Runaway (Airhead #3) (13 page)

Cursing, the cabdriver made a right turn so suddenly, Cosabella and I lurched over into Christopher. He threw an arm across my shoulders as, all around us, cars and trucks honked. Cosabella scrambled to find footing on the seat, which mainly involved stabbing her paws into my thighs.

“Sorry,” I said, mortified that parts of my own body had gone flying into Christopher’s. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” he said. He was craning his neck to look behind us. “If he was back there, we lost him for sure.”

“We did?” I tried to straighten up, conscious that Christopher hadn’t moved his arm. It was horrible to be so hyperaware of these things, when I was sure he didn’t care at all. “Well, that’s good.”

“And I get what you’re saying,” he said. “About Nikki. She has good instincts. They just needed to be guided in the proper direction. She was right to do something about what she overheard regarding the Quarks. She just didn’t do the right thing. Blackmailing her boss instead of trying to stop him does nothing for the greater good…which is what you want to do.”

“Robert Stark isn’t collecting all that data for no reason, Christopher,” I said, looking into his eyes. He still had his arm around me, so it was kind of hard not to. Also not to notice his lips, which were looking highly kissable. But I tried to turn my mind to higher things, such as saving Nikki and her family. “I was paying attention to your speech about him in Public Speaking. You don’t get to be the fourth-richest man in the world by doing things for no reason. Tomorrow night I have to go to a party at his house. If there’s going to be any chance of my finding out what it is he’s doing, it’s going to be then—”

“Whoa,” Christopher said, his arm tightening. “You’re going to confront him yourself?”

“Well,” I said, “I think it’s going to be our only chance of ending this. Otherwise…well, my parents are threatening to bankrupt themselves because they think they can just waltz into Stark Corporate, pay off my contracts, and be done with this. Which is so never going to happen. Steven and his mom are going to have to live in hiding forever, for fear of what Robert Stark and his cronies are going to do to them. And Nikki’s going to get herself killed— or kill herself— trying to be who she used to be. So…yeah. I’m going to confront him myself. With your help, if you’re willing. What do you think? Are you willing?”

Christopher didn’t say anything right away. The cab rumbled along Houston Street, taking us God only knew where. I held my breath, waiting for his answer. I knew I couldn’t do any of this without his help. I needed him— and his cousin Felix— to break back into Stark’s mainframe and see what they could find out. I didn’t think I’d be able to just walk up to Robert Stark and go, “Tell me everything.” I needed to arm myself with some information first.

Information only they could get. If they looked in the right place. And it wasn’t encrypted. Which it probably would be.

Still. The least they could do was try….

“You’re crazy,” Christopher said. He seemed angry. At me. At himself. At the whole situation. For which I couldn’t exactly blame him. “This whole thing has been completely crazy.”

“I know,” I said, with a shrug. Secretly, though, I was encouraged. A
You’re crazy
wasn’t a no.

“That guy back there had a
gun,”
Christopher went on. “Brandon Stark didn’t even have a gun, and he managed to kidnap you just by threatening to do mean things to your friends. How do you think you’re going to cope with his dad, who’s a
real
gangster?”

“Well,” I said. Suddenly, I didn’t feel quite so encouraged. There were actual tears in my eyes. “That’s why this time I’m asking you for help. I know I can’t do it alone anymore. I need you, Christopher.”

“You’re damn right you do,” he said. “It’s about time you realized it.”

Then he pulled me roughly toward him and kissed me on the mouth.

Fourteen

“WHERE HAVE
YOU
BEEN?”

That’s what Felix wanted to know when we showed up in his basement an hour later.

It was obvious from his tone that he didn’t mean where had
we just
been— escaping from Stark security goons and making out (well, a little) in the back of a cab.

He meant where had we been since he’d last seen us.

In fact, I wasn’t sure he’d moved from in front of his multiscreened computer command center since the first time I’d met him. He still seemed to have on the same clothes— baggy jeans, green velour shirt, and a lot of gold chains.

The only difference, really, was that there were a lot more empty plates piled up around him. His mom had evidently been bringing his meals down to him.

Well, it was hard being a computer hacker under house arrest…though I guess there were some perks. Like sandwiches and brownies from Mom, upstairs.

“We just outran a guy from Stark security,” Christopher informed him. “He was following Em. He had a gun.”

“Em?” Felix spun around in his overpadded computer chair to look at me with narrowed eyes. Then he nodded. “Oh, that’s right. I read the medical file. You’re just borrowing Nikki Howard’s body. Your real name’s Emerson…Watts, right?”

“Uh, I get to have the body for keeps, I’m hoping,” I said. “Getting your brain swapped into someone else’s body is no picnic, you know.”

“Especially if it’s Nikki Howard’s body,” Felix said, and he made a growling noise. “Mamacita, I’d like to get me some of that!”

Christopher walked over to his cousin and slapped him on the back of the head.

“Hey,” he said severely. “Show some manners. Just because you live in a basement doesn’t mean you don’t have to act like a gentleman around ladies.”

“Ow,” Felix said, reaching up to clutch his head. “Stop. I was only playing.”

“It’s okay,” I said to Christopher. I actually felt a little sorry for his cousin. It had to be hard to be so smart and yet not have any outlets— positive ones, anyway— for all that intelligence.

“No,” Christopher said, shaking his head at me. Felix might have been playing, but Christopher definitely wasn’t. “It’s not.”

I blushed. Christopher was being chivalrous toward me now…

…but back in the cab, after he’d pulled me so roughly toward him and kissed me, he’d pushed me just as roughly away and muttered, “Sorry. I didn’t mean to do that.”

I’d stared at him in astonishment, my lips still tingling from where his mouth had bruised mine, and said, “Christopher. It’s all right.” Believe me. It was
more
than all right.

“No,” he’d said. “It’s not.”

So. I still wasn’t forgiven. Not yet. It was just that he couldn’t help kissing me from time to time.

Boys are so weird.

Now he pointed at one of the computer monitors in front of Felix, which was streaming information.

“We’re still on Stark’s mainframe?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Felix said. He sounded sulky. He leaned back in his computer chair so that he could rest his gigantic feet on one of the milk crates that made up his jerry-rigged command center, near some of the empty plates. “Not that they’re doing anything interesting. I’m more bored with this hack than with all the
Stargates
combined.”

“They’re actually doing a lot that’s interesting,” Christopher said. “They’re storing all the data people who bought the new Quarks are uploading.”

This information startled Felix so much that he jumped, bringing his feet down from the milk crate and accidentally taking all the plates down, too, causing them to fall to the floor with a crash.

He didn’t seem to care or even notice, however. His fingers began flying over the keyboard in front of the Stark monitor.

“Holy crap,” he said, looking— for the first time— actually wide-awake and excited. “Why didn’t you say so in the first place? What would they care about a bunch of data from some pissant plastic student laptops? It doesn’t make any sense. Where are they storing it? I’m not seeing it.” He took a slurp from one of the Cokes his mom had brought down to us (Aunt Jackie was super happy to see me. She’d gotten the complete Nikki Howard fragrance collection for Christmas from her husband and wanted me to sign the box with Nikki’s face smiling alluringly up from it). “Where are they putting it?”

“What do you mean, you’re not seeing it?” Christopher demanded. “Can you find the data or not?”

“Oh, it’s on here,” Felix said, slurping the Coke. “Their encryption is a joke. I’ve never seen a corporation so full of itself. It’s like they think no one can touch them. And maybe that’s because no one’s ever cared enough before to try. But, I mean, I can’t tell what they want all this crap for. They’ve got kids’ Facebook and Flickr pages, even their damned
dental
records. What would they want
that
for? And here’s a bunch of online budget travel reservations. Priceline and cruise ships and spring break school trips…”

“Maybe they want to get into the travel business?” I ventured with a shrug. “Stark doesn’t have a commercial airline.”

“Phoenix,” Felix said.

“They want to base their travel hub out of Phoenix?” Christopher asked, confused.

“No,” Felix said. His straw hit the bottom of his soda can. “That’s what they’re calling the database where they’re keeping all these files. Project Phoenix.”

Christopher looked at me blankly. “What’s in Phoenix?”

I shrugged again. “Desert?”

“Senior citizens,” Felix said, when Christopher looked at him. “Old people who drive golf carts. In pastels.”

“Look it up,” Christopher said to Felix.

Felix sighed, and typed the word
phoenix
into a search engine.

“Phoenix,”
he read, when the definition came up. “A mythical sacred fire bird with a thousand-year life cycle, near the end of which it builds a nest of myrrh twigs, then self-ignites, then is born anew from the ashes.”

We all looked at one another blankly.

“Maybe it’s a new video game,” I suggested. “And the people whose data they’ve collected all have high scores on
Journeyquest
or something. And they want to send the game to them as testers.”

“Then they should have sent it to me,” Christopher said, looking (justifiably) offended.

“Yeah,” Felix said, clicking on the Facebook page of one of the new Quark owners. “And no way does this loser play
Journeyquest.
Look at him.
Hi, I’m Curt. I like the Dave Matthews Band. I only drink organically grown coffee. I’m going hiking with my dog in Seattle at the end of the month. I suck.”

I looked at Curt’s profile. He definitely wasn’t a gamer. He listed running and biking as his hobbies. He was attractive, without an ounce of body fat on him. He liked dogs and his nephews and wanted to save the whales.

All of which were admirable qualities and it was mean of Felix to be making fun of him.

“Show me another one,” I said.

“Hi,”
Felix said, clicking on another profile.
“I’m Kerry.
Oooooh, Kerry’s hot. She likes writing and sunsets. I like writing and sunsets, too, Kerry. Look at that, Kerry’s going to Guatemala to help teach children to read next month. That’s nice of her. What else does Stark know about Kerry? Let’s check her medical records. She had to e-mail them to the program she’s going to Guatemala with. Oh, look at that. Perfect health. Not even a cavity. Surprise. Those Quark buyers are way too healthy. Eat a cheeseburger, Kerry, swimming in grease!” Felix was yelling at his monitors.

Felix got excited way too easily. Maybe it was all the caffeine and sugar in the Cokes he drank.

“It’s weird,” I said, “that they’re all so crunchy granola.”

“Or,” Christopher said, looking at me, “someone at Stark is purposefully weeding through this data.”

“And only saving the files on the healthy, attractive ones?” I squinted at Kerry’s Facebook picture. She was standing in the sun on a hiking trail, wearing a T-shirt and shorts. She looked slim and fresh-faced and happy.

“But why?” Felix asked, reaching for the Coke I hadn’t touched (Nikki’s body couldn’t handle caffeine or high fructose corn syrup). “I hate healthy people.”

“I don’t know,” Christopher said. “But what else do they all have in common?”

“They take good care of their bodies,” I ventured.

“They’re all hot,” Felix said.

“And they’re all going places,” Christopher said, “with their lives.”

“Robert Stark is forming an army,” I said with wonder.

“Yeah,” Felix said sarcastically. “Of really boring people.”

Fifteen

“OH, THANK GOD YOU’RE HERE,” GABRIEL said, opening the door to his apartment.

I couldn’t figure out why he was so happy to see us. Not at first.

I’d offered to come over to his apartment with some takeout, having realized I was going to be no help whatsoever in solving the mystery of Project Phoenix…

…at least, not by sitting around, reading over file after file of incredibly attractive Stark Quark owners. That was something Christopher and Felix could do on their own.

So you could imagine my surprise when Christopher said he would come with me to Gabriel’s. Don’t ask me why. He hadn’t grabbed and kissed me again, or supplied an explanation for why he’d done so in the cab that afternoon. As far as I could tell, he still hated my guts and planned on continuing to do so indefinitely.

I couldn’t help wishing I could be more like Nikki. I’m sure she’d had plenty of guys play weird mind games with her. She wouldn’t put up with Christopher’s guff for more than five minutes. I’d love to have asked her how she dealt with guys like him. I would have done so, in fact…

…if I thought I could get away with it without her punching me in the mouth and demanding again that I give her back her body.

Inside the Thai restaurant where we’d gone to pick up the takeout, it had been warm and dry and had smelled insanely good. I’d ordered one of almost everything to go, then sat waiting for the food on a red vinyl padded chair with Cosy on my lap while Christopher sat beside us, texting Felix on his cell.

After a little while of trying to ignore Christopher’s presence —his highly kissable lips and big, raw-looking hands— it occurred to me: Wait a minute. I didn’t have to ask Nikki for her advice. I could just come right out and demand an explanation from Christopher himself about where we stood as a couple. I deserved that, at the very least. I mean, we’d been friends for years before we’d ever been boyfriend-girlfriend (if we were even that).

What was I so scared of, anyway? He was just a high school boy. I was freaking
Nikki Howard,
supermodel.

Even if I wasn’t, really.

Why was I so scared of what he was going to say, anyway? We’d already hurt each other as much as we possibly could. What more could we possibly do to each other?

And Lulu had said we needed to communicate more. Right?

“Christopher,” I’d begun, after taking a deep breath and telling myself to be brave. After all,
he’d
kissed
me,
right? That had to mean he still liked me, at least a little. “What exactly—”

“Don’t,” he said. He didn’t even look up from his cell phone.

“Don’t what?” I asked, offended. I mean, really! The least he could have done was look at me!

“Don’t start talking about our relationship,” he said.

How had he known? How do they always know? What do they have, some kind of radar?

“Uh,” I said.

Now I wasn’t just offended. I was mad. I wasn’t one of those whiny
I want to know where our relationship is going
kind of girls. I’d never brought it up once, not in the whole time we were going out.

Which, okay, had only been for, like, two weeks. And for a large part of that time I’d been shacked up with Brandon Stark…against my will.

But still.

“I think I have a right to know where our relationship currently stands,” I said indignantly. “Because I’ll be honest: If you’re going to keep playing these head games, I’m just going to start seeing other people.”

Yeah! That sounded good. Like something Lauren Conrad or someone would say. Not that Lauren Conrad is this huge role model or anything.

But who else do we single girls have to guide us during these complex modern times? Seriously, everyone else is divorced.

Christopher lowered his cell phone and stared at me with an expression of utter disbelief.

“What?”
he said. His voice cracked.

“I mean it,” I said.

I didn’t want to get into a huge fight in a Thai takeout place in Brooklyn.

But come on. A girl has to have standards.

“You can’t just come rescue me— twice— kiss me a bunch of times, and then act like you don’t even care about me.” I tossed some of my hair. “I don’t have time for this kind of game playing. I need to know. Either you’re into me or you’re not. If you are, great. If you’re not, quit kissing me. It’s only fair.”

This was good. I had no idea where this stuff was coming from, or anything. But I liked it.

“Well,” Christopher said. “To tell you the truth, right now, I’m really not that into you. Because you’re acting like someone I don’t even know. And it’s not that cute.”

Stung, I tried to pass off the tears in my eyes as a reaction to all the hot grease in the air from the frying. Maybe Lauren Conrad wasn’t that great a role model after all.

“I’m not acting like anyone,” I said. “Except myself. You said I needed to grow up, and that’s exactly what I’m doing. I’m just requesting some honesty from you. I really love you, and I want to know if you—”

“Jesus,” Christopher said. He lifted his cell phone into the air again. I couldn’t help noticing he was blushing. “Would you stop saying that?”

“Stop saying what? That I love you?”

I had to admit, torturing him was kind of fun.

“Yes,” he said, looking extremely uncomfortable. “You keep saying it, but then you don’t act like it.”

“How do I not act like it?” I demanded. Now
I
was blushing. I really hoped the cashier seated a few feet away who was staring into space didn’t speak good enough English to tell what we were saying.

“By flying off to Brandon Stark’s beach house, for one thing,” he pointed out. “And letting the whole world think you’re in love with him and not me, for another. Then, when I come to rescue you, you wouldn’t even come with me—”

“Oh, would you let that go?” I demanded. “I already explained that!”

“You can’t just say you’re sorry for something and have it all be better,” Christopher said. “You may love me, but you don’t act like it. You don’t trust me.”

“I called you today when I was being followed!” I reminded him.

“Was I the
first
person you called?” he asked.

I felt myself blushing harder. How had he known I’d called Lulu first?

“You were the first person I
thought
of calling,” I said. “But you were so mean to me on the plane. You have this whole evil supervillain thing going. It’s not very attractive, you know.”

It was sort of the opposite of unattractive, actually, but I didn’t want him to know that. It would only encourage his bad behavior.

Like now. He rolled his eyes and turned back to his cell phone.

It was at that point that
my
cell phone rang. It was Gabriel, calling to ask how soon I thought we’d get there.

“Uh,” I said. “Pretty soon.”

“It’s just,” he said, “the sooner you get here the better, actually.”

“Oh, why?” I asked.

“You’ll see when you arrive” was all Gabriel would say, in a slightly agitated voice.

This had seemed very mysterious, but he wouldn’t say anything more. We were going to take the subway to Gabriel’s place to further throw off anyone from Stark who might be following us. But we ended up with so many bags of food, another cab seemed like the best idea, so Christopher finally flagged one down— our argument on hold indefinitely— and we made it to Gabriel’s place without anyone seeming to tag along behind us. Nor, when we looked up and down Avenue A and Sixth, where Gabriel lived, did we see anyone who looked out of place— in pressed trousers and black shoes— lurking around.

When he opened the door to his apartment, I figured out everything about Gabriel’s mysterious comment, however. He wasn’t concerned about Stark security showing up unexpectedly. His anxiety was because his bachelor pad had been turned into an impromptu beauty salon.

Lulu was there, working her magic. Or trying to, anyway.

“Look,” she was saying to Nikki. “You’re just not cut out to be a blonde anymore, Nikki. Face facts.”

Nikki, sitting on a stool in the middle of Gabriel’s living room— his taste seemed to lean toward midcentury modern. He had a very fifties vibe going on, with low couches and a coffee table cut out like a kidney-shaped pool, and deeply piled shag throw rugs, modern art, the works. It was super old-school —was sulking.

“No,” Nikki was seething. “I’ve always been a blonde. I’ll always be a blonde. I want to stay a blonde!”

Nikki had foil packets sticking up all over her head, indicating something of a chemical nature was already going on with her hair. It just didn’t appear to be what she wanted.

“Trust me,” Lulu was saying. “You’re going to look adorable. For once your insides are going to match your outsides.”

This sounded ominous.

“Just give it a chance,” Lulu said. “Like that purple eye shadow I was trying out on you. It’s going to bring out the green in your eyes.”

“I told you,” Nikki seethed some more. “I want to be
blond.”
She stabbed a finger in my direction as Christopher and I came in with the bags from the Thai restaurant. “Like
her!
Like I used to be!”

Steven, sitting at Gabriel’s kitchen counter, thumbing through a magazine on architecture— Gabriel had dozens of them lying around— had leapt up as soon as he saw us.

“That smells incredible,” he said, relieving us of all the bags we carried. “You two are lifesavers.”

It felt good to be called a lifesaver, even if all we’d done was brought dinner.

Mrs. Howard had locked herself into one of the bedrooms with a migraine and wouldn’t come out. I could totally see why. It looked like a tornado had struck Gabriel’s apartment. There were shopping bags from stores like Intermix and Scoop scattered everywhere. How Lulu had managed to buy so much for Nikki in so little time, I’d never know.

“I don’t even know why we’re doing this,” Nikki complained as Lulu sponged foundation onto her face, “since I’m just going to get my old body back soon. It’s all a mute point.”

“Moot,” Gabriel corrected her, as he pulled plates down from a kitchen cabinet. “Moot point.”

“That’s what I said.” Nikki glared at him. It was weird, but even with the foil packets popping up out of her head like alien antennae, she was already looking better. Lulu had put her in some kind of black halter top that accentuated her creamy shoulders and a pair of jeans that weren’t hand-me-downs from me and actually fit the curve of her hips. She was starting to look…well, cute. Alien cute. But cute. “And nobody asked you, Prince William.”

“Oh, that’s very nice,” Gabriel said. He was practically snarling at her. I’d never seen him looking so frazzled. “I give you shelter in my home, risking my life in doing so, and you make fun of my accent. You’re extremely pleasant to have around, did you know that, Nikki?”

“Bite me, Harry Potter,” she said, with a sneer.

He looked at me helplessly. “Do you see?” he asked. “Do you see what I have to put up with?”

I felt bad for having dragged Gabriel, who really had been an innocent bystander, in on all this.

“Have some pad see ew,” I said, handing him a container. It was the only thing I could think of as a way to make it all up to him.

“Oh, thanks ever so much,” he said. I was pretty sure he was being sarcastic.

An alarm went off. Lulu looked at her cell phone and squealed. “It’s time to rinse,” she said, and grabbed Nikki to pull her off the stool and into the bathroom. Nikki went with her, but not without grumbling. When the door shut, Steven turned to us and said, “If we don’t find a way out of this mess soon, I think we’re all going to go insane.”

“I’ll put a bullet through my own brain.” Gabriel sounded grim. “Let alone wait for Stark to do it. Your sister will drive me to it, Howard. No offense.”

“I know what you mean,” Steven said as he took a seat at the kitchen counter and dug into a container of panang curry without waiting to put any of it on one of the plates Gabriel had provided. “She’s always been like that, if she doesn’t get what she wants.”

“That’s how she got where she is today,” I said. When everyone looked at me, I added, “Well, I mean, one of the highest-paid fashion models in the world.”

“And also somebody one of the richest men in the world wants dead,” Steven pointed out.

“Well, she’s not getting her old body back,” Christopher said, shoveling some pad thai into his mouth. “However much she might think otherwise.”

I blinked at him. He claimed to hate me, then kissed me and came to my defense at every possible moment, while insisting we couldn’t get back together because of my trust issues. What was going on with him?

“I know,” Steven said. “But we can’t go on living in hiding for much longer. And Gabriel can’t be asked to put up with us forever.”

The sound of shrieking came out of the bathroom. There was a bang, and then the sound of water spraying.

Then Nikki’s voice screamed, “Lulu!
What did you do?”
Her voice was drowned out by the sound of a blow-dryer.

Gabriel looked toward the ceiling, as if praying for patience.

“Have either of you heard of something called Project Phoenix?” Christopher wanted to know.

“I went to Phoenix once,” Steven said, chewing. “Nice weather.”

“Is it a band?” Gabriel asked. “I think I caught them once in Wales.”

“I’m fairly certain it’s not a band,” Christopher said. “It’s something Robert Stark is working on.”

“No idea, then,” Gabriel said.

“What is it?” Steven asked.

Christopher filled them in on what little we knew so far about Project Phoenix. The explanation took us through most of the carton of pad thai and the remains of the pad see ew.

“It makes no sense,” Steven said, when Christopher finished.

“It does,” Christopher said. “We just can’t see it.”

“I saw on the news today,” Gabriel said, “that they’re building an elevator to space.”

We all turned to look at him.

“Well, they are,” he said, swallowing. “An American company. Rather than launching a shuttle every time we have to send something up to the space station, we’ll just send it up in an elevator they’re building from a mobile seagoing platform that will reach all the way up to space. It makes sense, don’t you think? Anyway, maybe that’s what Project Phoenix is. Robert Stark’s own space elevator.”