The Dead Yard by Adrian McKinty Page A

subject.
    "Well, you’re not going to tell me that that was the first car you ever broke into," I

said.
    Kit pressed the button to open the Camry’s sunroof.
    The scent of pollen.
    The night air smeared with stars.
    "No, I’m not going to tell you that," she said softly and with a nervous laugh. "Let’s talk

about you, though. Why are you over from Ireland?"
    I had to be quiet now as I exited Route 1 and joined the 1A, via the 133. The 1A was a narrow

two-lane road, not much traffic, that made its way through little white clapboard towns, swampy

grasslands, boggy woods, and big wet marshes near the tidal shore.
    "What are you doing in America?" Kit asked me again.
    "Apart from beating up cops and saving girls?"
    "Yeah, unless you do that full-time? You’re not Superman, are you?"
    "Superman digs the police. I’m here just the same as everybody. Looking for work. Someone told

me this morning that I might have a job opening up in Salisbury Beach, Massachusetts," I said,

hastily recalling what Samantha had told me of the second part of the plan.
    "Doing what?"
    "I’m not sure what exactly, probably bar."
    "Salisbury? Well, I don’t think you’ll have a problem with gunplay up there, it’s not exactly

the most happening of places."
    "Hope not. Christ, twenty-five years in Belfast and I’m safe as houses, a week in America and

I’m in a bloody gun battle."
    Kit said nothing. She rummaged in her bag and found a cigarette.
    "Smoke?" she asked.
    I shook my head.
    "Filthy habit," she agreed and lit herself one.
    "Not so much that, I had a hard time quitting; I was addicted and I don’t want to start

again," I said.
    "I’m just a social smoker. Addictions are for the weak," Kit announced with condescension.
    I grinned inwardly and said nothing.
    "At least everyone’s ok," Kit said more to herself than me, and out of the corner of my eye I

noticed that now her hand was starting to shake.
    Well, yes, it had been scary, and after all she was little more than just a kid. No Mexican

prisons on her résumé.
    "Yeah, everyone seemed fine," I agreed.
    The woods thinned and the road went over a narrow perfumed river winding its way uneasily into

the black sea.
    "The feds had it all staked out," she muttered to herself.
    "I suppose so," I concurred, staring at her.
    "I should have known those guys were feds, they didn’t tip," she said.
    "And I was suspicious of that guy with the assault rifle from the start," I said.
    "Why?"
    "He was drinking lite beer," I said. "Don’t you find in your professional capacity that lite

beer drinkers are generally wankers?"
    "Now you come to mention it," Kit said, drawing in the tobacco smoke and relaxing a

little.
    We drove in silence and she smoked her cig, lit another, and was soon chill enough to become

the proud amateur tour guide.
    "See the road to that beach?"
    "Yeah?"
    "That’s where they filmed a Steve McQueen movie, the one with Faye Dunaway and he’s a bank

robber."
    "Don’t know it but it sounds good," I said.
    "And down there is where the famous writer John Updike lives."
    "John Updike? Sounds like a porn name," I said.
    "Joan Updike would be more appropriate…. Oh, and see over there, that’s where Jackie did a

hundred and five in the Porsche and got caught by the state police."
    "Who’s Jackie?"
    "My boyfriend," Kit said breezily.
    "Nice boy?"
    "Who cares about nice?" she said in her best Madonna.
    "Well, I’m sure he’s perfectly charming, but I can tell you one thing about him that you don’t

know."
    "What?"
    "He isn’t good enough for you," I said.
    Kit turned her head slightly and looked at me.
    "Are you making a pass?" she asked with a smile.
    My lack of an answer was my answer and it unsettled her in a way I found I liked a lot.
    At Ipswich we approached a well-lit place called the Clam Box, where you could smell fried

fish through the Toyota’s sunroof and broken window. Dozens of cars. Perhaps fifty people waiting