Phoenix (16 page)

I paused. “No.”

“His name is Lin Tan, but you won’t get to meet him. He was suspended a month ago for using a banned growth hormone. He isn’t allowed to ride with us again until next year.”

“Really? That’s too bad.”

“It is. He’s good. To make matters worse, my head of security was in on it. I had to let him go.”

Head of security?
That could easily be Meathead. My heart sank. Maybe Dr. V wasn’t behind the dragon bone thefts after all. Perhaps Lin Tan and Meathead were working for someone else? Or maybe it was just the two of them after the dragon bone?

“So, how soon would you like to come?” Dr. V asked.

I didn’t answer. My mind was still racing.

Hú Dié jabbed an elbow in my side. She moved her mouth to my other ear and whispered, “He’s lying about something. I can tell. You have to go.”

“Phoenix?” Dr. V said.

“Sorry,” I replied. “The phone cut out for a second. I would like to come to Texas as soon as possible.”

“That’s great! I’m having an open house and a small cyclocross race with just our team members at the ranch a week from Saturday. I’d love for you to participate. The sooner you get here and get on a ’cross bike, the better. Where are you now, and what airport did you fly into?”

“I flew into Beijing International. Right now I’m in
the city of Kaifeng, a long bus ride south of Beijing, depending on farm traffic.”

“Farm traffic? It sounds like you’ve had quite the adventure already. Stay right where you are. Give me twelve hours, and someone from my staff will call you back. The answering service has logged your telephone number, so I think we’re good to go. If all goes well, you should be here in a couple days. Is there any chance your grandfather can accompany you?”

“Er … no. He’s not even here yet. Why?”

“I am willing to bet there are no direct flights from Beijing to Austin, Texas. That means you will have to enter the United States in a different city, and as a minor you will need an adult to either travel with you or meet you at the airport. Do you have any relatives in New York or Los Angeles? I know there are direct flights from Beijing to those cities.”

I frowned. “No.”

“What about adult relatives in China who would like a free trip to the United States? Perhaps a cousin? The person only needs to be eighteen years old.”

Hú Dié began to jump up and down. She whispered in my ear again. “Tell him yes! Tell him yes!”

I scratched my head. “Um, I think so,” I said into the telephone. “I’ll have to ask, though.”

“Great!” Dr. V said. “When you find somebody, you can give your temporary guardian’s name to my travel agent when she calls you in the morning. As long as that person has a passport, we’ll take care of the rest. I don’t imagine that your relative will want to stay in our training
facility, so we’ll figure out something else. Perhaps a couple nights in Austin, then a week in Los Angeles or New York. I will pick up the cost for everything, of course.”

“That is very generous.”

“What is the point of having money if you don’t get to spend it? I have a cyclocross team, but I bought Ryan a twelve-thousand-dollar mountain bike to ride at a single race in Indiana. The least I can do is spend a few thousand dollars to get you here. From what I understand, you make Ryan look like a tortoise, and he’s no slouch. I enjoy spoiling my riders and their families. I should probably get off the phone now and get started on this. Do you have any questions?”

“No, sir,” I said. “Thank you very much.”

“Thank
you
, Phoenix. I’ll see you at the ranch. Bye.”

“Goodbye.”

Dr. V hung up.

“Woo-hoo!” Hú Dié shouted. “Is the ranch near Austin?”

I hung up the phone and looked at her. “Yeah, why?”

“Austin is where Lance Armstrong lives! He even has a bike shop downtown! I’ve always wanted to go there!”

“You think
you’re
going to be my guardian? I assumed you had a cousin you could loan me.”

“No way. I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”

“But you’re only fourteen.”

“Says who? Let me show you something.”

Hú Dié headed over to the counter that separated the shop’s retail space from the fabrication area. She
cleared everything off the countertop, then took hold of one end. “Grab the other end,” she said. “Help me lift it off. It’s not attached.”

I helped her, and we set the countertop on the floor. The counter’s base was hollow. Inside was a long, narrow machine unlike any I’d ever seen. “What is it?” I asked.

“A printing press,” Hú Dié said proudly. “It’s an antique. I carve custom printing plates for it out of metal.”

I remembered what Grandmaster Long said about Hú Dié’s shop selling more than bikes, and PawPaw’s questions and comments about her family. My face turned to stone.

“You forge passports as well as bikes?” I said. “That’s nothing to be proud of.”

“Do you want to go to Texas or not?”

I ground my teeth. “Yes.”

“Then stop being so righteous. What was it you said earlier? Oh, yeah—
shut up and ride
.”

Hú Dié’s passport-forging skills seemed
to be as good as her bike-forging skills. A day and a half after calling Dr. V, I found myself sitting ten rows behind “Cousin” Hú Dié on a flight to Austin, Texas. She certainly knew how to get her way. She even had a better seat than I did.

After getting our travel papers from Dr. V’s people, we began our journey with an hour-long bus ride from the station in Kaifeng to the city of Zhengzhou. From Zhengzhou we flew to Beijing, and from Beijing we flew to Los Angeles, crossing over the international date line and screwing up my sense of day and night once more. Now we were headed to Austin, but it was just a few hours on the local clock after we’d left China. It was all so confusing.

At least having Hú Dié act as my legal guardian made sense. U.S. Customs had been a breeze when we arrived in Los Angeles, and there should be no reason anyone in
Austin would question us, as this was a domestic flight. I hated to admit it, but it was a good idea having her come along.

The official plan was for Hú Dié to go all the way to the ranch with me for a quick tour; then she would be driven to Austin, where she would spend some time. From there, she was to fly to Los Angeles for a week before heading back to China. Unofficially, however, she and I were planning to do everything possible to have her remain at the ranch. Our goal was to persuade Dr. V to bring her onto the team as an unpaid mechanic’s apprentice for her ninety-day travel visa. She would work on the team’s cutting-edge bikes until we could run off with the dragon bone.

If the dragon bone wasn’t there, I planned to head back to Indiana as soon as possible. Hú Dié could stay with the team if she was having a good time. After seeing Hú Dié in action the past few days, I had no doubt that she would weasel her way onto Team Vanderhausen.

I glanced up the aisle at her, still finding it difficult to believe that it was really Hú Dié. Before we left, she’d put on makeup and styled her hair forward so that it hid most of her face. Delicate white gloves covered her grease-stained fingers, and her toenails were painted. She wore heeled sandals and a summer dress that made her look like a well-to-do young woman traveling on holiday. She easily looked the eighteen years her passport claimed, and no one challenged her.

Additionally, as we traveled through China, Hú Dié had spoken with firm authority, bossing ticket takers and
flight attendants around so much that they left her alone. Now that we were in the United States, she’d gone completely silent, acting as if she knew no English and flashing her brilliant smile every five seconds. People left her alone now, too, but they did so with a polite courtesy that made me want to scream. If they only knew what she was really like.

Before leaving China, I told Hú Dié about Ryan and Jake. I was bothered by the way Ryan had acted toward me the last time I saw him, but she told me to get over it. She said I couldn’t change someone’s behavior; only they could change it, so worrying about
why
someone changed was pointless. All I could do was accept things as they were now and move forward. In some ways, she sounded like Grandfather.

I closed my eyes and leaned back in my seat. I couldn’t stop thinking about Grandfather. I had spoken with him twice, and he’d insisted he was fine. He claimed he’d moved into the nursing home only as a precaution. However, I also spoke with my uncle, who told me a different story. Grandfather had attempted to decrease the amount of dragon bone he took each day in order to make his tiny supply last longer, but his body wasn’t handling it well. Uncle Tí had been frantically searching for potential treatments for Grandfather, but so far he’d found nothing.

I hoped I was doing the right thing in flying to Austin. If Dr. V wasn’t involved in this, I would be wasting a huge amount of time. However, while Dr. V had never given me a reason to distrust him, Hú Dié had said she could
tell by his voice when she had listened in earlier that he had been lying or at least misleading me. If anyone knew about misleading people, it was Hú Dié. Maybe Dr. V was behind it, after all. Either way, Hú Dié and I would have to be very careful around him, and assume he knew exactly why I’d suddenly changed my mind and decided to join him at the ranch.

I ran my hands through my hair. As I drifted off to sleep, I thought regardless of Dr. V’s guilt or innocence, if Grandfather were to slip away without my having said goodbye, I would hate myself forever.

I woke when the plane touched down in Austin. I checked my watch. It was 11:30 a.m. local time on Saturday—one full week since Lin Tan and Meathead had broken into our home. Time was going by so fast.

Hú Dié and I departed the plane and headed to the baggage claim. As we approached it, I saw a tall, wiry man wearing jeans and a T-shirt, along with scuffed cowboy boots and a straw cowboy hat. His leathery face was nearly as creased as PawPaw’s, though he was probably only forty years old. He held a small sign that read
TEAM VANDERHAUSEN
.

I turned to Hú Dié. “That’s us.”

She didn’t reply. She just smiled. Apparently, she was still deep into her role of “pretty but linguistically challenged young Chinese woman.” I fought the urge to punch her in the arm and looked back at the guy with the sign.

“Phoenix and his cousin?” the man drawled in a Southern accent.

I nodded.

“Name’s Murphy,” he said. “I work for Dr. V. Y’all come with me.”

We retrieved our luggage. I had my backpack and carry-on duffel bag, while Hú Dié had two large suitcases plus a carry-on. I didn’t know what she had in the suitcases, but judging by the extra fees billed to the team for those bags being too heavy, it wouldn’t surprise me if it was tools. Murphy helped her, and though he was thin, he was strong as a mule. He didn’t even flinch under the weight of the bags.

We walked outside, stepping into a wall of dry Texas heat. I was wearing a T-shirt and cargo shorts, and my arms, legs, and face suddenly felt as if I’d leaned too close to a campfire. How could anyone live here?

Murphy led us to a large black SUV parked in the garage across the street, and Hú Dié and I climbed into the backseat. I was already soaked with sweat. Murphy loaded our luggage into the back, grunting softly under the weight of Hú Dié’s suitcases, and he climbed into the driver’s seat. He sent a short text message with his cell phone, and then we pulled out of the airport.

The city of Austin was in the distance, and Hú Dié stared longingly out the tinted rear windows as though willing the vehicle to exit the highway and head toward the skyscrapers downtown and the famous bike shop in their shadows. That didn’t happen.

We headed west, and I watched as the landscape changed from typical American cityscape to something out of a surreal movie. Concrete gave way to parched, cracked soil and sagebrush, and the surrounding flatlands rose steadily in the distance. We were about to enter the famous Texas Hill Country.

As we passed over the first hill, civilization thinned, replaced by thousand-acre ranches bordered by miles of nearly invisible barbed-wire fencing. The hills ebbed and flowed around us in smooth arcs. Sparse patches of thorny bushes and stubby trees dotted the landscape, connected by alternating fields of huge boulders and dry, stunted grass. My pulse began to quicken. The farther we went, the more excited I felt. Despite the heat, I realized I would give almost anything for a chance to rip through those hilly fields on a mountain bike. As much as I hated the thought, I might have to break down and ask permission to borrow Ryan’s.