by Liz Marsham
“Take this left!” Frostee yelled.
“Hold on, Echo!” Tony called, and he jerked the wheel hard. The truck screeched around the corner, and Tony upshifted and leaned into the gas pedal.
“Don’t worry about me, worry about catching that sleeper!” Echo yelled back.
“Right!” Frostee ordered. “Then the northbound highway ramp on your left. The drones have him in sight!”
As Tony careened onto the highway, he heard Ms. Nowhere take a deep, exasperated breath. “Someone needs to start talking to me. Right. Now,” she said, her voice icy cold.
“A sleeper is a car that looks normal on the outside, or even beat-up,” explained Tony, cutting over to the left lane and pouring on speed. “But under the hood, it’s a different story. Top-of-the-line engine, turbocharge, you name it.”
Gary’s voice cut in on the comms. “What’s the point of that?”
“Gary,” chastised Ms. Nowhere, “you’re encouraging them again!”
“It’s interesting, though,” Gary said softly.
“Take the 2!” called Frostee, and Tony wove around merging cars, skidding onto the berm as he rocketed up the on-ramp to the new highway.
Echo raised her voice to be heard over the rush of wind. “In a race, the sleeper is supposed to mess with your head. You think you’re racing a broken-down old sedan, right up until it leaves you in the dust.”
“That trick—whoa!—only works once, though,” Cisco grunted, the effort of holding on clear in his voice. “Once you know the racer, it doesn’t matter—aaaaah!—what the car looks like.”
“Cisco, stop talking and hold on!” scolded Echo.
“No, keep talking,” Frostee said. “My drones weren’t made for racing speeds; they can’t keep up with you. Where are you going?”
“We just turned onto the—yaaaaah!—Angeles Crest!”
Tony looked up just in time to see the sign for Angeles Crest Highway flash by, the arrows pointing to the two right lanes.
“Plenty of time,” he muttered, shooting a glance in the rearview mirror and cutting the wheel hard to the right. Amid blaring horns, the truck blasted across three lanes, narrowly making the on-ramp.
“We must be right on his tail!” Echo shouted. “Can you see him?”
Now on residential streets, the highway quickly narrowed to one lane in each direction, then wound up into the mountains.
Ms. Nowhere’s voice came again, thin with impatience. “You know, Tony, there are other—”
“There he is!” Tony called. The sedan, headlights off, was expertly drifting around the hairpin turns ahead as the road climbed higher and higher. Tony could just make out Cisco’s flailing form clinging to the hood.
A long sigh came through the earpiece. “Have at it, then,” Ms. Nowhere said.
“These tight turns—oof!—are not—aaah!—easy, you guys!” With a jolt, Tony realized that Cisco was starting to sound tired. “It’s gonna shake me!”
Tony glanced to the right. Inches past the guardrail, a sheer cliff dropped off into blackness. If Cisco lost his hold on one of these turns . . .
“No, Cisco!” came Echo’s voice. “Try to break through the windshield!”
“But what if—”
“Try it now, Cisco!” called Frostee. “I’m looking at the GPS, and the next hairpin isn’t for half a mile!”
“AAAAAH!” Cisco bellowed, psyching himself up. Tony heard a crack, then “OW. That’s not gonna work.”
“Maybe use your feet?” shouted Echo. “One good kick!”
“Oh boy,” muttered Cisco, and then Tony heard “GRRRRRAHHH!” followed by a thwack.
“Hold on, here comes the turn,” Tony said. “We’re right behind you!”
The sedan’s tires screamed as the car drifted to the left around the hairpin. Cisco screamed louder, but he managed to hang on. Tony cut the wheel and downshifted, and the truck screeched after the car. Tony gritted his teeth and braced against the force pulling him to the right, then the rear of the truck pinged off the guardrail, just as he came out of the turn and upshifted again.
“That was close, Tony,” Echo said. “I don’t have Cisco’s iron grip back here.”
“Sorry, Echo,” replied Tony. “I can catch him before the next one.”
“This glass must be reinforced,” Cisco cried. “I can’t even—WHOA!”
A cone of brightness lit up the front half of the sedan. Cisco squirmed and blinked in the sudden light.
“That’s a drone!” cried Frostee. Squinting at the top of the cone, Tony saw that he was right: a large, sleek drone was pacing the sedan, propellers whirring.
“It’s trying to make him lose his grip,” yelled Echo. “Look!”
As she spoke, the drone went into a dive. Cisco yelped and dodged as the drone clanked off the hood, just inches from his head.
“We’ve gotta move fast,” said Tony. “Everyone hold on.”
Echo, Frostee, and Cisco yelled back in unison, “We ARE!”
Tony floored the gas and twisted the wheel, and the truck crossed into the oncoming lane, pulling up on the sedan’s left.
“Cisco, jump!” shouted Echo.
Cisco shifted his weight, preparing to leap. But the drone swooped down and dove again, and he was forced to shrink back against the hood. “This thing’s like a guard dog!” Cisco yelled.
“I got you!” said Frostee, holding his backpack out the window. “Sic ’im, backpack drone!”
Rotors sprouted from the corners of Frostee’s backpack and began to spin, and the bag lifted out of Frostee’s hand and into the air. It bobbed and darted around the guard drone, blocking its path to Cisco.
Frostee held out his hand.
When it was clear, Echo yelled, “Now, Cisco!”
Ahead of them, Tony saw headlights. “Hurry!” he shouted. “There’s another car coming!”
With a roar, Cisco gathered himself and jumped across the gap. He wrapped both hands around the truck frame, and Echo grabbed his belt to steady him. “I’m on!” he shouted.
Tony slammed on the brakes and dodged behind the sedan. A minivan swept by in the lane where the truck had been a moment before, horn honking wildly. A second later, the strange drone shot across the road in front of them, momentarily blinding Tony with its light.
“Aw, lug nuts, my eyes!” Tony yelled, throwing up his arm.
“The sleeper!” Echo called, just as Frostee said, “The drone!”
When Tony dropped his arm, he saw the flash of brake lights from the sedan and slammed on his own brakes instinctively. The truck fishtailed on the narrow road as the sleeper executed a neat skid into a small lookout parking lot that opened off to the right. By the time Tony wrestled the truck under control and brought it to a stop in the lot, the sleeper had rocked to a halt and turned itself off.
“Man, I lost it!” Frostee cried, throwing his hands up in frustration. He jumped out of the truck and held up his arms, and a few seconds later the backpack drone lowered itself onto his back and folded away its rotors. “That drone headed straight up over the mountain, and once it turned off its light, I couldn’t find it.”
Tony, Echo, and Cisco jumped down from the truck, and the four of them approached the car together. The only sound was the ticking of the car’s engine as it cooled. They looked at one another, confused. What had just happened?
“In case anyone was wondering about, you know, THE MISSION,” Ms. Nowhere’s voice suddenly blared in their ears, making them jump, “the hack is complete, and Alecto will be long gone. I have to admit, I thought you would at least break the rules one at a time instead of tossing them all out at once!”
“This can’t be a coincidence,” said Tony. “It’s too weird. The theft has to be connected to this car somehow.”
“Did you ever consider that the car was a decoy, meant to lure you
away?”
“Maybe,” said Cisco dubiously, “but then, what was with that drone?”
“It showed up once you started messing with this thing,” Echo said, giving the sedan a light kick. “Like it was protecting something. What if . . .” She trailed off, getting down on her back on the asphalt and scooting under the car.
“What are you looking for?” Tony asked.
“Anything that—gotcha!” Echo slid out and held up a flat square with rounded edges, as big as her palm.
“That is not what I think it is,” breathed Frostee, snatching the square. Tony heard a series of beeps as Frostee’s VR goggles ran a diagnostic, and then Frostee nodded. “That is exactly what I think it is. It’s a transmitter!” A second later he gasped and pointed to the car. “This is the hack, right here! Alecto was using the car as a router so she could break in remotely!”
“So that means . . .” Cisco trailed off.
“It means,” Tony finished, “Alecto was never anywhere near that building.”
CHAPTER 4
FRIDAY, 10:15 A.M.
“Gary, bring up the rules again,” said Ms. Nowhere, shaking her head. “Go wide.”
Gary tapped the remote, and the lines of text appeared on every screen in the garage, including the team’s phones. Tony heard a grunt of frustration from the Yoka hub, where Frostee was busy examining Alecto’s transmitter. Frostee looked over his shoulder, narrowed his eyes, then started typing furiously. One by one, the screens in the hub cleared, and Tony smiled. I have a feeling Gary’s remote is about to turn into a very fancy paperweight, he thought.
Tony and Ms. Nowhere had been arguing for over an hour, pacing around the boxing ring, and they were getting . . . well, nowhere. One by one, his friends had drifted away from the conversation. Frostee was working on the transmitter. Echo had climbed up the car lift and was working on spraying an elaborate tag high on the wall. Cisco was working his way through a giant pile of nachos. Even Gary was darting glances at the arcade cabinet next to the couch. But Tony couldn’t let it go. He knew he and his crew had done the right thing.
“Having a job means having a boss, Tony,” Ms. Nowhere said.
“But you know exactly who you hired,” Tony countered. “And you know we would never leave family in danger.”
“Rule number two: Trust your resources!” snapped Ms. Nowhere. “In this case, me! Did it occur to you that my people could have easily tracked that sedan and intercepted Cisco?”
Tony rocked back on his heels. “Uh, no,” he admitted.
“Gary’s not just here for his skills with the remote, you know,” Ms. Nowhere said.
“Do you have Leethal Legendz on this thing?” Gary murmured to Cisco, motioning to the cabinet with his chin.
Cisco nodded enthusiastically. “You know we do! The original and all five sequels!”
Gary hummed in appreciation. “I was a beast on LL3 back in the day.”
“What?” Cisco shoved a handful of chips in his mouth and dusted off his hands. “I goh-uh shee thish,” he said through the food, rising to his feet.
“Gentlemen,” Ms. Nowhere said icily. Gary and Cisco froze in place, then guiltily lowered themselves onto the couch.
“Look,” said Tony. “Gary could have tracked Cisco, but could he have driven like we did to save him? Could any of your people?”
Gary shook his head. “Not quite like you did, no,” he said.
“And if we hadn’t been there when the sleeper stopped, we wouldn’t have found the transmitter, and we wouldn’t know how the thefts are happening. We’re getting the job done!”
“You’re getting lucky,” countered Ms. Nowhere.
“The bottom line is,” said Tony, “if you’re going to make plans for us, the plans have to include us having each other’s backs.”
Ms. Nowhere crossed her arms. “Then you’re going to hate this next plan, because I’ve narrowed Alecto’s next target down to two places, and you’re going to have to split up.”
“But what about the transmitter?” Tony asked. “Maybe that could help?”
Frostee leaned out of the hub. “Bad news, T,” he said. “The way this thing works, I can trace its signal while it’s transmitting, but once it cuts out, it’s gone. And I won’t even be able to track it unless we’re in range. So once the hack starts, we gotta get to where the signal’s coming from fast.”
Tony started to grin at the word fast, but Ms. Nowhere raised a finger.
“All the more reason to split up,” she said. “We don’t know where this thing will start or end, and if this is our only lead, we need you covering as much distance as possible.”
“Hold on,” Echo chimed in. “This isn’t our only lead.” She swung down from the car lift and turned to Cisco. “Right before you got car-napped, you brought up that story we heard from Mitch.”
Cisco’s face lit up. “That’s right! He had a couple of buddies with high-end sleeper cars that got stolen, one after the other.”
“Yup,” Echo nodded. “The cars were taken in the morning and found the next day in some random place with their electronics shot. The dudes were trying to figure out who was punking them, thought maybe it was us.”
“Who’s got time for that?” Tony snorted.
Cisco shrugged. “Us, a year ago. Except, you know, more ‘surprise tagging of the new paint job’ and less ‘straight-up theft.’”
“Good point.” Tony turned to Echo. “So you think maybe Alecto is using the same trick every time, turning the sleepers into routers?”
“It’s worth checking out,” said Echo. “Frostee—”
“I’ve been hacking since you said ‘stolen,’” Frostee replied distractedly. Tony turned to see Frostee typing busily, data flying across the screens in the hub. “I’ve got the GPS histories for Mitch’s buddies here. They spend most of their time driving between garages and taco stands, but look at this.” He pointed to a few lines in the first log. “Ms. Nowhere, where’s the place that got broken into on Monday night?”
“Tenth and Grand,” Ms. Nowhere said.
Frostee nodded. “The first car spent, like, six hours parked on that block before it drove to Griffith Park and fried itself. What about Tuesday?” He squinted at the second GPS log. “Lemme guess, is it on Wilshire near Figueroa?”
There was a pause, and Tony looked over at Ms. Nowhere. “Is that . . . do you look impressed?” he asked.
Quickly, Ms. Nowhere shook her head. “Hardly. Now we know where Alecto has been, but we already knew that. We still don’t know where she’s going.”
Tony held up his phone. “Rule number two,” he said. “There’s a huge resource we haven’t used yet: Layla. If anyone will know the most likely sleeper car to be taken next, it’s her.” He brought up Layla’s number, discreetly smoothed his hair, and hit send on a video chat request.
Echo rolled her eyes. “Tony, you’ve been texting her for weeks. No answer. What makes you think she’s gonna—?”
“Tony?” Layla’s face popped up on his phone. “You’re calling me, it must be important. What’s up?”
“Hi!” Tony blurted, then got ahold of himself. “I mean, hey, how’s it going? Where are you?”
Layla leaned closer to the screen, her ponytail swinging onto her shoulder. Tony couldn’t see around her head; she could have been next door or on the moon, for all he knew. “What’s up, Tony?” she repeated. “I only have a minute.”
“Oh, uh. Right. Have you heard anything about sleeper cars in LA getting jacked?”
“Yeah, I did. It’s up to four now, right? Why?”
“Long story, but if you were going to take, like, the next best sleeper in the city, which would you pick?”
“Oooh, good question. Tino’s been working on one for years, looks like a pickup, but it’s actually all ultralight carbon fiber with a rocket under t
he hood. But there’s also that girl Jezz. Hers looks like one of those teeny little cars that can barely break forty, but woo, y’all should see that thing go.”
Tony heard the rattle of keys as Frostee started to search. He nodded at the screen. “Thanks, Layla. When you’re around, we should—”
“Gotta go, Tony.” Layla smiled and broke the connection.
“Bye, Layla,” Tony muttered. He looked up and saw Echo smirking at him. “What? She answered, didn’t she?”
“It’s Tino’s pickup,” Frostee declared. He hit a button, and a screen filled with a police report. “Reported stolen an hour ago. I’m tracking it now . . . looks like it’s in . . . Woodland Hills?”
“One of the firms on my list is in a corporate park in Woodland Hills,” Ms. Nowhere said. “That must be the next target.”
“And Alecto will be holed up somewhere nearby,” Tony said. “This is great. As soon as she starts the hack, we’ve got her!”
CHAPTER 5
FRIDAY, 7:45 P.M.
“Frostee, do you have her yet?!” Tony shouted. He upshifted and passed a convertible on a narrow corner.
The hack had started much earlier than the others, and now Tony, Echo, and Cisco were chasing the converted pickup down Topanga Canyon Boulevard. Frostee, in the passenger seat of Cisco’s pickup, was doing his best to find the signal’s origin.
“This lady is tricky,” Frostee complained over Tony’s earpiece. “I can’t pin her down!”
“We’re almost out of road,” called Echo. “When we hit the coast, do we turn north or south?”
“A few minutes ago, I would have said she was north,” grumbled Frostee, “but now . . .”
Ahead of them, the pickup blasted through the light and turned right, heading north.
“Remember the rules,” said Ms. Nowhere over their comms. “Gary!”
The displays in Tony’s and Echo’s cars flickered, then showed Ms. Nowhere’s “The Rules” image . . . except now the text at the top read “YOKA Rules!” alongside a grinning Yoka head. Tony and Echo chuckled.
