She had no idea who this blurry figure was, but she was hopeful it might be Hitch.
Ruby limped into base camp by sundown, just. She punched in her time – she was about thirteen hours overdue. The man was sitting on a stool fashioned from an old tree stump and he was drinking a hot beverage, book in hand. He looked up.
‘Better late than never Redfort.’
It wasn’t Hitch.
Ruby slumped down on the grass. It was a nice enough night, not raining at least, but she was tired, really, really tired. She looked around her.
‘Everyone else has been and gone,’ said the Spectrum agent. It was the same agent who had doled out the mission briefing the day of the drop. His name was Emerson.
She sighed. Did anyone else fail? she wondered.
‘Hungry?’ asked Agent Emerson.
Ruby nodded.
‘Didn’t do so well finding food, huh?’
Ruby shook her head.
Emerson helped Ruby hobble to the tiny log cabin.
Inside was a fire and there were a couple of chairs set round a small wooden table. Two bowls, two plates, a couple of forks and a couple of spoons. A large metal pot dangled over the fire and a very good smell wafted out. Ruby suddenly felt a lot more awake. Emerson didn’t seem like such a hard nut after all – he could cook at least.
For the first ten minutes she said nothing at all as she slurped the stew.
‘Wow, you are wolfing that down Redfort. When did you last eat?’
She looked up. ‘It’s good,’ was all she said.
Later, after Emerson had got her to the light aircraft and flown her back to the outskirts of Twinford, Ruby finally clapped eyes on Hitch. He was waiting there in the darkness like some kind of guardian angel.
The first thing Ruby did was to ease her left boot off. She had been dying to remove it, but she hadn’t wanted Emerson to see the injury; she didn’t need it to become some sort of big deal – not yet anyway.
‘Sam bring you in?’ Hitch asked.
‘How dya know?’
‘I recognise his bandage work,’ said Hitch, glancing at Ruby’s foot.
‘How come he was tracking me?’
‘I put in a request.’
They got into the car and drove into the night.
‘So what happened out there kid, what took you?’
‘I fell,’ said Ruby. ‘Hurt my foot.’
‘That’s a consequence,’ said Hitch, ‘not the reason.’
‘I lost my glasses – they fell in the river.’
‘So?’ he said.
‘What do you mean, so?’
‘What I mean,’ said Hitch, ‘is why should that be a problem?’
‘Are you kidding me?’ said Ruby. ‘I can’t manage without them.’
‘What I’m suggesting,’ said Hitch, his voice calm and steady, ‘is if you’re saying your being thirteen hours late is really because you can’t manage without eyewear then what are you doing trying to train as an agent?’
Ruby just looked at him. Then she said, ‘You gonna tell LB?’
‘No kid, I’m not going to tell LB, at least not if you tell me what’s really the problem here.’
Hitch pulled the car over to the side of the road and let the engine quietly idle.
‘I don’t really get it myself,’ said Ruby.
‘Come on kid, give me a straight answer. You can flannel all of them – you can even get me to cover for you – but you can’t pretend like I don’t know something went wrong, something more than losing one geeky pair of glasses.’
‘Colt didn’t tell you?’ asked Ruby.
‘No, what Colt says to you is your business,’ replied Hitch.
Ruby took a deep breath. ‘If you really wanna know, Colt seems to think I rely on what I know instead of using my instincts. He says I got a throw away the rules and react to what’s happening out there.’ She gestured to the darkness beyond them.
‘So what’s the problem?’
‘I don’t think I know how to do that,’ said Ruby. ‘So, when I go and lose my stupid glasses, I might as well throw in the towel.’
Hitch thought for a moment before saying, ‘I think I might be able to help you there kid.’
‘Yeah?’ said Ruby hopefully.
‘Might take a while; she’s not the easiest person to track down.’
‘Who?’
‘I’ll let you know if I find her.’
‘So you’re not gonna tell LB about my eye trouble?’
‘Why would I tell her?’
‘Why wouldn’t you?’ shrugged Ruby.
‘Because kid, I can see that there’s a whole lot more to you than your bad eyesight.’
She sighed, relieved. ‘So you’re not gonna tell LB I flunked?’
Hitch didn’t answer immediately. He checked his mirror and made to swing back out onto the road and then he said, ‘No need. LB already knows you flunked kid. She knew before you did.’
HITCH AND RUBY ARRIVED BACK HOME at Cedarwood Drive soon after midnight. They walked up the steps in silence and once in the front door Hitch whispered, ‘Sleep like the dead kid,’ before making his way down to his small stylish apartment at the bottom of the house.
Hitch had been with the Redforts for approximately four months and he had turned their lives around. He was there in the guise of household manager (or ‘butler’ as Sabina Redfort liked to brag) and he was good at it; no one would doubt his cover story.
But his real posting was as protector of Ruby; he was there both to keep an eye on her and work with her. If Hitch made a good butler, he made a whole lot better bodyguard and Ruby never once took it for granted. She had known him since March and already owed him her life twice over.
Now alone, she hobbled on up the two flights of stairs to her own private floor. Her room was much as she’d left it. A selection of her dirty mugs, cereal bowls and banana milk glasses had been collected up and removed, but generally her room was an unchanged scene of devastation. On the floor was a trail of clothes that led to or spread from the walk-in wardrobe. Record sleeves stacked one on top of the other next to the still turning turntable; piles of magazines and journals on all subjects fanned out across the rugs, and on top of these were pens, papers, telephones – all sculpted in various ridiculous shapes, some comical, some unlikely, a squirrel in a tux, a bar of soap, a corncob, a dog bone; and these four were not even the most eccentric.
The only place in any way orderly in her room was the bed; this was neatly made with the clean sheets pulled tight over the mattress and the quilt on top.