Latitude Zero

by Diana Renn

  I started to feel dizzy. I would have given anything for Kylie and Sarita to drive up in the Fingernail right now and rescue me. I wanted them to take a crowbar to that door. My only hope was that Mari or someone at the bike shop would notice my backpack on the ground behind the bike shop and guess that I’d hopped into the shipping container and gotten locked inside.

  Had I been locked in accidentally, though? Or deliberately, by Darwin’s crew? Had that redheaded girl and the ponytail guy seen me before closing the doors? I couldn’t be sure.

  But it didn’t make sense that they would lock me inside. There was no need for revenge. Darwin had already found the bike he was looking for, and I hadn’t ratted him out.

  I took a break from yelling and pounding on walls to inspect my prison. Holding up my LED light, I surveyed the tangle of bikes four rows back, where it seemed like incorrectly packed bike frames had come loose and slipped. Suddenly I spotted something that made me almost drop my light.

  A black, green, and white frame was wedged in between a bunch of hybrids and urban cruisers. Its drop handlebars gleamed white.

  What?

  I lowered the light to look at the rest of the frame, and now saw this bike was at a different angle from the others in the row, and it hadn’t been flattened like the surrounding frames. It had been deliberately wedged in between the others, as if it had been stuck in after the row was packed. I sucked in my breath as I read Cadence in flourishing script, running along the downtube. And, beneath the tube, I could just make out the decal.

  J. MACIAS.

  29

  I LEANED against the cold wall of the shipping container and just stared at that bike. Dizziness and nausea rolled over me in waves. I was five feet away from Juan Carlos’s stolen spare bike. Maybe this had been Darwin’s plan all along: to smuggle the stolen bike out of the country, camouflaged in this shipping container full of donated bikes. This ring of thieves could be selling to a black-market buyer in Ecuador. If they had stolen it from Dylan’s, they could have snuck it in here, while we were all inside the bike shop. I could have overheard them checking to be sure that bike was safely on board.

  I needed a closer look. The LED light had a clip, which I fastened to the strap of my tank top. I started moving bikes, frames, wheels, and handlebars to get to Juan Carlos’s spare bike. The only way to inch out the bike was to move other things one by one, enough so I could extract it and move it toward the doors. It was like playing a game of Tetris. From hell.

  Sweat dripped into my eyes and soaked my shirt. My scraped fingers stung and bled. I kept lifting, shifting, nudging those bikes until I had my hands on those handlebars at last.

  I had to find some way to alert people that I was trapped inside. And then I had to get this bike out of here. If there was any chance Jake was linked to the bike theft and the sabotage, maybe this bike would tell the truth. Maybe it still had his fingerprints on it.

  I was almost at a point where I could pull and scooch it out from the stack. I managed to move it about two inches. A loud crash interrupted me. Something heavy struck my head, and I went down, falling against a stack of bikes.

  I looked up, rubbing my throbbing temple. I inspected my hand in the light of the LED that had fallen and was now out of my reach. At least I wasn’t bleeding. A rack of bike wheels had slipped from the wall rack and one of them must have clipped me. Juan Carlos’s spare bike was now buried again.

  Suddenly I heard running footsteps outside.

  “Over here! It was coming from inside this one!” a woman shouted.

  I found a horn on a kid’s bike near me and pumped the rubber bulb, letting it squawk repeatedly to signal my location.

  I heard scraping and clanking sounds at the doors, and then the doors swung wide-open, flooding the container with light. Sweet light.

  I jumped out of the container, gasping for breath. And stared into the unsmiling faces of the truck driver, a U.S. Customs official . . . and the two people I’d seen just before the door slammed closed. I couldn’t take my eyes off Darwin’s spies, even as the truck driver stepped right in front of me and glowered. What were these two doing here?

  “What the hell were you doing back there?” the driver demanded. “Is this some prank?”

  “No! I was filming for a show I’m doing, and I thought since the door was still open, you weren’t going yet. Then I found a stole—”

  The redheaded girl glared at me. She made a sharp motion with her hand. No. Don’t.

  “You’re lucky your friends were on the ball and called the dispatcher,” the driver said. “You could have had a serious problem, young lady.”

  The girl smiled sweetly and handed me my backpack. “You left this on the ground, and I got worried, so I had the dispatcher tell the driver to check for you at the dock. Your phone’s inside,” she purred. “It was buzzing like crazy. I’m sure you missed a lot of messages.”

  I glared back and snatched it. “Thanks.”

  “So this is the volunteer who got locked in? Problem solved?” asked the customs official.

  “Sorry about all that,” the driver apologized. He glared at me. “Teenage hijinks. Clowning around a shipping container? I guess they thought that was funny. But I have daughters. Believe me, this is tame compared to the crap they put me through. I’ll lock up, and these kids can be on their way.”

  “I’ll just need to check inside,” said the customs official. “Security. You understand.”

  “Be my guest. It’s just a load of bikes and bike parts. I have the bill of lading right here.”

  As the customs official and the driver stepped into the back of the container, shining flashlights, I turned to the guy and the girl. “I’ve seen you before. Who the hell are you?” I demanded.

  The two of them looked at each other, then beckoned for me to follow.

  I hesitated. If they tried to hurt me, my cries would be heard. This was my chance to get information. I had to go with them.

  They led me behind another shipping container, an orange rusty one, a few yards away.

  “I am called Pizarro,” said the ponytail guy. He leaned against the orange shipping container, his thumbs hooked into his tight jeans pockets. He seemed like a college student, a mix of casual and intense, scruffy and composed. His T-shirt said THAT’S FUNNY, IT WORKED ON MY MACHINE. His eyes glittered as he slowly chewed a piece of gum and looked me up and down.

  “And I’m Balboa,” said the girl. “I know, right? Sucky name.” She made a face. “I’m new to the organization, so I get the bottom of the barrel on the aliases.”

  I glared at them. “So you work for Darwin.”

  “We do,” said Balboa, a note of pride in her voice.

  “Did you guys lock me in that shipping container?”

  “No,” scoffed Pizarro. “We didn’t see you when we closed the doors.”

  “Thank God I saw your backpack,” Balboa added. “You were so helpful yesterday, leading us right to the bike.”

  Leading them right to the bike. Great. So they had somehow tailed us to Dylan’s place.

  “But I didn’t expect you to join the bike and go along for the ride,” Balboa went on. “You almost screwed everything up.”

  I ignored her insult. “Explain to me why there is a stolen bike on that container. Where is it going?”

  A smug smile traveled across Balboa’s face. “To Ecuador, of course. Why else would it be in that shipping container?”

  “This bike’s not going to Vuelta, though,” I said, narrowing my eyes. “You have someone else expecting it.”

  Balboa started to answer, but Pizarro cleared his throat.

  “Sorry. That’s classified.” Balboa looked down.

  “So your buyer is there?” I guessed. “What’s that bike worth, anyway?”

  “A lot more, now,” said Balboa, and Pizarro shot her a look.
Again she looked down. I sensed that she was willing to talk, but Pizarro was in control.

  A chill ran through me. Was Balboa suggesting Darwin would make an even bigger profit on the black market, now that Juan Carlos was dead?

  I took a step forward. My jaw clenched so hard it hurt. Just yesterday I’d convinced myself it didn’t matter where the stolen bike ended up; it was his other bike, the sabotaged bike, that could tell the story of Juan Carlos’s death. A murder. But now I was filled with hate for Darwin and for these two idiots standing before me who sought to capitalize on Juan Carlos’s death. “There’s a customs official in the container right now. I could show him the bike and tell him it’s stolen. I know where you wedged it in.”

  “But you won’t.” Pizarro smiled, reached into his courier bag, and showed me a knife. The blade glinted in a shaft of sunlight.

  I gasped and stepped back.

  “And Darwin’s got the bike where he wants it,” said Balboa. “He says he’ll leave you and your family alone now, and there won’t be any more scandalous articles posted about you, unless you decide to squeal.”

  I froze. “Scandalous articles about me?”

  “Yeah. Online. Like the one I wrote and posted for Daily Commonwealth Online News.”

  “You?” The earth tilted. “You posted that?” So the Team Maureen woman hadn’t recorded me or taken my picture or written a word of that. It was all this crazy girl. “Why would you guys do that to me? I lost my job because of that article!”

  “Because,” said Balboa, “you lied about where the bike was in the woods. You misdirected Darwin. He lost valuable time there, and someone else intervened. That article was to teach you a lesson about lying, and about what he was capable of doing to you. Anyway, not bad for my first foray into journalism, was it? I was an English major, before I dropped out of college.”

  “I hate you,” I said. And I did. That bike could tell a story. If the saboteur—maybe Jake, maybe someone else—had anything to do with that spare bike, it could have fingerprints or DNA that could put police on the right trail. And these criminals were going to make that trail to justice turn cold.

  She shrugged. “I’m just doing my job. Look, you seem like a really nice person. I’m going to give you some advice. Don’t mention the bike in that box. To anyone. There’s something inside it that needs to get safely to Ecuador.”

  “What’s inside it?” My heart pounded. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be legal. And that customs official was in the container now! I cast a longing look in that direction.

  “Hey. She doesn’t need to know all that,” Pizarro snapped at Balboa.

  Balboa looked stung. Her confident smile fell. Then she turned back to me. “Fine. Just know that Darwin can destroy your mom’s business in an instant. He wasn’t kidding about that. He could spread dirt about your dad, too, and take him down. If you care about your parents, remember that. Because we can do worse. Much worse.”

  I shivered. What could possibly be worse than what she’d just described?

  Pizarro stroked the blade of his knife with one finger. Then he came right up to me, in three long strides. The knife blade glinted between his fingers.

  My breath came in short, sharp bursts.

  “It’s actually a good thing we found you here,” he said. “Because the bike’s not the only thing we’ve been looking for. Why don’t you just hand it over?”

  “What? Hand what over?”

  “The information.”

  “What?”

  “The valuable information that you were entrusted with.” Pizarro scowled, his thick brows knitting together. “Don’t play innocent, and don’t waste our time.”

  “But I don’t have anything!” Tears of frustration burned at my eyes. “I don’t know who you guys are, or who you think I am, or what you think I have!” Valuable information. About what?

  “You knew el Cóndor,” Pizarro hissed, taking one more step toward me. “You were one of the last people to speak to him. We saw you. You must have it, or at least know something about it.”

  I flattened myself against the cold steel of the orange shipping container. The corrugated siding dug into my shoulder blade. I had a metallic taste in my mouth. I’d bit the inside of my mouth so hard it was bleeding. “I don’t. I swear. The only information he gave me was his phone number!”

  “Pizarro,” said Balboa softly. “Maybe she really doesn’t have it.”

  “Of course she has it,” Pizarro growled. “The intel was solid. She just needs a stronger incentive to give up what she knows. Or has.” He took another step forward, bringing the knife blade two inches from my throat.

  Balboa pulled him back. “Hey! That’s not how we—”

  The container doors of my former prison slammed shut.

  “Look around the corner,” Pizarro commanded me. “Tell me what they’re doing.”

  I peered around the corner of the orange shipping container and saw the customs official and the truck driver closing up the white container with the bikes.

  “All right. Looks good to go,” the customs official announced.

  I took a deep breath. “There’s a bunch of policemen coming this way,” I lied, hoping that might protect me. “Looks like about six of them. And a news camera.”

  I turned to see the looks on their faces. But Pizarro and Balboa were already gone.

  30

  THE NEXT day, I sat on the porch swing at home eating ice cream while my parents, inside, debated my fate. I had pleaded my case for going to Ecuador as best I could over dinner. I’d made some pretty good arguments, thanks to Sarita’s intense coaching the day before. Like how doing volunteer work for a good cause, and filming it on my Volunteen vlog, would help my public image. I would gain international work experience. My Spanish would get a boost. It was a great opportunity to take a risk, so I wouldn’t have regrets someday, like my mom did.

  My biggest reason, though, I kept for myself: I had to see that stolen spare bike unloaded in Ecuador and find out what was inside it. Possibilities kept swirling in my mind. I’d actually gone online the night before and researched things that got smuggled in bikes. Among the items that came up: drugs, small weapons, stolen jewels. Using new, state-of-the-art X-ray equipment, K-9 units and other screening measures, immigration and customs officials had detected all kinds of contraband in bike handlebars and bike tubes at international airports.

  It sounded like Darwin and his team could be involved in something like that. Using a bike to transport something illegal. Maybe on a shipping container, hidden among four hundred bikes, it would elude scrutiny at borders. Those bikes weren’t going to be taken out individually and screened. But why would people want to use Juan Carlos’s bike to smuggle anything? And had Juan Carlos had any idea about this?

  I was way too scared to report the bike. For one thing, I was sure Darwin would find out somehow. Second, what was I supposed to say? I tried writing out possibilities, rehearsing the call I’d make to the Boston Police, but everything sounded lame. Hi! I’d like to report a stolen bike that I neglected to report a few days ago, which I think might have something illegal inside it, inside a shipping container that I got locked into. Have a nice day! No way. The police would either not take me seriously, or I’d be incriminating myself for failing to report all this in the first place.

  But if I could get to that bike first, as a Vuelta volunteer at the container unload in Quito, I could take it apart to check it out. I could “accidentally” find whatever contraband it was smuggling. Then I could hand it over to the police in Ecuador, safely out of Darwin’s range. The Ecuadorian police could contact the FBI, or U.S. Marshals, or whoever handled international crimes. And then those authorities could determine if the bike theft and the bike sabotage were actually linked.

  I couldn’t tell my parents this plan. I hadn’t told Kylie and Sarita, either. I hadn’
t even told Mari, when she emailed me her contact info in Quito. I was too scared of Darwin’s eyes and ears. I couldn’t put my friends at risk. All I had to do was intercept that bike before the “buyer” got it, and get it on the path to justice.

  Hearing a tire on gravel, I squinted into the darkness. Someone was riding up the driveway on a bike. Someone wearing a black T-shirt and cargo shorts, and no helmet. As our porch motion-detector lights clicked on, my suspicion was confirmed.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” I said as Jake pulled up to the porch and dismounted.

  “I’ve been trying to call and text you all day,” he complained. “You never answer your phone.”

  “It’s broken.”

  “This won’t take long. I need you to come talk to the Cabot Police with me. Tomorrow.”

  My breath caught in my throat. “The police? Why?” I felt dizzy. I had a pretty good idea of why he was talking to them.

  “The news isn’t public, but it will be,” he said. “Juan Carlos’s death is a homicide case.”

  My eyes widened. I hadn’t expected Bianca to have come through so fast.

  “You mean you didn’t see the news?” Jake shoved his hands in his pockets. “So I guess that reporter you’re in love with, Bianca Slade? She went to see the Team Cadence-EcuaBar mechanic. She was doing a consumer report on the dangers of carbon fiber. Somehow she wrangled her way in to have a look at the busted bike frame, from the crash, and she had an undercover forensics expert from MIT with her.”

  “And?”

  “The guy found signs of sabotage on the bike Juan Carlos crashed on. Front tube and rear brake both showed signs of tampering. They tipped off the Cabot Police. Now there’s a detective on the case, and guess who got called in for questioning?”

  I gripped the porch swing chain tighter. It was one thing to develop a theory that Jake could have been involved in all this. It was another thing to confront it head-on, to hear him saying these words—and to think that I might have been right. I might have been dating a thief and a killer for almost a year, and not known it.