Authors: Gabrielle Lord
March (10 page)
The ringing of my phone made me jump. I grabbed it and saw that it was a call from a private number.
I picked it up, and waited to hear who it was.
‘Cal?’
‘Jennifer?’ I asked, tentatively.
‘Yes, it’s me, Cal.’
‘I’ve been hoping so bad that you’d call again!’ I rushed the words out so fast that it must have sounded like one indecipherable moan—I couldn’t help myself, I’d been waiting, hoping, to speak to her again ever since I missed the meeting with her at the sundial.
‘I
was
there at the zoo,’ I began explaining. ‘I tried so hard to make it, and I really was almost there but … then I ran into some trouble.’
‘It’s OK,’ she said. ‘I know all about that now. Forget it. Let’s just hope that the third time is
lucky. Cal, can we meet up tomorrow night, after I’ve finished work? There’ll be no-one around to give you trouble. Just you and me.’
I didn’t quite like the sound of that. It was one thing to meet someone in broad daylight, in a public place, but it was quite another thing to meet someone all alone at night in a strange place. I’d learned that lesson from our first failed meeting, when Oriana and her thugs grabbed me.
‘I’m guessing you’re not talking about the zoo then. Where do you work now?’ I asked, cautiously. ‘At another hospital?’
‘No, I haven’t nursed for some time now. I’ve been working in laboratories. Right now I work at the government labs just out of town. Do you know the Labtech Complex? Big white building. There’s a bus that leaves from Liberty Square. You get off at Long Reef, and it’s only a short walk down from there.’
‘I can figure it out,’ I said.
‘I’m happy to work back and wait around for you. How about you come around 8:30–9 pm? You’ll have to hang around till everyone’s gone, but the carpark should be empty by then. And then it’ll be safe for you.’
I was liking this less and less. I didn’t like that this meeting was on her terms, and on her
turf, again. But did I have a choice? Was it really going to be
safe for me
?
‘You’ll need to press the after-hours buzzer,’ Jennifer added, ‘and I’ll let you in. You’ll find the red button just to the right of the front entrance doors.’
I thought about it for a moment.
‘Cal? Are you there?’ she asked.
‘OK. I’ll see you then,’ I said and hung up, hoping I wasn’t going to walk right into a trap.
The bus shelter was littered with bits of green ribbon from yesterday’s St Patrick’s Day festivities. I cleared a space to sit down and turned my back on the poster of my face that had been freshly stuck up on the wall. I didn’t think it looked anything like me anymore, with my new black look, but it was best to keep my head down, just in case. I was also puzzled by the phone number underneath my picture: it didn’t seem to be the usual anti-crime number and I wondered if Oriana de la Force or Vulkan Sligo were running their own publicity campaign to find me.
A middle-aged guy in jeans and a striped T-shirt was the only other person waiting in the shelter. I didn’t like the way he kept looking at
me and I was relieved when my bus arrived. As we pulled out, I glanced back at him, still sitting on the bench, talking on his mobile. I turned away and put him, with so many other paranoid thoughts, to the back of my mind.
It was pretty dark by the time I got off at the Long Reef stop and walked the few hundred metres or so towards the cluster of buildings I could see down the road. Even though the streetlights were very dim, the large, white building I was looking for stood out clearly.
The Labtech government laboratories were set in bushland at the end of a long winding road where I was met with a boom gate. I ducked beneath it and ran for cover in some bushes that lined the driveway on the other side.
I made my way up towards the reception entrance, noticing that the vast parking lot to the left of the building was, as Jennifer had predicted, empty. I was a little early, so I sat
under the leafy cover for a while and kept watch.
Nothing had moved in the last twenty minutes. I felt pretty sure that the grounds were deserted … aside from one particular person, waiting inside for her meeting with a teen fugitive.
I was so anxious to meet her and find out what she had for me.
I ran up to the entrance doors and pressed the red after-hours buzzer on my right. Shortly after, there was a buzzing sound and the lock was released. I pressed the heavy door open.
‘Turn left after the reception desk, ’ Jennifer’s voice advised me through the intercom, ‘and follow the corridor all the way to the end. I’ll be waiting there for you.’
I followed Jennifer’s directions, past a number of doorways and offices, until I found her waiting by a window in a small central area, the hub from which a number of narrow corridors led off in different directions. I approached with caution.
She wore a white lab coat that looked big
and bulky on her small figure, and a pale-blue paper cap covered her light brown hair that was tied in the back in a small ponytail. She came towards me with a warm smile and a look of relief. I held my hand out to shake hers, but she ignored it and came right in for a hug.
I was completely taken by surprise by her affection, and for a moment I felt like I was reuniting with family. I was also surprised by how unafraid she was of me.
I felt a surge of relief—at last we’d met. She stepped back, and seemed to examine me. She had gentle eyes and pale skin, and she smelled of peppermint.
‘Want one?’ she asked, pulling a small tin of mints out from a fold in her lab coat.
‘Thanks,’ I said taking one.
‘The stink of the solvents gets a bit much for me sometimes,’ she said, smiling.
Immediately, I liked her. I felt I could trust her.
‘You’re so much like Tom,’ she said, leading me down one of the corridors. ‘I nursed Tom up until, you know, we lost him.’
I felt comforted hearing her say my dad’s name.
We turned off the corridor into a small laboratory and Jennifer hastily closed the door
behind us. ‘He was a very special patient to all of the people who nursed him,’ she said, ‘especially me. We all wanted him to recover. But he steadily got worse. Cal, he wasn’t crazy. He just lost his connectors. Everything got mixed up in his mind. He worked so hard on those drawings for you. Tell me, do you have them?’
‘Yes,’ I said, hoping I was wise to trust her. Thinking about Dad made me so sad, but it was good to be talking to someone else who had valued him. It made me feel more determined than ever that I was going to solve the mystery he’d left me. ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I haven’t had anyone around to talk to about Dad for a while … You must know the amount of trouble I’m in?’
‘Of course I do.’
‘And you’re not scared of me?’
‘No,’ she said like it didn’t need explaining.
I slowly followed her around the laboratory, checking it out. ‘What sort of work do you do here?’ I asked, intrigued by all the
strange-looking
lab equipment.
‘We make vaccines in one section, but this area is for antivenom production. You might notice a lot of information about reptiles around the place; we keep a lot of snakes here, very venomous ones. We milk the snakes then
process their venom into the antidotes to their own toxins.’
Great, I thought, now noticing all the
snake-related
posters and charts crowding the walls. Just what I need … more dangerous animals.
As we walked along together, she pointed out a closed door a little further along the corridor. ‘This is where we keep our stores of antivenom.’
She opened the door and I looked through. A row of small fridges ran along one side of the room. After she switched the light on, I saw that each fridge was labelled with the name of a deadly snake: brown snake, krait, desert viper, death adder and coral snake.
She closed the door again.
‘So you said you have your father’s drawings?’ she asked.
I was immediately suspicious again. Why did she want to know that?
‘The drawings are safe,’ I said, knowing they were right there behind me, in their folder in the lining of my backpack.
‘Tom was very concerned about those drawings. He wanted you to have them. The doctors would happily have sent them to your mother or your uncle, but I knew it was you he wanted them sent to, so I made sure that happened.’
‘Thanks,’ I said.
‘I have something else for you that your father wanted to give you … but, Cal,’ she paused and took my hand, ‘I’m afraid I haven’t got it here for you tonight.’