First Drop

***

I had to wait another hour before Scott appeared, by which time I was back out on the deck, soaking up the shaded heat. He poked his head round the open sliding glass door with his hair sticking up more haphazardly than it did normally. How do teenagers do that?

“Hi,” he said, groggy and sounding slightly gurgling, like his throat was full of phlegm. “You wanna Coke?”

I indicated my coffee cup and shook my head. He withdrew back into the house. That was the last I saw of anyone until after nine, when Xander and Aimee rang the front door bell.

Scott let them in. He was wearing the same clothes he had on yesterday. So was I, come to that, but he had a choice.

“So,” Xander said, rubbing his hands together. “What’s the plan for today, man?”

I shrugged. “We wait for either Henry to call, or Madeleine to e-mail,” I said. “Then we act on whatever happens first.”

Xander looked deflated. “You’re not gonna spend all day hanging around the house?” he said, making it a question. “It’s Spring Break, man!”

Scott shuffled, looking uncomfortable. “I guess she’s right – we oughta stay put,” he said miserably.

Xander and Aimee both cast reproachful eyes in my direction. When I couldn’t stand the guilt they were putting onto me any longer, I retreated back out onto the deck with yet another coffee. At the rate I was consuming caffeine, I wasn’t going to sleep for a week.

I hadn’t time to finish my cup when Trey slid the door open and came out. I could tell by the set of his face, and the fact that he shut the door behind him, that he was there for an argument.

“I wanna go out,” he announced, scowling. It was as much of a shock to see him with his startling white hair as it was to see myself. “I don’t see why we have to sit around on our butts all day. When Henry knows anything, he’ll call.”

I sat back in my chair and looked at him for a moment. He hadn’t mentioned the possibility of missing contact from Madeleine, and neither did I. “So, the fact that between us we’re wanted for murder by half the police in the state has no bearing on this?” I said mildly.

He glowered some more, his bottom lip starting to edge out.

I sighed. “Where do you want to go?

“Excellent!” He flashed me a fast grin, his expression changing in a second, like he’d flicked a switch.

“Don’t get all excited,” I said, scowling myself now. “It was only a question.” Then I noticed the other three standing up close to the inside of the sliding door, flattening their noses against the glass and crossing their eyes.

Trey saw them and his grin widened. “Looks like you’re kinda outnumbered,” he said.

I sighed again, heavier this time and got to my feet. “Story of my life,” I said.

***

In the end, we compromised. We spent the morning at the house, which included Aimee reapplying my make-up disguise, then climbed into Scott’s Dodge and headed for the main strip, and the action.

Scott checked his e-mail just before we left the house, but there was still nothing from England. I think I was halfway resigned to the fact that we weren’t going to hear anything until Monday morning. I just hoped that Henry hadn’t managed to get us into even more trouble by then.

We had brunch at a little diner on the corner where Earl Street met North Atlantic Avenue. The five of us sat at a table outside, shaded from the sun by a giant umbrella. All the kids with the flash cars were cruising past along North Atlantic, playing their music loud and fighting over who looked the coolest in the heat.

Some of the cars were fitted with hydraulic suspension. If they thought they had an audience, the drivers made them hop and bounce along the road, occasionally lifting one wheel off the ground completely like a giant mechanical dog in search of a very large tree. I marvelled at the ingenuity and wondered at the point.

There were bikes, too, big custom-painted Japanese stuff, mostly ridden by suntanned kids wearing little more than swimming costumes. I was wincing too hard at the prospect of gravel rash if they came off to be impressed by the rolling burn-outs they indulged in. When they stopped I could see they’d worn their back tyres almost completely flat in the centre, which would have made the bikes go round corners like a drunken tea trolley. I started to feel old and sensible.

The cops were a heavy presence but their eyes seemed to glide over the group of us as we sat there, drinking malted milk shakes like we hadn’t a care in the world. The white spiked hair made Scott and Trey look enough like brothers to avert suspicion and Aimee’s work on me was holding up under the strain. Besides, weird- coloured hair seemed to be the order of the day round here. I almost began to relax.

And then Trey’s phone rang.

“Yeah?” he said and mouthed, “It’s Henry,” at me. I hutched closer, putting my head next to his so I could listen in on the call.

“I’ve had a response from the people we were talking about,” I heard Henry say, “but they want proof I’ve got, um, access to you. They wanna e-mail you a coupla questions and you gotta be here to answer right off. You gotta get down here in half an hour, or the deal’s off. You understand?” He was talking fast, his voice breathless.

Trey glanced at me. I shrugged, then nodded.

“OK,” Trey said. “No problem.”

“Outstanding,” Henry squawked. “Remember – don’t be late or the deal is off. These people are kinda serious.”

“We’re on our way,” Trey said and ended the call.

Yeah, a voice in my head piped up, but to what?

Scott was already on his feet, dropping a few dollars onto the table. “All right,” he said, “let’s roll.”

As the others pushed back their chairs I held my hands up. “Hang on a moment,” I said and everybody stilled. “Henry asked just for Trey. Now Trey doesn’t go anywhere without me, but that doesn’t mean all of us are going.”

Xander pulled a face. “Aw c’mon, man,” he moaned. “You can’t shut us out now.”

I caught Aimee’s glance, looked away. “I can’t look after all of you,” I said.

“We’re not asking you to,” Scott said quickly. “It’s just—” He broke off, slumping back down into his chair and grimacing as he searched for the right words.

“Don’t cut us out of this – not now,” Xander said with a note of quiet pleading in his voice. “You can’t let us get close to the action when it suits you, man, and then kinda dump us when it don’t, y’know.”

I looked at Aimee again, hoping she would be the voice of reason. She just smiled and picked the keys to Scott’s pickup off the table. “You don’t take us with you,” she said sweetly, swinging the keys tantalizingly from one finger, “and how you gonna get there in time?”

***

Getting to Henry’s place in time was the thing that proved the most difficult. After my reluctant capitulation Scott retrieved his Dodge from the car park behind the Ocean Center where he’d left it and edged out into the slow-moving traffic on North Atlantic. It had snarled to a crawl, not helped by the police cruisers which seemed to be pulling over an unending stream of cars into the centre lane and booking them on the spot.

After fifteen minutes we’d barely made three blocks and I had to make a conscious effort not to look at my watch every thirty seconds. Besides, Scott was looking nervous enough for all of us, fingers beating a relentless tattoo on the top of the steering wheel.

“Aw, come on, will ya?” he kept muttering through clenched teeth as he forced his way into a gap that didn’t really exist in the next lane on the grounds it had moved six inches further forwards than the one we were in. The driver he’d just cut up blew his horn and gave him the finger.

“Same to you, asshole!” Scott shouted into the rear-view mirror.

Four cars ahead of us a traffic cop was writing a ticket for some other poor unlucky driver at the next intersection.

“Hey, calm down,” I said, eyeing the cop. “The last thing we need right now is for you to get involved in a road rage punch-up.”

Unfortunately, the cop’s attention had been grabbed by the horn and the raised voices. I saw a pair of