Red Queen (53 page)

He was out on Hollywood Boulevard in a minute. He had scouted the surrounding area earlier. Small details mattered. He knew of a family-owned pizza joint three blocks north of the mall. It had a large Dumpster that was unloaded every Sunday morning, which would be tomorrow, before ten. He considered three blocks the minimum distance to safely dispose of his equipment. Even if he managed to steal the emerald, and some brilliant cop quickly traced the theft back to the theater, he or she wouldn't have time to search several city blocks for clues before his stash disappeared.

Yet the three blocks were long blocks and he had to force himself not to run. Running people looked like guilty people, particularly at night, and especially when they had a bag in their hands. The whole way to and from the pizza joint, he kept thinking that Silvia would have already come for her car and split.

But the Jag was still there when he returned to the mall.

He studied it before trying out his newly minted key. The trunk was on the small size—he'd glanced at it before but had failed to scrutinize it—and there was nothing worse than getting trapped in a trunk. It had happened to him only once, but that had been one time too many.

It had been an old Mercedes, from the sixties, built like a tank, and it had not come equipped with a child's safety-release lever—the kind that were nowadays standard on most vehicle trunks as well as refrigerators. Worse, the lock on the car's trunk had not responded to his usual bag of tricks, and he hadn't even been able to push out the backseat and crawl into the interior of the car. In the end he'd spent an entire night sweating in the garage of a mansion he'd never actually seen and needing to pee so bad he'd finally pissed all over the spare tire.

He had only managed to escape the next afternoon when the owner had taken the car to get washed. Fortunately the guys at the car wash had been mostly illegal immigrants and hadn't questioned the mysterious character who had suddenly popped out of the trunk in a white shirt, black pants, and black tie—his basic valet attire—and run like hell into a nearby alley.

Since that happened, he never climbed into a trunk without carrying a mini crowbar.

Marc noted that Silvia's Jag had a high-tech alarm system but was not overly worried. The best alarms had trouble
identifying a fake key. However, as a safety precaution, it was still best to pop the trunk from inside the car, from the driver's seat, after slipping the key in the ignition and turning it partway. A retired owner of a car dealership had taught him that little trick. It
reassured
the computer chip in the most sophisticated car alarms.

For the first time, Marc took out the case that held the Jaguar's copied key. It had a couple of rough edges but he was able to file them off with a small tool kit he always carried on any job. It
looked
perfect but he nevertheless held it up to the light and gave it a final exam, once again thankful his section of the parking structure was not covered by security cameras.

Then he slid the key in the lock and turned it.

Presto! It opened without a hitch.

Moving fast, Marc climbed in the car, leaving the door open, and slipped the key in the ignition, turning it a millimeter shy of starting the car. At the same time he scanned for an interior trunk release, finding one on the bottom of the driver's door beside a gas-tank release. He pressed it and the trunk popped open. Turning the ignition off, he withdrew the key and climbed out and locked the door behind him.

Time to get in the trunk. For some reason, for Marc, this part was harder than sneaking into a couple's bedroom while they were sleeping. He'd read somewhere that everyone suffered from some degree of claustrophobia—it was just a question of how much. He wasn't sure where he fell on the scale but doubted he would have made it as an astronaut.

The Jaguar's trunk was clean and empty but tight. It made sense, it was a sports car. Christ, it didn't even have a backseat. He'd known that ahead of time; nevertheless, it still annoyed him. Or perhaps “intimidated” him would've been a more accurate word.

Marc took off his valet vest and pulled out a pair of surgical gloves and a surgical cap and put them on. He'd seen too many reruns of
CSI
,
NCIS
,
CSI: Miami
—and
CSI: Lunar
, he snickered to himself—to dare leave behind any fingerprints or hair in the trunk. He even dabbed his eyebrows with Vaseline. Best to be paranoid when one damn molecule of his anatomy could strand him in the slammer for a decade.

Finally, Marc climbed into the trunk and pulled it shut.

It was dark inside and it felt stuffy. The only way he could fit in and maintain blood flow to all his limbs was to squeeze into the fetal position. He wiggled around with his back to the front and his face toward the rear. He had little room to move his arms and that concerned him. Later, when it was time to leave the trunk, he'd need his hands free if the release paddle failed. Of course there was no reason to think it should fail, but tell that to Murphy and the law named after him. Marc occasionally wondered who the real Murphy had been. The guy must have had a miserable life.

Christopher Pike is a bestselling author of young adult novels. The Thirst series,
The Secret of Ka
, and the Remember Me and Alosha trilogies are some of his favorite titles. He is also the author of several adult novels, including
Sati
and
The Season of Passage
. Thirst and Alosha are slated to be released as feature films. Pike currently lives in Santa Barbara, where it is rumored he never leaves his house. But he can be found online at
christopherpikebooks.com
.

Meet the author, watch videos, and get extras at

TEEN.simonandschuster.com

authors.simonandschuster.com/Christopher-Pike

ALSO BY

Christopher Pike

THE THIRST SERIES

REMEMBER ME

THE SECRET OF KA

UNTIL THE END

BOUND TO YOU

CHAIN LETTER

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

SIMON PULSE

An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing Division

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www.SimonandSchuster.com

First Simon Pulse paperback edition August 2014

Text copyright © 2012 by Christopher Pike

Previously titled
Witch World

Cover photographs copyright © 2014 by Marta Bevacqua/Trevillion Images

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

SIMON PULSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Also available in a Simon Pulse hardcover edition, titled
Witch World
.

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Cover designed by Regina Flath

The text of this book was set in Garamond.

Library of Congress Control Number 2013944712

ISBN 978-1-4424-3028-0 (
Witch World
hc)

ISBN 978-1-4424-3029-7 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-4814-2502-5 (eBook)