Latitude Zero (16 page)

29

I LEANED
against the cold wall of the shipping container and just stared at that bike. Dizziness and nausea rolled over me in waves. I was five feet away from Juan Carlos’s stolen spare bike. Maybe this had been Darwin’s plan all along: to smuggle the stolen bike out of the country, camouflaged in this shipping container full of donated bikes. This ring of thieves could be selling to a black-market buyer in Ecuador. If they had stolen it from Dylan’s, they could have snuck it in here, while we were all inside the bike shop. I could have overheard them checking to be sure that bike was safely on board.

I needed a closer look. The LED light had a clip, which I fastened to the strap of my tank top. I started moving bikes, frames, wheels, and handlebars to get to Juan Carlos’s spare bike. The only way to inch out the bike was to move other things one by one, enough so I could extract it and move it toward the doors. It was like playing a game of Tetris. From hell.

Sweat dripped into my eyes and soaked my shirt. My scraped fingers stung and bled. I kept lifting, shifting, nudging those bikes until I had my hands on those handlebars at last.

I had to find some way to alert people that I was trapped inside. And then I had to get this bike out of here. If there was any chance Jake was linked to the bike theft and the sabotage, maybe this bike would tell the truth. Maybe it still had his fingerprints on it.

I was almost at a point where I could pull and scooch it out from the stack. I managed to move it about two inches. A loud crash interrupted me. Something heavy struck my head, and I went down, falling against a stack of bikes.

I looked up, rubbing my throbbing temple. I inspected my hand in the light of the LED that had fallen and was now out of my reach. At least I wasn’t bleeding. A rack of bike wheels had slipped from the wall rack and one of them must have clipped me. Juan Carlos’s spare bike was now buried again.

Suddenly I heard running footsteps outside.

“Over here! It was coming from inside this one!” a woman shouted.

I found a horn on a kid’s bike near me and pumped the rubber bulb, letting it squawk repeatedly to signal my location.

I heard scraping and clanking sounds at the doors, and then the doors swung wide-open, flooding the container with light. Sweet light.

I jumped out of the container, gasping for breath. And stared into the unsmiling faces of the truck driver, a U.S. Customs official . . . and the two people I’d seen just before the door slammed closed. I couldn’t take my eyes off Darwin’s spies, even as the truck driver stepped right in front of me and glowered. What were these two doing here?

“What the hell were you doing back there?” the driver demanded. “Is this some prank?”

“No! I was filming for a show I’m doing, and I thought since the door was still open, you weren’t going yet. Then I found a stole—”

The redheaded girl glared at me. She made a sharp motion with her hand.
No. Don’t
.

“You’re lucky your friends were on the ball and called the dispatcher,” the driver said. “You could have had a serious problem, young lady.”

The girl smiled sweetly and handed me my backpack. “You left this on the ground, and I got worried, so I had the dispatcher tell the driver to check for you at the dock. Your phone’s inside,” she purred. “It was buzzing like crazy. I’m sure you missed a lot of messages.”

I glared back and snatched it. “Thanks.”

“So this is the volunteer who got locked in? Problem solved?” asked the customs official.

“Sorry about all that,” the driver apologized. He glared at me. “Teenage hijinks. Clowning around a shipping container? I guess they thought that was funny. But I have daughters. Believe me, this is tame compared to the crap they put me through. I’ll lock up, and these kids can be on their way.”

“I’ll just need to check inside,” said the customs official. “Security. You understand.”

“Be my guest. It’s just a load of bikes and bike parts. I have the bill of lading right here.”

As the customs official and the driver stepped into the back of the container, shining flashlights, I turned to the guy and the girl. “I’ve seen you before. Who the hell are you?” I demanded.

The two of them looked at each other, then beckoned for me to follow.

I hesitated. If they tried to hurt me, my cries would be heard. This was my chance to get information. I had to go with them.

They led me behind another shipping container, an orange rusty one, a few yards away.

“I am called Pizarro,” said the ponytail guy. He leaned against the orange shipping container, his thumbs hooked into his tight jeans pockets. He seemed like a college student, a mix of casual and intense, scruffy and composed. His T-shirt said
THAT’S FUNNY, IT WORKED ON MY MA
CHINE
. His eyes glittered as he slowly chewed a piece of gum and looked me up and down.

“And I’m Balboa,” said the girl. “I know, right? Sucky name.” She made a face. “I’m new to the organization, so I get the bottom of the barrel on the aliases.”

I glared at them. “So you work for Darwin.”

“We do,” said Balboa, a note of pride in her voice.

“Did you guys lock me in that shipping container?”

“No,” scoffed Pizarro. “We didn’t see you when we closed the doors.”

“Thank God I saw your backpack,” Balboa added. “You were so helpful yesterday, leading us right to the bike.”

Leading them right to the bike. Great. So they
had
somehow tailed us to Dylan’s place.

“But I didn’t expect you to join the bike and go along for the ride,” Balboa went on. “You almost screwed everything up.”

I ignored her insult. “Explain to me why there is a stolen bike on that container. Where is it going?”

A smug smile traveled across Balboa’s face. “To Ecuador, of course. Why else would it be in that shipping container?”

“This bike’s not going to Vuelta, though,” I said, narrowing my eyes. “You have someone else expecting it.”

Balboa started to answer, but Pizarro cleared his throat.

“Sorry. That’s classified.” Balboa looked down.

“So your buyer is there?” I guessed. “What’s that bike worth, anyway?”

“A lot more, now,” said Balboa, and Pizarro shot her a look. Again she looked down. I sensed that she was willing to talk, but Pizarro was in control.

A chill ran through me. Was Balboa suggesting Darwin would make an even bigger profit on the black market, now that Juan Carlos was dead?

I took a step forward. My jaw clenched so hard it hurt. Just yesterday I’d convinced myself it didn’t matter where the stolen bike ended up; it was his other bike, the sabotaged bike, that could tell the story of Juan Carlos’s death. A murder. But now I was filled with hate for Darwin and for these two idiots standing before me who sought to capitalize on Juan Carlos’s death. “There’s a customs official in the container right now. I could show him the bike and tell him it’s stolen. I know where you wedged it in.”

“But you won’t.” Pizarro smiled, reached into his courier bag, and showed me a knife. The blade glinted in a shaft of sunlight.

I gasped and stepped back.

“And Darwin’s got the bike where he wants it,” said Balboa. “He says he’ll leave you and your family alone now, and there won’t be any more scandalous articles posted about you, unless you decide to squeal.”

I froze. “Scandalous articles about me?”

“Yeah. Online. Like the one I wrote and posted for
Daily Commonwealth Online News
.”

“You?” The earth tilted. “You posted that?” So the Team Maureen woman hadn’t recorded me or taken my picture or written a word of that. It was all this crazy girl. “Why would you guys do that to me? I lost my job because of that article!”

“Because,” said Balboa, “you lied about where the bike was in the woods. You misdirected Darwin. He lost valuable time there, and someone else intervened. That article was to teach you a lesson about lying, and about what he was capable of doing to you. Anyway, not bad for my first foray into journalism, was it? I was an English major, before I dropped out of college.”

“I hate you,” I said. And I did. That bike could tell a story. If the saboteur—maybe Jake, maybe someone else—had anything to do with that spare bike, it could have fingerprints or DNA that could put police on the right trail. And these criminals were going to make that trail to justice turn cold.

She shrugged. “I’m just doing my job. Look, you seem like a really nice person. I’m going to give you some advice. Don’t mention the bike in that box. To anyone. There’s something inside it that needs to get safely to Ecuador.”

“What’s inside it?” My heart pounded. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be legal. And that customs official was in the container now! I cast a longing look in that direction.

“Hey. She doesn’t need to know all that,” Pizarro snapped at Balboa.

Balboa looked stung. Her confident smile fell. Then she turned back to me. “Fine. Just know that Darwin can destroy your mom’s business in an instant. He wasn’t kidding about that. He could spread dirt about your dad, too, and take him down. If you care about your parents, remember that. Because we can do worse. Much worse.”

I shivered. What could possibly be worse than what she’d just described?

Pizarro stroked the blade of his knife with one finger. Then he came right up to me, in three long strides. The knife blade glinted between his fingers.

My breath came in short, sharp bursts.

“It’s actually a good thing we found you here,” he said. “Because the bike’s not the only thing we’ve been looking for. Why don’t you just hand it over?”

“What? Hand what over?”

“The information.”

“What?”

“The valuable information that you were entrusted with.” Pizarro scowled, his thick brows knitting together. “Don’t play innocent, and don’t waste our time.”

“But I don’t have anything!” Tears of frustration burned at my eyes. “I don’t know who you guys are, or who you think I am, or what you think I have!”
Valuable information.
About what?

“You knew el Cóndor,” Pizarro hissed, taking one more step toward me. “You were one of the last people to speak to him. We saw you. You must have it, or at least know something about it.”

I flattened myself against the cold steel of the orange shipping container. The corrugated siding dug into my shoulder blade. I had a metallic taste in my mouth. I’d bit the inside of my mouth so hard it was bleeding. “I don’t. I swear. The only
information
he gave me was his phone number!”

“Pizarro,” said Balboa softly. “Maybe she really doesn’t have it.”

“Of course she has it,” Pizarro growled. “The intel was solid. She just needs a stronger incentive to give up what she knows. Or has.” He took another step forward, bringing the knife blade two inches from my throat.

Balboa pulled him back. “Hey! That’s not how we—”

The container doors of my former prison slammed shut.

“Look around the corner,” Pizarro commanded me. “Tell me what they’re doing.”

I peered around the corner of the orange shipping container and saw the customs official and the truck driver closing up the white container with the bikes.

“All right. Looks good to go,” the customs official announced.

I took a deep breath. “There’s a bunch of policemen coming this way,” I lied, hoping that might protect me. “Looks like about six of them. And a news camera.”

I turned to see the looks on their faces. But Pizarro and Balboa were already gone.

30

THE NEXT
day, I sat on the porch swing at home eating ice cream while my parents, inside, debated my fate. I had pleaded my case for going to Ecuador as best I could over dinner.
I’d made some pretty good arguments, thanks to Sarita’s intense coaching the day before. Like how doing volunteer work for a good cause, and filming it on my Volunteen vlog, would help my public image.
I would gain international work experience. My Spanish would get a boost.
It was a great opportunity to take a risk, so I wouldn’t have regrets someday, like my mom did.

My biggest reason, though, I kept for myself: I had to see that stolen spare bike unloaded in Ecuador and find out what was inside it. Possibilities kept swirling in my mind. I’d actually gone online the night before and researched things that got smuggled in bikes. Among the items that came up: drugs, small weapons, stolen jewels. Using new, state-of-the-art X-ray equipment, K-9 units and other screening measures, immigration and customs officials had detected all kinds of contraband in bike handlebars and bike tubes at international airports.

It sounded like Darwin and his team could be involved in something like that. Using a bike to transport something illegal. Maybe on a shipping container, hidden among four hundred bikes, it would elude scrutiny at borders. Those bikes weren’t going to be taken out individually and screened. But why would people want to use Juan Carlos’s bike to smuggle anything? And had Juan Carlos had any idea about this?

I was way too scared to report the bike. For one thing, I was sure Darwin would find out somehow. Second, what was I supposed to say? I tried writing out possibilities, rehearsing the call I’d make to the Boston Police, but everything sounded lame.
Hi! I’d like to report a stolen bike that I neglected to report a few days ago, which I think might have something illegal inside it, inside a shipping container that I got locked into. Have a nice day!
No way. The police would either not take me seriously, or I’d be incriminating myself for failing to report all this in the first place.

But if I could get to that bike first, as a Vuelta volunteer at the container unload in Quito, I could take it apart to check it out. I could “accidentally” find whatever contraband it was smuggling. Then I could hand it over to the police in Ecuador, safely out of Darwin’s range. The Ecuadorian police could contact the FBI, or U.S. Marshals, or whoever handled international crimes. And then those authorities could determine if the bike theft and the bike sabotage were actually linked.

I couldn’t tell my parents this plan. I hadn’t told Kylie and Sarita, either. I hadn’t even told Mari, when she emailed me her contact info in Quito. I was too scared of Darwin’s eyes and ears. I couldn’t put my friends at risk. All I had to do was intercept that bike before the “buyer” got it, and get it on the path to justice.

Hearing a tire on gravel, I squinted into the darkness. Someone was riding up the driveway on a bike. Someone wearing a black T-shirt and cargo shorts, and no helmet. As our porch motion-detector lights clicked on, my suspicion was confirmed.

“You shouldn’t be here,” I said as Jake pulled up to the porch and dismounted.

“I’ve been trying to call and text you all day,” he complained. “You never answer your phone.”

“It’s broken.”

“This won’t take long. I need you to come talk to the Cabot Police with me. Tomorrow.”

My breath caught in my throat. “The police? Why?” I felt dizzy. I had a pretty good idea of why he was talking to them.

“The news isn’t public, but it will be,” he said. “Juan Carlos’s death is a homicide case.”

My eyes widened. I hadn’t expected Bianca to have come through so fast.

“You mean you didn’t see the news?” Jake shoved his hands in his pockets. “So I guess that reporter you’re in love with, Bianca Slade? She went to see the Team Cadence-EcuaBar mechanic. She was doing a consumer report on the dangers of carbon fiber. Somehow she wrangled her way in to have a look at the busted bike frame, from the crash, and she had an undercover forensics expert from MIT with her.”

“And?”

“The guy found signs of sabotage on the bike Juan Carlos crashed on. Front tube and rear brake both showed signs of tampering. They tipped off the Cabot Police. Now there’s a detective on the case, and guess who got called in for questioning?”

I gripped the porch swing chain tighter. It was one thing to develop a theory that Jake could have been involved in all this. It was another thing to confront it head-on, to hear him saying these words—and to think that I might have been right. I might have been dating a thief and a killer for almost a year, and not known it.

“How’d you become a suspect?” I asked, my mouth dry.

“I’m a person of interest, for now,” he said. “They found my biking glove. It must have fallen out of my saddle bag. Right near the Team EcuaBar bike trailer.”

I narrowed my eyes. “What were you doing near their trailer?”

“Taking a shortcut. So I could get back to you quicker. Of course, that was when I had no idea you’d sneak off to hang out with Juan Carlos.”

“I didn’t sneak off to hang out with Juan Carlos. I told you, I moved to get away from TV cameras. But none of that even matters now. Juan Carlos is dead.” I glared at him.

“I know you suspected me of taking the guy’s bike. Don’t tell me you think I’m a murderer now.”

I continued to stare at him, searching for some fleeting expression that might reveal the truth.

His expression was skepticism, which turned into doubt, then shock. “Oh, God. You do. You actually think I rigged el Cóndor’s bike. To kill him.”

“I don’t know what to think, Jake. Now I know you were near the trailer, and you never told me that. How’d they know the glove was yours anyway?”

“My name was on it. It was part of a pair I used to race in. All our clothes and gear were labeled. Tessa.” His eyes were wild. No. Scared. “I didn’t want him to get hurt. I wanted him to go back to his home country. Or evaporate or something, once he started coming on to you.”

“Coming on to me?”

“You know what I mean. Every time I turned my back, he’d show up and talk to you. And he used to ask me, all the time, how things were going with us. It was like he was prowling around a house looking for cracks, for some place to get in.”

I shook my head in amazement. I never knew all that. Was Jake telling the truth?

“It drove me crazy,” Jake went on. “Yeah, I was pissed. But I didn’t want him to get hurt or to die. I swear, I didn’t do anything to him. And I’m going to have a hell of a time convincing the police about that.”

“Why?”

He sat at the opposite end of the swing and grabbed the other chain.

“Okay.” He looked down. “There’s something I never told you. The doping allegations? It wasn’t my bag they found those drugs and syringes in. They were in Juan Carlos’s bag.”

Now my jaw dropped. “Juan Carlos was doping?”

“No. He was clean. I planted the stuff. Okay? I did it.”

“No!”

“I did it,” he repeated. “And I was stupid enough to get caught. A surveillance camera at the gym where the team worked out showed me going into the locker room with a bag. Later they found my fingerprints on it. Now I’m on the record as someone who tried to get Juan Carlos kicked off the team. So I’m sure, on paper, I look capable of bike sabotage. Someone could look at this as a great act of vengeance.”

I looked away so he wouldn’t see my eyes glistening. I wanted to throw up. Or cry. Or scream. Or all of those things at once. All those weeks, months, I’d been the supportive girlfriend, standing up for him—even to my own parents—were based on a lie. He’d tried to sabotage Juan Carlos’s racing career, and then lied to me about it. All this time, I’d been defending a liar.

“God, Jake.” I shook my head. “Why did you do it? I mean, if you’d gotten away with it, he would have been deported.” If Jake could sink this low, could he be capable of worse? Like bike sabotage . . . like murder? I moved two more inches away. I glanced at Jake’s hands in his pockets. Who was this person beside me now?

“He’d taken my place. There wasn’t room for two champions on the team.”

“But Juan Carlos could have lost his whole racing career,” I argued. “What else would he do? His family doesn’t have much money. Cycling was his big ticket out. At least you had other options. You had college. Going pro would have been a great perk, but you didn’t have to.” I frowned. “Where’d you get the drugs and the syringes?”

“It’s not important. Everyone knows someone. The point is, I was stupid, okay? I got caught, and now it’s on my record. I was so embarrassed. I didn’t want to tell you the whole story. I thought I’d lose cycling, and my scholarship, and then I’d lose you.”

I looked away to hide my tears. “It’s too late. I don’t love you anymore. I can’t hold you together or fix whatever’s broken in you. And I can’t love a liar.”

Jake’s hopeful expression curdled into a scowl. “Ah. Miss Honesty. The girl who lied to her parents about us. And who lied to me about her cozy little chats with Juan Carlos. In Harvard Square. At Chain Reaction. Where else? How often? I’d be the last to know.” Jake stood up. “You know, you have this holier-than-thou perception of yourself as an incredibly honest person. You’ve confused yourself with your
KidVision
persona, which, by the way, was manufactured for you. The real Tessa Taylor? She’s as capable of deceit as the rest of us. None of us are perfect. We all lie or cover things up when it suits our needs. You’re no exception.”

His words stung. I hated to admit he could be right. I’d told so many half-truths since Chain Reaction—even since Jake’s doping scandal—while trying to do the right thing. Maybe my idea of myself as an honest person was the biggest lie of all.

Still, I’d spent the past two weeks dreaming up ways to do good, to be a person of integrity, and he was making me feel like all those blog comments about my bandit riding episode were right. That I was a liar, a cheater, a fake. This was what I hated about Jake. How he always made me crash.

He sat down again, closer, and the swing lurched crazily. I grabbed the chain to steady it.

His eyes were pleading. Desperate. “I need a solid alibi. I have to prove I didn’t go into the Team EcuaBar trailer that morning. I need a witness to support me. Come see this detective with me tomorrow. Tell them you were with me every moment that morning, until we got separated on the ride.”

“We did not ‘get separated.’ You
dropped
me. And we were not together every moment that morning.”

“Hey, you were out of my sight, too,” said Jake. “You feel like talking to a detective about why you tampered with evidence at a crime scene? Why you didn’t report a stolen bike right away?”

Now I stood up. “You wouldn’t let me report it! You said not to call the police!”

“Tessa. Listen to me. If I have to fight a legal battle, all because of a goddamn glove, it will kill my mother. It’ll suck up the last of my college savings on lawyers. I’ll lose any chance I have of getting to UMass in the fall. Please. I am begging. It’s the last thing I’ll ever ask of you. We both say we were never apart, not for one second, before the ride started. Deal?”

Could I trust him to have my back? Could I defend him again? Only if I was certain he wasn’t at fault. I now believed Darwin
was
running a high-end bike theft operation, and Jake could have been uninvolved in all that. But I had no proof to offer to send the cops after Darwin. And bike theft now looked petty compared to the bigger bike crime. Sabotage.
Murder.
Jake didn’t look good. The timing. The dropped glove. The know-how. The motive.

“You’re being honest? Explain this.” I stared him down. “I looked through all the photos on the Chain Reaction website. Every rider got their picture taken at mile ten. You couldn’t miss the camera. But
you’re
not pictured, and you told me you got to mile twenty. Why is that? And don’t tell me it’s because you’re so fast you were a blur.”

He looked down. “You’re right. I never made it to mile ten,” he admitted. “Or even to mile five. I went around the bend and cut back into the woods.”

“You went back into the woods? What for?”

“To check out that bike you’d found. I had to see it for myself.”

“And did you?”

“No. It was gone. I didn’t see that guy you mentioned, either.”

“Aviator sunglasses? Buzzed hair? Thick neck? You swear you never saw him?”

“I swear. But I believed you did. And I’ve had my suspicions that Juan Carlos was up to something for a while now. That’s what I went back to prove.”

“What would he have been up to? Doping?”

“Maybe. I’ve studied his racing videos online. He’s had some really significant breakaways ever since he went pro.”

“He doesn’t win every race. I’ve looked at his stats.”

“That could be strategic,” Jake insisted. “People started smelling a rat about Lance Armstrong because he won too much. If a coach or someone was behind a doping scheme now, they’d want to make sure the wins were spread out. Only the most important races or stages. Anyway, something was definitely up.”

“Why do you say that?”

“He came back from his off-season training in Ecuador in February, and he was like a different rider at spring training camp the next month. People said it was because he’d been training in the mountains.”

“Right. He had more red blood cells and lung capacity. The altitude gave him an edge.” I could hear the hopeful note in my voice. I did not want to think of Juan Carlos as a cheater, as a doper.

“It wasn’t just that,” Jake said. “He’d changed. All through the spring, he stopped doing interviews. At pre-season team meetings, he was really serious and quiet. He wouldn’t speak up. So I started paying attention. It seemed like he had something to hide. But I also didn’t think it was drugs.”

“But if he wasn’t doping, how would he be cheating?” I asked.

“I thought he might be doing some kind of bike-switching scheme. Having people swap out his bike, after inspection, for one that’s not approved. One with modifications. Maybe even a motor in the seat tube.”