Road Less Traveled (34 page)

In the face of her superior authority—and her bluster—the officer did the only thing he could. “Yes, ma'am!” He saluted again, then turned back to his console. Using the key around his neck, he opened a particular panel and hit a series of buttons on a small keypad. All around the small room, the monitors went dark. Then they began scrolling numbers faster than the eye could follow.

“We'll have a full diagnostic in ten minutes,” he informed Jo. “Systems will be back up and running in eight.”

Jo nodded. “Let's hope that's fast enough,” she grated, and folded her arms over her chest, feigning impatience.

But inside, she was hoping eight minutes would be enough to let Fargo do what he had planned.

Otherwise they could be facing a whole lot of questions. And she wasn't sure Allison—or Carter—would like all of their answers.

“So?” Jo asked as she rejoined Fargo not far from the
security gate. He was leaning against the wall, looking very pleased with himself.

“Piece of cake,” he replied smugly. “All I had to do was change the scanners' frequency so they're emitting straight electricity instead of X-rays, deactivate the safety buffers, and reconfigure the sensors so they can still broadcast but they can't receive. And voilà! An instant electrical net!”

“Is it dangerous?” she asked him quietly, eyeing the altered security gate.

“Not at all,” Fargo assured her.

“Good.” She moved away from the wall and headed toward the door. “Because we're going to be the first ones through it.”

“What? Why?” Fargo stayed where he was and stared at her, a look of horror flickering across his face.

“We need to be near the doors so we can see each person as he or she walks through,” Jo pointed out. “And so we can grab the thief after he's through the gate and before he can make it outside. If we stay on this side, we'll have to charge through after him, and that might give him enough time to get away.” She glanced back over her shoulder. “If you did this right, it shouldn't hurt too much. And you did get it right, didn't you?”

“Of course.” He pushed off and trotted after her. “But that doesn't mean we have to test it on ourselves!”

But Jo was already stepping through the gate.

There was a blue flash as she passed under the archway, and a faint crackling sound. Fargo thought he saw her brow furrow slightly, but she didn't pause or falter, and a second later she was on the other side. She beckoned him to follow.

“Great. If I'd known, I'd have set it to reconfigure itself after I went through,” he muttered as he approached the gate itself. He paused just in front of it for a second. Then, squeezing his eyes shut, he took another step forward.

“Ow! Gosh darn it! That stings!” The guards looked on, confused but chuckling, as Fargo danced from foot to foot, trying to shake off the stinging in his hands and arms. He rejoined Jo, who looked up at his head and grinned. That made him reach up to feel. Sure enough, all of his hair was standing on end.

“Why didn't this happen to you?” he grumbled at her, trying to pat his hair back down into some semblance of normality.

She just shrugged. “You're the one who set it up—you tell me.” Her grin faded as she got back down to business. “The shock worked fine, though. We should be able to see clearly if anyone isn't affected.”

Then she raised her phone. “Time to let everyone know they're free to go. And then we watch, and we wait.”

Fargo nodded. He just hoped he didn't have to go back through that thing. He'd always admired Albert Einstein, but that didn't mean he wanted the great man's hairstyle.

 

Twenty minutes later, people started emerging from the
corridors and converging on the main lobby. From there they filed through the security gates and then outside to reclaim their vehicles and head home for the day.

“Ouch!” said the first person to exit, their resident sleep and dream expert, Dr. Suenos. “What was that?”

“Sorry, the machines are acting up a little today,” Fargo called out from his spot along the wall between the gate and the front door. “We'll get them recalibrated before the morning.”

“Ow! Hey, what's the big idea?” Dr. Bubay, one of GD's seismic chemists, demanded as he got zapped.

“Technical difficulties,” Jo advised. “Don't worry about it.”

“Ooh, that was nice—sorta like a massage,” Taggart commented as he passed through the gate. He wriggled a bit and grinned at Jo. “Jo. Fargo.”

“Hey, Taggart.” Jo gave him a nod and a smile but followed them with her “not right now, I'm working” glare. The lanky Australian took the hint and kept moving.

Dr. Korinko was one of the next ones through. “Have you found the egg yet?” she asked as she approached them. She was still wringing her hands a bit from the shock, and the ends of her hair were rising from the static. Jo and Fargo exchanged a glance. Definitely not her, then.

“We're still working on it,” Jo replied. “But we think we'll have an answer very soon.”

“How soon?” Korinko demanded. “That egg can't have much longer before it hatches!”

“I know, and we're working as fast as we can,” Jo assured her. “I promise you.”

Fargo was only half listening to the conversation. The other half of his attention was on the gate, and on the people who passed through it.

Nothing.

Nothing?

He looked up, studying the person who'd just cleared the cordon and who was now approaching them. The man was average height, a few inches taller than Fargo but just as wiry, with tight blond curls and a boyish face.

“Dr. Wilder,” Fargo called out as the man approached him. “Can we speak to you for a moment?”

Jo glanced up at the request, then at Fargo. Her eyes narrowed when he nodded.

“I'm a little busy,” Wilder replied. He checked his watch. “Can it wait until tomorrow?”

“I don't think so,” Jo answered. “Now would be best.” Her tone indicated that it wasn't a request.

“What's this all about?” Wilder asked as he slowed to a stop a few feet from them. He nodded at Dr. Korinko. “Hey, Anna.”

Korinko nodded back, the expression on her face showing how puzzled she was. “Dan.”

“Any idea what's going on here?” he asked her, ignoring Fargo and Jo for the moment.

“What's going on is that you broke into her lab, trashed it, and made off with one of the Thunderbird eggs,” Fargo jumped in. He leaned in toward Wilder but stopped when he felt his hair twitch and his skin tighten. Even from a few feet away he could feel the charge the other man was carrying.

“What are you talking about?” Korinko asked. She looked at Jo. “Dan's a biogeneticist like me,” she explained. “He wasn't on the Thunderbird project with us.”

“But his lab is nearby, isn't it?” Jo asked. She vaguely remembered seeing him in the hall at one point. “And he knew what you were working on. Plus, his lab has the exact same security systems as yours, right down to the containment fields. He'd know how to disable them. And he could easily smuggle the egg back to his lab after all the confusion following the theft, and then remove it later when nobody was looking.”

“This is ridiculous!” Wilder claimed. “I didn't steal anything! Why would I? Anna and Sean are friends of mine, not to mention colleagues. I'd never jeopardize their work like that!”

“I don't know why,” Fargo admitted. “But you're definitely the thief.” He gave Wilder his best tough-guy smile. “And I can prove it.”

“Oh yeah?” Unfortunately, judging by the biogeneticist's smug look, he wasn't impressed. “Fine.” Wilder put his hands on his hips. “Go ahead.”

But Fargo was ready for that. He reached behind his back and whipped out—his voltmeter.

“That's it?” Wilder laughed. “Give me a break. What're you gonna do, detect lies?”

“No, I'm going to measure your electrical charge,” Fargo answered. He waved the voltmeter in front of Wilder, letting the device scan him fully. Then he checked the readout. “Aha!”

Jo leaned in to study the small screen. “Which means what, exactly?” she asked.

“He's got a lot of energy around him right now,” Fargo explained, indicating the numbers. “A lot more than he should from just a simple shock. And check out the frequency! That's an exact match for the hatched Thunderbird!” He glared at Wilder. “He's our thief!”

“Good enough for me.” Jo reached for her handcuffs. “You're under arrest, Mr. Wilder. You have the right—”

But Wilder didn't wait to hear the rest of his rights. He turned instead, and bolted back the way he'd come. Back into GD.

Back through the security gate.

“No!” Fargo lunged and caught Jo by the wrist as she started to go after the man. “Don't! He's carrying a double charge now, on top of the energy he already had from the Thunderbird! It could stun you or worse if you touch him!”

“Then I won't touch him,” Jo insisted, pulling loose. But as she flew toward the gate, she saw that Wilder was already halfway across the lobby—

—and rapidly approaching a familiar tan-clothed figure who'd just emerged from one of the hallways.

“Carter!” Her friend and boss looked up at her shout. “That's our Thunderbird thief! Stop him!”

Carter frowned, looked around, spotted Wilder sprinting toward him, and nodded. He dropped into a half crouch, arms out, ready to tackle the fugitive biogeneticist.

“But don't touch him!” Fargo yelled. “He's electrified!”

That made Carter freeze, before hitting Fargo with an all-too-familiar “you couldn't make this easy, could you?” look. Wilder had heard the warning as well, and now he broke into a grin and slowed his pace, deliberately aiming straight for the wary sheriff.

“Better get out of my way, Sheriff,” Wilder taunted. “I'd hate for anyone to get hurt.”

Carter twisted his head from side to side, sweeping the area for anything that could help with this dilemma. Then he spotted it.

Dodging past Wilder, he ran over to the security station. He snatched something from the desk there, then turned and raced back. As he neared Wilder, Carter held up his recently acquired prize.

A water bottle.

“No!” Wilder threw up his arms as Carter's arm swung forward in a sharp arc. The open bottle sprayed its contents across the room—and doused Wilder completely.

All the energy that had built up around the biogeneticist discharged at once. The flash was blindingly bright, and the sound explosive. Wilder was blown off his feet, and landed heavily on the floor, soaking wet but thoroughly wiped clean of any electrical charge.

Carter wasted no time. He dropped to his knees, flipped Wilder over onto his stomach, and handcuffed the man's hands behind him.

“Well,” Carter announced, looking around. “Guess we all know what he'll be charged with.”

Jo had dodged around the security gate while Carter
was splashing Wilder—no sense getting shocked twice!—and reached him a few seconds after the takedown. She helped Carter haul the thief to his feet, and glared up at him.

“Okay, mister,” she growled, getting in his face. “You're caught and you know it. You might as well talk.”

Fargo and Dr. Korinko were right behind her. “Is it true, Dan?” Korinko asked. “Are you really the one who took the Thunderbird egg?”

Dan shook himself and water went flying. For a second it looked like he was going to deny the accusation, even now. But then he hung his head.

“I'm sorry, Anna. I never meant for all of this to happen.”

“So you did take it,” Fargo accused. “Where is it? What've you done with it?”

“It's at my studio,” Wilder admitted. “It's perfectly safe.”

“Why did you do this?” Korinko asked. “We were friends. Colleagues. You know how long Sean and I had worked on this.”

“Worked on creating a creature, a beautiful majestic creature, only to cage it forever!” Wilder snapped. “You had re-created the Thunderbird of legend, and why? To sell it to some third-world country so they could grow yams? You were defiling centuries of history with crass commercialism! I had to do something.”

Carter shook his head. “So you stole the Thunderbird—so you could set it free?”

“Of course.” Wilder glared at them. “I've dedicated my life to reintroducing species to the wild. How could I stand by and watch something as awe-inspiring as the Thunderbird be subjected to a life of servitude?”