber.

The guard scattered a handful of shell casings across the floor, and then tossed the empty gun to Peachey. Peachey caught it.

“You’re going to kill me,” he said. “Pretend I was trying to escape.”

“Wrong,” the guard replied. He pulled a phone out of his pocket, and threw it over. “Keep this on you,” he said. “But don’t make any calls. Just wait for
instructions.”

“What kind of instructions?”

The guard turned back to the bodies. “The kind you’re good at following.”

Peachey’s mind was racing. Who are these people? he wondered. Government? Military? Private? Why are they letting me go?

The guard pointed at the semi-naked body. “You’ll find his clothes out that door.” He nodded towards the visitors’ exit. “Wear them on your way out, for the
cameras. There’s a white Volvo parked two blocks east of here, registration YEF58K. It has a gun in the glove box, some clothes in the boot, and a fake driver’s licence and passport
with some cash and a credit card in the passenger-side seat pocket. The keys are in the front wheel-well on the driver’s side.”

“Who’s the mark?” Peachey asked.

“I don’t have that information.”

“Who do you work for?”

“I don’t have that information either.” The guard took the keys from the dead woman’s belt. “They won’t know you’re gone until rounds at six a.m.
Between now and then, get as far away from here as you can.”

He threw Peachey the keys. As Peachey was unlocking his cuffs, the two guards walked out the remandees’ door and shut it behind them.

Within seconds, Peachey’s wrists were free. He bent down to unlock his ankles.

Get as far away from here as you can
. Sure, he thought. I’ve just got a few things to take care of first.

Three things, to be exact.

Ash woke up moments before her alarm. She grabbed the purring phone, hit
cancel
, and sat up. Her brain automatically rewound through the previous night’s events.
The library. The detective. The distress call.

Buckland wants to do this rescue tomorrow
.
We’ll have to be away overnight
.
Buckland said we’d be flying there, and that it’d take a while
.

Where are we going? Ash wondered, uneasy. What does Buckland know that we don’t?

But part of her was excited. Sometimes it felt like no matter how many things she returned to their owners, the guilt of her earlier crimes never seemed to sit any lighter. But this was
something different. A
rescue
. She was going to save a human life. If that didn’t ease her conscience, nothing would.

She went downstairs. Her father was already up, munching on some toast.

“You’re up early,” he said.

“I’m walking to school today,” Ash replied. She took a bowl and some cereal out of the cupboard and put them next to the milk on the table.

“Alone?” her father asked.

“Only halfway,” Ash said. “I’m meeting up with Alice at the supermarket.”

The lie came easily.

“Have I met Alice?”

“I don’t think so,” Ash said. “But she’s cool – I’ll bring her over sometime.”

She paused to spoon some cereal into her mouth.

“Actually,” she said, crunching, “she invited me to her place after school today – she’s having a sleepover party. But I told her I couldn’t go.”

Her father buttered some more toast. “Why’s that?”

“Benjamin and I are going to see a movie.”

Her father frowned, but said nothing. Ash picked up her bowl and spoon and took them over to the sink.

Finally, her father said, “I’m sure you and Benjamin could go to the movies some other time.”

“Sorry?”

“I mean, the movie will still be there tomorrow,” he continued. “Whereas the sleepover’s only on tonight. And you and Benjamin are close – he won’t take
offence if you cancel, whereas Alice might think you’re just not interested.”

Ash pretended to think about it. “Well, maybe I will go to Alice’s,” she said. “Is that okay?”

“Sure.”

Ash went back upstairs to get dressed, feeling cruel. It was one thing when we were poor, she thought. I
needed
to lie and steal back then. Now that we’re back on our feet, can I
justify this? Am I a bad person?

She thought of the museum curator, and the programmer’s family, and all the other people she’d helped. She thought of Alice B’s message.
Help me
.

She and her father were doing fine, but other people weren’t. She didn’t want to retire while more people needed her. But there would always be someone. So could she deceive her dad
for the rest of his life?

She put these thoughts out of her mind; she had work to do. She hefted her school bag and went back downstairs. Pushing open the front door, she called out, “See you after school tomorrow,
Dad!”

From elsewhere in the house, her father said, “Bye, Ashley.” And then she was out, headed for Benjamin’s place.

The jog took almost half an hour. She would have liked to take her bike, but there was an outside chance her father would notice it was missing. Still, she liked jogging. The rhythms were
hypnotic – the even breaths and footfalls, the thumping of her heart. Sometimes, when she was jogging for fun, she liked to try and synchronize them – two heartbeats for every step, a
ker
and a
thump
. Four steps per inhale, three per exhale.

Benjamin was waiting outside, punctual as ever. “Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” Ash replied.

There was a pause. Ash was feeling uncertain about the previous night’s argument. Was he still angry about Liam? Or was he just depressed? Or was he over it, and she was worrying about
nothing?

“Last night’s kind of a blur,” she said. “How are we getting to the airport again?”

“I’ve called a taxi to an address two blocks that way,” he said, pointing. “Buckland’s going to meet us at the terminal.”

“Got it,” Ash said. They started to walk.

After a while, she asked, “Did he tell you where we’re going?”

“No.”

“Or what we’re doing once we get there?”

“No.”

They’d already covered this. But for the first time since they’d met, Ash felt like she needed to fill the silence, to reach out across this horrible new distance to her best friend.
She wanted to clasp his hand, but she was frightened he’d shake it off.

Benjamin asked, “Did the fax machine print out the message while you were there, or was it already in the tray?”

“In the tray,” Ash said. “So it could have been there a long time, depending on when the vault was last opened.”

“So we could be on our way to rescue a dead woman.”

Ash nodded. “Unless Buckland has some way of knowing she’s still alive.”

“I don’t see how he could. But it’s not like he tells us everything.”

“Sorry?”

Benjamin glanced back over his shoulder. “You know what I mean,” he said. “Buckland’s never explained where he got the hit list, or why he’s still pretending to be
dead, or where the X box is, as well as a lot of other things.”

The X box was the last item on the hit list – the only one without a stated location or rightful owner. When they were first given the list, Benjamin asked Buckland what the X box was.
Buckland said, very seriously, “You’re not ready for the X box.”

Then he had demanded to know why they were laughing.

“If he came out of hiding,” Ash said, “the government would probably try to kill him again. Plus, Michael Peachey would be released from prison. And as for the hit list,
it’s not like either of us has ever asked where it came from.”

“And why is that?”

“Because it doesn’t matter.”

“Because we’re afraid of what he might say,” Benjamin said. “What if he stole it?”

Ash chuckled. “Oh no! How horrid.”

“I’m serious, Ash. What if he stole it from someone who might come after it? Or worse – what if he killed someone for it?”

She frowned. “He wouldn’t do that.”

“No? At least two people died at HBS when you were there. He doesn’t seem too upset by that.”

“They were murdered by government assassins, not Buckland.”

“He arranged for the assassins to be there.”

“One of the dead was a hit woman,” Ash said, “who was about to shoot me.”

“And who, if you recall, turned out to be working for Buckland.”

“To protect him. It’s not his fault she mistook me for someone else. And in fairness to her, I was trying to steal all his money at the time. If
you
recall.”

Benjamin sighed. “Are you determined to be obtuse about this?”

“Obtuse? I—” Ash broke off, realizing that she was just bickering to stave off the silence. “I’m sorry,” she said. “What are you trying to
say?”

“Just that we should be careful. We can’t just assume Buckland is infallible. Okay?”

“Okay.” Ash smiled wryly. “You worry too much, but okay.”

“I have to worry extra,” he said. “You don’t worry enough. We’re here.”

They stopped walking. Benjamin had chosen well – a big, new house with a well-tended lawn and an expensive car in the driveway. A cab driver might find two kids headed for the airport on a
school day curious, but coming from an expensive place like this, his or her curiosity probably wouldn’t flare into suspicion.

“So,” Ash said. “About last night.”

“Last night,” Benjamin agreed.

“When I agreed to go out with that guy, I didn’t think about your feelings. That’s not because they don’t matter – it’s just that I thought you were kidding,
all those times you...anyway, I was insensitive. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Benjamin said.

Ash sighed. “But I can’t be your girlfriend,” she said. “You understand that, right? We’ve been friends too long. I know all your flaws, and you know mine, and it
just wouldn’t work.”

“It’s okay,” Benjamin said again. “I get it.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure.”

Ash sighed, relieved. “Friends?” she asked.

“Always.”

The taxi pulled up a minute later. The driver rolled down the window. Reading off a screen, she said, “Mr. Maitland and girlfriend, to the airport?”