The Tower (42 page)

“Terry, look out!” I shouted as a black and white police car came around the turn.

“Oh, great!” Terry said loudly. “Something with a siren!”

At first I thought she was being sarcastic, but in less than a blink, Terry had dropped the rock and was running toward the police car, waving her arms wildly in the air and screaming hysterically, “Help! Police! Help me! Please!”

The squad car pulled over and two uniformed police officers stepped out of the front doors.

“What’s the trouble, miss?” asked the one closer to Terry as she sprinted up to him.

“I need your car!” shouted Terry as she piled into the cop, knocking him down onto the sidewalk and pulling the pistol out of his holster in one fluid move. The cop had hardly hit the pavement before Terry was pointing the gun over the roof of the police car at the other officer, who I realized was a woman.

Terry spoke in an even, icy tone as she said, “Ma’am, pull your pistol out slowly using the thumb and index finger of your left hand and place it on the hood of your vehicle. The only reason I haven’t shot you already is that there’s a kid watching.”

The officer, recovering from her shock, said slowly, “I can’t do that, miss. Put down the gun.”

“Don’t make me tell you twice!” barked Terry, pulling the hammer back on her stolen pistol.

“Miss...” the officer began again in what I assumed was meant to be a calming tone, but Terry was no “miss.”

Terry shot the woman in the left shoulder. The officer was spun around once, and then fell down out of sight behind the car. Turning back toward the male officer that she had knocked over first, Terry put a bullet into his right thigh. Then, rushing around to the other side of the police car, she knelt down and emerged with the female cop’s pistol, which she tossed to me.

“Get in the car, Hansel,” she said. “Gretel, you too. I’ll drive.”

“I’ve changed my mind,” I said, pointing at Alia. “We’re not taking her.”

“Oh yeah, sure!” Terry shouted sarcastically. “We’ll leave her here with two bleeding cops. By sunup she’ll be back with the Wolves.”

“I see your point,” I said wryly, opening the rear door for Alia.

My sister refused to get in.
“They’re hurt, Addy! I have to help them.”

“They’ll be okay, Alia,” I said. “Come on, get in the car!”

“But-but-but...”

I practically threw Alia into the back seat, slammed the rear door, and then got in the front beside Terry.

I had barely closed my door before Terry floored the gas pedal, and the police car lurched forward, gluing my back to the seat.

“Ow!” cried Alia, who had probably been knocked over.

“Put your seatbelt on, Gretel!” shouted Terry. “Seatbelt, Hansel!”

I started to pull my belt around me but Terry shouted again, “Mine first!”

I reached around her and fastened her seatbelt for her. Even as I did, Terry whipped the squad car around a corner, knocking me back into my seat.

I managed to pull my own seatbelt on only a second before Terry pulled another near-ninety-degree turn, narrowly missing an oncoming van. Even with the belt on, I bashed my head against the door window.

“And I’m dangerous?!” I shouted over the din of car horns around us. “You’re insane, Terry!”

“Hansel, find the siren switch! Hurry, before I kill someone!”

I looked at the dashboard of the police car. There was a radio transceiver, an onboard computer and a whole bunch of buttons and switches, but I couldn’t find anything that looked like the switch to the siren.

“Hansel!” shouted Terry.

I began flipping every switch in sight until I saw the flashing red and blue lights reflecting off the buildings around us. The blaring police siren followed soon after.

Looking at all the equipment, I suddenly remembered how Terry had taken Ralph’s car for our camping trip last year because Cindy’s sedan was equipped with a Guardian tracking device. A car like this would probably have a tracking system on it too, telling police headquarters exactly where we were.

I said to Terry, “You realize that we’re going to have every cop in the city after us in less than five minutes? We probably have a helicopter looking for us by now.”

“We’ll be there in two minutes,” said Terry. “Now shut your trap or you’ll bite your tongue.”

Bouncing its tires on the curb, our patrol car sliced into the sidewalk. Pedestrians were fleeing left and right, and I could hardly believe we hadn’t hit anyone yet.

“Addy, do something!”

“Who the hell gave you a license to drive, Terry?!” I yelled hysterically.

“What makes you think I have one?” Terry replied through clenched teeth as we pulled back onto the street and ran another red light. The siren was helping very little because we were moving too fast for the traffic to get out of our way in time.

“Easy,” Terry muttered under her breath, her eyes totally focused on the road. I decided that my interruptions weren’t helping, and silently prayed Terry wouldn’t get us killed before we caught up with the Angels.

Swerving around another corner, Terry slammed on the brakes, bringing the police car to a painfully abrupt stop. My heart was still racing and it took a moment for me to realize that I was trying to get out of the car without removing my seatbelt. By the time I undid my belt, Terry had already turned off the flashing lights and the siren, exited the car and pulled Alia out of the back seat.

Stepping out of the police car, I smelled water on the night breeze.

“Are we near the river?” I asked.

“Yes,” replied Terry. “Now come on. Don’t forget your gun.”

I could hear the sound of a police siren in the distance. I quickly retrieved the female cop’s pistol from the leg room where I had dropped it. Not wanting to be drained by a gun in my hand, I shoved the barrel under my belt.

Alia and I briskly followed Terry down the street.

We soon arrived at the riverbank. The river was even wider than I had thought when I had seen it from the penthouse windows. It was too dark to see anything on the other side, which was thick forest. On the slow-moving black water, I could see the red and green navigation lights of the few boats chugging along the river.

Several hundred yards upriver, there was a long wooden pier extending to a landing stage where one ominously dark and dirty-looking towboat was moored. I had seen towboats of various sizes pulling barges up and down this river, but there was no barge attached to this one.

“Is that it?” I asked, pointing to the rusty towboat. We were coming up from behind the craft so it was difficult to gauge its length from here, but it looked fairly big.

“Yeah, that’s it,” said Terry, breaking into a jog.

I matched her pace, and as we made our way down the riverbank with Alia struggling to keep up, Terry turned her head to me and asked grimly, “Is Silver worth it?”

“Worth dying for?”

Terry shook her head. “Worth killing for.”

“We’ll see,” I said quietly.

“You better be ready this time, Hansel, because
we’re going to do this my way. You just watch what I do and back me up. Push your tracer band now. We’re already out of the hiding bubble, but that’ll give the Knights an easier target.”

I put my right thumb on the tracer band’s button, keeping it down for more than five seconds. Nothing happened, and I wondered if it was broken.

“Don’t worry, Hansel,” said Terry. “It’s a silent signal. It’s working, probably.”

“Would you stop calling me that, Terry?!” I said, annoyed by what I felt was unnecessary cloak-and-dagger nonsense.

“No, and you had better start calling me Rabbit and her Gretel,” Terry said irritably. “There’s no telling when someone is listening.”

“Okay, okay.”

“Oh, and by the way, nice look, Hansel,” Terry said sarcastically. “That ought to help us keep a low profile.”

I looked down at my shirt. I had unthinkingly grabbed the first one I could from my dresser, but now I realized that I was wearing a light yellow T-shirt patterned with little red hearts and sporting a sparkly rainbow painted in glitter across the front: Cindy’s taste in horrendously cutesy clothes at its very worst. Far from being embarrassed, however, I felt happy at the thought that I had brought a part of Cindy along with me. Certainly not her best part, but a part nonetheless. It helped soften the tension I was feeling.

We were pretty close to the pier now. Seeing the towboat from the side, I could tell that it was well over a hundred feet long, and it was clearly a derelict, perhaps abandoned many years ago. There were no lights on, and some of the windows were cracked or missing. I couldn’t read the name on the hull. The paint, probably once white, had all but peeled off, and the hull and cabin walls were covered in rust.

“This boat’s been here forever,” whispered Terry as we stepped onto the pier. “I don’t know when the Angels started using it, but the hull is metal and underwater, so it’s the perfect hideout.”

“I can sense a destroyer,” I whispered back. “Maybe two.”

Now that we were close enough to the towboat, I could vaguely feel a telekinetic power, and a pyroid too. I couldn’t actually sense their locations, and I wasn’t even sure if there were two separate psionics or if it was one psionic with two destroyer powers. But I could tell the distance, and as we walked down the pier leading to the horizontal landing stage, I knew we were getting closer.

“Good,” Terry said quietly.

“Why is that good, Rabbit?” I asked, forcing myself to use Terry’s stupid call sign.

“Because they’re still here.”

I had some conflicted feelings about that being a “good” thing, but there was something else that was troubling me as well. I was pretty sure that the two flight-capable telekinetics who had carried Cindy off were not in the towboat, unless they had been given individual hiding protection. I wondered where they were. I also worried that, since my power was no longer hidden, the Angels probably already knew we were coming.

Terry knew this as well. She quickened her pace, saying, “Come on Hansel, Gretel, stick close to me. I don’t want to be caught in the open.”

“Maybe we should wait here for the Guardians to catch up,” I suggested.

Terry turned around and said frostily, “You wait. I’m going. Tell me who gets here first: the Knights, the police, the Wolves or Angel reinforcements.”

“Just a thought,” I said, putting my hands up in defeat.

Terry turned around and started walking again. “Stay with me on this, Hansel. I know what I’m doing. I’ve been training for this all my life.”

Keeping my sister close, I followed Terry at a short distance, wondering if there was anything in my life that I had always been working toward.

Chapter 16: Fire and Water

We stepped onto the long wooden landing stage alongside the hull of the towboat. So far, no contact, but I felt the destroyer powers very clearly now. The towboat looked enormous up close, its superstructure four stories high and towering over us. The main deck was about three feet higher than the landing stage. Terry gestured to Alia and me, and we silently climbed up onto the towboat’s forward deck.

“I’m scared, Addy,”
Alia whispered into my mind as she stood next to me on the giant towboat.

I didn’t want to respond aloud, so I gave my sister a quick smile and patted her on the back. I was scared too. Not just for myself, but for Alia, who clearly had no idea what she was getting into when she decided to come. Even if we managed to rescue Cindy, if anything happened to Alia...

Terry was gesturing toward the door of the main cabin. We cautiously approached it. But just as Terry was about to touch the handle, the metal door burst open, and several things happened at once.

Terry instantly darted to the side, placing her back against the outside wall of the cabin so that whoever was inside couldn’t see her. At the same time, I grabbed Alia by the arm and pulled her off the towboat’s deck and back onto the landing stage. Alia let out a yelp of pain, probably having hit the landing stage in a bad way.