When Lightning Strikes 1-1

by Meg Cabot

  Sean, however, was not so impressed.

  "You have got to be kidding me," he said when he got his first good look at his rescuers.

  "Look," I said to him as I pulled on the helmet Rob handed to me. "It's these guys or your dad. Take your pick."

  "Boy," Sean said, shaking his head. "You drive a hard bargain."

  Hank Wendell shoved a helmet at him. "Here ya go, kid," he said. He made room on his seat for Sean's eighty-pound frame, then gave his engine a rev. "Hop on."

  I don't know if Sean would have gotten on if, at that moment, an eardrum-piercing siren hadn't begun to wail.

  One of the guys from Chick's—Frankie, who had a tattoo of a baby on his bicep—called out, "Here they come."

  A second later, some military types came running up to the barless window, shouting for us to stop. Headlights lit up the parking lot.

  "Hang on," Rob said as I swung onto the seat behind him and wrapped my arms around him.

  "Halt," a man's voice bellowed. I glanced over my shoulder. There was a military jeep coming toward us, with a man standing up in the back, shouting through a megaphone. Behind him, I could see lights turning on in the buildings all across the base, and people running outside, trying to see what was going on.

  "This is U.S. Government property,"'the guy with the megaphone declared. "You are trespassing. Turn off your engines now."

  And then the night air was ripped apart by an earth-shaking explosion. I saw a ball of flame rise up in the air over by the airstrip. Everyone ducked—

  Except Frankie and the guy with the Tet Offensive tattoo, who high-fived one another.

  "Oh, yeah," Frankie said. "We still got it."

  "What was that?" I shouted as Rob accelerated.

  "A helicopter," Rob shouted back. "Just a little diversionary tactic, to confuse the enemy."

  "You'll blow up a helicopter," I said, "but you won't go out with me?" I couldn't believe it. "What is wrong with you?"

  I didn't have a chance to complain for long, however, because Rob sped up, and suddenly we were whipping through the darkened lots that made up Crane, heading for the front gates. The night sky behind us was now filled with an orange glow from the burning helicopter. New sirens, evidently from fire engines sent to put out the flames, sliced through the night, and searchlights arced against the low-lying clouds.

  All this, I thought, to bust a small boy and a psychic put of an infirmary.

  We hadn't managed to ditch the guy in the jeep. He was right behind us, still shouting through the megaphone for us to stop.

  But Rob and his friends didn't stop. In fact, if anything, they sped up.

  Okay, I'll admit it: I loved every minute of it. Finally, finally, I was going fast enough.

  Then, a hundred yards from the front gates, Rob threw his foot out, and we skidded to a halt. His friends followed suit.

  For a moment, we sat there, all six bikers, Rob, Sean, and me, engines roaring, staring straight ahead of us. The glow from the fire on the airstrip clearly lit the long road leading to the base's front gates. There were guards there, I remembered from when I'd gone by them on the bus to the mall. Guards with rifles. I had no idea how Rob and the others had gotten past these armed sentries to get onto the base, and I had no idea how we were going to get past them getting off of it. All I could think was, over and over in my head, "Oh, my God, they blew up a helicopter. They blew up a helicopter."

  But maybe it was a good thing they did. Because there was no one blocking our path. Everyone was heading toward the airstrip to help put out the fire.

  Except for the guy in the jeep behind us.

  "Turn off your engines and put your hands up," the guy said.

  Instead, Rob lifted up his foot and we lurched forward, heading straight for the gates.

  Which were down.

  Then someone in a bathrobe came striding across the road, until he stood right in front of the gates. It was someone I recognized. He lifted a megaphone.

  "Halt," Colonel Jenkins's voice boomed through the night, louder than the motorcycle engines, louder than the sirens. "You are under arrest. Turn off your engines now."

  He was standing directly in front of the gates. His robe had fallen open, and I could see he had on pale blue pajamas.

  Rob didn't slow down. If anything, he sped up.

  "Turn off your engines," Colonel Jenkins commanded us. "Do you hear me? You are under arrest. Turn off your engines now."

  The gatehouse guards appeared with their rifles. They didn't point them at us, but they stood their ground on either side of Colonel Jenkins.

  No one turned off their engines. In fact, Greg and Hank let out whoops and started racing even faster toward the gates. I had no idea what they thought was going to happen when they reached the men standing there. It wasn't as if they were simply going to move out of the way and let us by. This was no ordinary game of chicken. Not when the other guy was holding a high-powered rifle.

  I guess Colonel Jenkins figured out that nobody was going to turn off his engine, since suddenly he put down the megaphone and nodded to the two guards. I tightened my grip on Rob's waist, and ducked my head, afraid to look. They were only, I was sure, going to shoot into the air, to get our attention. Surely he couldn't mean to—

  But then I never did find out whether or not they would have shot at us, because Rob gave the front of the bike a violent jerk. . . .

  And then we were sailing off the base. Not through the front gates, but through a wide section of the chain-link fence that had been carefully peeled back to one side of the gates. This was how Rob and his friends had gotten past the sentries. All it had taken was a little determination, a pair of wire cutters, and some experience in breaking-and-entering.

  Once we were off the base, the only light we had to see by were the bikes' headlights. That was all right, though. I looked behind me, and saw that the jeep was still behind us, intent on stopping us somehow.

  But when I told Rob this, he only laughed. The road that led to Crane was little used, except for traffic to and from the base. All around it were cornfields, and beyond the fields, wooded hills. It was toward these hills Rob plunged, the other bikers following him, veering off the road and into the corn, which this early in spring was only ankle-high.

  The jeep bounced along behind us, but it was rough going. The colonel must have gotten the message out, since that single jeep was soon joined by some SUVs. It didn't matter, though. We were darting between them like fireflies. No one could have kept up, except maybe the helicopter, and, well, that wasn't happening, for obvious reasons.

  And then we lost them. I don't know if they simply gave up, or were called back to the base, or what. But suddenly, we were on our own.

  We had done it.

  Still, we stuck to back roads, just to be safe. I'm pretty sure we weren't followed, though. We stopped several times to check, in sleepy little towns along the way, where there was one gas pump attached to a mom-and-pop general store, and where the noise from the hogs' engines caused bedroom lights to turn on, and dogs chained up in yards to bark.

  But there was nothing behind us, nothing except long, empty stretches of road, winding like rivers beneath the heavy sky.

  Marco.

  Polo.

  We were free.

  C H A P T E R

  20

  Rob took us to his house.

  Not Greg and Hank and those guys. I have no idea where they went. Well, actually, that's not true. I have a pretty good idea. I think they went to Chick's to pound back a few, and to celebrate their successful penetration of a government facility thought by many to be as impenetrable as Area 51.

  Obviously those who thought that had never met anybody from the last row of detention at Ernest Pyle High School.

  Sean and I, however, did not join in the festivities. We went to Rob's.

  I was surprised when I saw Rob's house. It was a farmhouse, not big—though it was kind of hard to tell in the dark—but built at aroun
d the same time as my house on Lumley Lane.

  Only, because it was on the wrong side of town, no one had come and put a plaque on it, declaring it a historic landmark.

  Still, it was a sweet little house, with a porch out front and a barn out back. Rob lived there with just one other person, his mom. I don't know what happened to his dad, and I didn't want to ask.

  We crept into the house very quietly, so as not to wake Mrs. Wilkins, who had recently been laid off from the local plastics factory. Rob showed me his room, and said I could sleep there. Then he gathered up a bunch of blankets and stuff, so that he and Sean could go sleep in the barn.

  Sean didn't look particularly happy about this, but then, he was so tired, he could hardly keep his eyes open. He followed Rob around like a little zombie.

  I was a little zombie-like myself. I couldn't quite believe what we had done. After I'd gotten undressed, I lay there in Rob's bed, thinking about it. We had destroyed government property. We had defied the orders of a colonel in the United States Army. We had blown up a helicopter.

  We were going to be in big trouble in the morning.

  Still, I was so sleepy, it was kind of hard to worry about that. Instead, all I could think about was how weird it was to be in a boy's room. At least, a boy who wasn't my brother. I'd been in Skip's room—you know, over at Ruth's—plenty of times, but it was nothing like Rob's. In the first place, Rob didn't have any posters of Trans Ams up on his walls. Nor did he have any Playboys under the bed (I checked). Still, it was pretty alarmingly manly. I mean, he had plaid sheets and stuff.

  But his pillow smelled like him, and that was nice, very comforting. I can't tell you what it smelled like, exactly, because that would be too hard to describe, but whatever it was, it was good.

  I didn't have a whole lot of opportunity to lie there and enjoy it, though. Because almost as soon as I'd crawled into bed, I fell asleep.

  And I didn't wake up again for a long, long time.

  When I finally did wake up, it was about noon. It took me a minute to figure out where I was. Then I remembered:

  I was in Rob's room, at his house.

  And I was wanted by the FBI.

  Not just the FBI, either, but the United States Army.

  And I wouldn't have been surprised if the Secret Service, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and the Indiana State Highway Patrol wanted a piece of me, too.

  And, interestingly, from the moment I woke up, I knew exactly what I was going to do about it.

  It's not every day a girl wakes up knowing she's wanted by the federal law enforcement agency of the most powerful country in the world. I thought about lying around, relishing it, but I was kind of worried about the impression that would make on Mrs. Wilkins, who could, if I played my cards right, be my mother-in-law someday. I didn't want her thinking I was this big slacker or something, so instead I got up, got dressed, and went downstairs.

  Sean and Rob were already there, sitting at the kitchen table. In front of them was one heck of a lot of food. There was toast, and eggs, and bacon, and cereal, and a bowl of some white stuff I could not identify. The plate in front of Rob was empty—he was apparently through eating. But Sean was still putting it away. I don't think he'll ever be through eating. At least, not until after he's done going through puberty.

  "Hi, Jess," he said when I walked into the kitchen. He sounded—and looked—a good deal perkier than he had during the last twenty-four hours I'd spent with him.

  "Hi," I said.

  A plump woman standing by the stove turned and smiled at me. She had a lot of red hair piled up on top of her head with a barrette, and didn't look a thing like her son Rob.

  Until a shaft of sunlight, coming through the window above the sink, lit her face, and I saw that she had his eyes, so light blue they were the color of fog.

  "You must be Jess," she said. "Pull up a chair and sit yourself down. How do you like your eggs?"

  "Um," I said, awkwardly. "Scrambled is fine, thank you, ma'am."

  "The eggs are fresh," Sean informed me as I sat down. "From the henhouse out back. I helped gather them."

  "Your friend Sean's turning into a real farmhand," Mrs. Wilkins said. "We'll have him milking, next."

  Sean giggled. I blinked at him. He'd actually giggled.

  That was when I realized, with a shock, that I had never seen him happy before.

  "There you go," Mrs. Wilkins said, setting a plate down in front of me. "Now you eat up. You look as if you could use a good hearty country breakfast."

  I had never had fresh eggs before, and I was kind of worried they'd have some half-formed chicken fetus in them, but they didn't. They were really delicious, and when Mrs. Wilkins offered seconds, I gladly took them. I was pretty hungry, I discovered. I even ate some of the white stuff Mrs. Wilkins glopped onto my plate. It tasted like the Cream of Wheat my father always made us eat before school on really cold days when we were little.

  But it wasn't Cream of Wheat. It was, Rob informed me with a little smile, grits.

  If Ruth could only see me now, I thought.

  After I'd helped Mrs. Wilkins wash the breakfast dishes, however, the fun was over. It was time to get down to business.

  "I need to use a phone," I announced, and Mrs. Wilkins pointed to hers, hanging on the wall by the refrigerator.

  "You can use that one," she said.

  "No," I said. "For this particular call, I think I better use a pay phone."

  Rob eyed me suspiciously. "What's up?" he wanted to know.

  "Nothing," I said, innocently. "I just need to make a call. Is there a pay phone around here?"

  Mrs. Wilkins looked thoughtful. "There's the one down the road, over by the IGA," she said.

  "Perfect." To Rob, I said, "Can you drive me over there?"

  He said he could, and we got up to go. . . .

  And so did Sean.

  "Nuh-uh," I said. "No way. You stay here."

  Sean's jaw dropped. "What do you mean?"

  "I mean there are probably cops crawling all over the place, looking for a sixteen-year-old girl in the company of a twelve-year-old boy. They'll be on to us in a second. You stay here until I get back."

  "But that's not fair," Sean declared, his voice breaking.

  I felt of bubble of impatience well up inside me. But instead of snapping at him, I grabbed Sean by the arm and steered him out onto the back porch.

  "Look," I said softly, so Rob and his mother wouldn't hear. "You said you wanted things back the way they were, didn't you? You and your mom, together, without your dad breathing down your necks?"

  "Yes," Sean admitted, sullenly.

  "Well, then let me do what I have to do. Which is something I have to do alone."

  Sean was right about one thing: He was small for his age, but he really wasn't little. He wasn't even all that shorter than me. Which was how he was able to look me straight in the eye and say, accusingly, "That guy really is your boyfriend, isn't he?"

  Where had that come from?

  "No, Sean," I said. "I told you. We're just friends."

  Sean brightened considerably. He said, "Okay," and went back inside.

  Men. I swear I just don't get it.

  Ten minutes later, I was standing in front of a little general store, the handset to an ancient pay phone pressed to my ear. I dialed carefully.

  1-800-WHERE-R-YOU.

  I asked for Rosemary, and when she came on, I said, "Hey, it's me. Jess."

  "Jess?" Rosemary's voice dropped to a whisper. "Oh, my goodness. Is that really you?"

  "Sure," I said. "Why?"

  "Honey, I've been hearing all sorts of things on the news about you."

  "Really?" I looked over at Rob. He was refilling the Indian's tank from the single pump in front of the store. We hadn't watched the news yet, and Mrs. Wilkins didn't get any newspapers, so I was eager to hear what they were saying about me. "What kind of stuff?"

  "Well, about how last night, a group of Hell's Angels t
ore up Crane Military Base and kidnapped you and little Sean O'Hanahan off of it, of course."

  "WHAT?" I yelled, so loud that Rob looked over at me. "That's not how it happened at all. Those guys were helping us to escape. Sean and I were being held against our will."

  Rosemary said, "Well, that's not how that fellow—what's his name? Johnson, I think. That's not how Special Agent Johnson is telling it. There's a reward out for your safe return, you know."

  This sounded interesting. "How much?"

  "Twenty thousand dollars."

  "Each?"

  "No, that's just for you. Sean's father posted a hundred thousand dollar reward for his return."

  I nearly hung up, I was so disgusted. "Twenty thousand dollars? Twenty piddling thousand dollars? That's all I'm worth to them? That loser. That's it. This is war."

  Rosemary said, "I'd look out if I were you, honey. There's APBs out all over the state of Indiana. Folks are looking for you."

  "Oh, yeah, I bet. Listen, Rosemary," I said, "I want you to do me a favor."

  Rosemary said, "Anything, hon."

  "Give Agent Johnson a message for me. . . ."

  Then I carefully stated the message I wanted Rosemary to relay.

  "Okay," she said, when I was through. "You got it, honey. And, Jess?"

  I had been about to hang up. "Yes?"

  "You hang in there, honey. We're all behind you."

  I hung up and told Rob about Special Agent Johnson's bogus kidnapping story—not to mention the crummy reward out for my capture. Rob was as mad as I was. Now that we knew there was an APB out on me, and that Hell's Angels were being blamed for what had happened at Crane, we agreed it wasn't a good idea for me to be seen tooling around on the back of Rob's bike. So we hurried back to his mom's place—but not until after I'd made one last call, this one from a pay phone outside a 7-Eleven on the turnpike.

  My dad was where he usually is at lunchtime: Joe's. They get quite a noon crowd from the courthouse.

  "Dad," I said. "It's me."

  He nearly choked on his rigatoni, or whatever the special for the day was. My dad always taste-tests.

  "Jess?" he cried. "Are you all right? Where are you?"