by Meg Cabot
"Oh, man," Rob said, reaching for some cocktail napkins Chick kept in a pile behind the bar.
"Yeah, Mr. Chick," I said. "Say it, don't spray it."
"Nobody," Chick said, ignoring us, "is going to Jim Henderson's place. Got it? Nobody."
I couldn't believe it.
"Why not?" I demanded. "I mean, we know they did it, right? It's not like they tried to hide it, or anything. They practically hung up a big sign that says 'We Did It.' So let's go over there and make 'em give Seth back."
Chick looked at me for a moment. Then he threw back his head and laughed. A lot.
"Give the kid back," he chortled. "Wheredja get this one, Wilkins? She's a riot."
Rob wasn't laughing. He looked at me sadly.
"What?" I said. "What's so funny?"
"We can't go to Jim Henderson's, Mastriani," Rob said.
I blinked at him. "Why not?"
"Well, for one thing, Henderson shoots at the water meter-men the county sends out," Rob said. "You think he's not going to try to take us out?"
"Um," I said. "Hello? That's why we sneak in."
"Little lady," Chick said, stubbing a finger thickly encrusted with motorcycle grease at me. I didn't mind him calling me little lady because, well, there wasn't much I could do about it, seeing as how he was about three times as big as me. Mr. Goodhart would have been proud of the progress I was making. Normally the size of my opponent was just about the last thing I considered before tackling someone. "You don't know squat. Didn't I hear you say these folks already shot up a cop earlier today, on account of not wanting to give up some kid they got hold of?"
"Yes," I said. "But the officers involved weren't prepared for what they were up against. We'll be ready."
"Mastriani," Rob said, shaking his head. "I get where you're coming from. I really do. But we aren't talking the Flintstones here. These guys have a pretty sophisticated setup."
"Yeah," Chick said, after letting out a long, aromatic belch. "You're talking some major security precautions. They got the barbed wire, guard dogs, armed sentries—"
"What?" I was so mad, I felt like kicking something. "Are you kidding me? These guys have all that? And the cops just let them?"
"No law against fences and guard dogs," Chick said, with a shrug. "And a man's allowed to carry a rifle on his own property—"
"But he's not allowed to shoot cops," I pointed out. "And if what you're saying about these True Americans is accurate, then somebody in that group did just that, earlier today, over at the trailer park by Mr. Shaky's. They got away—with a twelve-year-old hostage. I'm willing to bet they're holed up now with this Jim Henderson guy. And if we don't do something, and soon, that kid is going to end up in a cornfield, same as Nate Thompkins."
Rob and Chick exchanged glances. And in those glances, despite the darkness of the bar, I was able to catch a glimpse of something I didn't like. Something I didn't like at all.
And that was hopelessness.
"Look," I said, my hands going to my hips. "I don't care how secure their fortress is. Seth Blumenthal is in there, and it's up to us to get him out."
Chick shook his head. For the first time, he looked serious … serious and sad.
"Little lady," he said. "Jimmy's crazy as they come, but one thing he ain't is stupid. There ain't gonna be a scrap of evidence to connect him with any of this stuff, except the fact that he's head of the group that claimed responsibility. Bustin' in there—which'd be damn near impossible, seeing as how you can't even approach Jim's place by road. It's so far back into the woods, ain't no way the plows can get to it—to rescue some kid is just plain stupid. Ten to one," Chick said, "that boy is long dead."
"No," I said, quietly. "He isn't dead, actually."
Chick looked startled. "Now how in hell," he wanted to know, "could you know that?"
Rob lifted his forehead from his hands, into which he'd sunk it earlier.
"Because," he answered, bleakly. "She's Lightning Girl."
Chick studied me appraisingly in the neon glow. I'm sure my face, like his, must have been an unflattering shade of purple. I probably resembled Violet from that Willy Wonka movie. You know, after she ate the gum.
But Chick must have seen something there that he liked, since he didn't end the conversation then and there.
"You think we should go busting in there," he said, slowly, "and get that kid out?"
"Busting," I said, "is not the word I would use. I think we could probably come up with a more subtle form of entry. But yes. Yes, I do."
"Wait." Rob shook his head. "Wait just a minute here. Mastriani, this is insane. We can't get involved in this. This is a job for the cops—"
"—who don't know what they're up against," I said. "Forget it, Rob. One cop already got shot on account of me. I'm not going to let anyone else get hurt, if I can help it."
"Anyone else," Rob burst out. "What about yourself? Have you ever stopped to think these guys might have a bullet with your name on it next?"
"Rob." I couldn't believe how myopic he was being. "Jim Henderson isn't going to shoot me."
Rob looked shocked. "Why not?"
"Because I'm a girl, of course."
Rob said a very bad word in response to this. Then he pushed away from the bar and went stalking over to the jukebox … which he punched. Not hard enough to break it, but hard enough so that Chick looked up and went, "Hey!"
Rob didn't apologize though. Instead, he said, looking at Chick with appeal in his gray eyes, "Can you help me out here? Can you please explain to my girlfriend that she must be suffering from a chemical imbalance if she thinks I'm letting her anywhere near Jim Henderson's place?"
Which was a horribly sexist thing to say, and which I knew I should have resented, but I couldn't, since he'd called me the G word. You know. His girlfriend. It was the first time I'd ever heard him call me that. Within earshot of someone else, I mean.
Being his date at that Christmas Eve wedding didn't look so far out of the realm of possibility now.
But Chick, instead of doing as Rob had asked, and telling me to forget about busting in on the True Americans, stroked his goatee thoughtfully. "You know," he said. "It isn't the worst idea I ever heard."
Rob stared at him in horror.
"Hey," Chick said, defensively. "I ain't saying she should go in alone. But a kid's dead, Wilkins. And if I know Henderson, this other one hasn't got much time left."
I threw Rob a triumphant look, as if to say, See? I'm not crazy after all.
"And you might say," Chick went on, "this is a homegrown problem, Wilkins. I mean, Henderson's one of our own. Ain't it appropriate that we be the ones to mete out the justice? I can put in a few calls and have enough boys over here in five minutes, it'd put the National Guard to shame."
I raised my eyebrows, impressed by the mete out the justice line.
Rob wasn't going for it, though. "Even if we did agree this was a good idea," he said, "which I am not doing, you said yourself it's inaccessible. There's nearly two feet of snow on the ground. How are we even going to get near the place?"
Chick did a surprising thing, then. He crooked a finger at us, then started walking—though, given his girth and height, lumbering was really more the word for it—toward the back door.
I followed him, with Rob reluctantly trailing behind me. Chick went down a short hallway that opened out into a sort of a ramshackle garage. Wind whistled through the haphazardly thrown up wooden slats that made up the walls.
Flicking on the single electric bulb that served as a light, Chick strode forward until he came to something covered with a tarp.
"Voilà," he said, in what I assumed was a purposefully bad European accent.
Then he flung back the tarp to reveal two brand-new snowmobiles.
C H A P T E R
11
Hey, I'll admit it. I wanted on that snowmobile. I wanted on it, bad.
Can you blame me? I'd never been on one before.
And for someone who likes going
fast, well, what's more thrilling than going fast over snow? Oh, sure, I'd been skiing before, over at the dinky slopes of Paoli Peaks. It had been fun and all. For like an hour. I mean, let's face it, Indiana is not exactly known for its mountainous terrain, so the Peaks got old kind of fast for any thrill seeker worthy of the name.
But nothing could compare to the sensation of zipping over all that thickly packed white stuff with my arms wrapped tightly around the waist of my hot, if disapproving, boyfriend.
Oh, it was good. It was real good.
But I have to admit, the part after we'd pulled up in front of the True Americans' barbed-wire fence, and just sat there with the engine switched off, gazing at the lights of Jim Henderson's house, glimmering through the trees?
Yeah, that part wasn't so fun.
That was on account of the fact that deep in the backwoods of Indiana, on a late November evening, it is very, very cold. Bone-chillingly cold. Mind-numbingly cold. Or at least toe and finger-numbingly cold.
You would think that Rob and I could have thought up something to do, you know, to pass the time—as well as keep warm—while we waited for Chick to catch up to us with the backup he'd promised. But given the fact that Rob was still so mad we were here at all, there hadn't been much, you know, of that going on. In fact, none at all.
"So what are we waiting for, again?" I asked.
"Reinforcements," was Rob's terse reply.
"Yeah," I said. "I get that part. But can't we just, you know, go and wait inside?"
"And what are we going to do," Rob said, "if we find Seth?"
"Bust on out of there," I said.
"Using what as a weapon?"
I thought a minute. "Our rapier wit?"
"Like I said."
Well. So much for that.
Rob didn't seem as cold as I was. Why is that? How come boys never get as cold as girls do? And also, what's with the peeing thing? Like how come I totally had to pee, and he didn't? He'd had as many Cokes back at Chick's as I did.
And even if he had had to pee, it wouldn't have been any big deal for him. I mean, he could have just gone over to any old tree and done it.
But for me, it would have been like this major production. And a lot more of me would have been exposed to the forces of nature. Which, with it being like ten below, or something, were pretty harsh.
Whatever. Life is just unfair. That's all I have to say.
Not that I had it so bad, I guess. I mean, comparatively, I guess I've always had it pretty good. I mean, my parents are still together, and seem pretty happy to stay that way … except, you know, when one of us kids is causing them trouble, like hearing voices that aren't there, or dropping out of Harvard, or being struck by lightning and getting psychic powers and then causing the family restaurant to be burned down.
You know. The usual parental stresses.
At least we were pretty well off. I mean, no one was buying me my own pony—or Harley—but we weren't exactly on welfare, either. In all, the Mastriani family had it pretty good.
As opposed to, just for an example, the Wilkins family. I mean, Rob had been working in his uncle's garage pretty much full time since he was like fourteen or something, just to help his mom make ends meet. He hadn't seen his dad since he was a little kid. He didn't even know where his dad was.
But I did. I knew where Rob's dad was.
Not that I was very grateful for the information. But there it was, embedded in my brain just like Seth Blumenthal's current location and status.
The question was, should I tell Rob, or not?
Would I want to know? I mean, if my dad had disappeared when I was a little kid. Had just walked out on Mom and Mike and Douglas and me. Would I want to know where he was now? Would I even care?
Yeah. Probably. If only so I could go pound his face in.
But would Rob want to know?
There was only one way, really, to find out. But I really, really didn't want to do it. Just come out and ask him if he wanted to know, I mean. Because I didn't want him to know I'd been snooping. I hadn't, really. His mom had needed that apron from her room. Was it my fault that while I'd been in there, I'd happened to see a picture of Rob's dad? And that afterward, as always tended to happen when I saw photos of missing people, I dreamed about his dad, and exactly where he was now? Was it my fault that, thanks to that stupid lightning, that I can't see a picture—or sometimes, even smell the sweater or pillow—of a missing person without getting a mental picture of their exact location?
"Listen," I said, pressing myself a little harder against his back. It was damned cold on the back of that snowmobile. "Rob, I—"
"Mastriani," Rob said, sounding tired. "Not now, okay?"
"What?" I asked, defensively. "I was just going to—"
"I am not going to tell you," Rob said.
"Tell me what?"
"What I'm on probation for. Okay? You can forget it. Because you're never getting it out of me. You can drag me out to the middle of nowhere," he said, "on some lunatic mission to stop a murdering white supremacist. You can make me sit for hours in sub-zero temperatures until my fingers feel like they are going to fall off. You can even tell me that you love me. But I am not going to tell you why I got arrested."
I digested this. While this was not, of course, the subject I'd meant to bring up, it was nonetheless a very interesting one. Perhaps more interesting, even, than the current location of Rob's father. To me, anyway.
"I didn't tell you that I love you," I said, after some thought, "because I wanted you to tell me what you're on probation for. Although I do want to know. I told you that I love you because—"
Rob swung around on the back of the snowmobile and threw a gloved hand over my mouth. "Don't," he said. His light-colored eyes were easy to distinguish in the moonlight. Because yeah, there was a moon. A pretty full one, too, hanging low in the cold, cloudless sky. Any other time, it might have been romantic. If, you know, it hadn't been like twenty below, and I hadn't had to pee, and my boyfriend had actually sort of liked me.
"Don't start on that again," Rob said, keeping his hand over my mouth. "Remember what happened last time."
"I liked what happened last time," I said, from behind his fingers.
"Yeah," Rob said. "Well, so did I. Too much, okay? So just keep your I love yous to yourself, all right, Mastriani?"
Sure. Like that was going to happen, after a girl hears a thing like that.
"Rob," I said, tightening my arms around his waist. "I—"
But I never got to finish. That was on account of a figure moving toward us through the trees. We heard the snow crunching beneath his feet.
Rob said a bad word and turned on the flashlight Chick had loaned us.
"Who's there?" he hissed, and shined the flashlight full on into the face of none other than Cyrus Krantz.
Now it was my turn to say a bad word.
"Shhh," Dr. Krantz said. "Jessica, please!"
"Well, whatever," I said, disgustedly. "What are you doing here?"
I couldn't believe his getup. Dr. Krantz's, I mean. He looked like somebody out of Icestation Zebra. He had the full-on arctic gear, complete with puffy camouflage ski pants. I had barely recognized him with all the fur trim on his hood.
"I followed you, of course," Dr. Krantz replied. "Is this where they're holding Seth, Jessica?"
"Would you get out of here?" I couldn't tell which was making me madder, the fact that he was putting our plan to rescue Seth in jeopardy, or that he'd interrupted Rob and me just when things had been starting to get interesting. "You're going to ruin everything. How did you get out here, anyway?" If he said snowmobile, I was going to seriously reconsider my refusal to work for him. Any institution that willingly supplied its employees with snowmobiles was one I could see myself getting behind.
"Never mind about that," Dr. Krantz said. "Really, Jessica, this is just too ridiculous. You shouldn't be here. You're going to get hurt."
"I'm going to get hurt?" I laugh
ed bitterly—though quietly. "Sorry, Doc, but I think you got it backward. So far the only person who's gotten hurt is one of yours."
"And Nate Thompkins," Dr. Krantz reminded me softly. "Don't forget him."
As if I could. As if he wasn't half the reason I was out there, freezing my hooha off. I hadn't forgotten my promise to myself to try to help Tasha, if I could. And the best way to help her, I couldn't help thinking, was to bring her brother's murderers to justice.
And of course to keep them from hurting anybody else. Such as Seth Blumenthal.
"Nobody's forgetting about Nate," I whispered. "We're just going to take care of this in our own way, all right? Now get out of here, before you mess everything up."
"Jessica," Dr. Krantz said. "Rob. I really must object. If Seth Blumenthal is being harbored on this property, you are under an obligation to report it, then stand back and allow the appropriate law enforcement agents to do their—"
"Oh, bite me," I said.
I couldn't be sure, given the way the moonlight, reflecting off all the snow, made it hard to see past the thick lenses of his glasses, but I thought Dr. Krantz blinked a few times.
"I b-beg your pardon," he stammered.
"You heard me," I said. "You and the appropriate law enforcement agents don't have the slightest clue what you're dealing with here, okay?"
"Oh." Now Dr. Krantz sounded sarcastic, which was sort of amusing, considering the fact that he was such a geek. "And I suppose you do."
"Better than you," I said. "At least we've got a chance at infiltrating them from the inside, instead of going in there blasting away, and possibly getting Seth killed in the crossfire."
"Infiltration?" Dr. Krantz sounded appalled. "What are you talking about? You can't possibly think you have a better chance at—"
"Oh, yeah?" I narrowed my eyes at him. "What number comes after nine?"
He looked at me like I was crazy. "What? What does that have to do with—"
"Just answer the question, Dr. Krantz," I said. "What number comes after nine?"
"Why, ten, of course."
"Wrong," I said. "What are Coke cans made out of?"
"Aluminum, of course. Jessica, I—"
