Hit List (19 page)

He was nowhere to be seen.

Ash looked at the laptop bag with the Benji inside it, thinking of the built-in tranquillizer gun. But she didn’t expect to have a chance to use it – too much assembly required, and
they were being watched too closely.

They had left the bank vault at gunpoint, the alarms curiously silent, the cameras somehow disabled. The Ghost stayed several steps behind them at all times, his footfalls almost silent. Half
the time, Ash wasn’t even sure he was there.

He directed them to a car under a dead street light, where he sprayed Benjamin with something out of an aerosol can. Then he unlocked the boot remotely and told them to climb in. They obeyed. He
told them to shut the lid, and they did that too. Ash wondered if he’d forgotten about the release button that was installed inside nearly all modern car boots on the inside. The sound of
duct tape being peeled off a roll and slapped on the seam, strip after strip, told her he hadn’t.

The ride was long and bumpy. Her phone said
no signal
, the reception muffled by the metal. She couldn’t tell where they were going, and she couldn’t call Buckland for help.
The air inside the boot was cold and stank of carpet cleaner, telling Ash that the car was either new or a rental, since it made sense for the Ghost to clean it after abducting them rather than
before.

She pictured him vacuuming, scrubbing, removing every trace they had ever existed – and she wondered where they would be by then.

He had been so careful. Now, in the plane, Ash doubted she’d have the opportunity to shoot him with the Benji. But she wasn’t going to waste it if it came.

She picked up the bag and put it by the door.

“Three minutes, forty-six seconds,” the Ghost said.

Ash picked up a small cylinder with a button on the end.

“What’s that?”

“The trigger,” she said.

“Give it to me.”

She handed it over. He slipped it into his pocket.

The thought of doing a job with someone other than Benjamin as her tech support was, for Ash, the scariest part of this whole disaster. She took some clothes out of the overhead locker and moved
towards the bathroom.

The Ghost said, “Stay in sight.”

“I’m going to change,” Ash said.

“Do it here.”

“No.”

He stared at her for a long moment. Ash doubted he had any compunction about causing her embarrassment. But he probably didn’t want to make her or Benjamin mad. Fearful, yes. Angry, no.
Fear would make them obedient. Anger would make them unpredictable.

He pointed the gun at Benjamin’s face. “Throw me the clothes,” he told Ash.

She did. He caught them one-handed, squeezed them, crushed them into strange shapes, and threw them back.

“Okay,” he said. “You have three minutes and ten seconds.”

Ash went into the bathroom and shut the door. She whipped out her phone.

Please, she thought. Come on.

Two bars of reception. Enough.

She typed:
b and i captured by ghost. headed 2 google now. being watched closely, dont call. plz help
.

She hit
send
. Then she stripped off her clothes as quickly as she could, pulled on the fresh ones, and opened the bathroom door—

—to reveal the Ghost looming in the doorway.

“Give me the phone,” he said.

“What phone?”

He punched her in the throat. She gagged, eyes bugging out as she staggered back into the cubicle.

“Give it to me,” he said.

Wheezing, Ash took it out of her pocket and held it out. He took it and it vanished in his hand.

“What did you tell him?”

There was no point lying. He would probably check the
sent
folder. “That we’ve been captured, we’re going to the Googleplex, and we need his help.”

The Ghost smiled, showing the perfect teeth that had entranced Ash only a day ago. “Good,” he said.

Good? Ash felt her stomach drop. She’d led Buckland into a trap!

“He won’t come,” she lied.

“Not for you,” he said. “But he will for Alice. He’ll want to beat me there.”

Benjamin and Ash looked at one another. Benjamin looked as confused as Ash felt.

“Revenge for stealing his emerald?” Benjamin asked.

“Payback for payback? No. Simple greed. He doesn’t know how to switch it off.”

Payback for payback, Ash thought. “What was the emerald payback for?”

The Ghost walked over to the door. “You haven’t figured that out yet?”

Unease scuttled through Ash’s brain. “Figured what out?”

“You never wondered who had the hit list before you? You thought you were Buckland’s first teenage puppets?”

No way, Ash thought.

Benjamin’s eyes were wide. “You worked for Buckland?”

“Until he stabbed me in the back,” the Ghost said. “I’ve been waiting a long time to give him what he deserves. Why do you think I came to your school?”

The earth’s rotation seemed to have tripled in speed. Ash thought of her conversation with Benjamin back home.
It’s not like he tells us everything. We should be careful. We
can’t just assume Buckland is infallible
.

She thought of the way the Ghost had sprayed Benjamin with something, but not her.

“You planted something on me,” she said. “That night. That’s why you came to the dance. That’s how you knew we were coming to California.”

“Time’s up,” the Ghost said. “Let’s go.”

The Googleplex was silent. Still. Dark. It would be aphotic, Ash thought, if it weren’t for that one halogen lamp.

The replica
T. rex
skeleton loomed out of the shadows, less comical at night. Teeth as big as waffle cones protruded from its jaw, ready to tear the flesh off the nearest
Leptoceratops.

Ash lay on the grass, shivering. She couldn’t go any closer to the buildings – three more steps and she’d be within range of the cameras.

She looked at her watch. Two minutes to go. I hope Benjamin’s okay, she thought.

It had been physically painful to leave him with the Ghost. For all she knew, the Ghost had only pretended to be interested in Alice so he could get rid of Ash and take Benjamin to the
buyer.

But if she’d refused to go, he would have killed her. She was certain of it.

Enough worrying. She plugged her headphones into the phone the Ghost had given her and dialled her own number.

The Ghost answered. “Yes?”

“I’m in position,” Ash said. “Are you ready?”

“Yes.”

“Let me talk to Benjamin.”

There was a pause.
Ask yourself this. How far can you push me?

Just a little further, she hoped.

“Ash?” It was Benjamin.

“Can he hear us?”

“No, just me.”

“Good. Are you okay?”

“I’m all right. Are you?”

“Yeah,” Ash said. “But I wanted to ask you something. How would you feel about retiring, after tonight?”

“You serious?”

“Very.”

There was a pause. “It’s been fun,” he said. “But there must be safer ways to have a good time.”

“That’s what I’ve been thinking.”

“You wouldn’t miss it?”

“I think I would,” Ash said. “And I still have a lot to make up for. But it’s not worth dying over.”

“No.”

“And when we get home, I’m taking you out to dinner.”

“Like...”

“Like a date,” she finished. “If you still want to.”

“You’re just on the rebound,” Benjamin said, “because the last guy turned out to be a jerk.”

Ash wondered if the Ghost realized Benjamin was referring to him. “That was a shock,” she admitted. “But I just want to do something normal. Be bored. Hang out, like when we
were kids.”

“You’re saying it would be boring?”

“Your social plans are fascinating,” the Ghost interrupted. His voice was low, distant. “But I don’t have all night.”

Ash frowned. “You said he couldn’t hear us.”

“He can’t! I...how did you do that?”

The Ghost said, “If this takes much longer, I might change my mind about letting you live.”

Ash rose into a sprinter’s crouch. “Then hit the trigger already.”

Thud
. The halogen light clicked off. The phone died. All the active electronic devices in Mountain View went down in a fizz of malfunctioning circuitry. And every Google® search in
the western United States came back with a 404 error.

The EMP generator Ash planted in the toilet cistern had done its job. There was no time to waste. She ran.

Her feet pounded across the grass, hard and fast. With all the lights out, she was sprinting through absolute blackness. It was hard to suppress the fear that she might be running towards a
wall, even though she’d been staring at this empty courtyard for the last half-hour.

She had twenty seconds before the power came back on. As she ran, she pulled a weighted glow stick out of her pocket, bent it to start the chemical reaction, and threw it like a tiny
javelin.

It tumbled to the ground up ahead, falling five or six metres short of the corner of Building 42, which loomed out of the darkness like the bow of an approaching ship.

Thirteen seconds. Ash held up the Benji, pressed the stock against her shoulder, pointed the muzzle slightly above the roof of Building 42, and pulled the trigger.

Wham!
The recoil spun her around, nearly knocking her off her feet. The grappling hook sailed through the air, trailing the cable behind it, and clanked against the roof. Ash pulled the
second trigger, and heard the
splink
as curved spikes popped out the sides of the hook. The motor in the Benji whirred as it reeled the cable back in.

Eight seconds until the lights and camera were back on. Ash held on tight, but there was still slack in the cable. Come on, she thought. Come on!

The grappling hook caught the edge of the roof, and Ash lurched forwards as the cable went taut, dragging her towards the wall. Her toes scraped along the grass as she fought to get her feet
flat. Soon she was sliding on her heels like a water skier. When she was close enough, she jumped.

The wall rushed up to meet her and she hit it feet first. The cable was still retracting, and she had to run to keep from falling over. She sprinted up the wall in swift leaps, and then suddenly
she was over the top.

She almost fell – the hook slammed back into the muzzle of the launcher, knocking her backwards, but she regained her balance on the edge of the roof. She stepped away from the drop as
quickly as she could.

Her phone vibrated in her pocket as it rebooted. The halogen light clicked back on down below. The toilet water had short-circuited the EMP, right on time. She peered over the edge, and saw that
the cameras had started moving again, but that her glow stick was all but invisible in the glare.

She had made it. She was in.

Benjamin and the Ghost would be in the sewer tunnels beneath the campus by now. She had to get down to the basement and let them inside.

There was a doorway on the other side of the roof, hopefully leading to a stairwell just like the one in Building 41. She ran over and tried the door. Locked. She pressed her palm against it,
feeling for warmth – if there was an active alarm system, the circuitry would produce heat.

There was a warm patch, just under the handle. She shone the Benji’s inbuilt torch into the seam, and saw the sensor – a thin square of metal, connected to the door frame by a red
wire.

Ash selected laser mode, removed the tinted shield, and pulled the trigger.

A bright blue dot appeared on the door, quivering. Ash could already smell burning paint. She took aim at the wire, and watched the plastic coating bubble in the heat. Soon the copper was
exposed. It glowed red for a moment, hissing, and then it cracked.

Ash switched off the laser and replaced the shield. The alarm should be disabled, theoretically.

She levelled the Benji at the upper hinge, selected grappling hook mode, and pulled the trigger.

The hook hit the door with a metallic thud, and the broken hinge jingled to the ground. Ash repeated the action on the lower hinge, then grabbed the door and pulled. She stepped aside as it fell
open, revealing a black hole.

Stairs materialized in the gloom as she clicked the torch back on. Her steps were agonizingly loud in the silence as she crept down on the balls of her feet.

There’s nobody here, she told herself. The only security guards are in an office outside the gate.

The stairs ended at a corridor lined with offices. The glow of the torch bounced unsettlingly off the glass walls.

Basement, Ash thought. Got to find the basement.

She caught sight of another flight of stairs up ahead. She slipped towards them, descended, and found herself on the ground floor.

There was a sign pointing to the bathrooms. She followed it, figuring that the basement would have the plumbing in it, and would therefore be under the bathrooms, or pretty close.

Crack.

Ash’s eyes widened. What was that?

She crouched, switching off the torch, and stayed as still as she could. She listened, but all she could hear was her heartbeat.

The sound had probably been some metal component of the building, swollen in the sun, shrinking as it cooled. Nothing to worry—

Footsteps.

She wasn’t alone.

Ash stayed frozen. Until she could work out which direction the person was coming from, it wasn’t safe to move. She could walk right into their line of sight.

Voices. There was more than one person.

So why are they here? Ash wondered. Are they Google® security, hunting me? Or are they other rescuers, searching for Alice?

Whatever they’re paying you for this, Alice must be worth more. Way more.

Anyone searching for Alice wasn’t necessarily a rescuer, she realized.

She saw a shadow moving, back the way she had come. That gave her the opportunity to run, but would she make it around the corner in time? And would they hear her?

Ash bit her lip. Move, or stay?

Too late. She could see their silhouettes now. They were facing her – if she moved, they would see.

“Do we abort?” one of them was saying.