Free Mind the Gap by Christopher Golden Page A

them would barely feel it. That’s why it was so damn easy to steal from them, to pick their pockets or con them on the street. They were hardly aware of what they carried, because they could afford to lose it.
    And how else were they to survive down there in the Underground? The rich, Harry insisted, would happily pick their bones. He did not pretend to be some modern-day Robin Hood, robbing from the rich to give to the poor, but Jazz figured the same rules applied. If she was to hide down beneath, she had to survive. A little petty thievery from the arrogant and rich did not trouble her overmuch.
    And the way she’d been raised—weaned on paranoia, caution, and suspicion—had laid the groundwork for a life of thievery. She’d learned to be stealthy and to blend in a crowd, and with her natural agility it almost seemed as though her past had been the perfect preparation. Jazz knew she shouldn’t take pleasure in discovering a talent for stealing, but the thrill was undeniable.
    “Well, what’s your haul, then?” Cadge asked.
    Jazz glanced around. By now the mark would have noted the theft, but unless he’d done so quickly enough to follow Cadge, there would be no way they would be caught. She plunged her hands into her pockets and drew out their contents. In her left hand she held the man’s wallet. She hadn’t checked to see how much money he’d been carrying and it wasn’t safe to do that here, but it felt thick with cash. In her right hand she held his mobile phone. Down there in Harry’s United Kingdom, they hadn’t any need for phones. No one to call. And it would be turned off by morning. But there was no telling when they’d find a use for it, so when her fingers had brushed against it in the right-hand pocket of the man’s jacket, she had liberated it.
    “Well done, you,” Cadge said.
    His own hands were empty. Today had been her first time hitting the street with them, and Cadge had been assigned to work the mark, not to do the actual nicking.
    Jazz glanced nervously at the entrance to the platform. “We should go.”
    Cadge nodded. “Wait for the train.”
    Two minutes ticked past with excruciating slowness until the train pulled into the station. People were disgorged and others got aboard, and then it rumbled away again. In moments, they were alone.
    Cadge led the way to the edge of the platform. He glanced both ways along the tunnel. According to Stevie Sharpe, there were other ways to get to the unused platforms at Tottenham Court Road, but the tracks were fastest. With great care, they picked their way along the side of the tracks, retrieved their torches from a nook where they’d stashed them, and fifty yards along they split off along a section of unused track. The abandoned tunnel ran past the old platform, but they didn’t slow. It wasn’t the moldering platform they wanted but this lonely, abandoned track. Following it would take them back to Holborn station, and from there they could descend to one of the older, deeper stations that had sheltered air-raid refugees during the Blitz. They would meet up with the others and make their way back to Deep Level Shelter 7-K, their sub-subterranean home.
    Home.
    A chill went through her. It was the first time she’d thought of the underground refuge as home, and something about it felt very wrong to her. She knew she had to hide, knew that if she ever tried to return to her real home, ugliness and murder awaited her there, perhaps along with truths and revelations she had no interest in ever learning. But to think of the shelter as home was to submit to the idea of living there forever, and that she could not do. Silently, she promised herself she’d never think of it that way again.
    Ever since the moment Cadge had yanked up her skirt, Jazz’s heart had been racing, adrenaline pumping through her. Now, at last, far away from any chance of discovery, her pulse slowed and the thrill began to lessen.
    And then she heard the music, distant