Two from the Heart(49)

He shoves the back door open and kicks over two empty garbage cans. As he turns back toward the house, he catches a glint of chrome. Tucked into a corner next to some garden tools is a Yamaha dirt bike, key still in the ignition.

Bron hasn’t ridden anything with two wheels since he was sixteen. He hops onto the saddle and turns the key. No juice. He puts his foot on the starter pedal and shoves down hard. The engine sputters, then dies. He tries again. This time it fires up.

He gives the bike some gas and takes off, nearly knocking over a rain barrel as he swings around the house and swerves onto the road, heading farther away from town—out into the empty desert.

He’s really cranking now. He squints his eyes and clenches his mouth tight as all kinds of airborne critters collide with his face. The road is pitch black, except for the bouncing white arc of his headlight beam.

He doesn’t know where he’s going—just knows that he has to keep moving and looking for answers. Looking for her. Forty miles per hour on the speedometer. Then fifty…

His head is buzzing with a thousand thoughts. Suddenly, he sees—

BAM!





Chapter 36


IT HAPPENS in the blink of an eye. And I’m watching it in HD.

Daisy screams.

Bron’s bike jolts to the side and flips. For a second everything is a blur—then totally still.

Now the night-vision sensors are picking up two heat signatures about twenty feet from the road. One is the bike engine. The other is Bron. Neither is moving.

A few of the minions jump up from their stations.

“Stop!” Daisy yells. “Stay right where you are!”

She looks at me and grabs a set of keys off a table. “Let’s go!”

We run out the back and hop into a Jeep. Daisy gets behind the wheel—as if I had a choice.

Before I can buckle my seat belt, she spins the Jeep around. I almost fly out the side. We bounce like crazy over ruts and rocks all the way to the main road. As soon as Daisy feels pavement under the tires, she floors it.

The techs back at the hangar are feeding directions into her Bluetooth as we go—but it’s not like there are a lot of roads out here to choose from. We make two turns and then it’s a straight shot to the scene. She counts down the distance as we approach: “One mile… half mile… two hundred yards!”

She brakes hard and yanks the Jeep onto the shoulder. In the middle of the road, just in front of Bron’s skid marks, is a crushed armadillo. Gross.

Daisy slams the shift lever into park and jumps out. She gets to Bron in about two seconds. I click the high beams to light them up. Bron is moving! He sits up slowly and Daisy grabs his arm. She helps him to his feet. In the headlight beams, I can see a patch of blood on his forehead. His shirt is shredded. But he’s walking and talking. He’s in one piece. The sand dune behind him must have made one hell of an airbag.





Chapter 37


WEIRD. I’M flashing back to my first meeting with Daisy—the one where she laid down the rules.

Rule number one: No contact with Tyler Bron.

Consider that rule busted.

“Are you okay?” I ask. “Anything broken?”

“I’m fine,” Bron says evenly. He shakes off Daisy’s help.

“Where the hell were you going?” she asks.

“What?” he says coldly. “You mean it’s not in your mission plan?”

All of a sudden he’s right up in my face—madder than I’ve ever seen anybody. But controlled. Really, tightly controlled.

“She really sucked me in. And you were just stringing me along… like some kind of puppet!”

“You should sit down,” says Daisy. “Take it easy for a minute.”

But he’s not done. I take a step back. I’m worried that he’s going to uncork a punch. But he stays at a low burn, which almost makes it worse.

“You know, I had a life. And it wasn’t a terrible life. And maybe I shouldn’t have been so quick to change it. It’s my fault. I can see it now for what it was. At least I knew what was real and what wasn’t. This was all a big mistake.”

He looks straight at me and points. “Starting with you.”

Before I can say anything, he hops in the Jeep. He puts it into gear and takes off—back the way he was heading. Somewhere in the general direction of civilization.

Daisy and I are standing in the middle of the road like idiots. That’s when I lose it.

“DAMN IT!”

I’m shouting at myself, at Daisy, at the whole stinking desert. “I just blew everything. How the hell did this happen? I just threw away my last chance! I blew it!”

Daisy is calm—and in no mood for any of my shit.

“Hey. Shakespeare,” she says, “this is not about you.”

She walks back down the incline to where the Yamaha is lying in the sand. As she pushes it up the slope, I grab the handlebars and tug it the rest of the way onto the shoulder.

Bent fender. Dented exhaust pipe. Cracked headlight lens. It could have been a lot worse.

Daisy swings her leg over the saddle and kick-starts the bike on the first try. She wheels it around and points it back toward the hangar. Bron is long gone.

“Well?” she says. “Don’t just stand there. Climb on.”