City of Saints & Thieves(9)

As we stand there, I realize Michael’s looking me up and down the same way I’m checking him out. He’s taking in my face, my tattoos. I scowl and feel some of my confidence come back with his blush.

“I’m going to sit down,” I say.

Without waiting for an answer, I lower myself into one of the leather chairs. I watch him, but I don’t think he notices me kick my phone under the chair as I sit. I wonder if the Goondas can hear me through the earpiece. Is Boyboy still able to transfer data? How long before they have to move the van? The neighborhood security drive-by happens every hour. We must be getting close. They’ll have to leave me, circle around, and come back.

“How did you even get in here?” Michael steps behind his father’s desk, keeping the gun trained on my chest. He looks from the computer to me, then back, his eyes wide.

I hold my breath. Hopefully the screen doesn’t show what I’ve been up to.

“Are you crazy?” he asks. “You’ve been on Dad’s laptop? Do you know what he does to people who mess with his things?”

And in that wide-eyed moment, I see him, the friend I once knew. He is still the same little boy, terrified and in awe of his father, tiptoeing past his office door, watching him leave for work with a look like a dog pining after his master. That look makes me want to hit him again, and suddenly I can’t stop the wash of memories that rear up and crash over me: We are seven, and Michael and I are screaming with laughter as we cannonball into the neon-blue pool. We’re nine, making shadow puppets on the kitchen wall during a blackout. We are ten, making a fort in the mango tree in the backyard, discovering a nest of baby bulbuls in the process, getting chased by the mother, who flapped and pecked at our heads.

One memory after another, like they’ve been pent up in a cage in the back of my mind, and someone’s opened the door. I was the chosen one, Michael’s best friend. I knew all his secrets and fears. I was allowed free rein whenever I was with him, and shooed back to my mother’s quarters when I was not.

And then all the images grind to a stop.

I’m eleven, and Michael is nowhere around. It’s just me and my mother, her eyes open and staring past me, blood painted in a delicate line from the corner of her mouth to her chin. Her braids fall over the hole in her chest. By the time I saw her, her life had already poured out onto the expensive furniture in this very room.

All the anger and pain and hurt comes surging back, hot and red. For a moment it blinds me.

He must know why I’m here, why I don’t care how angry his dad would be, or whether I get hurt in the process. He must. I press my hands into trembling fists and stare at them.

Michael is waiting. “So? What were you doing on his laptop?”

“Nothing.”

He pulls the USB adapter out of the computer and shakes it at me. “What is this? Were you copying files?”

When I stay silent, he comes around from the desk, and then he’s right up on me, hauling me to my feet and pawing over my body, searching while he keeps the gun at my temple. He is rough, and I feel flimsy under his hands, but I don’t want to give him the satisfaction of seeing my fear. Instead I clench my teeth and stare past him until he finds my knife and then the earpiece. He pockets them both.

“You enjoy that? Groping me?”

For a few long seconds we don’t move, just stand there, hackles up, ready to rip into each other, waiting for an opening.

“So now what?” I say finally. “Are you going to turn me in?”

The question jolts him. “Shonde,” he curses.

“What?” I ask.

He tears his gaze from me to glance at the office door. “Security will be here any second. I hit the alarm.”

I can’t help it; my knees go weak and my throat dries up. I have to swallow to speak. “They’ll kill me, you know.”

“I know.” He hurries to the office door. The gun stays pointed at me while he checks the peephole. I use the moment of distraction to crouch and retrieve my phone from under the chair. I slip it up my sleeve.

“Let’s go,” he says. When he turns, his expression has hardened into something unreadable. He grabs my arm and pushes me toward the still-open bookcase door. I resist, but then I hear something. A thumping. It’s growing louder and louder: boots. Not at the door yet, but coming at us fast. Lots of them.

He gestures at the tunnel with the gun. “It’s me or them; which do you want?”

I eye the dark opening in the wall, and for a second I feel like I’m looking into my grave. The footsteps halt outside the office. The doorknob rattles. This will not take long.

“I don’t know,” I say, but I plunge into the tunnel. Michael closes the bookcase behind us as I hear the first boot slam against the office door.





SIX


I can’t believe I’m doing this,” Michael says.

I don’t answer. I can’t believe I’m doing this either, following him into a dark wherever. I start to shuffle forward, but he grabs my arm. “Wait. There are stairs.”

There’s a click of a switch, and a fluorescent bulb above our heads stutters to life, like the start of a horror movie. It illuminates steps that recede steeply into the earth. The concrete walls of the tunnel are rough, with rusty water stains dripping from the ceiling like dried blood. I watch Michael press buttons on a small screen on the wall. When it turns on, we see a video feed of guards bursting through Mr. G’s office door, swarming until they fill the room, guns bristling.