Runaway (Airhead #3)

by Meg Cabot

  Steven’s sister, Nikki, with her jet-black hair and matching black corset, sashaying up to the bar behind her brother like she owned the place…

  And Christopher— my Christopher— escorting a very young-looking girl with curly hair who was peering all around the place with her mouth slightly ajar in the manner of someone who seemed way too excited to be there…

  Frida. My sister, Frida.

  I’m pretty sure some throw-up did come up into my mouth when I saw that. Frida? They’d brought Frida here? Were they crazy? Hadn’t they registered the part where I’d told them Robert Stark had threatened to kill Frida?

  “Um,” I said, ducking out from beneath Robert Stark’s arm. “Will you excuse me?”

  “Of course,” he said, looking a bit confused as I darted away.

  I raced toward Frida until I was able to grab her by both arms and spin her around— she’d been pressed up against one of the vast windows, looking down over Times Square at the crowd below.

  “Frida,” I cried frantically. “You’re all right?”

  “I’m great,” she said, pushing away some of the hair I’d caused to fall into her eyes by the violence of my gesture. “What do you think? Those guys came and got me. Em, what’s going on? No one will tell me. Is everything okay? And what happened to Nikki? She’s all hot now. Also, have you seen the way Gabriel looks at her? It’s not fair, I saw him first—”

  I hugged her to me.

  “Never mind about Gabriel,” I said into her hair. “He’s too old for you, anyway.”

  “What?” Frida said. She was hugging me back, but obviously had other concerns. “He’s only, like, eight years older. That’s nothing.”

  “Seriously.” I pulled her away from me and looked down into her eyes. My own were filled with tears. “There will be lots of boys your own age who are going to be crazy for you. So just shut up.”

  Christopher had come over, holding two glasses of soda. “Problems, ladies?” he asked lightly.

  “None at all,” I said, turning my tear-filled gaze toward him. “Is everything—”

  “Oh,” he said, handing one of the glasses to Frida. “It’s all good. Look up.”

  “Up?” I looked up, not knowing what he was talking about. But all I saw were the flat-screen TVs hanging overhead.

  “That’s right,” Christopher said. “Keep watching. Hey, has anyone talked to Brandon?”

  “Brandon?” I took the sparkling soda he offered me. I’d lost the one Gabriel had given me a long time ago. “Why?”

  “Because he just might want to prepare himself for—”

  That was when all the television screens in the room started showing that the Times Square ball was beginning to drop. And everyone began hurrying toward the windows to see it for themselves.

  “Ten,” everyone began to chant. “Nine…”

  Everyone, that is, except for Nikki— the real Nikki. She walked right up to Robert Stark with a great big smile plastered across her bright red lipsticked mouth.

  “Hello again,” she said, grinning at Robert Stark.

  He seemed a bit startled to be interrupted while counting down to New Year’s. But not unpleasantly so, because Nikki was one hot little number.

  “Well, hello there,” he said, grinning back at her. “Miss, er… Prince, is it?”

  “That’s right,” Nikki said. “Good memory. But that’s not actually my real name.”

  And she lifted the remote she’d snagged from the bar and turned up the sound on all the TVs.

  “Five,” everyone was screaming. “Four…”

  “It’s not?” Robert Stark asked, seemingly only interested for politeness’ sake. “What is it, then?”

  “Nikki Howard,” she said. “You should have just paid up, Robert.” Then she cocked her head to look at him a little bit harder. “On second thought…I should have just turned you in in the first place.”

  “Happy New Year!” everyone screamed.

  Over by the bar, I saw Lulu throw her arms around Steven and kiss him. Rebecca and Brandon had already wrapped themselves into such a tight clench, I had to look away, a little shocked. Even Nikki scampered off from a confused-looking Robert Stark to go up to Gabriel Luna, who was hugging his bandmates, pull him away by his shirtfront, and plant a huge kiss right on his lips…much to the dismay of Frida, who let out a faint whimper at the sight.

  Christopher, meanwhile, was grinning down at me. He looked more devilish than boyfriend-like. I was so alarmed by everything that had just happened in the past five minutes, I took a step away from him. I really wasn’t sure how much more I could take.

  “Oh,” I said, holding up both hands to ward him off, my heart having begun to stutter. “No…”

  But it was too late. He’d already caught me around the waist and hauled me back toward him, crushing my body to his and then dropping his mouth over mine.

  I think I let out a whimper that was not unlike Frida’s— only for different reasons, of course— before I found myself melting, as always, at the touch of his lips. Why couldn’t I resist him? It was so infuriating! Was this how it was always going to be between us? We were always going to be making each other mad, then kiss and everything would be fine…more than fine, actually?

  Christopher had his arms around me, seeming to be in no hurry to finish our New Year’s kiss. Not that I minded.

  Who knows how long we would have stood there kissing (and in front of poor Frida! I did feel bad about that) if right then every single television in the room hadn’t flashed the same orange message: Breaking News, and a news anchor hadn’t come on to say, urgently, “We’re interrupting our New Year’s Eve coverage to inform you of a breaking story out of New York City concerning Robert Stark, the entrepreneur who founded Stark Enterprises, known worldwide for its chain of large discount department stores.”

  A ripple of excited chatter went through the Stark Sky Bar when this announcement was made. Rebecca and Brandon actually disattached themselves long enough to pay attention to what was going on. The Stark shareholders all stood looking up at the television screens in confusion, some of them weaving on their feet a little, because they’d had so much to drink.

  Robert Stark stood absolutely still, staring in shock at what he was seeing.

  I reached for Christopher’s fingers with one hand and Frida’s with the other. Frida glanced at me and asked, in a whisper, “Em. What is this?”

  “Just watch,” I whispered back. I’d be lying if I said my heart wasn’t hammering a little, though.

  “This evening,” the news anchor went on solemnly, “CNN has exclusively obtained video— video CNN can verify is authentic— that proves that Stark Enterprise shareholders, including Robert Stark himself, have been knowingly participating in a highly experimental surgery known as a full-body transplant—”

  Somewhere in the room, a woman screamed and dropped a glass, which smashed to the floor.

  “—in a secret laboratory in Manhattan called the Stark Institute for Neurology and Neurosurgery. Here’s CNN chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, to explain this controversial —not to mention illegal— procedure.”

  “Thank you, Wolf,” a new voice said. “In a full-body transplant, a patient’s brain is completely removed from his or her body and placed into a new body, usually from a donor who has been declared brain-dead. In the case of something the corporation was calling Project Phoenix, however, living donors were being handpicked from—”

  “What is this?” Robert Stark thundered, whirling around to glare at the rest of us. “What is this? Turn it off. Did you hear me? I said turn it off!”

  No one moved to turn the televisions off, even though I was pretty sure the bartenders had the remote controls. In fact, I saw Nikki lift one of the remotes and deliberately turn the volume up.

  “—in this exclusive video, representatives from the corporation can be seen auctioning off the profiles of young people who, it is alleged, will be placed into a vegetative sta
te at a later date so their bodies can be harvested for the highest bidder, to have their brains transplanted into them when—”

  The footage I’d shot at the auction began to play as the news announcer went on. I have to say, that Stark brand cell phone had done a pretty good job of capturing what I’d wanted it to. The images of Kim Su, the Frenchwoman presenting her, and the shareholders bidding on her were clear as day. You couldn’t really see their faces, but you got the gist of what was going on really well.

  And the sound, after I’d had to slide the cell phone into my bra to hide it?

  Still crystal clear.

  Hey, Stark:

  Can you hear me now?

  “You,” Robert Stark raged, whirling around to face me as the recording of him— recognizably the deep voice of Robert Stark— was saying, They’ll be living their own lives, just with new bodies…. And it will be worth it, not to have to wake up every morning with creaking joints, to have to take nine different kinds of heart medications— believe me, it will be worth every penny to them….

  I stumbled back a step. He looked angry enough to lift me up and throw me bodily out one of the plate-glass windows that were all around us, like in one of the Die Hard movies. I totally wouldn’t have put it past him.

  I wasn’t the only one who noticed, either. Christopher moved in front of me, placing himself as a human shield between me and the billionaire who wanted to kill me.

  If that wasn’t love, I don’t know what is.

  “You,” Robert Stark growled again, completely ignoring Christopher. “You did this! I destroyed that phone! How is this even possible?”

  On the television screen, our voices went on— his and mine, with a written transcript provided for the viewer, in case anyone couldn’t understand what we were saying on the tape.

  “You’re going to get caught. It’s murder. You can’t keep it a secret forever.”

  Did I really sound like that?

  No. Of course I didn’t.

  But Nikki did.

  “I’ve managed to so far. How long do you think we’ve been doing this, anyway? We’ve been doing this for years. Years. With this latest technology, we’ve been able to offer our clients a more diversified and unique selection of products over a broader range, while still increasing our profit margin.”

  Profit margin. That’s all it had ever been about for Robert Stark.

  And that’s what was about to destroy him.

  “You destroyed my iPhone,” I said to Robert Stark, in the steadiest voice I could summon, speaking from around Christopher’s broad shoulders. “But you didn’t find my Stark brand phone.”

  “The one you’ve been bugging all this time,” Christopher added. “All that film and audio was up on your own mainframe. We just transferred it over to CNN. Wolf Blitzer has it all now. And after this, the world.”

  Robert Stark stared at us like we’d just told him Mariah Carey was really a man.

  “Stark!” one of the red-faced shareholders shouted. “You told us this would never get out! You swore!”

  “—two teen hackers in the New York City area who discovered that the new Stark Quarks actually contain spyware that enables the corporate giant to upload all the users’ data to their mainframe,” Wolf Blitzer went on, “and sent us this recording of Robert Stark and supermodel Nikki Howard at a Project Phoenix auction this evening…”

  The Stark shareholders, I noticed, were suddenly beginning to head for the doors of the Sky Bar, their expressions panic-stricken.

  But it was going to be difficult for them to leave.

  Because just then the doors were thrown open, and dozens of New York’s finest, in their dark blue uniforms, began to stream in, their gold badges gleaming under the disco lights.

  “Everybody stay where you are,” one of them said, using a megaphone to be heard over the sudden cacophony of shocked partygoers. “Nobody’s going anywhere.”

  “I need my blood pressure medicine,” the husband of the lady with the sparkles at the bottom of her skirt screamed.

  “We’ll make sure we get it for you,” a cop assured him, “over at Rikers.”

  “Is this really happening?” Nikki came over to ask me.

  “I think it is,” I said, feeling as dazed as she felt.

  Over by the bar, Brandon, finally realizing this was his big moment, hurried to face the photographers who’d been taking the publicity photos of me and his dad earlier.

  “In light of the recent discoveries about my father,” he said, suddenly sounding as if he hadn’t had a single thing to drink all night, “with whom my relationship has always been troubled, I’d just like to say that I’ll be taking over the day-to-day operations of Stark Enterprises for the foreseeable future, and that I’ll be doing my best to make Stark a greener, more earth-friendly corporation. I’ll definitely be thinking of the employees, who for so long have labored without a union or proper health care. I’ll be working to correct that, as well as the impression Stark may have given that it doesn’t care about the small business owner—”

  But none of the reporters was listening. They were only interested in what was happening in the center of the room.

  “Robert Stark?” asked a police captain, striding up to Brandon’s dad and showing him his badge. “We’d like to ask you a few questions downtown, if you don’t mind.”

  “Not without my lawyer,” Robert Stark bristled.

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” the police captain said politely.

  That’s when he handcuffed Robert Stark and led him away.

  Twenty-Two

  IT WAS MONTHS BEFORE IT ALL settled down.

  And even then, I couldn’t go anywhere without someone wanting to shove a microphone into my face to ask me about it.

  I wasn’t allowed to discuss it, though, because of the testimony I was scheduled to give against Robert Stark— and all the Stark shareholders who’d been at the auction the night of the Project Phoenix auction, and Dr. Holcombe, and yes, Dr. Higgins, too— at the grand jury.

  I wasn’t the only one testifying, of course. Because of what we’d done, Dr. Fong was able to come out of hiding and tell what he knew about the goings-on at the Stark Institute for Neurology and Neurosurgery, too, in exchange for immunity from prosecution.

  Some of the surgeries, he maintained, had been medically necessary to save the life of the patient, and completely aboveboard.

  But a lot of them…

  Well, let’s just say, not so much.

  The families of some of those “donor bodies” had come forward to testify as well. According to the legal experts I saw occasionally on the news, this wasn’t something Robert Stark was going to be able to wiggle his way out of. This was multiple counts of murder, attempted murder, and in Nikki’s case, assault with a deadly weapon (a scalpel).

  Robert Stark, formerly one of the world’s most powerful men, was going to go away for a long time.

  A long, long time.

  Dr. Fong wasn’t the only one who was safe now. Nikki, Steven, and Mrs. Howard were safe, too, because of what we’d done, and able to go back to their normal lives.

  Except, of course, that for some of them, this wasn’t so simple.

  Mrs. Howard was excited and eager to go back to Gasper and her dog-grooming business.

  I was sorry to see her go. I’d really grown to think of her as a second mother.

  But Gasper was the place she knew and loved, and where all her best friends were. And Harry and Winston didn’t like being cooped up in tiny New York apartments. They missed having a yard to play in.

  I went with her to the airport and hugged her good-bye. It was sad, but it was better for everyone all around, especially Mrs. Howard. Too much togetherness with her daughter had been giving her chronic migraines, and was perhaps too much for anyone to put up with, long-term…

  …including Steven, since he went back to his naval unit. He sort of had to. I guess it had something to do with the fact that he’d signed up to
be on this submarine and couldn’t exactly just leave, especially now that he’d found his mother and sister, which was the only reason they’d let him off in the first place.

  Lulu was devastated. I had to order her a banana split every day for almost a week before she started to look on the bright side.

  “At least,” she pointed out, “he can’t cheat on me. There aren’t any girls on his sub.”

  In the meantime, she says she’s really and truly going to finish her album. She’s already finished a song based on their (daily) e-mails to each other called “Hot Love Down Under (the Sea).”

  I don’t know. I think it’s got real potential. I’m not the only one. She was the first artist to be signed on the Stark label under Brandon’s new management as CEO.

  He hasn’t actually done a bad job of being in charge now that his dad’s in jail (without bail). Of course, Brandon has a lot of talented people to help him (not the least of which is Rebecca, from whom he’s seemed to become inseparable. In fact, she’s quit the agenting business. But that’s all right. Really, it is. I like waking up to find only people I’ve invited over in my bedroom).

  One of the first things Brandon did upon taking over Stark Enterprises was hire Felix and Christopher to come up with a free software patch for all the people who purchased the Stark Quarks to download, so they could fix the pesky little spyware problem. This was a far better strategic move than recalling all the PCs (which was what a lot of people advised him to do), and went a long way toward improving consumer confidence in Stark after everything his father had done to ruin the company. Because of the free patch and all the publicity the case is getting, the Stark Quarks are actually the highest-selling PCs of all time.

  Which just goes to show: There’s no such thing as bad publicity.

  Felix and Christopher did such a good job coming up with the patch solution so quickly (not to mention bringing down his dad as CEO) that Brandon hired them as heads of Stark’s IT department, since whoever was running it before sucked so badly, a couple of teenagers could break into the mainframe and basically run rampant through their entire network.