“My parents are here, but I can text them,” the kid said. “I’ll tell them I went to see the dinosaurs. Bet my mom’s in the bar, anyway.”
I thought with fondness of the Steampunk Saloon, my cocktail sitting abandoned on the table. Suck it up, Emmy.
Okay, what would I rather do? Save a girl’s life while sticking it to Pharma Daddy, or send three desperate yet not particularly awful men to jail and have a bunch of youngsters hating my guts? Including Race, Trick, and Vine if their judgey expressions were anything to go by.
There wasn’t really any contest, was there?
“Did you make any kind of contact with David Sacker?” I asked Jeffrey, just to check.
“Today? No. I wrote him begging for help a month ago, but he never wrote me back.” Bastard. “Who are you people?”
“That doesn’t matter.” I let out a sigh. “All those in favour of stealing a million bucks from Mr. Sacker, raise your hands.”
Every damn hand went up, including Artemis and Isolde Sackers’. Boy, their father really must be a piece of shit.
Could we do this?
I looked at my girls, and the crinkles around their eyes told me they were all grinning.
Yes, it seemed we fucking could.
CHAPTER 7
FIVE MINUTES LATER, everyone except Jeffrey Monteith sat around us on the platform. He still seemed kind of shell-shocked by developments, but I’d sent him into the control booth to monitor what was going on outside. His job now was to buy us time.
Kayleigh Monteith was being treated at Richmond General, and Mack had verified Jeffrey’s story by calling Dr. Beech, our favourite ER doctor and a man who could easily be bought for donations to whatever charity project he happened to be running that month. After a promise from Blackwood to send a gift basket for his next fundraising raffle, he dug around in the computer system and found the information we needed. Kayleigh Monteith’s situation was desperate. Her family had already sold everything they owned to fund medical expenses, and their insurance plan didn’t cover a cutting-edge drug like Cytoblin.
It was her last chance.
Neil Robinson, it turned out, was her boyfriend. Kelbyn had shown us a photo of the three of them together in happier times. A pretty brunette standing between two grinning men, her arms around them both. Even though he was meant to be posing for the photographer, Neil’s focus was on her, his smile for his girl rather than the camera. Young love. Once again, I was struck by the injustice in the world.
Now Neil huddled beside Kelbyn, hugging his knees to his chest and looking as if he might vomit at any given moment. Artemis didn’t seem much better. She was nestled between the legs of the guy who’d been sitting next to her on the roller coaster, and he was doing his best to keep her calm. Isolde? She appeared a little more gung-ho. She’d already suggested increasing the ransom to five million bucks, one million for each time their father had told them that their new make-up business was a frivolous waste of their time. And that was just so far this week.
“We need a plan,” I muttered. “I’m used to catching kidnappers, not being one.”
“Simple,” Carmen said. “Just think of every slip-up the pendejos you caught in the past made and avoid doing all of those things.”
“Gee, why didn’t I think of that?”
Okay, okay, I had to start at the beginning. We had two key objectives. One: get Pharma Daddy to cough up the cash, and two: make sure nobody in the sphere got caught.
To achieve the first, we’d need to go in fast and hard. No wiggle room allowed. And for the second, everybody needed to understand their role, remember their story, and agree to take the secret to the grave.
I addressed the last point first. Me and the girls still had scarves across our faces, but everyone had seen Race, Vine, and Trick. Probably knew their damn names too. I couldn’t risk today’s actions coming back to bite them on the ass later, nor did I want the Monteith family to get any nasty surprises a year or two into the future.
“Before we cross the line from morally dubious into abso-fucking-lutely illegal, everybody has to understand one thing. You. Cannot. Talk. About. This. To anyone. Not to your buddies on a drunken night out. Not to a girl you’re trying to impress. Not to your parents or your siblings or your second cousin twice removed. After today, we’ll be bound by a secret that could land us all in prison if the truth comes out. If anyone thinks they can’t handle that, then now’s the time to say so. It’s not too late to call this off.”
I gave them space to consider, no pun intended. The silence stretched into a full minute, and finally one guy near the back of the train spoke.
“If we can save a girl’s life, then we should do it. Not to get kudos, but because it’s the right thing to do.”
“Drugs are too expensive,” a girl said. “My brother’s insulin costs six hundred bucks a month.”
“President Harrison should fix that,” somebody else chipped in. “Then we wouldn’t have to turn vigilante.”
President Harrison was trying, believe me. We’d had several conversations about it over the years, but first the right people had to get control of the senate, and that was a whole other story.
“Anybody want to back out? Speak now or forever hold your peace.”
Nobody spoke. I took a careful look at Artemis, Isolde, and their friend. This would affect them more than anybody, and I crouched down so I could look them in the eyes.
“Are you okay with this? You’ll have to lie, not just to your family but to the cops. We’ll prepare you as best we can, but it won’t be easy.”
Artemis
