Fire Starter (The Sentinels) Read online

  “Why do you want to know?” Duffy asked.

  I didn’t reply, instead starting for the exit. This time, no one moved to stop me.

  “Rune!” Duffy called out.

  I paused by the door.

  “When I next need to move a piano, I’ll give you a shout.”

  Chapter 4

  Thursday 21:35

  The corridors of Gorlam’s were painted puke yellow, and everything was horribly familiar. Between the ages of five and sixteen, except for brief stints at foster homes or even briefer stints on the streets after an escape, it had been what I had to call home. That was until a year ago when I’d figured out how to delete myself from the system and make a permanent escape.

  I read the numbers on the doors. 212, 213. I adjusted my badge on my T-shirt and turned the corner. I knew the place so well, it had been remarkably easy to steal a staff badge and find out which room Alex and Jo Wilson were staying in.

  I thought back to my meeting with Duffy. That hadn’t gone as I had hoped. He had helped me find the Collier children, but the main reason I had gone had been to figure out what Duffy wanted from me. Since leaving the orphanage, I had suffered plenty of hunger and cold, but the thing I wanted most out of life was to maintain my independence, be my own man. Owing favors to Duffy threatened that.

  The door of Room 217 was slightly ajar and I hesitated, deciding whether to knock or not. I figured I wasn’t supposed to be there, so this wasn’t the time to start getting strict about the rules. I pushed the door fully open with my foot.

  A girl lay on her stomach on a bed, facing me, typing on her laptop. She lifted her head and saw me. I saw recognition in her eyes, then she returned to her typing.

  A memory of a crying girl from the night of the fire flashed into my mind. It was her: Jo Collier.

  I decided to take Jo’s indifference to my presence as an invitation, and I stepped into the room. I sat down on the bed opposite her. “Serious hacking for one so young.” Seeing the screens flicker back and forth on her laptop screen, I determined that Jo was the Transkey hacker. She was only thirteen, I remembered from reading the orphanage files on Jo Wilson. “You’ll be on the government radar before long.”

  “You’d think the government would improve their security instead of targeting good hackers,” Jo said.

  “It is good at targeting. It’s not so good at being competent,” I said. She didn’t stop working, colored screens flashing across the laptop. “You could have used a program called tor to disguise your location, you know.”

  “Tor or maybe I2P or freenet,” she said.

  I blinked. “You wanted to be caught.”

  She shrugged.

  “Why?”

  “Hacking Transkey to leave a message was Alex’s idea. I figured we should just ask you directly.”

  “Well then, I’m here now. Ask.”

  She shut the laptop and looked me directly in the eyes. “Did you kill Mum and Dad?”

  I shook my head. “I had nothing to do with it. I was in the wrong time and wrong place.”

  She stared at me for a long moment, then sighed. “Alex says I’m too trusting.”

  “Can’t distrust everyone,” I suggested, even though I realized I couldn’t think of a single person that I really trusted.

  “Alex would tell me that you would of course deny it if asked.”

  “And Alex is always right.” I turned to see a teen boy appearing in the doorway. “You?” he asked, pointing at me. “What are you doing here?” He dashed to the corner of the room and grabbed a baseball bat.

  I stood up and backed away. “Alex, calm down. There’s no need for violence.”

  He swung hard, I jumped back and the bat whizzed past my nose. Beezlebub, the kid wasn’t messing about.

  My back hit the wall. He swung for my head again. I ducked and the bat broke a hole in the drywall. I stepped around Alex and back toward the open door. He wrenched the bat free of the wall and turned toward me, his fingers tightening around the butt of the bat and anger blazing in his eyes.

  “Listen to me.”

  He rammed the butt of the bat against my stomach. I expelled a gasp of air and glanced across at Jo as I retreated. She gave me a shrug. Whether she believed me or not, she wasn’t going against her brother.

  I hesitated at the doorway. I could run and get away, but that would just be putting off the problem. I didn’t want to have to worry about Jo hacking into Transkey again, or Alex turning up at Ten-two in the middle of the night with a baseball bat, or worse. I preferred to confront problems head on, if at all possible. It hadn’t worked with Duffy, but surely I could successfully communicate with an angry teen. I was one myself, after all.

  First I had to get him talking. He swung again, aiming at my torso. This time, instead of dodging, I tensed up and let him hit me. He was only fourteen, how hard could he hit, I was thinking. Apparently, he was a young Barry Bonds, because it hurt like hell. I gritted my teeth and lowered my arm to wedge the bat against my body.

  Alex pulled, but I didn’t let go, instead charging at him and forcing him to fall on his bed. I then dived, grabbing hold of his hands and holding him down.

  He convulsed under me, trying to throw me off, then launched his head at me, snapping with his teeth when the headbutt fell short. After a brief struggle, I managed to get control of him. “Just hear me out first,” I said to him.

  He turned toward his sister, who sat on the bed with her legs crossed under her, seemingly enjoying the fight. “A bit of help,” he spat out at her.

  “We should listen to what he has to say.”

  Alex wasn’t happy with her neutrality. “Traitor.”

  “Hitting me provides some short term satisfaction,” I told Alex. “But you really want to know the truth. For that, you have to listen to what I have to say.”

  “Just let me go.”

  “Is that an agreement to listen to me?”

  “Get off me.”

  It wasn't exactly the assurance I was looking for but, from his expression, he had calmed down.

  I released him and stepped back rapidly. He glared at me and rubbed at his wrists where I’d held him, but he didn’t move to attack again. “Go on, then, prove your innocence,” Alex demanded, sitting up.

  “Shouldn’t it be innocent until proven guilty?” I asked.

  “Better one hundred men get wrongly executed than one parent-killer goes free,” he said.

  “Depends on the point of view.”

  “Let’s take the point of view of the orphan for once,” Alex said. “How do you explain being on the grounds that night?”

  “I was homeless and had been staying in an old treehouse. The trees around it completely hid it from the main house. For three weeks, I didn’t see another soul.”

  Jo smiled sadly. “We used to spend so much time in that old place. I can’t remember the last time we were there.”

  “You were there for three weeks with no one noticing?” Alex asked. “Really?”

  “Metallica rules, okay,” I said.

  “What?” Alex asked.

  “Which one of you inscribed that on the wall in the lower left hand corner.”

  “Not me.” Jo’s eyes narrowed. “Alex, you didn’t. You finished with an okay. How lame.”

  Alex reddened. “I was eight. The main thing was that I appreciated the genius of Metallica at a young age, not the corny diction.”

  Jo made the sign of the horns with both hands. “Alex rules, okay.”

  “Shut up,” Alex said to Jo. He turned back to me. “You could have just been in that treehouse that night and seen it.”

  “There’s a loose board in the back right hand corner and a space underneath. Inside is a red scrunchy and a My Little Pony with no head and a purple tail.” I looked at Jo.

  “Not mine,” she said.

  Alex laughed. “She went through a phase.” He made the sign of the horns on both hands in her direction. “My Little Pony rules, okay.”


  It was Jo’s turn to redden. “Shut up.”

  I smiled at the obvious bond between them. They were dealing with the loss of their parents in different ways, but at least they had each other. “If there’s anything else unique about the treehouse, test me. I got to know the place pretty well. The important thing to realize is that I didn’t just coincidentally turn up that night, I had been living on the grounds for a while.”

  “What about getting a job in Transkey immediately after?” Alex asked. “Another coincidence?”

  “I interviewed before the fire.” The interview hadn’t gone well. Findley had seemed to hate me then and I had been extremely surprised to receive an offer. Of course I had since learned that Duffy was the reason for that. “How did you know where I worked?” I asked.

  “It was listed on the police report,” Alex said.

  “How did y—?” I glanced across at Jo and got a confirmation in her expression that it was her doing. I had new respect for her skills. Perhaps she was on the government radar. I could hack into Gorlam’s system at will, but I had never managed to get into the Lusteer police system. “What else did the police report say?”

  “It mentioned you as a witness, but it didn’t mention anything about you staying in the treehouse,” Jo said. “It gave Transkey as your place of employment but didn’t list an address.”

  “A young vagabond with a record of multiple petty crimes happening to turn up that night made you the obvious suspect,” Alex said. “The Transkey records showing you were employed only days later indicated you were being rewarded.”

  “It does seem suspicious,” I admitted, thinking I would have come to the same conclusion as Alex. “I told Connor Duffy, the policeman who interviewed me, about living in the treehouse. Surprising it’s not in the police report. Anything else of interest in it?”

  “Not much,” Alex said. “The fire department said that the fire had spread quicker than any other fire they’d seen, but couldn’t determine what started it. Despite that, seems like the police are going to just dismiss it as an accident. Not that I’m surprised. This is Lusteer, cover up city.”

  I couldn’t argue with that. Corruption ran the city.

  “Even if you weren’t there, you were a witness,” Alex continued. “You must have seen something.”

  “I’m afraid not. When I woke up, the house was ablaze, and police and firemen were swarming.” I actually couldn’t recall waking up. I had gone to sleep the night before, and the next thing I remembered was being interviewed by Duffy with the Collier Mansion burning in the background. But having gotten Alex to believe I wasn’t involved, I wasn’t going to share that little tidbit. A memory floated to the surface of my mind: an old man with stringy gray hair in a tan overcoat. Where had that come from?

  “If you don’t know anything, I guess we are back to the drawing board.” Alex walked to the hole in the wall made by the bat and started to twist off small pieces of plaster.

  It had to be hard to investigate a parent’s death, continually churning through the raw emotions. I glanced across at where Jo was gazing into her lap.

  “You’ll get in trouble for that?” I nodded at the hole Alex had created.

  He grunted. “Hopefully they’ll kick us out.”

  “They’re not allowed to kick you out.” I had done enough to get kicked out many times over when I’d stayed in Gorlam’s. They had solitary and psych-eval for those who didn’t toe the line, both horrible. They broke your spirit one way or another. I was lucky to have escaped when I did.

  “Listen, I wasn’t involved, but I was there. Maybe I can help you find out more.” What was I saying? I had accidentally gotten caught up in whatever happened that night and had come here to extricate myself, not further my involvement.

  Jo looked up. “You would do that?”

  “We don’t need your help,” Alex said. “We’ll find out whoever was behind this ourselves.”

  “It’s harder to find out things when behind the walls of Gorlam’s.”

  Alex’s gaze shifted away.

  “Don’t try to escape,” I said. His sudden jerk told me I guessed right about his intentions. “They’ll just bring you back.” I had been recaptured many times before I figured out how to escape permanently. “You’ll just get sent to solitary.” Right now they had each other to lean on—I didn’t want to see them lose that.

  Alex grunted.

  The blasted idiot was going to make things worse. “Give me some time to try and find out something before you do anything stupid.”

  Instead of replying, he just walked out the door.

  I considered everything I had read about the case, trying to figure out an angle I could investigate. If the fire had been started deliberately then there had to be a motive. I remembered from newspaper reports that Jo and Alex’s father was a journalist. “What about you, do you trust me to help you?” I asked Jo.

  “Alex wouldn’t want me to.”

  “Alex is rather hot headed,” I said. “What would you say if I asked you to help me and keep Alex out of the loop.”

  “I would say no.”

  “Would you be willing to give me a headstart on the information discovered?”

  She considered, then nodded. “I could do that.”

  “Can you hack your parents’ files? Especially your father’s.”

  “He worked from home and his computer was destroyed in the fire.”

  “Did he use Dropbox? Anything like that?” I could try to hack into his personal files myself, hope for weak security. But kids sometimes knew their parents' passwords, plus Jo was already a better hacker than me.

  “I can check it out.”

  “Great. Let me give you my mobile number.”

  “I already know it.”

  “Course you do.” I gave her a grin. “Text me your number.”

  I exited. Outside, I closed the door, then leaned my back against it, my smile fading. What was I getting myself into? What had possessed me to offer to help? It had been a total coincidence that I’d been there that night; I didn’t have to get involved.

  Was it because I felt sorry for what had happened to Alex and Jo? In Gorlam’s, everyone had a sad story, and I’d quickly figured out to avoid attachments as much as possible. Most orphans didn’t even want to be helped, and becoming involved in their lives would only drag me into the morass of other people’s problems. Taking care of only myself was the best way to survive.

  I had come back to the orphanage only to break the very rules that had allowed me to endure the place and ultimately escape it.

  Chapter 5

  Friday 19:10

  The computer monitor shining blue light onto my face was the only light left in the office. Everyone else had gone home, it was just me alone with the internet. I rubbed my eyes, thinking about what I had discovered about the Collier family. I leaned forward to write on the pad in front of me.

  The phone rang, and I jerked, knocking cold coffee across my desk. Blast and double Beezlebub blast. I ran for the small kitchenette, grabbed some napkins and returned to soak up the coffee.

  The phone continued to ring and I stared at it. I wasn’t even sure of my own extension number and had no idea who else would know it. The ringing stopped. Before I had a chance to relax, it started up again.

  This time I picked up the phone. “Yes.”

  “I’m outside.” Duffy’s voice.

  How? Why? What? A swirl of questions rose to my mind and I chose one. “What do you want with me?”

  “I’m outside.” He hung up.

  Was I to be at the beck and call of a gangster slash policeman from now on? It was exactly what I wanted to avoid, but refusing Duffy didn’t seem to be a viable option. Duffy hadn’t bothered waiting for a response, meaning he knew how little choice I had. Bastard.

  I switched off the computer monitor, grabbed my leather jacket off the back of my chair, then exited Transkey, giving the security guard a nod as I passed reception. He didn�
��t even look up from his book.

  A brand new Mercedes, dark red with darkened windows, was parked outside. I pulled open the passenger door and sat inside.

  The Merc was spacious and the front driver seat was pushed way back, but even so, Duffy’s bulk meant that he was hunched over the steering wheel. He started the car and swung out into the traffic. “Don’t keep me waiting in the future.”

  “I didn’t know it was you.”

  Duffy didn’t reply.

  “You going to tell me what’s going on?”

  More silence.

  “Nice wheels,” I said. “Comes to what, four, five times your yearly salary?” In a place as corrupt as Lusteer, people like Duffy didn’t have to bother hiding what they did.

  “That mouth of yours could get you in trouble one day.”

  “It already has. Many a time.”

  Duffy snorted. “You are young. You don’t know what real trouble is. Pray you never do.”

  “I can’t pray since I don’t believe in God.”

  “He doesn’t exist. It’s the other side that does. Unfortunately, the price for help can be high so I don’t recommend praying to them.”

  I snorted a laugh but he didn’t crack a smile. Still, I decided to assume he was joking. Better a crazy sense of humor than plain crazy. We lapsed into silence, and I looked out the window, watching the streetlights flicker past.

  After about twenty minutes, we arrived at our destination, a residential part of Lusteer. Duffy parked the car and nodded to an apartment block across the road. “Third floor. Apartment Number 37. Keycode 4123 will get you through the main door.”

  “And I’ll find what there?”

  He leaned across me and opened the passenger door.

  If I didn’t already know, that made it clear he wasn’t in a chatty mood. I climbed out of the car and shut the door behind me. I hoped he might immediately drive away, but he didn’t.

  The night was clear and the moon was close to full, giving me a good look at the silhouette of the apartment block. It was a squat building, four stories high with small balconies sticking out the sides of it.