Free Money Run by Jack Heath Page A

mirror.
    Then she saw her computer was missing, and that shattered the illusion.
    Her first thought was that her dad had moved her stuff. Then she remembered he was out of town for the weekend. She ran out to the dining room, and saw that the TV had gone. And the DVD player. And in the kitchen, the microwave and the blender left gaping holes, exposing walls she’d never seen.
    The house looked clean . Like someone had snuck in with a giant vacuum cleaner, big enough to ingest furniture.
    Most people have been robbed at some point in their lives. Ash knew girls at school who’d had their houses burgled. But her bed was gone. What kind of rotten, greedy burglar steals a bed?
    The phone had been snatched from the charger, perhaps as a final afterthought. She took out her mobile to call her dad. But as she was dialling, she thought about how much it would cost to replace it all. Thousands of dollars, tens of thousands. Ash didn’t know how much money her dad had. She didn’t know how well insured they were. But she had a feeling that this would be permanent damage. They might have to move house, somewhere cheaper. Her dad would have to work more hours, unless he could find a job that paid better.
    She hung up the phone. She couldn’t give her dad that news. No way. She felt like she’d swallowed a tombstone. Part of her wished that she could somehow arrange for him to find it first, pretend she hadn’t been home since it happened.
    But she’d rather he came home to find everything as he’d left it.
    She lay down on her couch, which the burglar evidently hadn’t been able to steal. And she did what every girl does in a crisis – she called her best friend.
    The missing phone was the key, Benjamin told her. You can’t track a missing bed. TVs and microwaves had serial numbers, but they were of little use for finding and identifying stolen goods. But a phone is a transmitter.
    All Ash’s stuff wouldn’t have fitted into an ordinary sedan so Benjamin hacked into the Department of Motor Vehicles database and looked up the names and addresses of every van owner in the city. They eliminated anyone too old to carry a TV, anyone who lived too far away from Ash, and anyone living too close, figuring a burglar wouldn’t work too close to his home. Since the robbery had taken place during the day on a Friday, they ruled out schoolteachers, public servants, bank tellers. People who were likely to be missed if they left work to rob a house.
    They had twenty-eight candidates left. Ash’s dad had taken the train, leaving his car at home. He had his keys with him, so Benjamin showed her how to hotwire it. He’d read it in the Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook .
    Ash was behind the wheel, for the first time in her life. They drove slowly, but not so much as to be too conspicuous. They pulled over at each address, Benjamin in the passenger seat with the charger of the stolen phone plugged into the power source. He dialled Ash’s home number on his mobile and got a “sorry, no service” message every time.
    The call would never connect – unless the charger was within range of the stolen handset.
    It was the twenty-third house. Scummy shingled room, curtains all drawn – ordinary and boring and empty-looking. A white van was parked in the driveway. The phone rang once before Benjamin hung up. They kept driving, parked the car a few houses down, and went back on foot.
    The backyard was overgrown; spider-web strands of grass stuck to Ash’s socks, rocks fallen from the potted plants scraped her soles. No animals. The curtains weren’t drawn on this side; she could see her TV through the window. Her bed was propped up against the wall behind the couch.
    She beckoned to Benjamin, who was coming around the other side of the house.
    â€œThat’s my TV,” she whispered. “That’s my bed. This is the place.”
    Benjamin squinted in through