Everything was just as she remembered, just as she had created. It was her world, formed with her hopes and dreams.
Except, something was different.
He was there, sitting at the same table, across from her and just in the shadows. She realized that he’d been watching her this whole time, never saying anything. He just watched. Now that she was looking at him, now that she had seen him, he leaned forward and smiled, taking her hand in his. She knew the smile, recognized it, but still could not see the boy’s face.
“Surely, you must know,” he said, and his words filled Mae with a thrumming dread.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The plane landed and taxied to a private hangar away from the airport terminals where larger planes loaded and unloaded passengers. The snow fell with fury, the storm not quite a blizzard, but working itself in that direction.
"We're here," Ryan said and nudged Adam's shoulder. Adam was stretched out on a leather couch that lined one side of the Learjet and had slept for most of the flight from Boston to Detroit. At the beginning of the flight, Ryan had tried to sleep, but found that every time he closed his eyes, he saw Mae and wondered what had happened to her. After nearly 30 minutes of trying to clear his mind and focus on sleep, he had given up. Instead, Ryan sat on the small table that unfolded from the wall, and studied the documents Heather had sent before they'd taken off.
Heather impressed him. All this time, he'd never known that it was one girl who'd been running the Lit Dragons from behind the scenes. She was the liaison between the players and auto companies, she organized the delivery of the cars and the clean up crews, and she transmitted the data obtained from the games back to the companies where they would use what was learned to improve their product lines or issue recalls. In addition to all that, she ran the financing for the games—making sure the players were paid—and she made sure the rules were followed. The Lit Dragons was not a large group, only 30 players or so at any given time, but Ryan was still impressed that she ran it all.
And this was no different. Before they'd taken off, she'd sent him the maps they were to follow and had ordered a number of cars to be delivered last minute. Ryan had no idea what strings she'd had to pull to get the cars delivered so quickly, but she'd come through. The only thing Ryan was required to do was get to the private airplane hangar in Detroit. Even that hadn't been difficult. His parents each had a private jet at their disposal, but they would often fly together on his mother's plane. His father’s jet sat at Logan International for most of the year, unused. Ryan had simply made a call, and by the time they'd made the trip to Boston from western Connecticut, the flight crew was readying the airplane for take off.
"I can't believe you have a plane," Adam rubbed the sleep from his eyes and peered out the window.
"My dad's plane."
"Still." A gust of wind and snow pounded against the plane and the metal exterior shuddered and groaned. "Really coming down out there, eh?"
"I never really liked the weather in Detroit," Ryan said. He opened a mini fridge along the wall and removed two bottles of water, tossing one to Adam.
"Detroit..." Adam said, shaking his head with disbelief. "And this is where they've taken her."
"No, but it's the closest Heather could get us to Mae," Ryan grinned, "and our transportation."
"What do you mean?"
Ryan nodded towards the front of the plane as it came to a stop inside the airplane hangar. The stewardess, a young woman who couldn't have been out of college for more than a couple of years, unbuckled from the jump seat near the front of the plane and smiled at Ryan and Adam.
"Welcome to Detroit, gentlemen," she said. The co-pilot joined her and together they began to open the door.
"Dude, you have a hot stewardess," Adam said, grinning.
"Shut up, man. My dad's stewardess," Ryan muttered, but smiled. After all Adam had said about his relationship with Mae, it was nice to be on top for the moment, even if it was just superficial.
The door swung open and the cold air from outside instantly cooled the cabin. A set of rolling stairs had been pushed up next to the airplane. Ryan and Adam grabbed their bags, nodded to the flight crew, and stepped into the hangar.
Adam gasped when he saw the cars, stopping on the top step and staring into the hangar. An eighteen wheel semi truck was parked along the back wall, its auto carrier trailer empty. The cars that had presumably arrived with the semi were parked alongside one another. Four cars gleamed beneath the fluorescent lights of the hangar, each a dark color that made the sporty curves more subtle. The cars were reminiscent of sports cars already on the road, but there were no markings of any kind on their bodies. They were familiar but completely anonymous.
"You like?" Ryan asked, looking back over his shoulder at Adam, who still stood gape-mouthed.
"These are all yours?"
"No," Ryan said, "not exactly."
"Hey-o!" a guy shouted nearby. Ryan turned and smiled when he saw a familiar face hobbling from around one of the cars. Sam looked pale and weak, as if he'd been in bed and out of direct sunlight for weeks, which he had been. He had been one of the players for Lit Dragons for the game in Chicago, Ryan’s navigator, but had been injured in the final accident of the games. He'd been stuck in bed recovering for months.
"Sam!" Ryan shouted and shook his hand. "I thought you were holed up!"
"Well, I heard you're in a bit of a bind so I decided to come along. Got the red alert on the Lit Dragons server, which I'd never seen before. So I dialed in and heard what was going on. It's only been a couple months since I saw you last. How'd you manage to get tangled up in this mess?"
"I met a girl, Sam," Ryan said.
"Well, I can understand that." Sam said, and put his arm around the girl who stood next to him, beaming. The girl was beautiful, big blue eyes and light brown hair that was tied into a messy bun. Her skin was the color of a caramel latte, and the little makeup she wore only accentuated her subtle and attractive features.
"And you must be—"
"Dani," she said and took his offered hand.
"Sam, you know this is against--"
"—the rules, I know." Sam finished.
"After the last accident, you think I'd let him do this stuff again?" Dani asked, her eyebrows raised as if to dare Ryan to disagree.
"Besides," Sam continued, "that girl who runs the thing--you know its just her, right? The girl whose voice you always say is so sexy when she starts the games? She said this was our last ride, that the Lit Dragons are going away into the night, so the rules don't matter much anymore. She told us what happened at your house, and we're real sorry to hear about that, man. Real sorry."
"Well, I appreciate it." Ryan chuckled, remembering how Sam's nervous and incessant chatting used to drive him crazy. It was nice to hear him now, and to see him on his feet.
"I'm afraid this might be more dangerous than the usual rides, and you know how those can sometimes turn out. And didn't you guys just have a baby?"
"Don't worry, man," Sam said. "Dani here is looking for a little bit of a thrill. We dropped the kid off at her parents and we're along for the ride. We'll be careful—don't want to orphan the baby before she even knows us."
Dani punched him in the arm and he winced, adding, "Knock on wood, Dani, jeeze!"
Ryan laughed and noticed four additional people gathering around the cars. Another girl and three guys. None of them looked familiar, but he assumed they were normal players for the Lit Dragons, or Heather wouldn't have been able to get them here. He wondered if Heather had told them about the people they were going up against. All the players went into each game for the Lit Dragons with the knowledge that the games were real. Injury and even death was a possibility, and people had died in the past. It was that possibility that made the games worthwhile, that gave the players a taste of really living and tasting each breath of life.
But this was different. The possibility of death came not just from the game—where it
was essentially an accident. Lit Dragons was not a fancy method for suicide and there was no active intention to kill or die. Quite the opposite, in fact. The goal was to live after having experienced the heightened possibility of death. But in this situation, this rescue mission to save Mae, not only was there danger in driving, but there would be external forces trying to kill them and prevent Mae from being rescued.
Ryan wondered if Heather had explained this to them, and if they'd still come to play the game, even with that knowledge.
He nodded to the others as they approached and introduced himself.
"Name's John, and this is my brother Todd," one of the guys said, indicating the guy standing next to him. Now that he mentioned it, the resemblance was there, and Ryan could tell they were related. They were both tall with very broad shoulders. Their hair was a reddish blonde and their faces were wind and sun burned.
"Nice to meet you," Ryan said. "Where you guys from?"
"Southern Texas," Todd said as he pulled a package of cigarettes from the breast pocket of his shirt. He shook the package and placed one of the smokes between his lips. He held the package out and offered it to the group.
"Nah, man," the other guy said. He had dark skin, short hair, thick glasses, and spoke with an accent that Ryan couldn't place.
"Those things'll kill ya," he said, "but, seeing as how I'm here, I guess that's a bit hypocritical. My name is Patrick. From L.A., but going to school at Sanford. Ready for some ice driving tonight. Nice driving. Nice, ice, get it?"
Ryan shook Patrick's hand and chuckled with the others to be polite. He nodded to the girl, who smiled back. Her hair was died a dark red with streaks of purple. Her makeup was dark and her skin pale, and Ryan would have expected her to be dressed darkly as well, but instead, she was wearing a flannel shirt and jeans. She had a silk scarf around her neck and diamond earrings dangling from her ears.
"Brooke, from New York," she said.
"No accent?" Sam asked.
"Not from there," she said. "Going to law school."
"Great, that's all we need is another lawyer," Patrick said.
"You in law school too?"
"Yep."
Brooke rolled her eyes and they laughed nervously.
"And who's your friend?" Sam asked, motioning toward Adam, who stood a few feet behind Ryan and hadn't said anything since getting off the plane.
"This is Adam. He's a mutual friend of Mae's."
"The girl we're going after?" Dani asked.
Ryan nodded.
"Must be a popular girl," John muttered.
"She's perfect," Adam said, a little too defensively. Ryan looked away for a second, trying to mask the look of frustration that crossed his face. Most everyone there saw it though, and the silence stretched on for too long.
"You guys okay going after the same girl?" Patrick asked, looking over his glasses and finally breaking through the silence.
"Only matters who she chooses," Adam's jaw was set and hard.
Ryan turned and met his gaze, and the two stood staring at each other for several seconds. It was out in the open now, Ryan realized, what they'd both been thinking. They each had feelings for her, and they both had an idea of a future with Mae.
"Maybe she won't choose either of us," Ryan said. "That's not why I'm here. They're going to kill her, or maybe worse. And you know it."
Adam continued to stare at him for several seconds before nodding and looking away. The group gave a collective sigh of relief that the tension had passed.
"Beautiful rides," Brooke said. "This one is mine."
She ran her fingers along the curves of the car that was a dark red.
"I call the blue one," Patrick said.
"What kind of cars are they? They don’t have any names or anything, how do you know what they are?" Adam asked. Everyone turned.
"Have you never played?" Todd wondered.
"He's no Lit Dragon," someone else said.
"No, of course he's never played," Ryan said, and then turned to Adam. "The cars aren't marked because the companies who make the cars don't want anyone knowing who made them."
Adam grunted, confused. "But that doesn't make any sense."
Ryan opened his mouth to respond, but his phone buzzed. He didn't recognize the phone number, but it was Heather. Her voice was just as smooth and attractive when talking on the phone as it was when she began the games.
"Hey," Ryan said.
"Hi. Can you put me on speaker?" Heather asked, and Ryan did. He placed his phone on the hood of the nearest car. He leaned against the bumper and the other players gathered closer.
"Welcome to Lit Dragons," Heather said and began to explain the rules for this last game.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
"Once you get to I-85, there's going to be a road block of some kind," Heather said. "I can't tell if the road block is manned by police officers, but you'll need to be ready for it if so. Do you have guns?"
"No guns," Ryan said. Heather heard some grumbling in the background, but couldn't tell who it was. She'd managed to get six players in addition to Ryan and his friend (who she was still more than a little worried about). The players who would respond on such short notice and with the warning that this was the last game and bound to be much more dangerous, were likely to be the most extreme and willing to take risks. Still, they were going up against armed mercenaries and commandos. The soldiers were not playing games and would kill the players without any hesitation. She wasn't sure the idea to go up against them without guns was a good one, but she left that decision to Ryan.
"Well, the cars I had delivered should be enough to get around and away from the road blocks," she said with measured tones, "but you'll have more of a problem when it comes to the convoy. If Mae is being escorted by armed soldiers, which you've told me is the case, you won't want to be unprepared."
"We'll worry about that bridge when we get to it." Ryan said, "I'm hoping we can be in and out without a fight, and that the cars will be weapon enough."
Heather hesitated, thinking about the implications of that statement.
"Well," she said, "good luck. If my timing is right, the convoy already has a head start and may be several hundred miles ahead. You'll have to move fast. The weather is clear, but the roads will still be bad. Each of the cars is equipped with Bluetooth technology, so you will be able to communicate with one another through your phones, hands free. I'll be in touch."
"Heather," Ryan said quickly as she was about to end the call.
"Yeah?"
"Thank you."
"You're welcome," Heather said. "Just be careful."
Ryan ended the call and Heather sat staring at her computer screen for several seconds wondering what it would be like to have someone care about you so much that they would risk their life to come after you in the face of anonymous soldiers and almost certain death. She hoped he wouldn't die, not because she had any feelings one way or the other, but because she didn't want them to win. She wanted Il Contionum taken down. She wanted Ryan to succeed and to take Mae away from them, even though she still had no idea why she was so important to their organization.
"Well, let's figure that out," she said under her breath and tilted the computer's screen slightly forward as she leaned in and began to work. She opened a program that would splay the running applications on the computer. The mirroring and tracking program would be hidden well, she was sure, but at the moment, there were only a few applications running. She went through each application, and on the second to last, identified the dummy software that stood as the red herring to the mirroring program. Within seconds, she had identified how the data was being transferred back to whoever was monitoring the reporter's computer. She found the ISP and plugged it into her own ISP tracking software, and after a few minutes of working, the application produced the exact location of the server to which the data was being transmitted.
Heater smiled and stretched her arms. What she had just done in less than 10 minut
es would have been impossible for most people, but for her it was only a slightly challenging puzzle. She loved puzzles.
She tapped into the location of the ISP connection and met with the first of what she knew would be many firewalls protecting the networks and servers for the organization. If they'd been smart, they would have diversified their data to various server locations and multiple ISPs, but considering how tightly Il Contionum was run, she figured they would keep everything close to the chest. Only a few would ever have access to that data, but it was likely in one spot, and protected by only so many firewalls.
She began working, knowing the next part of the process would take several hours. Absently, she took another sip of her tea and nibbled on a shortbread cookie. At the moment, the tea did nothing to relax her. The influx of data, and the knowledge that she would breach the network in only a matter of time, was enough.
Perhaps it was the release of built-up stress and anxiety, or maybe the moment of complacency as she worked, but if Heather had opened the last of the five applications running on the computer--the weather app--she would have found yet another dummy application used to hide another tracking program.
In a room that was far away from where Heather worked, an alert flashed on the desktop of an analyst. He read the coded numbers and words and smiled as he turned to his colleague.
"We've got her."
Chapter Thirty
Ryan pressed the keyless ignition. The car roared angrily to life and Ryan flexed his fingers against the leather grain of the steering wheel. He looked over at Adam, who was admiring the black leather interior and seemed to be lost in the moment, as if this was the first time he'd ever sat in a car such as this.
Even Ryan had to admit that the car pushed the envelope for the cars they typically drove for the Lit Dragons. This one was a dark grey, the color of an autumn thunderstorm raging on the horizon. The players were never told the specifications for the cars, never given any details about the engines or the differences between one car and the next. The game was driving and destroying, testing the limits of the cars. But even without the exact specifications, Ryan could feel that this was something special. The roar of the engine had a dark undercurrent, a heavy purr that reminded Ryan of what a sleeping dragon might sound like.
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