When Lightning Strikes (20 page)

"Oh, I don't know. How do you think I should spend it?"

Douglas thought about it. He said, "Well, Dad could use a new set of clubs. Not that he ever gets a chance to play."

"I don't want golf clubs," I heard my dad yelling. "We're putting that money away for Jess's college."

"I want a car!" I heard Michael yell.

I laughed a little. I said, "He just wants a car so he can drive Claire Lippman to the quarries."

Doug said, "You know that's true. And I think Mom would love a new sewing machine."

"So she can make us some more matching outfits." I smiled. "Of course. What about you?"

"Me?" Douglas was beginning to sound even farther away than ever. "I just want you home, and everything back to normal."

I coughed. I had to, in order to cover up the fact that I was crying again.

"Well," I said. "I'll be home soon. And then you'll wish I wasn't, since I'll be barging in on you all the time again."

"I miss you barging in on me," Douglas said.

This was more than I could take. I said, "I … I have to go."

Douglas said, "Wait a minute. Dad wants to say—"

But I had hung up. Suddenly, I knew. I couldn't talk to my dad. What was he going to do for me anyway? He couldn't get me out of this.

And even if he could, where was I going to go? I couldn't go home. Not with reporters and Pepsi representatives following me everywhere I went. Douglas would completely lose whatever fragile grip he had on sanity at the moment.

"Jess?"

I started. I had almost forgotten Sean was in the room with me. I threw him a startled glance.

"What?" I said.

"Are you …" He raised his eyebrows. "You are."

"I'm what?"

"Crying," he said. Then his eyebrows met in a rush over the bridge of his freckled nose. He scowled at me. "What are you crying for?"

"Nothing," I said. I reached up and wiped my eyes with the back of my wrist. "I'm not crying."

"You're a damned liar," he said.

"Hey. Don't swear." I began hitting buttons on the phone again.

"Why not? You do it. Who are you calling now?"

"Someone who's going to get us the hell out of here," I said.

C H A P T E R
19

I
t was a little after midnight when I heard it: the same motorcycle engine that I'd been straining my ears to hear on and off for the past couple of weeks. Only this time, it wasn't roaring down Lumley Lane, the way it had in my dreams.

No, it was roaring through the empty parking lots of Crane Military Base.

I leapt up off the bed where I'd been dozing and rushed to the window. I had to cup my fingers over my eyes in order to make out what was going on outside. In a circle of light thrown by one of the security lamps, I saw Rob. He was riding around, his face—hidden by the shield of his motorcycle helmet—turning right and left, trying to figure out which building I was in.

I pounded on the windowpane, and called his name.

Sean, curled up on the bed beside mine, sat bolt upright, as fully awake as he'd been soundly asleep just a second before.

"It's my dad," he said in a choked voice.

"No, it's not your dad," I said. "Stand back while I break this window. He can't hear me."

I knew I only had a few seconds before he thundered past the infirmary. I had to act fast. I grabbed the nearest thing I could find—a metal trash can—and heaved it at the window.

It did the trick. Glass went flying everywhere, including back over me, since a lot of the shards ricocheted off the metal grate. I could feel tiny slivers of glass in my hair and on my shirt.

I didn't care. I yelled, "Rob!"

He threw out a foot and skidded to a halt. A second later, his foot was up again, and he was tearing through the grass toward me. It was only then that I noticed that behind him were about a half dozen other bikers, big guys on Harleys.

"Hey," Rob said when he'd thrown down his kickstand and yanked his helmet off. He got off the bike and came toward me. "You okay?"

I nodded. I can't even tell you how good it felt to see him. It felt even better when he reached through the metal grate, wrapped his fingers around the front of my shirt, dragged me forward, and kissed me through the bars.

When he let go of me, it was so abrupt that I knew he hadn't meant to kiss me at all. It had just sort of happened.

"Sorry," he said—only not looking too sorry, if you know what I mean.

"That's okay," I said. Okay? It was the best kiss I'd ever had—even better than the first one. "Are you sure you don't mind doing this?"

"Piece of cake."

Then he went to work.

Sean, who'd observed the whole thing, said in a very indignant voice, "Who's
that
?"

"Rob Wilkins," I said.

I must have said it a little too happily, however, since Sean asked, suspiciously, "Is he your boyfriend?"

"No," I said. I wish.

Sean was appalled. "And you're just going to let him get away with kissing you like that?"

"He was just glad to see me," I said.

A particularly hairy face had replaced Rob's in the window. I recognized his friend from Chick's, the one with the Tet Offensive tattoo. He snaked a chain through the grate, then secured the other end to the back of one of the bikes.

"Stand back, y'all," he said to us. "This here's gonna make a helluva racket."

The face disappeared. Sean looked up at me.

"These are friends of yours?" he asked, in a disapproving voice.

"Sort of," I said. "Now stand back, will you? I don't want you to get hurt."

"Jesus," Sean muttered. "I am not a baby, all right?"

But when the biker gunned his engine, and the chain rattled, theh went taut, Sean clapped his hands over his ears. "We are so busted," he moaned with his eyes closed.

I had a bad feeling Sean was right. The grate was making ominous groaning noises, but not budging so much as an inch. Meanwhile, the motorcycle engine was whining shrilly, its wheels kicking up a ton of dirt, throwing it and bits of grass back through the grate and into the room, already carpeted with glass.

For a minute, I didn't think it was going to work—or that, if it did, the noise would rouse Colonel Jenkins and his men, and they'd be after us in a heartbeat. The grate was simply too deeply embedded into the concrete window frame. I didn't want to say anything, of course—Rob was trying as best he could—but it looked like a hopeless cause. Especially when Sean dug his fingers into my arm and hissed, "Listen.  .  .  ."

Then I heard it. Above the shriek of the motorcycle's engine, the sound of keys rattling outside the infirmary door.

That was it. We were busted.

What was worse, I'd probably gotten our rescuers busted, too. How long would Rob end up in jail because of me? What was the mandatory sentence for trying to break a psychic free from a military compound?

And then, with a sound like a thousand fingernails on a mile-wide chalkboard, the entire grate popped out from the sill and was dragged a few feet until the biker slammed on the brakes.

"Come on," Rob said, reaching for me over the crumbling sill.

I shoved Sean forward. "Him first," I said.

"No, you." Sean, in an effort to be chivalrous, tried to force me through the window first, but Rob got hold of him and hauled him through.

Which gave me a chance to grab my backpack—which Special Agent Smith had so graciously brought me—then vault over the window sill behind them, just as the dead bolt on the infirmary door slid back.

Outside, it was a humid spring night, silent and still … except for the thunder of motorcycle engines. I was astonished to see that, in addition to Rob's friends from Chick's, Greg Wylie and Hank Wendell, from the back row of detention, were also there, on majorly cherried-out hogs. I have to admit, I got a little teary-eyed at the sight of them: I had no idea I was so well-liked by my fellow juvenile delinquents.

Sean, however, was not so impressed.

"You have got to be kidding me," he said when he got his first good look at his rescuers.

"Look," I said to him as I pulled on the helmet Rob handed to me. "It's these guys or your dad. Take your pick."

"Boy," Sean said, shaking his head. "You drive a hard bargain."

Hank Wendell shoved a helmet at him. "Here ya go, kid," he said. He made room on his seat for Sean's eighty-pound frame, then gave his engine a rev. "Hop on."

I don't know if Sean would have gotten on if, at that moment, an eardrum-piercing siren hadn't begun to wail.

One of the guys from Chick's—Frankie, who had a tattoo of a baby on his bicep—called out, "Here they come."

A second later, some military types came running up to the barless window, shouting for us to stop. Headlights lit up the parking lot.

"Hang on," Rob said as I swung onto the seat behind him and wrapped my arms around him.

"Halt," a man's voice bellowed. I glanced over my shoulder. There was a military jeep coming toward us, with a man standing up in the back, shouting through a megaphone. Behind him, I could see lights turning on in the buildings all across the base, and people running outside, trying to see what was going on.

"This is U.S. Government property,"'the guy with the megaphone declared. "You are trespassing. Turn off your engines now."

And then the night air was ripped apart by an earth-shaking explosion. I saw a ball of flame rise up in the air over by the airstrip. Everyone ducked—

Except Frankie and the guy with the Tet Offensive tattoo, who high-fived one another.

"Oh, yeah," Frankie said. "We still got it."

"What was
that
?" I shouted as Rob accelerated.

"A helicopter," Rob shouted back. "Just a little diversionary tactic, to confuse the enemy."

"You'll blow up a helicopter," I said, "but you won't go out with me?" I couldn't believe it. "What is wrong with you?"

I didn't have a chance to complain for long, however, because Rob sped up, and suddenly we were whipping through the darkened lots that made up Crane, heading for the front gates. The night sky behind us was now filled with an orange glow from the burning helicopter. New sirens, evidently from fire engines sent to put out the flames, sliced through the night, and searchlights arced against the low-lying clouds.

All this, I thought, to bust a small boy and a psychic put of an infirmary.

We hadn't managed to ditch the guy in the jeep. He was right behind us, still shouting through the megaphone for us to stop.

But Rob and his friends didn't stop. In fact, if anything, they sped up.

Okay, I'll admit it: I loved every minute of it. Finally,
finally
, I was going fast enough.

Then, a hundred yards from the front gates, Rob threw his foot out, and we skidded to a halt. His friends followed suit.

For a moment, we sat there, all six bikers, Rob, Sean, and me, engines roaring, staring straight ahead of us. The glow from the fire on the airstrip clearly lit the long road leading to the base's front gates. There were guards there, I remembered from when I'd gone by them on the bus to the mall. Guards with rifles. I had no idea how Rob and the others had gotten past these armed sentries to get onto the base, and I had no idea how we were going to get past them getting off of it. All I could think was, over and over in my head, "Oh, my God, they blew up a helicopter.
They blew up a helicopter
."

But maybe it was a good thing they did. Because there was no one blocking our path. Everyone was heading toward the airstrip to help put out the fire.

Except for the guy in the jeep behind us.

"Turn off your engines and put your hands up," the guy said.

Instead, Rob lifted up his foot and we lurched forward, heading straight for the gates.

Which were down.

Then someone in a bathrobe came striding across the road, until he stood right in front of the gates. It was someone I recognized. He lifted a megaphone.

"Halt," Colonel Jenkins's voice boomed through the night, louder than the motorcycle engines, louder than the sirens. "You are under arrest. Turn off your engines now."

He was standing directly in front of the gates. His robe had fallen open, and I could see he had on pale blue pajamas.

Rob didn't slow down. If anything, he sped up.

"Turn off your engines," Colonel Jenkins commanded us. "Do you hear me? You are under arrest. Turn off your engines now."

The gatehouse guards appeared with their rifles. They didn't point them at us, but they stood their ground on either side of Colonel Jenkins.

No one turned off their engines. In fact, Greg and Hank let out whoops and started racing even faster toward the gates. I had no idea what they thought was going to happen when they reached the men standing there. It wasn't as if they were simply going to move out of the way and let us by. This was no ordinary game of chicken. Not when the other guy was holding a high-powered rifle.

I guess Colonel Jenkins figured out that nobody was going to turn off his engine, since suddenly he put down the megaphone and nodded to the two guards. I tightened my grip on Rob's waist, and ducked my head, afraid to look. They were only, I was sure, going to shoot into the air, to get our attention. Surely he couldn't mean to—

But then I never did find out whether or not they would have shot at us, because Rob gave the front of the bike a violent jerk.  .  .  .

And then we were sailing off the base. Not through the front gates, but through a wide section of the chain-link fence that had been carefully peeled back to one side of the gates. This was how Rob and his friends had gotten past the sentries. All it had taken was a little determination, a pair of wire cutters, and some experience in breaking-and-entering.

Once we were off the base, the only light we had to see by were the bikes' headlights. That was all right, though. I looked behind me, and saw that the jeep was still behind us, intent on stopping us somehow.

But when I told Rob this, he only laughed. The road that led to Crane was little used, except for traffic to and from the base. All around it were cornfields, and beyond the fields, wooded hills. It was toward these hills Rob plunged, the other bikers following him, veering off the road and into the corn, which this early in spring was only ankle-high.