Criminal Destiny (7 page)

Another photograph appears on the screen—Amber, seated in a chair, in a dingy office.

“They took your picture!” I exclaim.

She's sheepish. “I guess I should have mentioned that.”

“So everybody in Denver has seen the crazy girl who ran away from the cops?” Malik exclaims. “Yeah, that might be something we should know!”

“. . . police released this photograph, but withheld the girl's name. At a press conference early this evening, a spokesman was careful to point out that she has not been accused of any
crime, and was never under arrest . . .”

At that point, the screen shows a uniformed officer speaking to reporters.
“We're worried about this girl. She's just a kid and, based on the story she told, we have reason to believe that she's extremely troubled. Her so-called rescuers are no older than she is, and they seem to have no adult supervision. As you can see, they took some pretty crazy risks in order to get away. If anyone knows anything about these four kids, please call our tip line.”

As the camera withdraws from him, we get a better view of the media and spectators gathered around. Standing in the background is a tall man in a plum-colored paramilitary uniform and beret. We recognize him immediately—Baron Vladimir von Horseteeth.

It's like the temperature in the bedroom drops thirty degrees. An icy shiver runs up and down my spine. None of us thought Project Osiris would give up the search, but we never expected the Purple People Eaters to be hot on our heels so quickly.

“I'm sorry, you guys,” Amber murmurs. “It's all my fault.”

“They would have figured it out anyway,” I tell her. “They know we ditched their SUV at the place with all the buses.”

“But we've got to leave town,” Eli adds.

“Now?” asks Amber.

I feel my stomach tighten. I'm looking forward to the prospect of a night in a real bed in a real house.

Eli thinks it over. “I think we're better off lying low tonight. But tomorrow we have to move on.” He turns to Amber. “And you need a haircut.”

Amber is mystified. “What's my hair got to do with it?”

Eli points at the TV. “The whole world just saw a picture of a girl with long blond hair. So you need to be a girl with short dark hair.”

Malik's hand shoots up. “Oh! Pick me! I want to do the haircut! I saw a Weedwacker in the shed!”

Amber sighs. “Okay, fine. But Tori's doing it, with real scissors!”

“The big question is,” I say, quieting everybody down, “where are we going to go, and how are we going to get there?”

“I've been poking around,” says Malik. “There's a Jeep Wrangler in the garage. Those must be the keys on that hook in the kitchen.”

We all look to Eli, expecting him to protest, but he surprises us. “We'll take it. It's too dangerous on buses now that the police know to look for four of us. And sooner or
later, the Campanellas will get it back.”

“Great,” I say. “It's all settled except for one thing—where are we going to go?”

“I've been thinking,” he says slowly. “Maybe Amber had the right idea about going to the police.”

“Right.” Malik is bitter. “Because today was so fun.”

Amber studies the carpet, her face flushed.

“I'm being serious,” Eli tells her. “The cops didn't believe you about Osiris, but what if we had proof?”

“Our Clone Society of America membership cards?” Malik suggests.

“A witness.”

“A witness?” Amber echoes. “The only witnesses are our parents. Even the Purples don't know everything.”

“There's one other person,” Eli insists. “My dad had a partner when he created Osiris. Tamara Dunleavy, the internet billionaire. She bailed out of the project before it got started, which means she isn't necessarily on our parents' side. She lives on a ranch near Jackson Hole, Wyoming.” His dark eyes burn with that crazy intensity he gets sometimes. “I vote we go there.”

Amber and I have been styling each other's hair since before kindergarten. But taking scissors to it obviously ratchets
things to a new level. I clip slowly, a little at a time. You'd think I'm cutting off fingers for how dramatic she's being.

“I don't want to look like a cactus!”

“It's hair, Amber. It grows back.”

By the time I'm through, she's got a short bob, kind of pixie-style, with bangs. It isn't exactly salon quality, but I have to say it's not awful.

The next order of business is the color. Turns out Mrs. Campanella doesn't dye her hair. It's looking like we're going to have to use boot polish when we find the dad's supply of that Just For Men stuff you brush into your beard. Twenty minutes later, Amber's own mother wouldn't recognize her. (I mean the person who pretended to be her mother, obviously.)

“Oh, wow,” Amber moans, glued to her reflection in the mirror. “Wow.”

I struggle to find something positive to offer. “Well, the good news is you're the total opposite of Amber Laska, which was the whole point, right?”

She nods. “Wow.”

When we emerge from the bathroom, I announce grandly, “Presenting someone who looks nothing like the girl on the news tonight!”

It falls on deaf ears. Malik is passed out on the king-size
bed. Eli is slumped over the computer on the desk. Both are fast asleep.

I've never been so jealous of anyone in my whole life. Amber and I each choose a kid's bedroom and crash.

F
elix Frieden—Felix Hammerstrom—stands at the head of the table, his steely gray eyes every bit as cold as I remember them. He's under tight rein, but I can tell how mad he is. They're in the conference room of the Serenity Plastics Works, a factory that's supposed to be making traffic cones, but is really the headquarters of Project Osiris. Eleven whiteboards stand in a semicircle, each one covered in notes and photographs, telling the life story so far of eleven clones.

He slaps the pointer against my picture. “We gave them everything,” he says with barely controlled fury. “The gift of Serenity—all the tools to overcome the criminality of their basic nature. And this is how they repay us.”

Steve Pritel, Tori's “father,” is almost in tears. “My Torific would never do this. She loves us, and I know we love
her. It's the evil influence of one of the others.” His eyes flash to Dr. Bruder, Malik's “father.”

Dr. Bruder cocks a brow. “Aren't we getting a little emotional over something that is, after all, pure science? The whole purpose of the Osiris experiment is to determine if the subjects' immoral natures will overcome their Serenity upbringing. Now we have our answer. They've broken into a house, taken what they needed without a second thought. They're resourceful, ruthless, and fearless, with no loyalty to anyone but themselves. They have all the attributes of the DNA that created them, and they've shown that they won't hesitate to use those talents in ruthless pursuit of their goals.”

“Are you saying,” asks Mrs. Laska, “that the experiment is over?”

Dr. Bruder nods. “We may not be getting the answer we were looking for, but it's certainly an answer.”

“You're all missing the point,” comes a voice from the doorway. Everyone wheels. A tall, vitally energetic woman with piercing blue eyes and striking white hair enters the conference room and stands before them.

I've never met her, but I know her from pictures. She's Tamara Dunleavy, cofounder of and one-time partner in Project Osiris.

“You're not looking at the issues in the order of their
importance,” she goes on, her authoritative voice resounding in the enclosed space of the conference room. “Who cares about your twisted little experiment? Don't you see? You have duplicated four of the worst people in human history, and unleashed them on the world!”

My numb hand slips out from under my chin, and I whack my face against the corner of the computer monitor—hard. I come awake with a start. Light floods the master bedroom through the venetian blinds. Morning. I must have spent the night hunched over the computer. My body feels it in every joint.

Malik is still asleep on the bed. I don't know where the girls are.

I shudder as my dream comes back to me. I never want to think about Felix Hammerstrom again, but that doesn't stop him from invading my head every night. I see his frozen face, which is the closest thing to parental love I'll ever know, and the photo of my dead mother, who never existed.

This is the first time the nightmares have included Tamara Dunleavy, though. It's already shaking my belief that going to find her is the right thing to do. How do we know that she won't turn us over to the police or, worse, the Purple People Eaters? After all, she helped develop Project
Osiris, which means at some point she must have believed that cloning criminal masterminds was a great idea.

Just before she didn't, that is.

So how will she react to us? For all we know, she really will consider us a menace to society. But as I wake up a little more and my head clears, I'm still convinced that going to her is a risk worth taking. She's the only person outside Serenity who can back up who and what we are.

As I get to my feet, I jostle the mouse, bringing the computer out of screen-saver mode. What I see on the monitor nearly stops my heart.

It's a pop-up alert from the airline that the Campanellas' flight from Honolulu arrived at Denver Airport six minutes early at 7:44 a.m. Checked luggage can be claimed on carousel 3.

I stare at the clock on the screen. It's 8:31. The Campanellas landed more than forty-five minutes ago! They could be home any minute!

“Wake up!”
I bark at Malik. I must be yelling pretty loud because he jumps eight inches off the bed.

“What?”

“They're coming!” I babble.

“The Purples?”

“The Campanellas! The people who live here! Their
plane landed forty-five minutes ago! We've got to get out of here!”

Amber and Tori hear the yelling and come running in.

My first sight of the new Amber with hair shorter and darker than Tori's is so shocking that I momentarily forget the crisis that's almost upon us.

Malik is half-asleep and bleary-eyed. He stares at Amber. “Mrs. Campanella?”

“It's me, dummy!” Amber snaps. “What's going on?”

We fill them in, and the next few minutes are a mad scramble of kicking into shoes, and gathering up our freshly stolen backpacks. We snatch the keys from the kitchen hook, and race for the garage.

The girls pile into the back of the Jeep; Malik and I take the front, with me at the wheel. We try every button and switch, looking for the garage door opener, starting the wipers, the washers, high beams, and fog lights. Finally, Malik locates it rubber-banded to the sun visor. He presses the button, and the door begins to rise.

I watch it through the rear-view mirror. It reveals the last thing any of us want to see. A taxi is parked at the curb, and the Campanella family is piling out, retrieving their luggage. They stop what they're doing, and stare open-mouthed at their garage.

“Hang on!” I throw the Jeep into reverse and stomp on that gas pedal like it was a venomous spider. The car shoots backward down the drive, clipping one of the suitcases, which bursts open, hurling clothing up in the air. A Hawaiian grass skirt comes down on the windshield, and Malik tries to brush it aside with the windshield wipers.

The dad of the family is sprinting toward us now, bellowing in fury.

I stomp on the brake, throw the car into gear, and we take off with a squeal of tires. I have to swerve to avoid Mr. Campanella, and jump the curb, flattening his mailbox.

By the time we turn the corner out of sight, he's already on his cell phone.

“Calling the cops,” Malik guesses.

I get up to speed on the main road, keeping my eyes peeled for a freeway entrance away from this neighborhood. “Listen, you guys,” I toss over my shoulder. “In another minute, this car's license number is going out over the police radio as stolen. There's no way we can drive it to Jackson Hole.”

Amber pounds the back of my seat. “We have to ditch it!”

“Not here!” Malik counters. “They're looking for the car, but they're looking for us too. We'll be four morons,
wandering on random streets, just waiting to be arrested.”

I make a snap decision. “The bus station.”

“In downtown Denver?” This from Tori. “Isn't that too risky? There are more cops there than anywhere.”

“Not necessarily,” I counter. “We'll separate so they'll never see four of us together. They don't know what we look like, and they won't recognize Amber. Then it's on to Jackson Hole—by bus.”

“There's only one problem,” Tori muses nervously. “If they find the Jeep near the terminal, they'll know we left town on a bus. They can radio every driver, and ask about four kids.”

“They won't find the Jeep near the bus station,” Malik promises.

“What are you talking about? Of course they will!”

He grins. “Just get us to the bus station, and leave everything else to me.”

I have absolutely no idea where I'm going, but the Jeep's navigation system is easy enough to follow, and soon we're headed downtown on the highway. I can't tell you it's a breeze. We spend most of the ride in stiff-necked misery, scouring the road for police cars. We even spot a couple. Luckily they're too far away to notice us.

At one point, we hear a siren, and I nearly drive up a
telephone pole. But it turns out to be an ambulance. False alarm.

When we reach downtown, the traffic thickens, and so does the tension. Pedestrians and fellow motorists can see right into our car. In my mind, our license plates are the size of billboards, pulsating with the neon message:
Stolen Car. Arrest These Kids.
If we're going to get caught, it's sure to happen here, and soon.

And then the bus station is looming on the right. “What now?” I ask Malik.

“Drop the girls here,” he instructs. “We'll meet on the platform for the next bus to Jackson Hole.”

Tori is anxious as they climb out of the Jeep. “What are you guys going to do?”

“We're going to find the worst neighborhood in Denver.”

I'm pretty sure they think he's joking—which is what I think until he directs me through the narrow streets behind the terminal, carefully choosing each turn so that it will take us down a dirtier, more dilapidated, garbage-strewn block. Soon we see graffiti on the walls, security bars on the windows, and seedy-looking characters on every stoop and corner. I know everything seems kind of seedy compared
with Serenity. But even by big city standards, this is pretty scary.

“Are you sure you know what you're doing?” I ask nervously. “This looks like a really dangerous place.”

“Probably,” Malik agrees, his voice nervous but determined. “But when you need to make a car disappear, it's where you want to be. Stop here, and don't turn off the engine.”

“But why—?”

He shuts me up with a look. “Just follow my lead.”

We get out of the car, leaving the keys in the ignition and the motor running, and begin to hurry up the block. By the time we reach the corner, there are already two figures circling the Jeep.

“They're going to steal the car!” I hiss.

“That's the whole idea,” he intones. “By the time the cops find it, it'll be miles from the bus station, and we'll be long gone.”

“Those poor Campanellas.”

“What do you care?” he demands a little peevishly. “They already know their car is stolen. They watched us take it. What difference does it make if we keep it, or pass it on to the next crooks?”

Next
crooks. My stomach sinks further. “I'd hate to meet the guy you're cloned from.”

“He's old news,” Malik scoffs. “He's rotting in jail somewhere. I'm the one you have to worry about. And I'm just starting to get the hang of the outside world.”

Sometimes Malik scares me.