Ian sat on the stretcher in the back as Wink typed at the desk. The five flat screens were mounted above her. All but one displayed scrolling output from running programs. The little genius always had something going.
Ian hunched and vomited into the bag at his feet. There wasn’t much. It had been awhile since he’d eaten. “Ugh . . . What did you do to me?”
“Dude . . . it’s not like that drug went through FDA trials or whatever. I only know what the woman told me.”
“What woman?”
“The Chinese woman.”
“What if she had lied, huh? What if she sold you antifreeze? Or battery acid?”
Wink made a face. “That would have been awkward.”
“Awkward?” Ian shut his eyes. He reminded himself that she was a child and there was no point in arguing. He looked out the oval windows at the back. He shook his head. “There’s not really a herd of tauntauns in the parking lot, is there?”
“Sadly, no.”
They had stopped at a new mall on the outskirts of the city. It was a block temple to commercialism, complete with cineplex and roadside circle of restaurants.
“This was a good idea, dimwit. I told you the drug would work.”
“You know, it’s possible I came up with this on my own.”
“But not likely.”
Ian made a face.
Wink made one back. She accessed the Trojan she left in the police system and ran a search. “According to this, you were implicated by someone named Oleg Korsakoff, professor of mathematics at Stanford. Born in Russia. Lives in San Jose. Consults for a research company in Silicon Valley.”
“That’s it.” That’s where the box was. It was all coming back to him. He had been so worried before, so convinced it had nothing to do with him, that he hadn’t really paid attention to what Agent Scanlon had told him. “The FBI said one of the scientists at the lab copped to the theft, and that he named three people, two of whom were already dead.”
Wink nodded. “Derek Wilkins, Ian Tendo, and a reporter, Abby Siegel.” She looked at him. “Do you know those people?”
Ian shook his head. He walked over and looked at the screen.
“Then what’s the connection?”
“I don’t think there is one. I think we’re all just people they want to discredit for one reason or another.”
Wink brought up a web browser. “The university web page says the professor is currently on sabbatical. But there’s a contact number for students and colleagues.” She grabbed a phone from the drawer in the desk and handed it to Ian. “Don’t worry. It’s dynamically routed. Totally untraceable.”
Ian dialed and waited for the encrypted line to connect. “What’s in the box?”
“Can’t say.”
“Why do you guys want it?”
“Can’t say.”
He shook his head. “You know it’s my li—” Someone answered on the other end of the line. “Hi, is Professor Korsakoff there? Yeah . . . uh, my name is . . . Rory. I was one of his students.”
Wink mouthed the word ‘Rory’ with a questioning face.
Ian ignored her. “In the hospital?” He paused. “Oh, that’s terrible. Is there any way you could tell me which one? I’d love to stop by and pay my respects.” Ian nodded. “Okay . . . Oh, no . . . Right. I’m so sorry to hear that. Thank you so much.” He hung up. “Apparently the professor is very ill. He’s being held by the police at a hospital just outside San Francisco. She said there’s no way we can see him.”
“Oh, we’ll get in.” Wink stood and opened the rear doors of the ambulance.
“Where are you going?”
“Dude. Food court. Pizza.”
“What if the electrocutioner shows up?”
“Electrocutioner.” Wink snorted. “That’s a good one.”
“Thank you.” Ian lifted his head in pride.
“Relax. You worry about everything.”
“And you don’t worry about anything.”
“Fiiiiine . . .” Wink walked to her work area in the back. “But his name is Deadbolt. At least, that’s what they call him.”
“Deadbolt?” Ian sat in the seat by the desk as the little girl hooked the magnetometer to a battery. “Seriously?” He looked at the idle terminal. He brought up his email.
“No real names, doofus. It’s all codes and cyphers.” She attached a small red light to one of the wires, then affixed both to the casing with white surgical tape. Her tongue stuck out the side of her mouth while she worked.
Ian stared at the screen. Three messages from Digby asking what was going on, the last two marked urgent. Some spam. Nothing from Emli. Not even an “Are you okay?” A year they had been together. Movies on Sundays. Dinners with her friends. Four nights in Cancun. Christmas with her family.
“Here.” Wink set the device on the desk. She saw the screen and rolled her eyes. “Get over it, dude.”
“Excuse me?”
Wink hopped out the back of the truck. “She dropped you like dead weight. And that was before she thought you were a terrorist.”
Ian didn’t want to talk about it. “What am I supposed to do with this?” He picked up the heavy metal cylinder.
“Moving current creates a magnetic field. The more powerful the current, the stronger the field. If you-know-who comes within half a mile, the light will come on and we’ll bail. Feel safer now, Nancy?”
“Whatever.”
Wink hopped out the back, and Ian followed the girl across the lot. It was Saturday and the mall was busy. A nook near the main entrance held three vending machines and an ATM.
Ian saw a police officer standing by a jewelry store in a corner unit. He put his hood up.
Wink ran into the neon-lit food court and Ian followed. A TV on the wall looped footage of the Chinese nuclear disaster. The anchor was telling people how they could donate to the victims and their families. Ian stopped for a moment and watched. It reminded him of his apartment. He’d been following the story, along with everyone else in the industrialized world. He didn’t know what was going on anymore. He was so out of it.
Wink secured a slice of cheese pizza on a paper plate and sat by herself in the noisy hall, playing on a portable game console. She hadn’t asked Ian if he wanted anything. It hadn’t even occurred to her. He walked over. There were other kids around, running and laughing. She hadn’t even glanced at them. He wondered how a prodigy like her would relate to people her own age. Probably not well.
He sat down across the crumb-covered table. “Don’t you have school or something? Where’s your family?”
Wink stopped playing, but she didn’t look up. The noise from the console indicated she lost the game. Ian felt like he’d transgressed a boundary. He immediately regretted the question. A pair of kids ran by.
“I don’t have a family.”
“Oh. Shit.” He felt horrible. He remembered what it was like in school having to tell everyone that his dad was dead. He felt so different. “I’m sorry.”
“That was a good strategy, though. It probably works on normal people. I’ll have to remember that. But I’m still not going to tell you what’s in the box.”
Ian scowled. She thought he was trying to befriend her to get information. “It wasn’t a strategy.”
She snorted.
“Not everyone is trying to manipulate everyone else.”
“Whatever.”
“Do you really live alone?”
Wink chucked the half-finished pizza in the trash. “Come on. If we’re gonna beat these guys, we need some supplies. And you need some new clothes. You stink like butt sweat.”
Ian smelled his armpit as Wink walked away. He trotted to catch up. “You just totally dodged that question.”
“I did not.”
“Yes, you did.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Then answer it.”
“YES!” Wink ran across the hall into a store called Sparkles.
Ian looked at the sign. It was all flowers and pastels. Inside were shoes and bright, frilly clothes and racks of costume jewelry. There wasn’t another guy in the store. He sighed and walked in. “I thought you said we needed supplies.”
The girl found a pair of cowboy boots: pink leather with glittered stitching. They were expensive. She dug for her size through the stacks of boxes on the floor.
A young mother shopping with her children gave Ian a weak smile and a wide berth. He felt like a complete creep with his hood up, clutching a strange device wrapped in surgical tape. And apparently he stank. Come to think of it, he had been sweating a lot. He smiled at her as she left. It didn’t help.
“So what happened to them?”
“Who?” Wink took off her shoes and pulled on the boots one at a time.
“Your family, genius.”
Wink didn’t answer. She stood and modeled the boots in front of a squat mirror.
Ian noticed the woman with the kids talking to the cop outside the store. The officer turned his head. Ian looked away. “We should go.”
“She’s not gonna take you back, you know.”
“I didn’t realize we were talking about me.”
Wink pulled the boots off, toe-to-heel. “Look at it from her perspective.”
“Have much dating experience, do you?” Ian glanced around the main hall for the cop. He didn’t see anything.
“Ew. No. But it’s basic game theory. She doesn’t know whether you’re really a terrorist or not. If you were her only option, maybe you’d get lucky. But you’re not.” The girl put her purple shoes back on. “Why is she gonna waste time trying to figure out all your shit when any other guy offers better odds for less work? Especially when you look like that.” Wink stood and waved her hands over Ian.
He ignored the insult and followed her into the mall. “This is going to be a terrible shock to your genius ego, but most people don’t pick a date based on game theory and calculated probability.”
“Women do.”
“Oh, whatever.”
“It’s biology.”
“It’s fantasy.”
Wink waved him off. “You’re not a woman.”
“Technically neither are you.” Ian stopped. “Where are we going?”
The girl had led him into the nook with the vending machines. She put her hands on Ian’s arms and moved him closer. “Stand here.”
“What? Why?”
Wink knelt in front of the ATM. “We need money. For supplies.”
Ian’s eyes got big. “You’re stealing!”
“Shh!”
She removed the front panel of the machine and pulled the portable gaming console from her pocket. Ian stood still and tried to act nonchalant. It was difficult while holding a magnetic sensor.
“You’re stealing money so you can buy pink glitter cowboy boots.”
“I am not.” She hooked the console up to the ATM.
“You totally are.”
“Shh! Stop worrying about ev—”
That was it. Ian leaned down and took Wink’s arm. “This isn’t a game. People are dying. I don’t know who you are, but the rest of us are not machines for you to engineer. This is my life. Not an exercise in game theory.” He pulled tighter. “And you do not steal money to buy yourself stuff. That’s wrong. Do you understand?”
The little girl was quiet. Ian thought she might cry. He immediately felt bad. He let go. He was about to apologize when the console beeped and twenty-dollar bills began ejecting from the dispenser. In seconds, the slot filled and the bills fell on the ground. Wink stuffed them in her pockets two and three at a time like a contestant on a game show.
“Can I help you two?”
The cop. Ian stood stiff. Wink immediately ran. She had the console in her hand and the cord yanked free.
The two men watched her run out the doors.
“Your friend’s pretty fast.”
Ian watched her disappear. “I’m not so sure she’s really my friend.”
“No kidding.” The cop looked at the dismantled ATM. Bills were still falling to the ground. “Making a withdrawal?”
Ian didn’t answer. He was trapped and sick to his stomach. He sighed.
The cop looked at the magnetometer. The name on his uniform said Mendez. “Neat toy.”
“It’s not a toy. It’s a magnetometer. It measures—”
“I know what a magnetometer is.” The cop traced a circle with his finger. “Turn around.”
Ian set the magnetometer on the ATM and did as he was told. For the second time in as many days, his hands were cuffed behind his back. Officer Mendez patted him down. No weapons. No wallet. No ID. He took Ian by the arm and grabbed the magnetometer.
The machine had stopped. It was empty. There was a pile of bills on the floor. Ian had never seen so much cash.
Officer Mendez called for help as a small crowd gathered. They pointed in shock at the pile of bills and the guy in the handcuffs. Ian was glad he kept his hood up. He kept his face to the floor, just like all the criminals he saw on TV.
A security guard appeared, a skinny man in a white short-sleeved T-shirt.
Officer Mendez nodded to the cash. “Keep an eye on that. I’ll be back as soon as I take care of Clyde here. Lemme know if Bonnie shows back up.”
He led Ian to an old boat of a police cruiser. It was parked in a spot near the front marked POLICE ONLY. “You have any ID?”
“No, sir. I lost it.” That was true.
“Lost it?” The cop didn’t flinch, but it was clear he was skeptical. “What’s your name?”
“Would you believe it’s . . . Lando Calrissian?”
The cop looked blankly at the Asian kid before him. “Now why you gotta go ripping on Billy Dee like that?”
“I’m not!” Ian objected. “He’s, like, my second favorite character from Empire.”
“After Boba Fett.”
“Of course.”
The cop opened the rear passenger door of his cruiser and put Ian in the back. A metal screen protected the front of the car. The rear doors had no handles.
Officer Mendez tossed the magnetometer in the front and sat in the driver’s seat. It was quiet with the doors closed. He logged into the thin computer mounted on the dash.
“Well, I’ll be.” The policeman stared at the screen. “Okay, Lando, it says here you’re from Strasbourg.” He turned to Ian for an answer.
“Uh . . .” Ian had no idea what to say. “Ja.”
“Come on, man.” The cop was not amused. “I just made that up.”
Now he knew Ian was lying. Ian shut his eyes.
Officer Mendez motioned to the screen. “But it actually does say a man matching your description, alias Lando Calrissian, is wanted for questioning by the Empire, AKA the FBI, for . . . terrorism?” It was a question. “You wanna tell me about that?”
“I know it looks bad.”
“Yeah.” The cop nodded. “A little too bad.”
The red light on the magnetometer clicked on. It was bright. Both men saw it.
Officer Mendez pointed. “That’s not good, is it?”
Ian shook his head. He leaned toward the front seat. “You probably need to get backup or something. Seriously. Everyone here is in danger.”
The cop turned. He looked like he might almost believe Ian. “How about you tell me the truth and I’ll consider it.”
Ian blurted. “I’m being chased by some people, like a secret organization or something. I don’t know. They have this symbol. They set me up, but the girl helped me get away. I just want to clear my name. I didn’t know she was going to steal the money.”
Officer Mendez paused. “That’s the worst lie I’ve ever heard.”
Ian’s shoulders sank.
The policeman stared out the windshield as Deadbolt pulled into the parking lot riding a sleek, black motorcycle. He still wore the helmet and padded suit with the silver dragon.
“But I’ll tell you what.” The officer didn’t take his eyes from the intruder. “If that’s the FBI, I’m Boba Fett.”
Ian perked up.
The officer looked at the screen. “I know a bullshit record when I see one, Lando.”
The cycle stopped at the front of the entrance near the broken ATM. The dark man pushed through the onlookers.
The cop squinted. “Is that a sword?”
A sheathed katana was strapped to the man’s back.
The cop shook his head. “Jesus H. Christ. I’ll be right back.”
“If you try to stop him, he’ll kill you. You gotta let me outta here.”
Deadbolt burst out of the crowd. He scanned the parking lot for the police car and started toward it.
The cop shook his head. “No time now.” He stepped out and opened the rear passenger door. Just a crack. “Let me see if I can’t have a little talk with this gentleman.”
Ian glanced at the partially-opened door, then watched the cop adjust his gun belt and walk toward the dark man. His heart rate quickened. He felt his palms get clammy. He could run. He was supposed to run. He’d been running this whole time.
Ian pushed out of the patrol car and ran into the driveway. “Hey, hey, hey! I’m right here!”
Deadbolt saw. He pushed past the cop.
“Damn fool!” The officer yelled. He grabbed the dark man’s arm as he passed. “You. Just a minute, there.”
The dark man stopped. The police officer had ahold of his arm. There was a pause.
Officer Mendez started to convulse violently. The force of his contractions pulled his arm free and he fell to the ground, still locked in seizures.
Then he stopped. He wasn’t breathing.
Deadbolt drew his sword. Ian stepped back. His skin felt like it was on fire. He ran and felt a great rush of air, as if a gust of wind had come out of nowhere. In an instant, he was three rows away.
How had he moved that fast?
The dark man was still by the prone officer. He ran toward Ian, who ducked and shuffled between the parked cars. It was hard to keep low with his hands cuffed behind his back.
He dropped and hid behind a Chevrolet. “Shit.” He didn’t know what to do. He poked his head up cautiously. He couldn’t see the dark man. He lowered his head to the pavement with a grunt. Officer Mendez was on the ground. He was dead. Ian scanned under the cars for the dark boots of his pursuer. Nothing.
The sword penetrated the side of the Chevy and Ian jumped. The blade was completely black. Ian stared wide-eyed at the killer. He could see his own reflection in the man’s thin, sleek helmet. Ian pushed himself back with his feet. They must still want him alive.
He bolted back toward the dead cop. This time the dark man threw his hand into the air. An arc of electricity danced between the parked cars and struck Ian in the back. It hurt, and he buckled and rolled across pavement.
He looked back. He had just covered fifteen meters in an instant. How was he moving so quickly?
The killer pulled his sword free from the truck. Ian jumped to his feet. An engine revved. The ambulance screeched to a halt between the two men. Wink stuck out her tongue at the killer through the tinted window.
Ian opened the passenger door as best he could with his hands behind his back. The dark man ran forward.
“Hurry!”
Ian launched himself into the cab and landed belly-first on the seat. Wink had replaced the sunflower pedal extensions. She hit the gas while Ian’s legs were still dangling out the open door. The truck rushed forward.
“Get in, moron!”
“I’m trying!” Ian struggled into the seat just as Wink clipped a stationary car with the tip of the door, which slammed shut. Ian almost lost a foot.
“The bike!” he yelled.
“What?”
With his hands still cuffed, Ian banged his head against the door, motioning to the dark man’s motorcycle parked in front of the mall. The killer was running toward it. There was a small crowd.
“Ram it!”
The child turned the wheel. The ambulance shifted. Tires squealed. Tools and equipment crashed in the back. She had her tongue sticking out as she maneuvered the large vehicle around a row of cars and straight over the bike. People jumped back. The handlebars snapped and the tires bent in a burst of sparks as the sleek street bike rolled under the heavy truck.
The ambulance hit the highway, sirens blaring. Everyone moved out of their way.
Ian rested his head against the seat. “Jesus, we just almost died.”