Page 33 of Playing With Fire

His boots crunched dry leaves and the collar of his jacket was turned up against the chill. “Thanks for the invite, Jodi. It’s been...a real eye-opener.”

He was gone.

Chapter Five

The twins were lying.

Ricky knew it. He just didn’t know what they were lying about.

Two men, both regular inhabitants of the town shelters who were more than familiar with the shadowy corners of the town parks, had seen Josh and Judah as hanging around and “up to no good”.

Ricky let out a breath. He tried not to think about the hurt, outraged expression on Jodi’s face. She was a journalist, for God’s sake. She ought to know that hard questions were the only way to get answers. There was no point pussyfooting when it came to keeping people safe.

He thought about the cigarettes and the matches. Tried to imagine how a scenario involving a couple of feral teenagers fit in with what he already knew about the fires.

Finally, when his overstuffed brain couldn’t think of more possibilities, he stretched out on his bed and opened up Chrissie’s sketchbook.

Instantly, he was swept up in memories. The writing was scrappy, hashtags thrown up by her chaotic brain scrawled randomly across pages: #blacklivesmatter #metoo #nolockdowns #universalincome #climatechangeishere #freepoliticalprisoners.

Chrissie had cared, wildly, deeply, and indiscriminately, and she had poured out her anguish in her quick cameos of life on the streets of New York.

Neither of them had been prepared for the sheer thrill of the fast-moving crowds, the soaring buildings, the restlessness of the fabled city which never sleeps. For the glitz and grime, and the tawdry over-priced apartments and the flotsam and jetsam of those swept aside.

Chrissie had loved it all, throwing herself into the raging river.

Ricky had blinked; once, twice, and then put his head down and worked. Without being told, he had known instinctively that dreams are ephemeral, treacherous beings, constantly moving out of reach. Timetables, exams, training, more training... those things he knew and trusted.

You can take the boy out of Temple Mountain...

He knew the tatty notebook almost by heart now. The slow but steady decline as Chrissie had fallen deeper into the abyss. And Ricky wondered, not for the first time, if he should have stayed around. Maybe checked on her.

It was always going to end in tears.

Chrissie’s handwriting got worse, indecipherable scrawls which he suspected were about dealers and contacts. Her cheap knock-off cell phone had been found by the cleanup crew, but had yielded nothing beyond heavily coded, brief text messages to the same contacts.

Ricky flipped to the back page where Chrissie had tucked the thin, much-handled official papers. The New York State Adoption Services papers, the certified home study of the adoptive parents, the multi-page contract provided by the private agency Creating Families. File numbers and reference codes were the only keys to the new names of the child, who was female, and the adoptive parents.

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