B003J5UJ4U EBOK (27 page)

“They’re smart enough,” Flinch said. “They might be evil and greedy and heartless, and they might be happy to rip off the government whenever they get a chance, but they didn’t become zillionaires by being stupid.”

I nodded. “Yeah. As soon as each company makes the connection, they’ll be all over Bowdler. And he’ll know it was
us. But he can’t tell them that. What can he say? ‘Sorry. The telekinetic I kidnapped has a bit of a revenge thing going on.’ That wouldn’t go over too well.”

“We need to be ready when he calls,” Martin said. “We need everything figured out ahead of time so we can get Lucky back and make sure Bowdler never bothers any of us again. So, what do we do when he calls?”

“We ask him to bring Lucky to us,” Flinch said.

“Or we could just demand that he lets Lucky go,” Cheater said.

I shook my head. “No, I want to see that he’s okay. And I want to meet Bowdler face to face, so he understands that this is over. We need to figure out a safe place for that.”

“I’m on it.” Cheater went to the laptop and pulled up a satellite view of Philly. He zoomed down and started scrolling around. “How’s this.”

I leaned over his shoulder and looked at the screen. He’d found a baseball field. It looked like it was next to a school. “That would work,” I said. It was also close enough for us to walk there. I’d realized that every time we took a cab, we left a record. And it was tough cramming all five of us into one cab.

“I like it,” Flinch said. “I don’t want us to do this indoors, or anywhere crowded where we can’t see everything that’s going on.”

“Well, that brings up a tiny little problem,” Martin said. “If Bowdler has a disrupter, we’re just five kids with no way to fight back. What if he pulls a gun, or uses another of those gas bombs? What if he has someone hiding with a rifle?”

“I did find this,” Cheater said. He opened a file on the hard drive. A diagram filled the screen. “It’s a schematic for the disrupter.”

“Does that help us?” I asked. “Is there a way to block it or something?”

Cheater shook his head. “Nope. Not as far as I can tell.”

“We’ll figure it all out,” I said. If we had to, we could rush him. But I didn’t want it to get down to that. Some of us would get hurt. I remembered how he’d kicked Martin. “There’s no way I’m letting Lucky stay with him.”

“Whatever it takes,” Flinch said.

“No matter what happens,” Martin said, “we keep going until we rescue him.”

Cheater and Torchie nodded in agreement. I knew all of them would fight to their last breath.

Another hour passed. I checked the phone to make sure it was still on.

“Why don’t you call him,” Torchie asked.

“It’s better if he calls.” That’s one of the things I’d learned from my dad. In any negotiation, it’s best to let the other guy say what he wants first. That was our only advantage. Bowdler had weapons. He had resources. We had time. But not as much as I’d like. A couple days with Bowdler might break Lucky beyond repair.

“All this waiting is making me hungry,” Torchie said. He wandered into the kitchen, rustled around in a cabinet, then shouted, “Hey, there’s popcorn!”

A moment later, he yelled, “I can’t get the microwave to work.”

“I’ll go,” I said. I joined him in the kitchen. The microwave seemed to be dead. There wasn’t even a display on the clock. I checked the plug. It was in. “Looks like no popcorn.”

“Watch this.” Torchie stared at the bag. In a couple seconds, I heard popping. A few second after that, the bag was almost full. And a few seconds after that, it burst into flame.

I slid it into the sink and turned on the faucet.

“I haven’t quite gotten the timing right,” Torchie said. He tore open the bag and grabbed a handful of soggy popcorn. “Mmmm. Not bad. Sorta like buttery Jell-o. Want some?”

“Maybe later.” I went back to the living room to wait for the phone to ring.

By four o’clock, I was starting to get worried.

“He’s not going to call,” Cheater said.

“He will,” I said. “He has to.” I looked around at the guys, hoping they agreed.

“I think he’s waiting until tonight,” Martin said. “Rats love darkness.”

“Yeah,” Flinch said. “A guy like Bowdler doesn’t like to slither out into the sunlight.”

At eight, half an hour before sunset, the cell phone finally rang.

elsewhere …

THE MORNING HAD
been a nightmare of angry calls. Three separate experiments had somehow gone badly wrong, causing considerable damage. There’d also been a mishap on a corporate jet. Worse, Bowdler had seen a story on the news about a devastating explosion at one of Ganelon Corp.’s facilities. That disaster hadn’t been tied to his equipment yet, but he was sure a call was coming sooner or later.

It couldn’t be coincidence. Eddie was behind it. He’d been picked up on cameras at the airport and the toll bridge. Bowdler smiled. This just reinforced his belief that Eddie had the potential to become a priceless resource. Imagine what he could do once he was properly trained.

The damage was bad, but Eddie was worth a thousand times more than all of the Roth-Bullani contracts. And Eddie would be under control soon. His inexperience made that inevitable.

Bowdler placed a call to Santee. “I have four locations I know he’s visited beside the airport.” He read off the addresses.

“I’ll have my men check taxi records. It’ll take some time.”

“Use as many resources as necessary. Cost is not an issue. Has the Woo connection provided any cross-links?”

“Too many. We’re sifting through it.”

“Call me when you find them.”

THE CALL CAME
at seven-fifty that evening.

“I’ve located the targets in an apartment above the Happy Dragon Family Restaurant,” Santee said. “We’re currently directly across the street from the building.”

“On the sidewalk?”

“Negative. I’m off the street.”

“Do you have a van?”

“Affirmative. Do you want me to extract them from the building?”

“No. It would be best if you secured them in a less-populated area.”

“Agreed.”

“Hold your position. I think I can arrange for them to leave cover.”

Bowdler looked at the bed where the boy was dozing. “Company’s coming, Dominic,” he said. “Let’s give your pal Eddie a call.”

negotiation

I WAITED UNTIL
after the third ring, trying to calm my nerves. Then I flipped open the phone. “Eddie’s Wrecking Service.”

The slight pause told me I’d scored a point.

“You’ve caused a lot of trouble,” Bowdler said.

“I can cause a lot more. Right now, you can probably still patch things up with those companies. Or find some new partners. But I’d be happy to wipe out the rest of your experiments. You’d never make another dime.”

Instead of a reply from Bowdler, I heard a shout of pain. Then he said, “Do you recognize that voice?”

I bit back the angry words I wanted to use. “Hurting him doesn’t get you anything.” I could feel sweat pouring down my back. I tried to keep my voice calm. “Let him go and all of this stops. You get to keep running your research scams. I get to go on with my life.”

“We need to discuss this face to face. Go to Rittenhouse Square,” he said. “Call me when you get there and I’ll give you an address of a house where we can meet.”

I didn’t like the way he gave in so easily. And I wasn’t
going to play any of his super-spy games. “Not a chance. We’re meeting someplace open.”

“The square is a bit too public for our purposes,” Bowdler said. “There’s a park nearby.”

“Too many trees.”

“So what would you suggest?”

“Maybe a field.”

“Now there’s a great idea,” he said, speaking to me like I was a child. “Do you think the Phillies would let us use their stadium?”

“No. I meant a school field or something.”

“In the city?”

Playing dumb, I guided him along and, amazingly enough, he finally agreed to meet right where I wanted—at the ball field Cheater had found. I think Dad would have been proud if he’d heard me.

I turned to the guys. “We’re meeting him at nine at the ball field behind the high school.” It was a small victory, but it gave me hope.

Torchie glanced at his watch. Then he shook his hand like he was trying to fling water from his fingertips, and studied his watch again. “Darn. It isn’t working.”

“Don’t worry about it. The cell phone shows the time.”

“I got a new battery in it last month,” Torchie said. “It’s my favorite watch. It’s my only watch, but even if I had another, it would be my favorite.”

I got up from the couch. “Forget the watch. It’s not important.”

“Everything’s breaking,” Flinch said. “Your watch. The
microwave. The kitchen radio. Nothing works. It’s like someone has the hidden talent to kill electronic stuff.”

“Wait!” Cheater said. “Torchie, what time did your watch stop?”

“How would I know that?” Torchie asked.

Cheater grabbed Torchie’s wrist and looked at the watch. “That’s it. I’ll bet it stopped when we were at the lab. That thing you found. What did you say it was?”

“There was a note,” Torchie said. “To Bowdler. From one of those companies. It said something about a sample of their new FME thing.” He went over to the table next to the couch and picked up the device.

“Not FME,” Cheater said. He was so excited now he was almost hopping. “I knew that didn’t sound right. You got it backward. It’s an EMF gun. It fried your watch when Flinch pointed it at you. And you’ve been frying stuff with it for the last two days. This is awesome.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“Electromagnet fields. An EMF pulse kills microprocessors,” Cheater said. “We can knock the disrupter right out.”

“If that thing really works,” I said.

Cheater took the device from Torchie, charged it, and pointed it at a digital clock on the corner table. Then he pressed the
DISCHARGE
button. The EMF gun let out a weak chirp.

“It didn’t do anything,” I said.

“It’s losing power,” Cheater said. “Maybe if I got closer.” He walked up to the clock and tried again from a foot away.
This time the numbers on the clock all turned to eights, and then went dark.

“Yup, it works,” Cheater said.

“So we can knock out the disrupter,” Martin said. “This is great.”

“If we can get close enough.” I didn’t think Bowdler would let us get too near him.

“I got it,” Flinch said. “One of us has to go there first and walk past him. Someone he hasn’t seen.”

Cheater pointed at Torchie. “It’s gotta be you. He’s seen the rest of us.”

I didn’t like the idea. “Bowdler is going to be cautious. He knows there are five guys. Maybe he found a picture of Torchie. It’s too risky.”

“But he wouldn’t be suspicious if it was a girl,” Flinch said.

Martin and I protested at the same time. “No way,” he said.

“We can’t send Livy,” I said.

“Of course not,” Flinch said. “But we can send her clothes.” He looked at Torchie for a moment. “I think they’d fit you.”

“What!” Torchie backed up a step and held his hands out, as if to push away Flinch and his ideas. “Not a chance. I’ll face Bowdler. I’ll face anyone I have to. But not in a dress.”

“It doesn’t have to be a dress,” Flinch said. “A skirt would work fine.”

“We’ll need a wig, too,” Cheater said. “They sell them on the corner.” He dashed off.

Torchie looked at me, as if I’d help him find a way out. All
I could do was shrug. “Hey, sometimes you just have to take one for the team.”

Cheater returned with a blond wig and tossed it to Torchie, who stared at it like he’d just been handed a warm pile of intestines. “I’ll get a skirt from Livy,” Cheater said.

“I’ll ask her for it,” Martin said. He dashed out the door and down the hall. We all crowded around the door to watch. I think he was halfway there before he realized how ridiculous a request he was about to make. Of course, by then it was too late because, somehow, he stumbled and ended up running into her door. I almost felt bad when I saw how hard he hit it. Maybe I should give him a break.

When Livy opened the door, Martin said, “Can we borrow a skirt?”