It was a new model, with a nice gold-flake paint job. New enough?
She pushed her mind in under the hood, and there! At the front, on the right, clustered all the little coils of logic and circuitry she needed. Each microchip threw its map at her. She chose the ones connected to the battery and the ignition key, and with great delicacy squeezed a little power into them.
The engine cleared its throat and rumbled quietly.
Chizara crept closer and bent over to check the driver’s seat.
No one. This was her work, this unlocking, this starting.
She went around and opened the driver’s-side door. This was wrong, so wrong. This was a felony. This was grand theft auto, and not the game. This was also driving without a license. Chizara had only had five lessons in Dad’s truck.
But she climbed in. The seat fit her snugly, perfectly.
Seat belt. Snick.
Lights. There.
Hand brake. Uh-huh.
The dashboard was lit up, the surface layer of an elaborate 3-D plan, a miniature city of systems. The cabin was peppered with little stings of tech, phone docks and mirror adjusters and seat controls. In the engine bay the electronics raced and pulsed, prompting and monitoring everything mechanical.
None of it was strong enough to hurt Chizara while she was still this amped up from her mall crashing. Though that theft prevention system hollering for a satellite—yeah, that could go. She let it burn, one leaf in a glowing forest.
She put the car in drive, released the hand brake.
Indicate, Dad’s voice said from the passenger seat. Check your mirrors.
The Camaro slid out into the road, smooth as silk. And the road was empty. Everyone was in town, watching those bright sprays of fireworks, impatient for them to end and for that building to come down, crash-crumple-rumble-crash.
The clock on the dash read 21:14—she had sixteen minutes.
She couldn’t afford to be cautious. She had to drive like the mad criminal she was.
Eyes wide, hands gripping the padded-leather wheel, Chizara put her foot down. The Camaro obeyed, steady and fast.
And she started planning.
When she got there, she’d have to be subtle. To focus. Isolate the fuses and wires set to bring down the hotel, and neutralize only them. Not lurch around like a drunken King Kong and knock out half the town. She could do it with finesse, make it look like the explosives experts made some small mistake—
Her phone buzzed as she flew along Metro Boulevard. She got it out and tucked it against her shoulder the way she’d seen drivers do. Fool, Dad would growl whenever he saw that. Dangerous fool.
“Nate?” Chizara said. “I’m on my way.”
“Good to hear.” She’d never heard his voice so steady and hard. Was this what his fear sounded like? “I’m past the fence they put up to keep the crowd out. I’m going in to find Ethan and Kelsie.” No code names. The no-code-names thing was snapping her heart in two. “In case I don’t find them in time, I’m counting on you to stop this thing.”
“I’ll be there! I’ll be there!” she shouted, terrified, elated, inflated with her stolen power, wide-eyed with horror at all the rules she was breaking, at everything hanging on her actions. Four people’s lives—that had to be worth going to jail for, didn’t it? “Don’t worry, Nate, I’m coming!”
She took the corner onto Mason Street with a squeal of tires and floored the accelerator. Ahead, above, close enough to almost fill the windshield, fire flared up; light rained down.
CHAPTER 76
MOB
KELSIE COULD FEEL THE CROWD outside the building.
They were spread in all directions, vast and rumbling like a distant storm. They were excited, enjoying this big night of spectacle and adventure from vantage points safely blocks way from the Parker-Hamilton. Their excitement rose with each spindly plume of fire and carefully designed explosion overhead.
Kelsie tried to absorb the energy out there, to take strength from it. But the crowds were too far away. Mostly what she felt was the emptiness of the hotel halls and floors. Abandoned places were even worse when there was a joyful crowd in the distance, like an oasis you could never reach.
She sank into the dull ache of knowing that the last week had been for nothing. She hadn’t saved her dad, she couldn’t save herself, and she’d doomed Ethan in the bargain.
A roar went up outside. The fireworks reached a crescendo, then sputtered out.
“Is it time?” she asked.
She looked at the others. The room glowed dimly from the lights outside, lit with the occasional flare from a falling ember.
Dad glanced at her through puffy eyes. “Not yet, Kels.”
She strained against her bonds, trying to pull free. It was useless.
“Then why did the fireworks stop?”
“Maybe they’re reloading,” Ethan said dully from the gloom to Kelsie’s right.
Kelsie let herself believe that. Maybe it wasn’t time for the big explosion that would vaporize them all. She didn’t look up at the fat block of C4 strapped to the column over her head. But she could feel it there, a misshapen totem of death.
Dad said, “I’m so sorry, Kels.”
“I know.”
She could feel tears begin to run down her cheeks, cutting tracks in the grime. It was so dusty in the abandoned hotel. After two long hours of being tied up, she could feel the dust in her lungs. She shook her head to clear her eyes.
She hated being tied up. If she had to die, she wanted to be moving.
“It’s all my fault,” Dad snuffled. His nose had been beaten halfway into his face, and he could barely breathe.
“I tried to fix it, Dad,” Kelsie said. She’d tried so hard. But it was like the ropes around her wrists. No matter how much she pulled, they wouldn’t break.
“I hate everyone out there,” Ethan muttered. “Why do people like to watch stuff blow up, anyway? It’s so stupid.”
Kelsie shook her head. Couldn’t he feel how much joy there was in that crowd? That was life. But here inside this building was only death.
“Ethan,” she said. “I’m really sorry for getting you into this mess.”
“We got each other into this mess,” Ethan said.
“You helped a little, I guess.”
“Yeah, well. My voice did.”
Kelsie looked up at him. “Ethan, your voice is you. It’s part of you, and it does what you want. Maybe not the exact way you want it, but you’re the one who starts it rolling. Take responsibility for it.”
Ethan let out a breath. Now he looked annoyed. “Gee, I wish I had the time to really think through what you’ve just said. Instead of, like, fifteen minutes before I get blown up.”
Kelsie was about to reply when her father said, “I got all of us into this. It’s my fault. You’re just kids.”
“Stop, Dad.” Kelsie wanted to hug him and punch him at the same time. “You’re just making me feel worse.”
She’d known since that time he’d gone away to prison that Dad was a danger to himself. She should have taken better care of him.
The whump of a firework exploding made them flinch. It broke into a series of crackles, sending wild shadows through the giant room.
“See?” Ethan said. “They were just reloading. Lots more show to go.”
Her dad started sobbing softly.
Kelsie thought back to that moment in the Moonstruck Diner, seeing him in the passing car. Less than a week ago, but it felt like it belonged to another life. Another Kelsie, one who was a thousand years younger than she felt now.
“I know when I’ve done wrong, Kels,” her dad said.
“Dad . . .” She didn’t finish. She couldn’t. She wasn’t sure, anymore, what she wanted him to do or say.
“Kelsie,” Ethan said softly. “The guy’s trying to say the last thing he’ll ever get to say to you. Maybe you should listen.”
“That’s right,” Dad rasped. “That’s it exactly, son.”
Kelsie squinted at Ethan, looked for the expression on his face in the semidark. He wore that smooth, practiced gaze.
She couldn’t believe it. Here they were, about to die, and Ethan was still playing around with his stupid power.
“Dad, Ethan doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He doesn’t know us.”
“Just trying to help,” he wheedled. Now that was his real voice.
Kelsie hated being trapped here, in this abandoned, empty place. She wanted to be out there with the crowd, carried up with those swells of excitement every time the sky exploded. If she only had a few minutes, why couldn’t she spend it dancing to that glorious crowd music?
But no, she was here, tied to a column of concrete and waiting to die.
“I tried to do right by you, Kels,” Dad said.
“He did, you know,” Ethan said.
This was like being trapped in a trash compactor. The two of them coming at her from both directions, and her tied up, unable to cover her ears.
Dad said, “I did my best.”
“I know, Dad.” Though really, if she was honest about it, Dad’s best had always been pretty crap.
A couple of burning firework embers fluttered down past the windows, lighting the room in garish purple and orange. Kelsie’s pulse quickened. With every burst the end was coming closer.
Ethan leaned forward, his face lit by the vivid colors. “I think what you’re both trying to say is that you love each other. Okay?”
“Stop trying to scam me, Scam,” Kelsie said.
She wished the two of them would just stop. She knew this was a stupid way to die, arguing with her dad and the lying kid who’d bumbled his way into her family’s mess.
But when the next set of whistles and booms overhead subsided, there was Ethan’s voice again: “Some things need to be said. Right, Jerry? You know what I’m talking about.”
Kelsie twisted in her ropes. “Why are you doing this, Ethan?”
“Because there’s something your dad always wanted to tell you. But he thought there’d be time.”
“Time?” Kelsie turned back to her father. “For what?”
“To talk about your mom,” Ethan’s voice said.
Kelsie didn’t answer. Her mother had died a long time ago, when she was little.
She watched her dad lit into garishness by fireworks, his bruised and bloodied face like a mask. She’d given up asking about her mom before she’d even turned ten. Dad always changed the subject. She figured he was too hurt by the loss to really talk about it.
But she’d always wondered.
“Who is this guy?” her dad said. “How does he know?”
“Same way as in the bank,” Kelsie said.
“He can read minds?”
“Sort of.” She turned to face the smooth mask. “Why are you doing this, Ethan? What do you want?”
“For you to find some peace,” Ethan said, his voice as soft and comforting as an ad for life insurance. “You were three years old when you guys left New Orleans. Jerry, you told Kelsie’s mom never to follow you, right?”
“We didn’t leave her.” Kelsie closed her eyes, trying to block out sound. “She died.”
She felt the crowd outside whooping and hollering. She tried to reach for that feeling out there, anything to erase the desperate need that choked her.
“Dad?” When he didn’t answer, she turned to Ethan. “What really happened?”
“Your mom didn’t die. He saved you from her.”
“What?” Kelsie tried to look at her father, but her vision was full of pinpricks of light. She was breathing too hard, hyperventilating.
This wasn’t peace. What the hell was the voice doing?
“She loved you,” it said. “But she was violent. He thought he could protect you, until your mother broke your wrist one night. He packed up and left her right then to keep you safe. Middle of the night, he got in the car and drove west and he didn’t stop until he hit ocean. He loved you both, but he chose you.”
“Oh my God,” Kelsie whispered.
“I’m sorry,” Dad said softly. “I never knew if it was the right thing to tell you.”
“So it’s true?”
Dad nodded. “I was going to tell you when you got older. But I kept putting it off.”
He sounded fierce and sad.
Kelsie turned back to Ethan. There was a spray of embers against the windows. The fireworks were low and close now. Kelsie could see that Ethan’s smooth expression was gone. He was watching her with a look of deep sadness.
“That sucks, Kelsie,” he said softly.
“Where is she now?” Kelsie asked. It turned out the voice had been right. She did want to know the truth, even if it was only for a few minutes.
Ethan’s mouth opened and the voice said, “She still thinks of you.”
A feeling went through her then. Much smaller than the glorious crowd energies outside, but vital nonetheless. Like finding something old and precious that she didn’t know she’d lost.
“Is she still in New Orleans?”
Kelsie watched Ethan, waiting for the voice to answer. But his face changed from a smooth mask to a panicked boy about to die.
“Do you hear that?” he squeaked.
Kelsie listened. The excitement of the people outside was making her blood beat, crowding out the quiet in her ears.
“Someone’s in the building,” Ethan cried. “Help! Help! ”
“Who are you shouting at?” Kelsie asked.
“Just yell, will you? Help! ”
Kelsie shouted with all her might. A moment later the two of them were shouting in unison, sending their urgent cries out to fill the empty rooms and echoing hallways.
When they paused for breath, Kelsie heard it, heavy footfalls on the staircase.
Someone was coming.
CHAPTER 77
BELLWETHER
FINALLY SOMEONE ANSWERED.
Nate staggered to a halt on the dusty concrete of the stairs, panting hard.
“Help!” came the distant call. Ethan.
Scam—he reminded himself. This was a mission. He had to stay detached, in case there were hard choices to make.
Another voice joined Scam’s, high and clear. Mob.
Nate hit the stairs again, climbing toward the noise, ignoring the muscles burning in his legs. The flashlight on his phone threw wild shadows, and the walls gaped open where sledgehammers had pounded through.
The fireworks were getting lower, closer. Sprays of fire spilled from the top of the Parker-Hamilton now. The windows of the stairwell trembled with the explosions.
The finale was almost here. But he had to think of the Ultimate Goal, not failure. Failure meant dying in this filthy, forsaken building. Losing everything.
Nate didn’t answer the cries above. It was a waste of breath, and his lungs were full of dust.
He followed the sound to the twelfth floor, almost the top of the doomed hotel, and there they were in a large empty room. Scam, Mob, and her father.
“Nate!” Scam yelled. “I mean Glorious—um, Bellwether!”
Nate still couldn’t answer. He was panting too hard.
“Whoa,” Scam went on. “I didn’t think it would be you saving us.”
Nate ignored him. The three were tied up with thick ropes. He didn’t have a knife.
Glass.
He ran to the windows, but they were intact. On the floor was a piece of masonry. Nate picked it up and hurled it against the pulsing lights from outside.
The brittle sound of shattering was followed by the roar of the crowd pouring through the gap. The explosions were thundering overhead, building to a climax.
“Don’t cut your hands. There’s a rag five feet to your left.” That was Ethan’s voice, being helpful for once.
Nate snatched up the rag and took hold of a jagged peninsula of glass still in the window. It snapped off and fell inward to the floor, splitting in two.
He lifted the large
r piece and ran to where Mob was tied to a supporting column.
On the way up, he had decided to save her first. She was new and unknown, full of potential. Her power had filled him with questions, and she was more like the rest of them—born of the crowd, moved by the Curve. Not like Scam.
But the ropes around her wrists were thick nylon, and the piece of glass kept slipping and cutting him. It didn’t help that Mob had pulled her ropes tight by struggling. Her hands were bright red.
“Cut the piece two inches above her left hand,” Scam said calmly.
Right. It was near the middle of the knot, and already frayed where Mob had rubbed it against a corner of the column. Nate started sawing there, and soon it was unraveling.
Her hands parted, and Mob fell forward with a groan, rubbing her shoulders.
Nate ran to Scam, who was second on his list.
“Where?” he asked.
“No need to cut,” the voice said. “Take that loose end on your left and—not that one. Yes, that’s it. Work it back in toward the knot.”
As Mob swept over and grabbed the piece of glass, Nate saw the specks of blood on the rag. His right forefinger was bleeding fast.
The blood helped, making the rope slicker. It slipped through, but the knot still held.
“What next?” Nate said.
The voice didn’t answer.
“What next?”
“Oh no,” Scam said, his real voice breaking. “It’s not talking. There’s no point.”
Mob was still sawing away at her father’s bonds, but Jerry spoke up. “It’s gone quiet outside.”
Nate hesitated, staring at the knot before him. His mind refused to resolve its puzzle, or to understand what they all were saying.
“Maybe they’re just reloading again?” Scam’s real voice.
Mob stood up, her ear cocked toward the crowd. The glass dropped from her hand and shattered.
“No,” she said. “I think we’re done here.”
Nate shook his head, staring at the knot. Think of the Goal, not of failure.
“Chizara,” he said, half to himself. But she was on the other side of town, too far away to help.
Still, there was no point sitting here and waiting for the end.
Nate rose from his crouch and held out his hand to Mob. “We can run. We can still make it.”
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