First Drop

arms, unconsciously rubbing at her skin. “He lost a lot of blood and there’s, like, other complications.”

Trey stared from one to the other. “Like what?”

“They took X-rays and they reckon the bullet’s pretty close to his spine, man,” Xander said, voice compressed. “There’s a chance he might not walk again.” Just for a moment, his eyes landed on me as he spoke and I knew without it being said that he blamed me – us – for what had happened.

I could have pointed out that no-one had forced them to come to Henry’s with us. In fact, I’d specifically asked them not to, but there was enough guilt floating around without me adding my contribution.

“They called Scott’s folks,” Aimee put in. “They dropped everything and got on a plane. They should be here any time. I just don’t know what we’re gonna, like, tell them.”

“Have you said anything to the hospital?”

Aimee shook her head, glancing to Xander.

“We’ve had the cops hassling us already,” he said, “but we didn’t tell them nothing.”

“Good,” I said. “For God’s sake don’t mention me or Trey to them.”

“What?” Xander yelped. He muscled in close, putting his face into mine. He was slightly taller and when he was pumped up on anger and grief he seemed bigger still. Aimee made a protesting noise and put her hand on his arm. With an effort he got a grip on his temper, lowering his voice to a growl. “Our friend could be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life because of you, and all you wanna do is stay out of trouble?”

“Trouble isn’t the beginning of it,” I said, flat. “At least one of the guys who murdered Henry and then came after us is a cop. Two of them are now dead. If you want to tell the cops – who might or might not be in on this – all about what really happened, then on your own heads be it. Far better to invent a drive-by shooting incident and leave it at that. Everybody keeps telling me it’s Spring Break. Wild things happen all the time.”

I watched my words penetrate, saw Xander take on board the truth of them and mentally step back. Even if he couldn’t bring himself to back down physically. Eventually, Aimee wedged herself between us.

She walked Xander back until his calves hit one of the waiting chairs, then she gently pressed on his shoulders until he sat. He complied without resistance, keeping his eyes on me all the while.

Aimee came back to us, managing a rueful smile. “Look, you guys better go,” she said. “Soon as we know anything, we’ll call you.” Her smile expanded when she turned it on a dejected Trey. “I’m real glad you’re OK.”

As she made to go back to Xander I caught her arm. “There’s one more thing,” I said quietly. “You remember I gave Xander the hard drive from Henry’s computer?”

She nodded. “You want it back?”

I shook my head. “It’s no good to us without access to a computer to put it into,” I said. “But we still need to know – now more than ever – who he contacted.”

She shrugged, her disinterested look clearly suggesting I was being insensitive to ask after something so trivial at a time like this. “Why?”

I paused, trying not to show my impatience, while I hunted for a way to persuade her. “Because otherwise we’re not going to find out who the guys who shot Scott are really working for,” I said.

I watched that hit home. She nodded again. “OK, I’ll, like, see what we can do.”

We left quickly, trying not to attract any attention. Suddenly the hospital seemed to be full of people in uniform but none of them appeared to be looking for two kids. And if they were, we didn’t appear to be the kids they were looking for.

Although I was reluctant to abandon our transport, keeping hold of the Taurus would have caused more problems than it would have solved. Nevertheless, I couldn’t resist checking it over before we left it for the last time, just in case there was anything tucked away in there that we could use.

It wasn’t until I opened the boot that I realised just how carefully Jim Whitmarsh and his men had planned our abduction from Henry’s place. The whole of the inside of the boot area was lined in heavy plastic, the kind that builders use. It had been taped down around the edges and, when I cut an experimental slit in it with my Swiss Army knife, I found it was two layers deep.

“What’s that for?” Trey asked, still subdued.

“For a man who claimed to have had a change of heart about killing us immediately,” I said, voice grim, “Whitmarsh was certainly taking precautions not to leave any forensic evidence that we’d been in his car.” I glanced across at him and suddenly felt the need to reinforce my earlier actions. “If I hadn’t got us away from him, he was planning to kill the pair of us, sooner or later. You do realise that, don’t you?”

After a moment’s pause Trey nodded, although without making any comment on whether he’d come to terms with what I’d had to do or not. He stood and watched while I wiped the inside of the Taurus down as best I could and locked the doors. Then we walked out of the car park into the blazing heat on International Speedway Boulevard. The massive spectator stands of the Daytona Speedway loomed away to the west of us, on the other side of the eight-lane highway.

I stopped by the first storm drain we came across and dug the keys out of my pocket. But as I dangled them over the slats of the grid Trey’s obvious surprise made me pause. “What?”

“You can’t just, like, dump the keys down a drain,” he said, actually sounding shocked.

I looked at him for a moment, head on one side until he realised how that sounded and coloured up. So, it was OK to shoot at people and steal their car, but . . .

I shook my head and let go of the keys. They bounced once and disappeared into the gloom. Kids today. I’d been one myself but I swore then I’d never understand them.

***

We walked as far as the next diner, where we found a bunch of kids who were heading to the strip and were easygoing enough to offer us a lift. Then Trey and I spent most of what was left of the afternoon hanging out around the Boardwalk area, looking at the crazy cars on display, being deafened by the bands that were playing. I hadn’t heard of any of them but they were pretty good on the whole. Even if they didn’t know where to find the volume control on most of their amplification.

Trey was moody and quiet, which suited me because it left me largely alone with my thoughts. I was still trying to work out what on earth was going on and failing to put together anything that would hold water.

I tried all the permutations I could think of, however unlikely they seemed, starting with the facts as I knew them. Keith had vanished. Oakley man was trying to kill us. Whitmarsh, originally hired to protect the family, had been at first trying to kill Trey, but was now trying to capture him alive – for the short term, at least. Gerri Raybourn was trying to frame me for kidnapping the boy – and possibly the father, too.

It all boiled down, as far as I could see it, to who had possession of the program Keith had been working on at the time of his disappearance. There was too much potential money at stake for it to be a coincidence.

Keith had part of it, although the fact that he’d run when he was apparently so close to completion had suggested to Henry that Keith had realised he was unable to finish the job. But if people thought the program didn’t work, why had they put all this effort into going after Trey? Revenge?

But whose revenge?

If it was the company Keith worked for – and therefore Gerri Raybourn and Whitmarsh – that would make a certain amount of sense. Maybe they’d started out for revenge, but then Henry must have let it slip that Trey might just have the missing pieces. Their agenda had abruptly changed from trying to eliminate the boy to needing him alive if they were going to have any chance of their promised millions.

And just when I thought I might have put it together, it all started to unravel again. As I understood it, Trey only had a small part of the program. With Keith missing and possibly in hiding, how were they planning on getting hold of the rest?

Unless Keith was involved, too. But in that case, if he was trying to get rid of Trey because he might stir up trouble over his mother, why stop now? And where did Oakley man fit in? After all, he claimed he was the one who’d tortured and executed poor Henry. Had he been bluffing just to scare us?

The one thing I was trying not to think about was what had happened to Sean, but I couldn’t help it. Especially not after Whitmarsh’s throwaway line. “You put up more of a fight than Meyer,” he’d said, “that’s for sure.”

Even so, I wouldn’t allow myself to give up all hope. I couldn’t allow it.

***

As the light started to drop we grabbed some food in one of the crowded barbecue places on the main strip, squeezing into a booth to share a table with a group of kids who’d driven down from Georgia just for the