Charlie Thorne and the Last Equation

by Stuart Gibbs

  Only Charlie didn’t stay on the run. Before she got to Dante, she suddenly veered to the right, into the trees.

  She spotted us, Dante thought. How on earth did she do that?

  Up the mountain, Milana changed course and followed Charlie into the woods.

  Dante dug his poles into the ground again and took up the chase.

  • • •

  Charlie shot through the trees. Her hunch had been right. Someone had found her. She didn’t know who exactly, but she wasn’t going to wait around to find out. She had seen the second person down below, moving to block her escape, forcing her to take evasive action. And the one she had spotted on the ski run was coming after her too.

  The problem now was that she was on tricky, unpredictable terrain. She had spent plenty of time studying the trail map for Snowmass, picking out potential escape routes in case of trouble, but she couldn’t possibly scope them all out. She could only hope that she was skilled enough to handle them.

  The forest was thick here, full of trees, and Charlie was certainly moving too quickly through it to be safe. She had no choice though. The female agent was coming after her just as fast, and whoever had been waiting down below—she couldn’t even tell if it had been a man or a woman—was certainly coming as well. So Charlie skied through the trees as quickly as she could, reckless as it was.

  It struck her that the forest was incredibly silent compared to the ski resort. The runs at Snowmass were filled with the noise of other skiers and the clanking machinery of the lifts, but here in the woods that sound had faded almost instantly, muffled by the canopy of branches and the deep snow on the ground. Every sound Charlie made—every swoosh of a turn, every grunt of exertion— sounded as loud as a cannon, but she could also clearly hear the woman pursuing her.

  The woman was catching up.

  Charlie might have been an excellent skier, but she was still only twelve. The woman was bigger and stronger than she was. And in addition to the trees, there was another big problem with fleeing on skis. Charlie was leaving tracks. Perfect, easy-to-follow tracks in the snow. Which was allowing the woman behind her to stay on her tail. Charlie needed to do something to slow her down.

  So, in addition to looking for the best route to speed through the forest, she also had her mind racing, analyzing the gaps between all the trees ahead, estimating the distances between them, assessing which route would be optimal for what she needed. Finally, she spotted what she was hoping for. As she shot through the gap in the trees, she ducked and held a ski pole above her head, turned perpendicular to her. It wedged perfectly between the tree trunks, which yanked it from her grasp and held it there, suspended four feet above the ground.

  Charlie didn’t risk a look back to check her work. She could only plow ahead, hoping the pole would blend in with the forest and that the agent pursuing her would be too focused on following the tracks in the snow to be looking at the trees.

  A startled yelp rang out through the quiet woods from behind her, followed by the sound of a skier getting clotheslined by a ski pole and then wiping out badly.

  Charlie grinned, proud of her trick.

  And then the ground dropped out from underneath her.

  FOUR

  Dante came upon Milana so fast he almost skied right into her.

  She was sprawled directly in his path, having lost control for some reason and smashed into a tree. Dante swerved and nearly crashed himself, then stopped to check on her. Yes, that meant Charlie was widening the gap between them, but he feared Milana might have knocked herself unconscious, and he couldn’t leave her behind. By the time he found his way back to her, she might have frozen to death.

  “Moon . . . ,” he began.

  “I’m all right.” She groaned. Although she was trying to hide the pain, he could hear it in her voice. “Go get her.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes! Go get that little jerk!” Milana pointed down the mountain.

  So Dante went after Charlie. Only he’d lost some time and a lot of speed. It took him a while to get moving again, but the slow pace turned out to be a blessing in disguise. If Dante had been going much faster, he might have gone over the edge of the cliff.

  It wasn’t a huge cliff, but it came up fast, the lip of it hidden by a thick stand of trees. Even at his relatively slow speed, he almost pushed through the branches and went right off the top.

  His fear for his own safety was immediately overwhelmed by his fear for Charlie Thorne. She probably wouldn’t have seen the cliff coming either, and she would have been going fast. Dante didn’t want the kid dead. He skidded to another stop and cautiously sidled to the lip, peering down over the edge.

  The cliff was only thirty feet tall, but there were plenty of rocks at the bottom and only a narrow patch of snow to land in. To Dante’s relief, Charlie wasn’t splayed out on the rocks below. Instead, there was a pair of ski tracks leading through the snow into the trees, indicating that somehow, by incredible luck or incredible skill, the kid had nailed the landing and continued onward.

  So she was still alive.

  The problem was, there was now a cliff between Dante and Charlie, and Dante sure as heck wasn’t about to ski off the top of this thing. He looked around and spotted an area to the side where the rock face gave way to a narrow slot filled with snow. That, he could handle. It wouldn’t look good, but he could manage it. The bigger concern was that it would eat up more time. Dante had no choice though. He needed to bring in Charlie Thorne. The fate of the world depended on it.

  • • •

  Charlie was now well down the mountain ahead of Dante. The slope had grown steeper since the cliff, but Charlie wasn’t going as fast now, exercising more caution. The cliff had caught her by surprise and shaken her. If another sudden drop came up, she wanted to be ready for it.

  She knew she was lucky to have weathered the cliff as well as she had. She had been skiing recklessly, too focused on what was behind her instead of what was ahead. One moment there had been ground beneath her and the next there wasn’t. There hadn’t even been time to see the numbers before she hit the ground. She simply had to go on instinct. Somehow she had landed all right, though she had barely made it a few feet into the woods before catching a shoulder on a tree and getting knocked on her butt. Fortunately, she had been able to recover from that quickly and set on down the slope again, although her shoulder throbbed and she now had about five pounds of snow down her pants, freezing her rear end.

  She had come down at least a thousand feet in elevation since Deadman’s Drop. The thick stands of evergreens were giving way to forests of aspen, and the bare branches of those trees were easier to pick out a path through. That was good news, as Charlie was growing tired. Fleeing her enemies was exhausting.

  She was also starving. Skiing burned a ton of calories, and she and her friends had been planning to get lunch after Deadman’s. Now Charlie was thinking that, in addition to being tired, she might be hypoglycemic as well.

  As Charlie sliced through the trees, her phone rang in the pocket of her ski parka. It was probably Eva or one of the other girls, wondering where she was, annoyed at her for taking off without them and now making them look for her. There was no time to answer it though. They would have to just keep wondering where she was.

  It made Charlie think about the mess her life had suddenly become. She had been hoping no one would have ever caught on to what she’d done. Hoping that she could continue coasting through college, then maybe do the same thing in graduate school, until she was eighteen and legally free from her parents. Then she could do whatever she wanted with the money she had socked away—as long as she was smart about it.

  But now someone was onto her. Maybe they worked for the government and were technically the good guys. Or maybe they weren’t good people at all. Either way Charlie couldn’t go back to college. That life was over. She would have to figure out something else.

  She had money to get by in the meantime. She always
carried money on her in case of trouble. A lot of money, in cash. And her passport, too. It was in a special belt strapped around her waist underneath her ski clothes.

  As for Eva and the other girls, she would never see or speak to them again. They would probably sit around for the next fifteen minutes, getting more and more annoyed about her, and then they’d start to get worried, and then they’d probably notify the ski patrol, who’d notify the police, and then the rest of the afternoon would be everyone trying to piece the puzzle together of what had happened to her, a puzzle no one would ever fully figure out. . . .

  There was a noise ahead.

  Charlie stopped and listened.

  She heard the sound of a motor in the distance. Then she heard it cut out, followed by the sounds of someone talking on a cell phone.

  Charlie smiled. According to the ski map she had memorized, she had a good idea what lay ahead.

  She continued down the slope, confident enough to move faster now. The ground flattened out a bit, and she carved quickly through the trees until she saw what she was looking for.

  A house.

  It was enormous. A mansion. Anyone who could afford the millions of dollars to buy a ski-in, ski-out property could also afford plenty of house. There were probably eight bedrooms and twice as many bathrooms, a gourmet kitchen, a grand dining hall, and a few rooms the owner didn’t even know what to do with. And given that it was a second home—or maybe even a third or a fourth home—chances were the owners weren’t even here.

  The house sat at the end of a road that Charlie had seen from the ski lift at the bottom of the mountain. There were lots of enormous houses on the road, houses very much like this one. The road was gated and had a security post to keep people from coming in uninvited, though the guards wouldn’t be that concerned with people going out.

  A pickup truck was parked in the driveway, the truck of a local pool serviceman, probably here to check the hot tub. Any mansion by a ski run would certainly have a hot tub. Maybe two.

  The truck would do nicely.

  Charlie skied up to the house, popped off her skis, and abandoned them in the snow. She pulled her goggles up off her face but didn’t bother taking her ski helmet off.

  Then she checked the pickup to see if the keys had been left in it. It would save her some trouble if the pool guy was careless and had left them there. He hadn’t though. So Charlie worked her way around the house, following the fresh footprints in the snow.

  Sure enough, there was a hot tub, filled with heated water. The pool guy had just flipped the lid up, and steam was billowing into the air.

  The guy was young and busy talking on his phone, the buds jammed in his ears, barely even focused on his work, so he didn’t hear Charlie coming before he saw her. Then he stopped in midsentence and stared at her, trying to figure out what she was doing there. The dazed look in his eyes indicated he wasn’t too bright.

  Charlie knew she didn’t appear threatening. She was tall, so she looked older than her twelve years, but she was still obviously only a young teenager at most. “Can you please give me the keys to your truck?” she asked, nice and easy. “It’s an emergency.”

  The pool guy yanked the buds from his ears. “What kind of emergency?”

  “The kind that requires your truck. Could you please just give me the keys?”

  The pool guy laughed, like maybe this was a joke. “You want me to hand over the keys to my truck? Just like that?”

  “Exactly,” Charlie said. “I don’t have the time to explain this in any more detail, so . . .”

  “What happens if I don’t give you the keys?” the guy asked, taunting her. “Are you gonna take them from me, girlie?”

  The guy’s attitude was upsetting to Charlie. Instead of being concerned for what trouble she was in, he seemed amused, which wasn’t cool. But she did her best to remain calm and said, “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “I would have felt bad about taking your truck. But now that I realize you’re a sexist jerk, that’s not the case anymore.”

  The pool guy glowered at her, then gave her a little shove, knocking her back on her heels. “You think you can take my keys from me?”

  Charlie sized the guy up. He was nearly a foot taller than her, but she had learned in self-defense class that size wasn’t everything. In fact, big guys were often overconfident in their abilities. “Yes.”

  The pool guy laughed condescendingly. “I’d like to see you try.”

  “All right.” Charlie hadn’t expected things to come to this. She’d never had to fight anyone outside the dojo and wasn’t completely sure she had what it took. But she needed that truck, fast, and now this guy was in her way. So she thought back to her martial arts classes and put everything she had learned into action.

  Step one: When confronting someone bigger than you, use their size against them. She lashed out a leg and swept the pool guy’s legs out from under him. On the icy deck, it was easy. He slipped and landed flat on his back.

  Step two: Incapacitate your enemy as quickly as possible. Charlie knew she wasn’t strong enough to punch the guy’s lights out, so instead she dropped onto his stomach with her knees, knocking the wind out of him.

  Step three: Be prepared for a counterattack. Sure enough, it came. The pool guy made a lame attempt to try to swat her off him, but she caught his hand and wrenched two of the fingers backward. The pool guy wailed in pain and stopped fighting.

  Charlie was surprised how easy it had all been. “The keys,” she said. “Now. Or you’ll need an ambulance.”

  With his free hand, the pool guy quickly fished the keys from his pocket and held them up to her.

  Charlie snatched them away. “Give me your phone, too.” She didn’t want the guy calling the police the moment she left.

  The pool guy wavered about ceding his phone, but another yank on his fingers made him change his mind. He handed that over too.

  Step four: Make sure your challenger is down for good. According to Charlie’s martial arts instructors, a lot of jerks would pretend to be down for the count and then attack again the moment you turned your back. So to be safe, she shoved the pool guy into the hot tub. He wasn’t going to be able to run after her soaking wet in this weather. His clothes would freeze solid on him.

  The guy howled and then called her a whole bunch of really offensive things.

  “This could have been a whole lot easier on you if you hadn’t been such a creep,” Charlie said, and then ran for the truck, hoping she hadn’t been delayed too long. There was no time to kick her bulky ski boots off to drive—she didn’t remove her ski helmet or her gloves, either. She simply climbed into the truck and started it up.

  Charlie had driven only once before; a few weeks earlier Eva had let Charlie tool around a supermarket parking lot in her car late at night in exchange for help with her homework. It hadn’t been that complicated, and all vehicles worked pretty much the same. Charlie found the gear shift, put the truck in reverse, backed into the road, shifted into forward, and floored the gas.

  Charlie had expected that driving on an icy road was considerably more complicated than driving on a dry parking lot—but she hadn’t been prepared for how much more powerful the truck was than Eva’s crappy car—or that it would be difficult to use the gas and brake pedals with ski boots on. The truck leapt forward and nearly plowed right into an aspen tree. Charlie swerved away, flattening a shrubbery, and then almost skidded right off the other side of the road. She swung back in the original direction, took out the neighbor’s mailbox, and finally managed to wrest the truck under control. She hit the gas again and sped downhill, hoping she was on her way to freedom.

  Suddenly, the second of her pursuers, the one who’d been at the bottom of the ski run, shot out of the trees, sliding into the center of the road ahead. At this range, it was now evident that he was a man, and a big man at that. He reached under his jacket, going for his gun.

  Charlie knew what she needed to d
o. If she hit the accelerator, she could mow the agent down before he got the gun out. It’d be the idiot’s own fault for doing something reckless like throwing himself in front of a truck on an icy road. By the time anyone found the body, Charlie would be long gone.

  She willed herself to floor the pedal.

  But she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t kill anyone. So she slammed on the brakes instead. The tires locked and the truck spun on the ice.

  The man scrambled to the side of the road, dodging the bumper as it swung past, allowing Charlie to get her first good look at the man’s face.

  Dante Garcia, she thought. I should have known.

  Then the truck nailed a snowbank and upended, and everything went black.

  FIVE

  Somewhere over Missouri

  Charlie knew she was on a private jet before she opened her eyes. She had never been on a jet before, even though she could afford it, because chartering a jet as a twelve-year-old would have gathered attention she didn’t want. But she knew enough about what a jet would be like to put the pieces together.

  She could feel the vibrations of flight and hear the telltale purr of the twin engines. That meant she was on a plane. And yet she was facedown on a couch. It felt like fake leather against her face. Commercial planes didn’t have fake leather seats. Or couches, for that matter.

  Plus, it was relatively quiet. A commercial flight would be full of chatting fellow passengers, flight attendants doing food and beverage service, maybe a crying baby or two. The only noise Charlie could hear besides the engines was the occasional rustle of paper. It sounded like someone was reading.

  Her captors had removed her ski helmet and pried the boots off her feet, but she was still wearing her other cold-weather clothes, so she was hot inside the plane. However, she didn’t move. Instead, she remained still and kept her eyes closed, not wanting anyone to know she had regained consciousness yet, trying to piece together what she could.