Old Hate - Chapter One

Old Hate

Chapter One

by David Pidgeon

Sarah watched as the stranger entered the saloon. He came to the bar, bought his usual bottle of whiskey and took it and a glass over to his usual seat in the corner. He was a tall man, and lean but he tried to hide that under the thick coat that he wore despite the sweltering heat. He sat in the corner and, as the day wasted itself away, slowly but steadily depleted his supply of liquor. He watched everything, she saw from behind the bar, with a fierce intensity. He studied the face of each person that entered. He was looking for someone. It wasn't for the ambience or the watered down whiskey that he'd been coming here for over two weeks. He was hunting someone and he wouldn't leave until he had found them.

She busied herself with cleaning up, hoping to avoid the ire of Emmett again. Her face was still sore from the last time he'd been unhappy with her work. She tried to make herself busy enough to forget the man in the corner.

She almost had, when he spoke.

“Are you Harmon Merriweather?” he asked, in a low and quiet voice.

She looked up and saw that there was a man standing at the bar, looking at her. He wore an extremely faded grey coat, the kind Sarah knew from the war, and a military style cap. His eyes glittered as he heard the man speak and a grimace came across his face. He turned, slowly and spent a good long moment studying the man in the corner.

“I reckon I am” he said, a drawl to his voice.

“I'm Jonah Walsh and you killed my father”

Sarah sensed, not saw, the man's surprise and saw the movement as his hand reached for the gun at his belt. He had barely touched it when a gunshot rang out, deafening Sarah and leaving a loud ringing in her ears for quite some time after. Harmon Merriweather staggered backwards one step and fell heavily against the bar before falling to the ground with a thud. Her eyes flitted to the man in the corner who remained seated but now his right hand held a smoking pistol. He kept it trained on the downed figure until he was certain there was no remaining threat and then neatly holstered it again in one simple but elegant movement.

He reached across, picked up his bottle of whiskey and stood with a slight stagger to his step. He tipped his hat to Sarah, spared a glare at the body on the floor and walked out.

The decision was instantaneous and unplanned, even to her. She threw her cleaning rag down and rushed around the bar to the body of Harmon Merriweather. She pried the pistol from his rapidly cooling hand and rushed outside, hot on the heels of Jonah Walsh.

She spotted him sauntering down the side-walk as if nothing had happened. She called his name and he turned, as she closed the distance between the two.

"My name is Sarah and I want you to take me with you, please"

His eyes gazed deeply into hers and there was only a moment's hesitation. He nodded and gestured for her to follow him. She followed closely.

They rode out of town, the two of them on his roan stallion and they made camp in the ruins of an old house as the sun began to sink beyond the horizon and night crept in.

They sat in silence for a long time before he spoke.

"The man you work for, he hit you?"

"Yes. Often and hard. He wasn't happy with me working there, but he couldn't find anyone else and I had nowhere else to go so I dealt with it"

He nodded.

"How long since... your father?" she asked

He stared into the fire.

"Before I was born. He was trying to flee with my mother and they came for him and killed him. He gave up his life in order that she and I, although he did not know of me at the time, would live."

"What of your mother, where is she?"

"She passed"

"I'm sorry"

"You needn't be, it was some time ago. A few years now. Now it's just me and the horse"

She nodded and they both sat in silence again for a while.

"Who are they, the men who killed your father?"

"They were soldiers. Well, they called themselves soldiers but they were just murderers. Border ruffians outta Kansas, trouble-makers who didn't really care for following orders. My father was an officer in the Union who made trouble for them and they didn't take too kindly to it. They hunted him across a few states and eventually pinned him down when he was with ma"

"What are you going to do now?"

"There's still a slew of 'em out there for me to kill. Jameson and his whole bunch of bastards. Still at least five, by my count. Merriweather wasn't the worst of them by any account, but he was the easiest to find. I've got a trail on Kent, one of them, and I intend to follow it west come sun-up tomorrow"

She nodded

"You don't have to stay with me, if'n you don't want to. I can drop you somewhere safe, I can give you some money"

She nodded again, but he knew then that she wouldn't allow herself to be dropped off anywhere at all.

They settled down to sleep and the stars wheeled overhead, mute and ever-present witnesses to their dreams, their rotation through the heavens heralding the coming of the sun for one more day and a day that would see the continuation of Jonah Walsh's campaign of revenge.

Art of Theft - Chapter Three

Art of Theft

Chapter Three

by Murray K.

Step.

I love open plan living. It's makes it easy to navigate in the dark
when your only source of light is a red glow-stick bracelet. The
floors are wonderfully bereft of tripping hazards and there are nice
wide spaces between all the furniture. At the speed I'm moving,
detouring around a couch would add another ten minutes to this
business.

And step.

After sitting at the bottom of the pool for 6 hours, getting into the
apartment was a relative breeze. Getting down from the roof was
pretty easily achieved, even in the wetsuit. The only reason I
bothered with a rope was to make getting back up easier.

And step.

As for why I went down to the balcony, one word: Deadlocks. The
front door and the door down from the roof both had them, but the
balcony door didn't. I've played around with picking locks a bit but
I'm no expert. A good deadlock with some trap pins could take me a
lot of time. But a few seconds with a pick gun on the balcony lock
and I was in. That was the easy part.

And step.

When I was a kid I was into birdwatching for a while. I always liked
animals, but one of the challenges with birds was how close I could
get to them. Now, you can't really sneak up on a squirrel, the moment
he notices you move towards him, he's onto you. But birds don't seem
to differentiate much between people and trees. As long as they don't
see you moving when they’re looking at you, they don't care that
you're suddenly a foot closer than you were. So the key was to move
at a snails pace, slowly lift a foot, inch it forward and put it back
down again. Shift weight onto the forward foot...

And step.

And that is pretty much what I'm doing right now. In the corners of
all the rooms and the hallways, the Welshes have security sensors
which I discreetly checked out at the party. The sensors are
infra-red motion detectors, so they detect anything that's a different
temperature to ambient and moving. Basically, I'm treating them like
a flock of birds. I figure if I don't move too quickly, they won't
get startled.

And step.

I’m hoping the wetsuit helps as well, the sensors should really only
see my face and hands, but it’s best not to take any chances. One of
the hardest things is not knocking the plastic bag I’ve got hanging
from my left hand. The plastic shouldn’t set off the sensors, but as
I say, no chances. Each of the sensors has a small red light at the
top of it, and if just one of those goes off, I’m toast.

And step.

It’s slow progress, and it’s taken twenty minutes to get through the
living room, down the hall to the bedroom. Thankfully the Welshes
leave their doors open when they go on holidays. The moment I get
inside the bedroom I shuffle to the right so I’m no longer visible
from the hallway, and then I raise my right arm very slowly and turn
on my laser pointer. It takes a few moments to adjust my wrist but
then I have it pointed directly at the IR sensor.

And relax.

While ever the laser pointer hits the sensor, it’s basically snow
blind. The transition doesn’t set off the sensor, and then it can’t
see a thing. There’s only one sensor in the room so as long as I stay
out of the view of the hallway sensors I can actually move for a bit.
Vigorous stretching is still a bit difficult to do while keeping the
laser pointer focused, but I feel a lot less tense as I walk over to
the Matisse. I have to lower the bag I’m holding to the floor first,
but then I gently ease the Matisse up off the hook and...

I’ve got it!

The laser pointer trembles a little as I struggle to keep it focused
on the motion sensor. Very, very gently I lower it down to the carpet
and reach into the plastic bag. Out comes a square the same size and
shape as the Matisse. The faint light of the glow stick makes it hard
to tell but the frame looks like a perfect replica. Lord knows I
studied the real one for long enough at the party. Inside that frame
is a canvas printed copy of the Matisse, carefully touched up with
varnish to match the brushstrokes. Talk to anyone at Sotherby’s or
Christie’s and they’ll have a dozen stories that all come down to the
same thing, a tale of someone bringing in a painting that they thought
was a minor masterpiece, only to find that it’s a print covered in
varnish. A couple of coats and a hairdryer to crack the surface and
it looks just like oil paint. It’s an old trick, but it works. I
figure, as I carefully place the replica on the wall, the easiest way
to get away with a crime is if no-one knows it’s been committed.

It is tortuous creeping back to the balcony when all I want to do is
jump and run and whoop. As soon as I’m out I relock the door and
climb back onto the roof. Then it’s time for a quick change, back
into jeans and a fresh designer shirt from the toolbox. Also from the
toolbox, a Louis Vuitton roll bag. Now before you roll your eyes,
there’s a reason I’ve chosen LV. That pattern on the side is
unmistakable. After all, what’s the point of a status symbol if
no-one knows it’s a status symbol? But that means that when someone
sees a well dressed young man with an LV bag, the last things they’re
going to expect to be in that bag are diving gear, rope and a stolen
painting.

It’s a struggle to get everything in there, especially since I have to
take care of the painting. The large salt tub is staying but I figure
no-one is going to notice a tub of pool salt in a pool shed. The dive
weights also end up underneath a planter box, I’m afraid they’re a few
pounds of weight I just don’t want to carry down. But after a bit of
fighting everything else is put away and I’m ready to go.

The fire escape locks aren’t any harder than the balcony door, but
that’s expected. They make them easy just in case emergency crews
need to get past but aren’t in enough of a hurry to bust the door
down. I pick one to get in and then another a few floors down to get
out, then it’s express lift all the way to the ground. I stare at
myself in the lift mirror and thank god the wet look is in. I look
rumpled, but the kind of rumpled one might expect from someone leaving
an apartment block at 2am.

The doorman, presumably Charlie, gets up from his desk when he sees me.

“Cab, sir?”

“Yeah, sure. Thanks.”

I hoist the bag on my shoulder and follow him to the curb. I’m trying
to think of small talk but before I get the chance the cab’s there, I
had the guy a $5 bill and I’m away. Almost too easy. I keep looking
to see if anyone’s following, and when I get dropped off a block from
my apartment I spend the whole walk home with half an eye over my
shoulder. But there’s no-one. It seems I may have gotten away with
it.

So now the painting is hanging in my bedroom, directly opposite the
bed, sitting comfortably between the Monet and the Boudin. The first
touches of sun are hitting the buildings nearby and the slight glow is
giving the painting a morning feel as well. The adrenaline has worn
off but for the last 4 hours I haven’t been able to stop looking at
it. It’s beautiful, wonderful, I love it. It leaves me with only one
question.

What next?

Footsteps in the Dark - Chapter One

Footsteps in the Dark

Chapter One

by Hayden Tunnicliffe

She looked up as the guard's footsteps rang out once more. Through the iron bars of her cell she could see the glow of a lantern drawing near, the tang of burnt oil in the air making her tiny prison that much more claustrophobic. The guard held his light up to the window in the door, confirming his charge still lay in the room, the light seared her eyes as it shone through the small window.

He said something, not knowing any German, she could only assume he was tormenting her from the tone in his voice and the laugh that came from his companion. She spat at the window, a small measure of the hatred she felt for her captors. Soon enough the guards moved on, the sounds of their boots echoing off the stone walls, as if a hundred men marched through the small prison. Again she was left in the dark, not knowing if the next time they came would be the last.

She was awoken from her daze as the door creaked open. As she got to her feet, moving instinctively to the back of the room, she noticed that there was no light.

'Shh! Keep quiet' came a voice out of the darkness. 'I am here to help' Suddenly the floor in front of her leapt into vision as the stranger opened the cover on his lantern, shining but a sliver of light into the room.

'Who - who are you?' she whispered as the man beckoned for her to follow him out of the cell.

'We haven't the time for that now. We must leave before the guards return' The man said, moving along the wall and peering around the corner. 'Quickly now. I will explain everything when there is time'

Anything was better than being locked in that damned cell any longer she thought as she followed the man, being as quiet as she could possibly be. It seemed like an eternity that they stalked through that dark maze, occasionally ducking behind whatever cover they could find as the guards passed.

'We must hurry. It is only a matter of time before they begin their route again and find you gone. And if we aren't out of here by the time that happens then we are done for'

She only nodded as she struggled to keep up with him, afraid she might alert someone. A soft breeze and the shine of light told her that their flight in the dark was nearly over. They paused closer to the exit as her rescuer leaned over to extinguish their light. 'Here. Do you know how to use one of these?' the man asked as he pushed a pistol into her hand. 'Yes, but wouldn't the gunfire attract attention?' she asked as she checked the chamber.

'Only use it if there is no other choice' the man said as he readied his own weapon before moving out of the tunnel. She followed him, the light blinding her as she hastily ran from the tunnel. It took a minute for her vision to adjust to the shock, the sun beared down from above them, as she looked out across the fields that lay below them.

'It will be suicide to cross the open fields' the man said as he drew her attention to a hedge on the far left of them. 'We must use that to get across the fields and into that copse of trees, where we will wait for the extraction, keep low and follow me' he said, dashing off before she could reply.

She followed him, glancing back to make sure they weren't followed. The cool country air burned in her lungs at the same time as it invigorated her body, every nerve was set on end as she pushed forward through the brush. Finally they reached the bottom of the hillside and before them lay acres upon acres of open fields, the only cover to be found were the hedges between them and the odd hay bale. The man dashed across the small open space towards the closest hedge before pausing to survey the situation. He motioned for her to follow and she raced towards him as fast as her weakened body would allow.

'Here. Drink some, you will need your strength' he pushed a canteen into her hands. The water was almost gone before she realised they might not have any more and quickly screwed the top back on.

'I'm ready.'

They started towards the trees, she made it to be a good mile from where they were, she only hoped that they would make it before exhaustion took her.

Halfway across the field she heard an alarm sound from behind them, evidently the guards had discovered that she was missing. She cautioned a glance behind her but could not see any pursuers, all the same they doubled their pace. She hoped they would not be seen at this distance, but kept her head as low as their speed would allow just the same.

She could hear the bark of dogs and the shouts of men behind them as they came ever nearer the tree line, and safety. Another look back told her that they still hadn't found their trail. She hoped they never would, death was preferable to the rest of her life in that prison.

At last they reached the tree line, giving up stealth completely they sprinted into it, stumbling across roots and fallen branches she followed her surefooted saviour, falling twice before they reached their destination. She fell to the ground in exhaustion, her legs burning and chest heaving as she drained the last of the water in the canteen.

'I hope you have more' she almost pleaded as the man sat next to her.

'You think I would come unprepared to a rescue mission' he laughed as he put another canteen into her lap. 'Here, but don't drink it too fast, there is only one more where that came from and our transport won't be here for another 3 hours'

'Who are you?' she asked between sips of the canteen, 'And why would anybody rescue me? I'm just a civilian'

'They call me Alcott, but you can call me Robert. I was sent to extract you because HQ think you could be useful to the war effort. But mostly I am here because I couldn't leave a gorgeous lady like yourself to rot in a damned jerry jail cell'

'I don't know how much help I can be, but thanks all the same Robert. I am Carol, but I am sure you already knew that'

Old Hate - Prologue

Old Hate

Prologue
By David Pidgeon

1865

She barely heard the sound over the pouring rain, a rap against the glass of the window that caught her attention when it was repeated. She looked up from her book and could see only darkness outside. Putting the book down, she stood and walked across to the window. She hesitated before it. The noise came again and without making the decision, she unlatched it and opened it. As soon as she did, a figure entered from outside. It was a man, dripping wet. She drew in a breath to scream or shout or make some sort of noise, but he spoke.
"Jane" came his voice, hoarse but familiar.
"Hiram?"
He looked up at her, that familiar face and those same green eyes. She threw her arms around him and held him tightly to her, ignorant of his sodden clothing. He embraced her briefly before pushing her away slightly.
"Jane, I am terribly happy to see you but I am soaking wet. Do you have a something to dry myself with?"
"Hiram, what are you doing here?"
"I told you I would return, did I not?"
Tears came to her eyes and a smile to her lips, as did a scolding tone to her voice.
"Hiram, you know it isn't safe"
"I told you I would return. I gave you my word. Something dry, my love?"
"Get out of those clothes Hiram. I've still some of yours stored away in the closet"
He began to undress and in a moment of awkwardness, she turned away from him.
"I've missed you"
"You've no idea how I have missed you"
She opened the closet and moved things about in the bottom of it, pulling out the stored clothes.
"We have to leave, Jane. Tonight"
She turned to look at him, forgetting her bashfulness of a moment ago as he stood naked before her. He stared intently at her, with a look she knew.
"You know that I cannot argue with you when you look at me like that my Hiram, but why must we leave?"
"They know that I am coming here. I believe, also, that they would do you harm to get to me. I cannot have that."
He stepped forward to hold her, free of the wet clothes. He was warm, despite the rain outside and she let herself sink into him. Her lips found his, her clothes were lost and they fell onto the bed and melted together.

They lay together in the bed when he heard it, the low rumbling sound of several horses galloping.
"We must leave now" he said and stood.
She simply nodded at him.
"I'm afraid you will not have time to pack" he said, as he began to dress.
She nodded again, trying not to be afraid.
Fully clothed, he began to root through the small pack he'd carried in with him. She studied him as he did so, admiring the man she loved. He was short but had long arms and legs for his height, an unusually rangy frame. He had jet black hair and glittering green eyes, his usually neatly trimmed beard was starting to grow out. He looked tired, she thought.
He turned to look at her and could not help but smile as he saw her watching him. Then his look became hard.
"You must dress now Jane, and dress for travel."
He removed his hand from the pack, holding in it a pistol that gleamed dully under the lantern light of the room. He checked that it was loaded and, satisfied, hung it over his shoulders from the leather thong that was attached to it, leaving it swinging close to his hip on the right side.
Jane was dressed quickly and stood before him ready.
"We cannot go back out the window, we must go downstairs and hope that we can leave through the back."
She nodded.

As he opened the back door of the hotel Jane lived in, there was the crack of a gunshot from across the street and the doorframe near his head suddenly splintered. Hiram sprang backwards, keeping Jane behind him and closing the door into the street
He looked at her and she saw fear in his eyes.
"Jane, they have us surrounded."
Tears rolled down her cheeks.
A voice boomed in from the rain.
"Come out Walsh, we know you're in there" hollered one of the men outside, "come out now and we won't hurt your woman. She's free to go".
Jane shook her head. Hiram placed his hands on her shoulders and stared at her.
"We have no choice, my love. I had no choice in coming back to you and I have no choice in saving your life."
"Please, no. Please Hiram, I can't lose you again. Please" she said, weeping and grabbing tightly on to him, as if trying to hold him there.
Tenderly but firmly, he took her hands into his and pulled her to him in a crushing embrace.
His breath moved her hair as he whispered into her ear "I will always love you, in this life and the next" before releasing her.
She slumped to the floor, weeping.
Hiram opened the door.
"I'm coming out"
Through the tears she could barely see him go.

Art of Theft - Chapter Two

The Art of Theft

Chapter Two
by Murray K.

Friday afternoon has taken an eternity. Ever since the financial
crisis the markets have been working in dog years as they lurch from
one disaster to another. Japan seems to have settled down so the
crisis du jour is the middle east again with a dash of soveriegn debt
and the markets have taken another pasting. The clients always need a
bit of love in these conditions and I'm just finishing my ring around.
The last name on the list is Mr Welsh.

"So how are we looking" he asks after we go through the pleasantries.

"Not bad. The portfolio protection we put in place has worked well,
the option straddles are - "

"I don't need the detail Scott, just tell me, are we winning or losing".

"Well, today's a draw but we're a nose ahead for the week."

"Hell, in this market a draw is a win in my book. Great work Scott.
I'm going to feel a lot happier for the next month knowing you're
looking me."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence sir. When are you off, anyway?" I
ask, glad he's bought it up first.

"We fly out Saturday morning, arrive in St Petersburg Sunday morning.
By this time Monday we'll be on our riverboat cruising down the Volga
river."

"You know Henry, I was going to ask you about that. Why Russia? Was
Paris booked out?"

"Gloria and I have been to Paris a hundred times. We figured it's
time to do something a little more adventurous. It's the route the
Vikings took to get all the way to Baghdad you know?"

"Well, you can bring me back a horned hat if you like. By the way, do
you want me to call you or email you anything?"

"And ruin my holiday? I've told everyone, even my kids, the phone is
off. I might check messages once a week or so. Just let me know if
you've lost my entire fortune, I'll look for a goatherder job on the
Russian steppes."

"Oh, you don't want anything to do with goats. Nasty, foul-smelling,
mean-spirited creatures."

"Sounds like your colleagues at Goldman's, Scott."

"Not a bit of it. Folks here wear cologne. Have a good trip Henry."

"Thanks Scott, talk to you in a month."

And with that, motive becomes motive and opportunity.

Saturday morning is spent in my apartment, laying tonight's tools out
on the bed, surrounded by my art collection. Most of what I have on
my walls in prints, but there's the odd minor work that's original.
After our last bonus, when one of my colleagues bought a Masserati, I
bought a beautiful Eugene Boudin seascape of Le Havre. It cost about
the same amount as the car, but where in New York are you going to
park a Masserati?

Next to the Boudin is the product of my first foray into crime, a
small Monet. Actually, that's a bit misleading, it's a lithograph and
the only thing Monet really did was sign it. But it's based on one of
his compositions and that signature is worth something. The motive
was pity as much as desire. The lithograph was one of the many
thousands of pieces in Goldman Sachs' art collection, mostly up and
coming current artists so Goldman can claim to be modern Medicis.
I've no idea how this little piece entered the collection and clearly
neither did Goldman's curator, because he'd relegated it to a small
internal meeting room. With the hundreds of low level management
updates and strategy meetings it had seen, I'm amazed it hadn't
spontaneously combusted. My theft wasn't a particularly bold or quick
affair, first I just took it off the wall and hid it in the computer
cupboard. A month later, after it had been missed by no-one, I
spirited it out in a laptop bag one evening. Easy. Getting the
Matisse, well that would be a very different story.

By the time I leave in the late afternoon I've repacked a dozen times.
An ex of mine used to say that whenever I was stressed I went
borderline OCD, but I prefer to think of it as thoroughness. I leave
my apartment hauling all of my gear in a toolbox and a large plastic
tub that had previously contained 20kg of pool salt. I walk a block
before grabbing a cab uptown to central park and arrive a touch before
half past five. It's awkward lugging everything the three blocks to
the Welsh's apartment, but most of the foot traffic was heading with
me away from the park. I intentionally try to avoid people's eyes,
not that anyone was likely to notice me anyway. I'm dressed in jeans
and the kind of blue button-up shirt one would only wear as a uniform,
emblazoned with the logo of "Skyline Pools". The cap sitting over my
wrap-around shades has the same logo, courtesy of iron on transfers.
I look the regular Joe Tradesman, or so I hope.

Half a block away from the apartment, I get hit by a surge of
adrenaline. It's the same feeling I get standing at the top of a
cliff, about to abseil down. I savour it for a moment and then I'm at
the building, standing in front of the doorman.

"Hey bud," I call to get his attention.

"What's up?"

"I'm Dave from Skyline Pools," I say, pulling out an ID that had been
put together with a colour printer and a laminator. "We got a fault
call from the pool on the roof here. Client by the name of, uh,
Walsh's?"

"Welsh's," replies the doorman absent-mindedly while looking at the
ID. It's amazing what a laser printer and a laminator can knock up
nowadays.

"Yeah, that's them. Can you give them a call, tell them I'm coming up."

"Sorry bud, no can do. They're not in."

"Aw geez, are they gonna be long?"

"Can't say."

"Well, the systems reporting a major fault. Any way you can get me up
there to check it out?" This was the moment of truth. I reckoned I'd
figured the logistics out, but the one variable, the one human factor,
was this doorman letting me up to the roof. He was clearly in two
minds, turning my ID over in his hands. "Have you got any calls of
sudden wet floors from the apartments? Flooding, water leaking from
the light fittings, coming down the walls."

"No, nothing."

"Well, I guess I can come back when they do..."

"Ah, come on, we'll check it out."

A quick trip up the elevator gets us to the top floor and we head into
the fire escape, up the stairs and onto the roof.

"I think the pool's over, uh, there it is," he says, pointing back to the west.

"Yeah, I know, I've been up here before," I say, the first truthful
thing I've said so far. "I'll check the equipment shed, can you have
a quick look at the pool?"

I set my gear down next to the small shed and open it up, reaching for
a couple of things from my jeans pocket as I do. I smear a couple of
the pristine pipes and a patch of floor with a tube of grease and
stick a small box of angry red blinking LEDs underneath one of the
large control boxes. Then I open up the toolbox and grab a spanner
and screwdriver from the top. By the time the guard comes back, I'm
industriously unscrewing what I think is the main filter control.

"Hey, you'd better see this," says the doorman with genuine concern,
"there's water spilling over the edge."

I follow him to the pool and it takes me a second to realise that the
guy has never seen an infinity pool before. On one side the wall is
lower and there's a steady stream of water cascading over the top, so
that anyone inside has the sensation that the pool never ends, just
goes off into the horizon. The doorman is looking at it with quiet
alarm, and I say a small prayer of thanks to whatever gods look after
thieves.

"Yeah, thought so. Problem with the pump, it's overflowing."

"Is it flooding the apartment?"

"No, don't worry, there's a secondary containment for just this sort
of thing," and I point out the small area where the water is meant to
collect. "Give me a second."

I head back to the equipment shed and spend a couple of seconds trying
to work out which machine is the pump. Then I just turn everything
off at the wall switches and the steady hum goes silent. Sure enough,
by the time I head back to the pool edge there's a lot less water
coming over, and after a minute there's just a tiny trickle.

"Good thing we got here when we did, that would have filled up
quickly," I lie to the much relieved doorman, and head back to the
pool shed with him in tow. "I can see what's wrong with the pump and
I reckon I can fix it, it'll take about half an hour."

"Oh," says the doorman, looking at his watch. "My shift ends in 15
minutes." And I was relying on that as well, 6pm on the dot. Try
getting a New York doorman to work 5 minutes more than he has to.
"I've got to get down and tell Charlie what's going on."

"That's fine," I reply. "Look, this shouldn't be a problem. You can
tell Charlie to come up or I'll just head down when I'm finished."

"Yeah, ok," he says, looking at his watch again. "Charlie'll be up in
15 or 20." And with that he walks back to the fire escape.

The moment the door clicks shut I'm up and moving. I strip off my
shirt and clean off the grease, then pull everything out of the tub.
I've got a 3 mil wetsuit top in their that I throw on, then strip off
my jeans to reveal the wetsuit bottoms. Surprisingly comfortable,
they stop chaffing, but they don't breath well, probably won't wear
them the next time I'm clubbing. I put together the rebreather tank
and fit two 5 litre oxygen canisters and my weight belt, that's half
the weight of the tub right there. I get a large piece of blue
plastic and a roll of roofing tape out of the tub and then stow the
toolkit and my clothes in it, then put it at the back of the pool
shed. It looks like it belongs there. Then it's goggles on,
mouthpiece in, and into the water.

As I hit the water I'm glad it's been sunny the last couple of days,
even so it's unpleasantly chilly. But I haven't got time to think of
that as I spread out the blue plastic on the water's surface. This
was a test of my colour sense, but the plastic is pretty close to the
colour of the pool. I bring it down to the bottom and have to
straighten it out underwater, the hardest part of the whole deal. A
series of steps come down into the pool, and I tape the plastic so
that it sticks out from the last of these. Then I tape it one side to
form a new step. The pool is about as wide as I am tall, and when I
get in under this plastic I'm able to rest my feet against the side
and tape the other end of the plastic.

So now I'm sitting, cocooned in a piece of plastic pretending to be a
pool step, trying to slow my breath in the respirator. The rebreather
puts out only a fraction of the bubbles of a normal scuba tank, and
I'm hoping that to the casual observer I'm invisible. After an hour
has passed I figure that Charlie the doorman must have come up to
check. Will they just check the roof, or will they open up the
aparment? Will they even search through the building? I've got no
idea, but since there's no sudden splashing and tearing back of my
plastic sheet, I at least know they haven't spotted me yet. I figure
6 hours more than long enough for any heat to do down, the hardest
thing now is that my hands are starting to freeze. I hope they're not
too numb to get past the locks.

Under a Steel-Grey Sky - Chapter Two

Under a Steel-Grey Sky

Chapter Two
By Michael Bennett


Seeing the woman come around the corner, the man just behind her, he realised that the guy seemed instinctively to know the best course of action to protect her. He wondered what was going to happen, or just who they were, as his deeper police instincts over-rode his hard crust of belligerence.
This time, to his amusement, was a reversal of the situation in the diner. She was the one wearing a gruff mask, the bodyguard looking more calm, almost smiling toward him. He guessed that a decision had been reached despite, or maybe because of, his behaviour inside.
As they walked up silently, he figured he might as well play his part in this act, and opened how it seemed he was supposed to. 'So, what's the game, girly? Why've you sought me out, in a cop diner of all places? If you were trying to keep a low profile for whatever this is, you kinda sucked at it.'

Taking a step closer and looking at him evenly, she put a hand out toward Fighting Man and said quickly, “I would have dropped by your ...hovel, Mr Turner, but it looked like I'm not the only one interested in you right now. So, here we are” as she was handed two envelopes, “and here you are. I'd like to hire you to investigate the matter, and the men, inside this. Call me this evening, once you've looked it over. My personal, private, number is in there. The other envelope.. Consider that a down-payment for your services.” Turning on her heel, she glanced back and said “I'll wait for your call to hear your preliminary thoughts.”

As she began to walk away, Fighting Man something in Japanese, causing her to lose colour in her face. Turning around slowly, she added with a tinge of desperation, the gruff mask cracking for a second “ - and don't let your other watcher catch you with that, or find it. I haven't the foggiest who that is, and had no desire to reveal the fact I was attempting to meet with you. There will be a rather messy undercurrent of violence here, and I don't know ...well, everything I could reveal, is in there. Goodbye for now, Mister Turner.” She turned again, letting her guard lead the way. Pauly watched silently, opening the smaller envelope, and almost yelped at the amount of bills stuffed inside. Must've been at least 2 and a half grand in $100 bills, at least. All that just to read a few pieces of paper?

Giving her a little time to get away, Pauly smoked two of his cigarettes, pacing the alley, giving the matter some thought. About halfway through the second one, his inner detective won out again, as he knew it would. He'd find a hotel and crash there for at least the night. A swanky, upscale one. She certainly gave him enough to be able to do that. He'd have to find a pawnshop that did under the counter deals, since he hadn't Old Nancy, his well worn revolver. He didn't think it'd be the smartest idea to go back for her, in case the person watching his place was still there.

Walking through the alley, Pauly spotted a taxi, and hailed it. Getting in, he told the driver where he wanted to go. Letting the city blur past silently, he again fell to thinking, wondering just what she was on about with all the talk of violence and undercurrents. And just why had she come to him? Obviously she couldn't go to the cops, so she clearly wasn't the most upstanding of citizens... And the bodyguard was most likely Yakuza.

But aside from the guard, and the fact she sought him out ('why me' floating through his brain again), brought 2 possible angles, at least that he could nut out. Either she was telling the truth, and didn't know exactly who she could trust, which meant he was holding something that could bring a massive storm down on him. Or she was feeding him a massive line, which could have the same result.

As he pulled up to the hotel, having gotten a functioning, if inelegant looking, handgun and some fresh clothes and a few other things and stuffed them into a bag, he realised grudgingly that he'd taken the bait, and would see this through to whatever end it lead to, even before getting to his room, to read what she'd wanted him to look into.

Once the concierge had shown him into the swanky hotel room, and he'd scoffed down on a room service order that cost more than any meal he'd ever eaten, he kicked off his shoes and sat down to read the file. He wasn't sure if it was a spun story, what actually happened, what she thought was fact, or some mix of the 3. But he'd taken her money, so he would at least investigate it to a surface level. After a couple of hours, more than a few beers, and almost 2 packets of cigarettes, he'd memorised it in it's entirety.

After a mostly restful night in the most comfortable bed he'd ever known to have existed, he figured out what his next move would be over a stacked breakfast. It was just smart to know all angles of a case, to have all the sides you possibly could, before moving. He was lucky that he was able to investigate, as opposed to being dumped in a sudden crisis or event, which had happened rather often while on the force, so long ago. The instincts were still there, even if he wasn't.

Which is why he knew what his next move would be, though he didn't know how it would go.
He knew it was time to face his old partner. It was the only strong link he had, the only possible source he had to get more information about the case he'd taken on, and the woman who dragged him into it.

Reluctantly walking into his old precinct, he noticed that the general buzz was greater, seemed more intense, than he once knew. He wasn't the sharpest guy in the world, but he knew when something was up. And he knew, again because of instincts, that it was tied to what he was now investigating. He'd have to play this one close to his chest. Very close.

It was then that he heard a voice shout, across the room. At him. His partner had spotted him, and was beckoning. The first thing he noticed, aside from the familiar deep rumble of his voice, was that he'd been promoted to Captain.

Dues - Chapter Two

Dues

Chapter Two
By Imogen Cassidy

"We explained our rates to you before you engaged us, Mr Bailey," Ian was busy on the phone when she got in the next day - late, necessarily so - but early enough to deal with whatever business they might have. She didn't understand why Ian was always in before her, no matter what time she decided to show. She figured he had some latent prescience that told him what time he needed to show up at work in order to impress people. It would certainly be a useful application of magical talent.

God knew there were few enough of those.

"I understand, Mr Bailey, if you feel disappointed, but the rituals were performed and your house was completely cleared, if you're still experiencing problems…"

Jade rolled her eyes and dumped her bag on her desk. Therein lay the problem. Useful applications of magic - there were too few of them. It was all very well being able to light your way without a torch or levitate something across a room, but when it got down to it, electricity was more reliable and levitating stuff got boring very quickly.

What magic was good for, and this was the basis for her entire business, was getting rid of the effects of magic. Bringing things back to normal. Making life predictable and easy and not full of unexplained manifestations or leaks through rendings and tears in the fabric of whatever people were conveniently labeling as reality these days.

Because there were always people who thought magic was more useful than it was. There were always people who wanted to use it to control other people, or make themselves rich, or control other people into making them rich, or some sort of combination of them all. And using any magic without training lead to the sort of things that she'd been called out of bed at four this morning to investigate.

"Mr Bailey, she's not here at present, but I'll be certain to get her to talk to you about this. I know you're upset, but our credentials are all legitimate and you won't find another agency…"

She sighed. Then there were people like Mr Bailey. People who were convinced that they were more important than they actually were. If magic wasn't the problem something else would be - a government conspiracy perhaps, or was a returning client - certainly crazy, but mostly harmless. He believed his house was a centre of mystical energies. He believed any house he lived in became a centre of mystical energies. That spied on him. Or stopped his toaster from working. Or tried to control him into blowing up churches or leafleting for the local Green candidate. It was certainly the mystical energies which had caused his wife to leave him (although Jade had her own theories on why that had happened). It was a cycle for him. He'd reach the top and ring her, or one of her competitors, and ask her to cleanse it, repair any rendings, make it normal and she would do it, or Ian would, and the house would be fine, after wards (usually it was fine before) but Mr Bailey would never be convinced.

Ian had dealt with him three or four times now. The first time he'd been horrified that Jade took the man's money, but Jade had patiently explained to Ian that if they didn't do the work he was asking for, the man would just go to someone else, who would charge him more and tell him the problem was more complex than he thought and they needed to do more research and it would just pander to the man's paranoid fantasies. As it was, with a certificate from their agency stating that they'd already performed the rituals, any agency who accepted work from Mr Bailey after them (and several would, she knew it) would be guilty of fraud. As long as he was asking Jade to do the work, she knew it would be the end of the line for him. Despite his arguments.

She settled into the desk next to Ian's as he continued to attempt to assure Bailey that they'd done their job, and started sorting through mail. Business was slow at the moment. The last big rend had been six months ago, and enough people had been scared by it that the usual idiots who decided to turn to magic for their personal needs were still wary of doing anything that might cause another. The honeymoon period would end soon, though, she knew. She thought of the warehouse, the small rectangle of card now in the hands of Matheson at his precinct.

…Or possibly already had.

Ian finally managed to get off the phone and heaved a dramatic sigh. "Truly, that man gets more paranoid every week. Are we allowed to suggest counseling?"

"He's already in counseling," she said, absently, opening bills and spiking them to be paid. "But they can't force him to take his meds. And if we suggest he goes back on them he accuses us of necromancy."

Ian rolled his eyes. "Never could master necromancy," he said.

"That's a very good thing, Ian," she said. "Nothing more likely to cause rendings than raising the dead."

"And the Catholics get so very irritated by it," Ian added. He turned back to his computer and started typing - a report probably, for the last job they'd done. Ian was good at reports. He had a knack for language that she lacked. "There's a phone message for you from Phillips," Ian said as he typed, "they want to know if we need to postpone our order again."

It had been a very slow month. Apart from Bailey's job, they'd only had one other call out and the supply cupboard was practically full. She fingered the message pad and picked up the phone to call them back.

"Boss?" Ian said. She blinked. What had she been doing again?

"What?"

"You've been sitting like that for five minutes. Did you not get back to sleep?"

She looked at her hand, the phone receiver still in it, and frowned, puzzled. Something wasn't quite right.

"You call Phillips," Jade said. "Tell him we'll have our regular order this month."

Ian cocked an eyebrow. "Oh ho!" he said. "Getting a hunch are we?"

She smiled at him. "No, just being sensible. If there was a rend in the area - even a small one - chances are there'll be more. It's never just one."

"You are a font of wisdom and beauty," Ian said, picking up the phone and dialing. "Also, you pay me, which makes me happy. Where are you going?" he asked her as she got to her feet, picking up her bag again. She hadn't realised where until he asked.

"Back to the warehouse," she said.

"Have fun."

She chewed her lip absently. "Sure," she said.

The police car was gone and the warehouse door was barred with scene tape. It didn't have a lock on it, though. She wondered why there were no squatters, then stopped wondering. The warehouse was too far away from everything for squatters to be attracted to it. No shops, no transport, just featureless, wide, empty streets and warehouse after empty warehouse. Like a ghost town from an old western.

She pushed her way in and made her way to the room where the rend had been, keeping her senses on alert. There was nothing out of the ordinary at all, which in itself was out of the ordinary. Rends were not simple things. Even the smallest left ripples - the kind of ripples that set off the alarms at in the Occult Rooms of the local precinct, the kind that resulted in hauntings like the ones Bailey was sure he was plagued with. Here, there was nothing.

When she reached the spot where the card had been lying she knelt, feeling the ground with her fingers and smelling the air. Still, there was nothing. She frowned, concentrating harder, slowing her breathing and centering herself the way she'd been taught by her mentor, all those years ago…

..there. A small ripple. The slightest echo of a tear in what was real…

…except that it wasn't a tear. She could see that now. It was too precise, too exact.

It was a cut.