Prank Wars (43 page)

“They stole my car.” He ran his hands down Thanh’s black hair. “Are you okay?”

“You seemed mighty close to
Dune Guy!
” I pressed.

“Who?”

I tried to point out the wannabe assassin, but he was gone. Where were the rest of our Denny’s friends? Byron noticed the same time I did. He sprang to his feet. “We lost them.”

“As soon as they heard the screams outside, they ran,” Eric informed us with a solemn voice. “They got what they wanted. They don’t need us anymore.”

Byron abandoned us and rushed for his car, pulling off his sagging wig at the same time. “They said they were gonna test this thing out. Where’d they go, Eric?”

This would prove whose side Eric was on—at least to me. Eric’s eyes were wary. “I can only guess some place high.”

“Somewhere where they could set up wireless antennas,” Byron surmised.

“You don’t think they would test it here?” Thanh freed Eric from her clinging fingers, fear filling her face. “They can’t! They’ll kill us all!”

“What?” That diverted me from trying to find Eric guilty. “What will kill us all?”

Eric scrambled to his feet, bringing Thanh up with him. “The device locates targets and assassinates. It’s lethal.”

“But they don’t have the capability,” Byron argued. “They haven’t set up any receptors or anything. It could take days.”

“Unless they already have it set up?” Thanh rubbed her raw fingers against her face. She knew what she was talking about. “Everything’s in place. The control box is the last piece of the puzzle…almost, but not quite.”

“They said there was a missing piece,” Byron said. “Can you confirm that?”

She nodded. “Yes, to the frequency remote. Did you look in your backpack?”

He shook his head, looking grim. I stepped forward, giving a halfhearted wave. “They stole it before I could get it out of there.” It hurt to admit, especially when Thanh’s face drained of all color like that.

“Then they have it all,” she said in a hopeless voice.

“No.” Byron shook his head. “They might not. We might have a chance.”

I was as much out of the loop as Cameron and friends. “I don’t understand.”

“The missing piece will enable them to lock onto a frequency,” Byron explained, “A target. And then that target will be assassinated.”

“All they’d need to do is lock into a cell phone,” Thanh said through quivering lips. “They’ll target its frequency and kill whoever has it. The victim doesn’t have to pick up the phone even. It’s as simple as getting one call and you’re dead.”

Byron took a deep breath. “They’re going to reach out and touch someone.”

“Really Byron? Was that really necessary?” I cried. “Thanh! Why did you invent something like this? What were you thinking?”

“I wasn’t trying to! I wanted to invent free energy…like Tesla. I…I…” she glanced at my blank face, “in layman’s terms, I wanted to send energy through frequencies by priming the air. One push of a button and it powers a dead car on the road by locking onto its frequency, another zap and it powers a whole city. No need for generators or batteries or gas.”

“But they’ll only use it against us.” Byron pushed from us to pace the parking lot. I knew he was trying to formulate a plan. It was almost impossible when we didn’t know what direction Sandra and Hölle had gone. “As soon as the government recognized the project’s destructive capabilities as a potential weapon,” he said, “our team was sent on a PSD to keep an eye on Thanh and shut down the project if necessary. Only they sent the wrong people.”

Thanh let out a low moan. “We’ve got to do something before it’s too late!”

Eric wrapped an arm around her. “I won’t see you in danger again. They’ll kill anyone who’s a threat.”

That was all of us.

Thanh’s shoulders lowered. “A lot of people will die if we don’t do something. The device won’t just kill its target, but anyone standing in its path. It isn’t fully functional yet. The test run will be a disaster.”

“I’ve got to warn headquarters,” Byron said. He was a mess. Black paint blemished the whiteness of his once pristine tee. His jeans were ripped down the knee, his dark hair mashed down like a cat licked it. He looked very un-Byron-like—more so because I never saw him look so much like a soldier. “I’ll make them listen,” he growled, bringing his iPhone to his ear then turning pale, he lowered it. “The device is on.”

My heart dropped. “How do you know?”

“It’s wiping out all communication. They’re priming the air.” Testing out Byron’s theory, I picked up his old iPhone. The screensaver glowed through my hand. The reception was dead. We were stuck in the current of a nightmare. Byron met my eyes. “It’s interfering with the frequencies.”

Cameron and his girlfriends messed with their cell phones with no luck. Eric cradled Thanh’s head against his shoulder to comfort her, but his eyes were on me. What was his problem? He claimed his girl, now leave me alone. I lowered my borrowed phone. Byron climbed onto the roof of his car, the veins on his arms standing out. His Suburban groaned in complaint as he scanned the distance. “Where’s the tallest building around here?”

Obviously. It covered the moon with its long and mournful shadow. “The Provocity towers,” I breathed.
How ironic.

Byron dropped his hands. “It’s going to need all that electricity to make this thing work for its test run. Just tap into the cabling and wires that already exist. One generator would be more than enough. Once they figure out how to prime the air, they’ll test it. They’ve got their dish, their antennas. All they needed was that missing piece to target the frequency.”

“And thanks to us, they’ve got it.” I met Eric’s eyes over Thanh’s head. He looked down.

Byron scooted off the black Suburban, grabbing my arm in a strong grip. “Head to the police department. They’re the closest thing we’ve got for help around here.”

“Not Madeleine,” Eric reminded him. “They won’t listen to her.”

I cast him an angry look. Byron stared at him then nodded. “You’re right, not Mad.” I glared at Byron as he circled to Cameron.

Cameron threw his hands up. “I don’t even know where the police station is!”

Did anybody? The girls studied their painted toes with renewed interest. “Center Street,” Byron intoned slowly. “You might be able to find a signal to call them once you’re far enough away from here.” He still held tightly to my arm. “You’re not coming with me, Madeleine.” He dragged me from his car. Byron had always seemed so composed before turning agent. Before I could argue, he tried to give me back to Cameron. “Take Mad and Thanh out of here.”

“No.” I peeled my fingers free from Byron’s. “You need my help.”

“Stop being such a martyr.” Eric gripped my elbow and shoved me headfirst into the leather bench seat in Byron’s black Suburban. I wasn’t sure whether to thank him or not. “You need our help,” he told Byron. “I’m going too. Someone has to cover you.”

“No!” Thanh wouldn’t have any of it. “Eric. Please, stay with me!”

Eric’s fingers found her hair and he stroked the long strands away from her face. “I’m responsible for this. Now that you’re safe, I have to help these guys. It’s the least I can do. Get the police. Explain everything to them. Please, Thanh. I don’t want anything to happen to you, not after all I’ve done to keep you safe.”

Thanh’s lip trembled and she nodded. Her fragile eyes tearing up. I was touched…in an odd sort of way. He
still
had been flirting with me to get the device. Dirty player. Byron climbed into his car and gave me an exasperated look when he saw me on the bench next to him. “What are you still doing here?”

“Don’t ask stupid questions.”

Luckily he didn’t. He just groaned. “Don’t be too happy about this. You’re not going to like it.” Byron turned the keys in his ignition. The radio spat out fuzz—another side-effect of the stolen device. It was too distracting and he flipped it off, throwing his arm around me to back out of Denny’s parking lot. We sped down Bulldog Avenue. The night was black ahead of us, the towers bathed in a blanket of velvety ink.

“Tell me exactly what we’re doing,” I said.

“It’s like Thanh said,” Byron said through tight lips. “She wanted to be like Tesla—you remember the crazy guy, right? He wanted free energy. Well, he’s not so crazy. He had a theory on how to do it and if Thanh is right, those terrorists will have set everything up exactly as he proposed
on top of the Provocity towers. It’ll transmit energy from the generators straight into the upper atmosphere and prime
the air like a pump. Then it will pluck the energy from the air to cause a huge chain reaction
with the lower atmosphere that will eventually reach the dish antenna these terrorists set up. There it can focus and reflect this beam anywhere. If they focus it on something about the size of a human head, it’s guaranteed to kill.”

It was the closest I’d ever paid attention to any scientific explanation. “This is just the test run, so anything can happen,” Byron said. “I’m sure they’ll point it at someone important and famous and in the media frenzied aftermath, every terrorist will be scrambling to get their hands on it.
It’s in its crude stages now. But once they work out the kinks, it
will change the nature of assassination. Find the frequency of a target and key enemies are gone. No one will be safe.”

“With a cell phone.”

“More than that. They’re working on identifying people in more sophisticated ways, though for now, anything with a frequency signal can be targeted. Webcams, GPS, internet users, you name it.”

“Why didn’t the government shut down the project?”

“The potential of the experiment was too overwhelming. According to Tesla, energy can be pulled from the air and transmitted anywhere. It would’ve meant free energy to all with minimal cost and nonexistent prices at the pumps, but then…well, anything can be made into a weapon. They’ll sell it to the highest bidder.”

Eric sat silently in the back. I moved around to face him. “How did
you
get involved...lover boy?” —Okay, so I should have laid off the sneer.

The leather seat groaned when he shifted. “Thanh and I have been dating for a few years now. She started getting threats and didn’t know who to trust. I transferred from the U to get closer to her. It just got worse from there.”

It was a romantic story; that’s why I was having a hard time swallowing it. “What about the first time I saw you? You were with that guy who attacked me.”

“Walter?”

That was not the name I imagined for him. “Uh,
Dune Guy
?”

Eric nodded with a grimace. “They told me they’d hurt Thanh if I didn’t help them. I had to do what they said.”

“But Thanh switched her backpack with Byron, and you stole it back. Wait. Did you have it when I jumped into your car with you?”

“She was dead without it. They weren’t even supposed to know the backpack was hers, but the information leaked. I don’t know how.”

That one was my fault. I let Sandra know. I remembered
country station night when Eric broke into our apartment. Soon after, our keys to our complex came up missing. I stared at the road ahead of me. The white lines sped past in the darkness. “Did you steal our keys too?”

“I just wanted them to leave Thanh alone.” He sounded testy. “I thought maybe those were the keys everyone was looking for.”

That made sense, but still there were a few holes. I decided to poke at them. “Why did you say you kidnapped Thanh when you talked to me on her cell phone?”

“I never said I kidnap...why would I say that? What? You don’t believe me?”

I leaned back in my seat, not answering. I supposed it was Hölle who had threatened me over the phone then. That made sense, since he called Byron immediately afterward to debrief him on Thanh. Hölle had left the threatening note too. Eric really was some stupid boyfriend trying to protect his girlfriend…and he flirted with me to do it.

I turned to Byron to see if he was buying this. One look at him and I doubted he heard a word. His brow furrowed in concentration, his whole body taut as he raced us closer to danger.
The lights faded out down the street. I swiveled, seeing the lights flicker off behind us like blown out candles. “Did you see that?”

“It’s like turning on a hair dryer,” Byron said. I was surprised he had heard me. “The lights are going to dim.”

The Suburban stalled and came to a full stop. We waited a moment, smothered in silence. The only light came from the full moon above the Provocity towers. It covered a huge part of the sky. Eric clasped the back of my seat, pulling my hair with it. “It affects cars too?”

“Their electrical systems.” Byron shoved his door open, fishing through his emergency kit in the back. He pocketed some light sticks. “The air’s polluted with electro smog. They’ve started the test run. Let’s go. We don’t have much time.” Under the light of the moon, we slammed the Suburban doors behind us. Our shoes slapped against the pavement as we ran full speed for the Provocity towers...and whatever else waited for us there.