Baxter had always been kind to her, but Carina knew he wouldn’t defy Sheila. She was his boss, and besides, he was a professional to the core. He wouldn’t turn away from the job he was paid to do just to help her.
Tanner moved around the edge of the garage, pushing boxes out of the way. “There’s a bike … only one, though. Oh, flat tire. Don’t suppose a Jet Ski will do us much good—”
“Tanner, my biggest problem is shoes,” Carina said.
“Why didn’t you say so?”
Near the door leading to the backyard was a rack containing ski boots, gardening clogs, and old sneakers. Tanner rifled through it, knocking over half a dozen shoes in his hurry. “How about these?”
He held up a pair of women’s golf shoes with fringed tops. Carina grabbed them and tugged at the laces. “A little big,” she said, jamming one on her right foot. “But I can tie them tight and—”
“You’d better hurry,” Tanner said urgently. “The lawn mower man’s—Oh, shit, I think he must be out of gas, he’s coming over here—”
Carina yanked on the second shoe and fumbled with the laces. “I’m ready,” she said just as Tanner hit the garage door opener. He grabbed her arm and they dove for the door, crouching low as it slowly creaked open, the man coming toward them.
“Hey, what the hell are you doing?” he shouted, but Tanner and Carina were already out.
“To the right!” Carina said. Coming down the alley at a run was Meacham, closely followed by Baxter and a third man who wasn’t making any effort to hide the fact that he was talking into a radio as he jogged along. Carina recognized the Calaveras Lab’s silver-and-red logo stitched on his jacket as he spotted her and veered toward them.
“This way,” Tanner said, pulling Carina with him. They raced through the backyard behind the garage where they’d been hiding, through the lazy spray of a sprinkler, around a pair of little kids playing on a plastic slide.
“Gate ahead,” Carina yelled without slowing. “Gonna jump it—”
The wooden gate was set into a fence, at least four and a half feet tall, that circled the yard. There was a latch, but if Carina took the time to unhook it, their pursuers would use those critical seconds to catch up. She hit the gate without slowing down, placing her hands over the tops of the boards, then jackknifing her body up and over, the way she’d practiced on the vault a hundred times before. The tops of her thighs scraped against the rough edge of the wood, but then her feet struck ground on the other side—a perfect landing.
She dashed out of the way just in time to avoid being crushed by Tanner, who’d hit the gate right after her. He didn’t nail the landing as well as she had, coming down heavily and nearly falling before righting his balance. She waited to make sure he was unhurt; then they both took off running down the street as someone slammed into the gate.
Their pursuers apparently lacked the dexterity and strength to clear the gate the way she and Tanner had. She heard cursing and shots fired. Something whizzed by her ear.
“Tanner, watch out!” she screamed, but he was one step ahead of her, grabbing her hand and pulling her abruptly toward the cars parked along the edge of the street. She couldn’t believe the security men were shooting—were they really trying to kill them? Hadn’t Sheila said that she wanted to protect Carina?
She looked over her shoulder, despite knowing it would slow her down. There—there was Baxter, running in front of Meacham, pushing him out of the way. It might have been accidental—but from where Carina stood, it sure didn’t look like it.
Was Baxter trying to protect her?
“Stay low!” Tanner called as they raced for the cover of the cars.
Something struck her upper arm. “Ow!” She slammed her hand over her biceps and touched a barbed piece of plastic. A dart? “Tanner, I’ve been—”
“Two blocks to the BART station,” Tanner yelled. “Inbound train’s coming!”
Carina looked where he was pointing. Rising over the street, the elevated tracks ran through downtown Martindale, carrying commuters the thirty miles across the mountains and the bay, and into San Francisco. And there, in the distance, was the train, its headlights winking as it approached.
If she really had been shot, Carina was just going to have to deal with it after she got on that train.
As she plowed forward, her vision began to swim in front of her. A strange, buckling sensation rippled through her muscles, and she stumbled. But Tanner didn’t let go. The borrowed shoes hurt her feet, the leather rubbing against her toes and the backs of her heels. She ignored the pain and focused all her effort on not falling.
Forward … just keep moving forward, one foot in front of the other. Again. Again. It was like when she used to run the 800-meter in middle school. Carina wasn’t cut out for the event, but she’d given it her all, even as the other girls surged past her. She never placed in a single race, and more often than not she came in last, but she didn’t stop trying. Each time, she hoped that her mother would come to the meet, that she would leave work early like she was always promising to do and stand in the bleachers with the other parents, watching her run, cheering her on.
That possibility kept her going through an entire losing season, before the coach finally decided to let her compete in the field events. It was just a matter of narrowing your attention until all that was left was the next step, and the next, until you hit the finish line and could collapse. Pain meant nothing; the raw scrape of air in your lungs meant nothing—that was what Carina had trained herself to believe as she surged toward the finish that would never be good enough.
The turnstile was in sight. Tanner dug into his wallet for his transit card and slid it through. “Go!” he shouted, waiting for her to pass. She let her momentum carry her, the metal bars sliding out of the way. But her legs felt wrong. Her foot flopped down at a strange angle, and this time, without Tanner to catch her, she couldn’t recover. She fell hard on her hip, feeling the cold concrete scrape her skin as a startled woman jumped out of the way.
Tanner was through the turnstile now, and he took her hand and pulled her up. “Son, is she okay?” an old man asked, but they were already on the move. The train had arrived, and they raced for the escalator, Tanner practically carrying her.
“Too many people,” Tanner panted as a crowd raced to make the train. “We’ll never make it on the escalator. We have to use the stairs.”
“I … can’t,” Carina gasped. Her vision had worsened; now she was seeing black spots, and the edge of the handrail seemed to waver in front of her.
And then she was airborne. Tanner had picked her up and thrown her over his shoulder, grunting as he took the stairs two at a time. Carina felt the blood rush to her face, watching the stairs pass below, her body limp and her muscles useless.
The train doors were starting to close as Tanner burst through them. He staggered to an empty seat and fell heavily into it, holding Carina in his arms. The last thing she felt before she lost consciousness was the train starting to move.
“Come on, Car, wake up.”
A gentle hand on her face. Tanner’s voice. Something pressing against her leg.
Carina blinked, a wave of nausea passing through her as the scene around them swam and wobbled until it finally settled. Her eye was twitching again, like before, but this time it was several seconds before it passed and she was able to look around.
A train car. Fairly crowded. The thing pressing into her leg was the backpack belonging to the bored-looking man next to her. A guy in front of them was rocking out to the music from his earbuds. Carina could hear its harsh, tinny beat above the noise of the train.
She wiggled her fingers experimentally. They seemed to work okay. She lifted her arms, shuffled her feet, and—onee she was sure she wasn’t paralyzed—straightened up in her seat. Her purse was nowhere to be seen; she must have dropped it at some point as they ran. She’d been leaning against Tanner, which was nice … but as her mind cleared, her last few lucid moments came
back to her.
The garage. The guys chasing them. Shooting at them.
“Hey!” she exclaimed, slapping a hand to her biceps. She could still feel the faint sting where the dart had entered her skin, but there was barely a mark, just a red dot.
Tanner unfolded his hand, showing her the dart lying on his palm. It was tiny, a tube with fringed plastic at one end and a wickedly sharp needle embedded in the other.
“Careful with that,” Carina said.
“Yeah, don’t worry. I just kept it because I thought—I don’t know, maybe there’s some way to have it tested and figure out what was in it.”
“Something that knocked me out, obviously.”
“Unless it was just my natural animal magnetism. Women faint around me all the time,” Tanner said, attempting a smile as he jammed the dart into his pocket.
“How long was I out?” Carina said, struggling to her feet to look out the window.
Tanner shot out a hand to steady her. “Hey, hey, careful there.”
“No, there’s no time.” She saw the Walnut Creek Medical Center whizzing by outside. “We’re in Walnut Creek already. How long was it? Ten minutes?”
“Maybe … maybe eight?”
“Did they follow us? In one of the other cars?”
“I don’t think so.”
“But you were focused on me, right?”
Tanner looked stricken. “Car, I didn’t—”
“We have to move,” Carina said, holding on to the pole for support. She looked at the back of the car, where the doors rattled and rocked along with the rhythm of the train.
“If they followed us on, they would already have found us,” Tanner said, but he put an arm around Carina’s waist and helped her down the aisle. It was slow going—Carina’s stomach was twisting and her vision was blurring; she narrowly missed falling on an elderly woman, who glared at them as they passed.
“Or they could be waiting for us at another stop.”
“How?”
“It wouldn’t have to be them—there could be others. Guards on Sheila’s team, watching the platform.” The train was beginning to slow as they pulled into the Walnut Creek station. “Come on. I’ll go through, you stay on this side. They’ll be looking for two of us together.”
She gave the doors a shove, struggling to open them. Before Tanner could try to stop her, she was in the narrow space between the cars. Below her feet, she could see the tracks rushing by. She closed her hands tighter around the handholds and passed through to the next car. A group of girls in St. Ignatius uniforms sat together near the end of the car; Carina sat behind them and tried to look like she was part of the group, despite her formal dress.
She stared at her lap, hoping it would look like she was texting, as the train came to a stop. She watched from the corner of her eye as passengers exited and got on: commuters in business clothes, a few older ladies, a young man with a bicycle.
The ride seemed to take forever. At each stop, the train car grew more crowded, giving her extra cover. Every time she saw a young man in a dark jacket, her heart sped up in fear, but no one seemed to pay her any attention. The train went belowground as it traveled under the bay between Oakland and San Francisco; when they arrived at Embarcadero, a dozen passengers exited and someone slid into the seat next to her.
Tanner. “Our stop’s coming up,” he muttered. He showed her his phone, a map on its display. “Montgomery. That address your uncle gave you? I looked it up. It’s in Chinatown, a few blocks from the BART stop. Think you’re okay to walk?”
“Yeah, I think so.” Carina bit her lip, hoping there wouldn’t be anyone waiting for them. “So that dart was meant to knock me out. Sheila wanted them to bring me back.”
“And she was willing to go to a lot of trouble to make it happen.”
“It’s just so crazy,” Carina murmured, mindful of all the people within earshot. “I have no idea why she thinks it’s so important to get me back there. I mean, I get that she thinks I’m in danger, but it seems like chasing us around with guns is a little extreme.”
“Yeah, I was hoping you could maybe shed some light on that,” Tanner admitted. “I’ve got nothing. I can’t imagine why anyone would go to so much trouble to save you. I mean, genius hot track stars are pretty much a dime a dozen, you know?”
Carina knew he was trying to lighten the mood, but as the train slowed to a stop, she felt fear grip her again. Fear … and something else, that strange energy from earlier. She rubbed her arm where the dart had entered and felt nothing, no bump, no swelling. “How are you feeling?” she asked.
“Well, I don’t think what I have is a cold. The tremor thing I had earlier, that’s gone.” Tanner held out his hand with his fingers spread wide: steady. “And even though I feel like I have a fever and I get these weird little waves of—not dizziness … I guess I’d call it almost like disorientation, my mind trying to catch up to my senses—I don’t feel, you know, woozy or anything. I mean, I feel … strong. Sort of extra sharp or something. Like—” He closed his hand into a fist. “Like I’m not even sure what I could do if I pushed myself. When I went over the cart, when I kicked the box, I was going for distance, and I swear to you, Car, that was the longest jump of my life. It’s crazy.”
“And the gate,” Carina said. “That had to be close to five feet tall.”
“Yeah. I mean, I wouldn’t have been surprised to see you make it, but there’s no way I could have cleared that in practice. But when I was coming at it, it was as if my brain did this instant-processing thing where I knew exactly how to land it, and then I had this burst of power to get off the ground.”
“Maybe it was the adrenaline?”
They looked at each other, neither expressing aloud what they were both thinking—that there wasn’t enough adrenaline in the world to make a feat like that possible.
“What about you?” Tanner asked. “Any other symptoms?”
“I feel feverish too,” Carina admitted. “And kind of … superfocused? I don’t know how to describe it. It’s almost like I’m thinking with ten-times magnification.”
Tanner laughed. “You are so your uncle’s niece, you must bleed geek. You have to know that wouldn’t make sense to anyone else, right? But yeah, I think I know what you mean.”
“Well, maybe it’ll at least come in handy. Since we don’t exactly know what to expect when we get to Chinatown.”
“Nothing like throwing yourself headlong into the unknown,” Tanner said. The train was pulling into the Montgomery station, and they stood up to join the knot of passengers heading toward the doors. “Such a rush.”
“Tanner …” Carina pressed close against him, taking advantage of the crowd to speak into his ear. “I was thinking, maybe you should just turn around. I’ll be okay from here, and your parents will be expecting you at home.”
Tanner scowled. “First of all, you won’t be okay from here—at least, I don’t have any guarantee that you will, and that’s not good enough. There’s no way I’m letting you do this by yourself. And second, my parents aren’t expecting me until tomorrow.”
“What do you mean?”
“I called them, when you were out cold. Told them I was heading over to Rob’s.”
Rob Stanton was Tanner’s best friend at the Borden School, the private school he attended twenty minutes from Martindale. Getting into Borden required both money and an off-the-charts IQ, and Rob was one of the students who came from outside the state for the opportunity and boarded there; Tanner occasionally stayed over in his dorm on weekends.
“I don’t like you risking your safety for no good reason,” Carina protested. “I mean, it doesn’t make any sense for both of us to be here, especially now that there’s people shooting at us. I would have told you to go home where it’s safe.”
“I know that. Why do you think I called while you couldn’t do anything about it?”
The doors opened and they were swept out with the crowd into the station. Carina put a few
feet between her and Tanner, keeping her face down, staying with the crowd moving up the escalator. Moments later they were exiting the station. The evening sky was turning dusky purple. It was cooler in the city, and Carina felt chilly in her light dress. The stolen golf shoes were threatening to give her blisters.
Tanner caught up with her as they crossed Market. “I didn’t see anything,” he said. “You?”
“No. I think we managed to lose them. And at least here we don’t stand out as much.” They headed down Sutter Street, blending into the crowd, which represented a wide cross section of humanity. A man in his fifties with silver dreadlocks past his shoulders and a clerical collar stood in a doorway reading a take-out menu. Three young women with neon-colored hair and work boots crossed in front of them at the intersection, and a man in old-fashioned roller skates and a camouflage jacket bought flowers from a vendor across the street.
“Yeah, for all we know, golf shoes are the latest thing here. Or maybe you’ll start a trend.”
They walked quickly, Carina occasionally looking over her shoulder to see if anyone was following them. They turned right on Stockton into the heart of Chinatown, where paper lanterns festooned the streetlights above the crowded sidewalks. Crowds of people, residents of Chinatown and tourists alike, were out enjoying the beautiful spring evening. Delicious smells wafted from restaurants, and merchants hawked their wares.
“I’m starving,” Tanner said as they passed a restaurant whose window tempted passersby with a variety of roasted meats. “I could eat that entire duck myself—as an appetizer.”
“Me too. I didn’t think I’d be able to eat at all today, but for some reason I’m famished.” She’d had to force herself to eat in the days since Walter’s death, grief having obliterated her appetite. This morning she’d managed a little breakfast, aware that she had to keep her energy up for the entire day. Still, she hadn’t eaten since, and her stomach rumbled ravenously. But they couldn’t take a break yet, still terrified that their pursuers were on their trail. “Let’s figure out this key thing first and go from there, okay?”
Infected Page 5
