Chapter Sixteen
Ilove the Arts District. When you remove all the Vale jealousy bullshit and just look at it for what it is, the place is a haven.
Sure, the predominant architecture is a wealth of abandoned factories, but the regeneration remade them, breathed new life into them.
Clean brickwork, huge Crittall Windows, murals, meeting and eating places on every block.
Where there was no room for swathes of parkland, the greenery lives vertically instead.
Moss walls are set against glass walls. Cubism-inspired planters hang high above, overflowing with vines and creepers that brush your head as you walk by.
The ground floors of each building are outfitted as either commercial lets or community hubs. Coffee shops exist next to sculpture classes, mahjong meet-ups next door to Middle Eastern restaurants. There’s something happening everywhere you look. Colour, laughter, noise; life.
Amidst all this bustle, or perhaps at the crown of it, is the Marina. The place that was a sanctuary for me and the kids. The place we went to treat ourselves on good days and to hide behind facades of normality on bad ones.
The girls who work at the ice cream parlour know us by face and by order. Strange how a comfort becomes a liability. I remind Aiden of this fact, and we make a conscious effort to avoid it. There’s plenty more to do and see, especially with money. Or so I think.
It’s strange but now that I look, there’s nothing I want to buy.
Everything I see looks like a waste. Like I’d be throwing cash away for the sake of it.
What if something comes up in a few days and I don’t have enough to cover it because I splurged here?
I keep my card firmly in my wallet and usher us to the farmer’s market we’ve come to see in the first place.
Aiden watches me subtly but doesn’t say anything. I sense his disappointment as clearly as I wear my own.
“You okay?” he asks. He kneels at a basket of old potatoes, ones that have begun to form roots.
“Yeah, fine.” I point at the potato in his hand, as good a distraction as any. “Surely, they’re too…uh…gnarly to be tasty?”
“I’m thinking about the potato pots on the roof. I don’t have Kingfishers, and these make the best fries.”
“Oh.” It never occurred to me that you could grow potatoes on a roof, but thinking back there were four super-sized pots tucked in against the greenhouse wall.
Aiden buys four large potatoes, a range of salad vegetables and three heads of cauliflower, which makes my eyebrows raise into my hairline and Aiden laugh. I’m just hoping he has a plan because even the twins hate cauliflower, and they’ve eaten scraps out of the trash when pushed. Fuck Eric Feelan.
“Hey, where’d you go?”
“Eric.”
Aiden goes on immediate alert. His grocery bags hit the deck. His hand flits inside his jacket to reach for his gun. He scans the crowd. “Where!?”
“Jesus, sorry! No, I mean, I was thinking of the kids and food, and that inevitably led to the bullshit my…Eric pulled. It’s nothing.”
Aiden sighs with a whoosh of air. Removes his hand from his jacket and takes my face in both his hands.
“It’ll take a while before the memories quiet.
They’re all still fresh—just lived experiences right now.
Eventually, they’ll fade and become replaced by better things.
More so when the kids come home.” He kisses my forehead before stepping away and reaching for his abandoned shopping.
But what he said sticks in my head. “You think they’ll come back?”
“Whether they do or not, you’ll have the freedom to visit them or have them come stay with you for a while. Normal family stuff.”
What even is normal anymore? “New normal,” I concede, stifling my inner bitching.
“New normal,” he agrees. “I thought you might like to pick up a change of clothes while we were out.”
“That was my plan too, but I’ve not seen anything…” Aiden turns and points to each of the boutiques with perfectly nice clothes on the boardwalk. “…that I like,” I finish lamely.
“Then come with me; I might know a secret place,” he teases.
We leave the Marina, skirting the outside of the amusement park sprawled across the vast lot behind.
Soon the buildings become shipping crates and wire fencing.
The road ends at an unmanned gate and transforms into a thoroughfare of grooved highways that are as wide as airport runways.
This must be the harbour; the port and shipping zones that most ordinary folk don’t see.
You have to work here to gain access, and yet we just waltzed in.
“Shouldn’t that gate be closed?” I ask, nodding back towards the one we walked through.
Aiden chuckles. “It will be by the time we’re done here.”
“Is this Trevainne land or UACT land?” I guess it could be either, but I’m intrigued.
“Trevainne,” he replies. “UACT has no interest in owning land, but we do have a port-side base to keep an eye on imports and exports. It helps to be close in case of raids.”
It boggles the mind how UACT operates. They’re not clandestine in the slightest. They actively advertise that they’re working with Trevainne. “You’re not subtle about it; I’d have thought the bad guys would just drop contraband elsewhere.”
“Bad guys?”
“You know what I mean.” The stain of a blush heats my face.
“There aren’t many spots for ships to make land around Harrison. We’re watching all the workable areas.” He sounds confident and yet detached. I’m guessing this part of the operation doesn’t fall under his remit.
Still, they’re missing the obvious. “Are you watching the businesses? Like the water company vans that run out of the Vale?” I ask.
“What do you mean?” Just like I thought. They’re too confident. Too clean.
“There’s a lot of activity at the water treatment plant on the southeast side of the Vale. At least twice a month they run trucks out of there.”
“That’s normal activity for…”
“Like forty trucks twice a month. What water company needs forty sixteen-wheeler trucks for a city the size of Harrison? It is a city-operated service at that. It’s obvious what they’re up to. Everyone in the Vale knows, or at least suspects. We also know to keep our eyes and mouths shut about it.”
Aiden looks at me as though I’ve grown a third nostril. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
“Nope. Then you also have to assume the hydroelectric station, the prison, and whatever else lines the waterfront are also involved or could potentially become involved. They might not get their ships to harbour but they can get speedboats and trawlers to drag in submerged troves. Actually, doesn’t the prison have an old waterway system?
They used to bring the prisoners in via boats back when it was first built. ”
“How the hell do you know all this?”
“History books?”
“How do you know the comings and goings that even we haven’t considered?”
“The Vale isn’t just a place where we hunker down to rot.
There are lots of people willing to do anything to make a living.
That kind of work is readily available. If you want to see what is happening in Harrison, you need to tag the kids.
The more desperate they are to get out of the shit, the darker the deeds they’re willing to commit,” I tell him.
“Ironic really, because the deeper in the shit you are, the less likely you are to get out alive.”
“I need to talk to Rutledge.” Aiden stops walking and pulls out his phone.
“I can head back to the apartment…”
“No, I’ll have him meet us. We’re here for a reason.”
“Which is?”
“The outlet.” Aiden speaks to me but keeps tapping at his phone.
“Outlet?”
A chime echoes. He takes a second to read the message and then types his reply as he explains.
“Our guys and girls don’t often get the opportunity to take time off for shopping and ordinary things.
So UACT supplies them via the outlet.” He tucks his phone away and laughs at whatever expression I’m making.
“There are some really nice items; it’s not all combat pants and camouflage. ”
Yep, he pretty much nailed what I was thinking. “Huh.”
“I just figured you might want a wider selection to choose from.”
Actually, if it is more like a department store than a fancy boutique, it’ll be perfect for what I need. “Sounds good. Show me the way.”
He lifts his hand and sweeps it in an arc toward the building we’re standing in front of, and by building, I mean a storage warehouse. No windows. No signage. Nothing indicating what it is or might be.
“Ta da!”
“A warehouse?”
“Think of it like a giant outlet store.” There’s no other way to think of it, when we walk in and are confronted by a huge desk and six serpentine rows of rails and shelves.
This place has everything. Clothing, shoes, bags, electronics, home goods, outdoor goods, and that’s just what I can see.
The place is so vast that half of it vanishes behind a horizon line of toiletries.
“Morning, Sir,” an eager voice calls out, pulling my attention from the rails and to the desk. A young woman smiles shyly at Aiden. Above the desk hangs the checkout sign, but I only see one till. For a place this big, they have only one till?
Aiden grins. “Lafferty! How long have you been on Target practice?”
“Target Practice?” I whisper.
“It’s the nickname we give to this place because it’s pretending to be a real store.”
The girl, Lafferty, grumbles, “Since six.”
“Are you pulling a twelve?”
She pouts. “Yeah. I think it’s a punishment for the stunt I pulled in the mess hall last Friday.”
“Probably. Do you have enough coffee to stay awake?”
“Of course!” She points to the shelf under the desk and, sure enough, it’s decked out with a kettle, cups, and instant coffee.
“Lafferty, this is Miss Girard.” Lafferty’s shoulders tighten, her lips pinch and she turns to stare at me. Her gaze is assessing for sure, though not threatening. She either takes her job seriously or she has an inkling of who I am.