The Girl in the City (5 page)

Leah puzzled over the question for a few minutes, then realized it wasn’t important. All that mattered was that her father was in trouble, and it was her fault. She clenched her fists, nails digging into her hands. She wished she’d left the bag and the stupid circuit board behind. Taking it hadn’t helped the man—he’d still died—and now her father had been arrested. He’d probably be tortured or worse. And all because of his stupid little girl.

Leah opened her hands, staring at the red semicircles her nails had left in her palms. She was missing something, some fragment of the puzzle. She replayed the conversation she’d heard in her mind, then frowned as she realized what was bugging her. The Transport officer had said her father was a member of TRACE. That didn’t make sense. TRACE was a terrorist group. They hurt innocent people and then tried to make it look as though Transport were responsible. Her father couldn’t be involved with terrorists. He rescued spiders from the bath and gave them names before he let them go.

Voices drifted to her from the other side of the house. It was the Transport officers ordering people back, telling them to move on. This could be her chance. If Transport were leaving without the board, it might still be in the house somewhere. If Leah could find it, she could trade it for her father.

Leah checked that the kitchen was still empty, then she tiptoed over to the back door. She listened at it for a couple of minutes, trying to hear past the blood pounding in her ears. The house seemed silent, so she slowly turned the handle and cracked open the door. The tiny hallway on other side was empty. Leah slipped inside and gently closed the door behind her, flinching at the metallic clack of the catch snapping into place.

Leah picked her way into the kitchen. She removed the bag of food from across her shoulder and slid it under the table. It was getting in her way, and at least there it would be out of sight if Transport came back. She checked that the bag couldn’t be seen too easily, then made her way out of the kitchen to the front hallway.

Leah could see a shadow outside the front door, just the outline of someone blurred by the frosted glass. The shadow moved, and Leah had to force herself not to panic and run. The shadow moved again, a hand being raised to an ear.

“Yes, sir. I understand,” said a female voice.

Leah froze, watching the door handle, ready to get out of the house if it moved. The shadow dropped its hand again and shifted position, but the door stayed closed. Leah turned and hurried up the stairs and into her father’s bedroom.

The room was a mess. The four drawers from the old wooden dresser that stood in the corner of the room had been pulled out, and the contents scattered across the floor. Even the bases of the drawers were broken, smashed in an effort to find any hidden compartments. The sagging mattress from the bed had been tipped up, propped against the wall and cut open. Clumps of stuffing lay around the room like dandelion puffs.

A frame holding a photograph of Leah’s parents had been smashed and thrown against the wall, leaving a dent in the plaster. It took Leah a while to find the photograph itself. It was lying crumpled up beneath one of the drawers from the dresser. Leah picked it up, straightened it as best she could and slipped it into her pocket. She picked half-heartedly through the clothes and the remnants of the mattress. If the circuit board had been in the bedroom, Transport would have found it.

Choking down her disappointment, she headed back out of the bedroom and looked down the stairs towards the front door. The shadow was still there, so she crept along the landing to her room. She swung the door open and let out a soft cry.

It looked as though a tornado had ripped the place apart. Her furniture had been tipped over, and what few clothes and toys she had were spread across the floor. Anything that could be broken had. The wooden dollhouse her father had made had been smashed into a dozen pieces. Doll-sized furniture lay across the floor, most of it crushed by booted feet.

Leah wiped away a tear and tried to work out where her father might have hidden the board. She hadn’t seen him carrying it when he left the house, so unless he’d come back and got it later, it had to still be here. She replayed the morning’s events. Her father had known the circuit board was important as soon as he’d seen it. He knew what it was or knew what the symbol painted on it meant. He’d taken the board and sent Leah to her room so that he could talk to someone on the telephone. Leah had listened to them talking, and then he’d gone up to the attic and…

Smiling, Leah slipped out of her room.

The door to the attic was hanging off its hinges where the Transport officers had forced it open. She stepped awkwardly over the splintered planks of wood and climbed up the stairs.

Boxes of clothes and photographs and her father’s tools were strewn across the attic. Leah ignored them, picking her way through the debris to the old metal trunk in the corner of the room. Her father had told her it had once belonged to his great-great-grandfather. The lid was open, and the contents, dozens of books and old black-and-white photographs of her father’s family, had been dumped onto the floor and picked through. Most of the books had been torn apart.

But Leah wasn’t interested in the trunk. She grabbed one of its handles and pulled. It was much easier to move than the last time she’d looked inside it. Then it had taken the combined effort of her and her father to heave it into the center of the attic. They’d spent a lazy afternoon sorting through its contents, deciphering the faded writing on the back of the old photographs and inside the covers of the books, piecing together the history of her father’s family. This time she was able to move the trunk without any difficulty. It made a scraping sound as it moved over the wooden floor, the same sound it had made when her father had moved it earlier.

It took Leah a few attempts to find the loose plank. If she’d been a Transport officer more interested in tearing apart people’s property than finding a hidden compartment, she’d have missed it too. But
she
was looking for a hiding place, and when she pressed on the corners of the dusty floorboards, one of them moved. The wood creaked slightly as she levered it free. The hole below was dark and dirty, but there was more than enough room to fit the circuit board, even in its plastic case.

Trying not to think about the spiders and bugs and other creatures that might be lurking beneath the floor, Leah stuck her hand into the hole and felt… nothing. Panicking, she pushed her hand deeper, sweeping it through cobwebs and dust. For a few terrible seconds, she thought she’d been wrong, then her fingers touched the corner of something hard, and her heart leapt. It was almost out of reach, but she stretched in as far as she could and managed to drag it towards her with the tips of her fingers.

The object got stuck as Leah pulled it out of the opening, and she almost dropped it. But then it came free, and she was holding the circuit board up in front of her, relief making her hands shake. She brushed a few cobwebs from its surface and peered at the red and black mark. She still didn’t recognize it.

A voice called from somewhere outside, and Leah remembered where she was. She ran her fingers around the edge of the plastic case. If she could get the circuit board out, it would be easier for her to carry, but there didn’t seem to be a catch or hinges or even a line where the case might open. It was just a solid block of plastic. Chewing her lip, Leah searched through the junk scattered across the attic and found an old cloth bag. It was much bigger than it needed to be, but it would have to do. She slipped the board into the bag and wrapped it up.

The shadow was still standing outside the front door when Leah got back downstairs. Not wanting to risk discovery any longer than she had to, she hurried past and into the kitchen. She started towards the garden but stopped. After a moment’s hesitation, she reached under the kitchen table, and pulled one of the loaves out of the bag she’d left there. She tore off a chunk and crammed it into her mouth. Isaac had been right—it was delicious. It seemed a shame to leave the food behind, but she couldn’t risk taking it with her.

A canteen of water sat next to the sink, and Leah took it and clipped it to her belt. She checked that the garden was clear and then ran outside, through the open gate and into the alley. Clutching the circuit board to her chest, she turned right and walked away from her home as casually as she could.

It was quiet back on the street, just a handful of men and women running errands, but Leah could feel their eyes on her. She was convinced they knew that the bag she was carrying contained something illicit. Her eyes darted left and right as she walked, and she had to force herself not to flinch every time anyone passed too close. She pulled the bag away from her chest and let it swing by her side, trying not to look any more suspicious than she already did. Eager to get rid of the circuit board as quickly as possible, Leah began making her way towards the drainage tunnels.

Leah spotted the woman as she turned into an alley off Coyote Avenue. She was plain and unassuming, average build, brown hair, wearing a beige work suit of a type Leah had seen dozens of times around the city. But it was her face that caught Leah’s attention, or more accurately, the scar on her face. It ran from just above the woman’s right eye, across her forehead, and down over her left eye to her cheek.

The woman was trying to act nonchalant, but when Leah varied her pace, the woman followed suit. Leah took a couple of quick turns and the woman hurried to catch up to her. Leah slowed, considering her options. The woman was probably working for Transport, an undercover officer. Which meant she’d have called for backup, and Leah didn’t have long before more Transport policemen arrived. There was no way Leah could confront the woman. She’d have to lose her somewhere in the city if she could; otherwise her best bet would be the tunnels.

Leah headed to one of the indoor markets that littered the City. The markets were raucous collections of salvage traders, performers, information brokers, and the odd food stall run by the rare entrepreneur who elected to use their food vouchers to buy ingredients they could cook and sell for a profit. Afternoon was peak time for the markets. There’d be plenty of opportunity to lose the woman there. Leah picked one of the smaller side entrances and ducked inside.

The smell hit her immediately, a pungent mix of spices and meat, grease, and sweat. Despite her fear, Leah felt a pang of hunger, and her mouth began to water. The air was filled with the strident cries of dozens of vendors, all intent on proving they could shout the loudest. The narrow passages between the stalls were jammed solid in places, the customers shuffling slowly forward as they craned their necks to see what the vendors were peddling.

Leah pushed her way through a group of people huddled around a young boy performing sleight-of-hand tricks with a grubby deck of cards. She needed to get to the middle of the market. There would be a mealspace there, a wide area filled with tables and chairs where the inhabitants of the City came to eat and talk and make their deals. She might have already lost the woman, but she couldn’t tell among the crowd. The mealspace would give her a clearer view of the people around her, and it would provide more options for escape.

Leah kept checking over her shoulder as she wove through the throngs, but she didn’t see the woman. Not knowing where her pursuer was made her nervous.

When she finally found the mealspace, it was bigger than she’d expected. The air was filled with the chatter of dozens of men and women huddled around the tables or leaning against the posts holding up the sagging roof of the market. Leah made her way to the center of the space and began searching for the woman with the scar.

Leah had almost convinced herself she’d lost the woman when she spotted her entering the mealspace. The woman scanned the crowd, looking left and right. Now that she knew where the woman was, Leah could pick the best route to get away. She turned and hurried towards the aisle on her right. It was close enough that she could get out of sight quickly but still far enough away from the woman to give Leah time to escape if she was seen. She’d almost reached the aisle when iron fingers gripped her shoulder.

Leah yelped and turned to face the man who’d grabbed her. As soon as she saw him, she relaxed. His name was Marc Derricks, a loud, permanently effervescent man that Leah’s dad knew well.

“Well hello there, Leah! How are you? I haven’t seen you for weeks. Or your dad. The last time I saw him was when he brought me that old bicycle. That cleaned up real good, that did. I made a tidy profit, let me tell you. Your dad got a fair price, though. Don’t you worry about that. You seem in a bit of a hurry, Leah. Off to meet some friends, I expect.”

Without pausing to breathe, he waved a hand towards the bag holding the circuit board. “What’s that you’re carrying? Something interesting? Something your dad might want to trade with old Marc? ’Coz if it is, maybe we can make the trade now. I’ve got a new book I really think your dad is going to like. You know you can trust me to give you a good deal, and you can’t say that about everyone. There’s people out there that’ll rip you off, Leah, let me tell you.”