Overtaken Read online

  Dad set me aside in his office and quickly tended to his remaining responsibilities, then clocked out a little early. Being a respected doctor, not to mention one of Richard Cochran’s favorite researchers, was a perk he didn’t take advantage of often, but it was more than enough to grease the wheels when needed.

  Tonight was one of those times.

  I waited until we were in the car and pulling out of the parking lot to pitch him my plan.

  “Dana’s house is on the way home,” I announced as if it were a fun fact my dad didn’t know.

  He shook his head, eyes on the road, guessing exactly what was on my mind. “You’ve had more than enough adventure for one night.”

  It was a no, but it wasn’t firm enough to not risk a second pass.

  “Please, Dad,” I pleaded, staring right at him. He looked at me as I continued. “Just a quick drive-by. We don’t have to go inside.”

  My dad didn’t answer, but I could see the wheels spinning in his head. He just turned his eyes back toward the road and continued driving. It was past curfew, and the roads were completely empty. Just when I thought he was taking me home, he suddenly made a sharp turn that pointed us toward Dana’s ritzy neighborhood.

  “Just a drive-by,” he insisted quite firmly. He was tightening the reins, making sure I felt the boundary.

  I nodded and looked out the window. The other houses in Dana’s neighborhood were just as impressive as the extravagant Fox compound. Not surprisingly, the Cochran home was also only a few blocks away. Tudor mansions and modern ski chalets blended together in an overwhelming theme: wealth. Each plot was expansive, dotted with trees wrapped in tiny white Christmas lights. I’d almost forgotten that the holiday was less than a month away.

  My dad slowed down as Dana’s house came into view. The Martha Stewart photo spread was ruined by the collection of Bar Tech Security cars parked outside, their red and yellow lights flashing.

  As we rolled closer, we could see a half-dozen uniformed Bar Tech security guards mulling around on the front lawn. They weren’t alone. Dana was with them.

  “What’s she doing?” I rolled down my window, but we weren’t close enough to make out any words. I had to go see what was happening. My dad was already turning the corner, a necessary move to avoid their suspicions.

  “Just drive out of sight,” I advised. “I can sneak back on foot.”

  He glared at me like I had two heads. “No way am I letting you out of this car.” There it was. The stern not-if-hell-freezes-over version of his “no” face.

  “Dad. Please.” I refused to take no for an answer. Danger or not, I had to know what happened to Jackson.

  Dad didn’t slow, but he didn’t press into the gas yet either. I could feel my window of opportunity shrinking fast—probably another few blocks if that. I turned to look behind us. We’d crested a small hill. I couldn’t see Dana’s house anymore, which meant they couldn’t see us.

  “Please. Pull over.” My voice had more urgency, bordering on desperation.

  My father stopped the car short on the side of the road and looked at me. He could tell by the worried look in my eyes how important this was to me—how important Jackson was to me. Dangerous or not, he knew I wouldn’t let up. And couldn’t let up.

  “I don’t like you putting yourself in danger.”

  Present tense! Relief ran through me. Dad was going to let me go.

  “I’ll be careful,” I promised. My dad shook his head and exhaled audibly. “Five minutes. And don’t get too close. Never know who’s watching.”

  I nodded, then opened the car door and hopped out. I closed it as quietly as I could. Through the window, I held up five fingers as confirmation. I heard him and would obey. If only I could go invisible on command.

  I hoofed it back over the small hill, careful to stay at just the edge of the road. I wasn’t expecting any other drivers, but my dad would’ve murdered me if I ended up roadkill.

  I crested the hill and had the Fox house back in my sights. My heart was pounding so loud I was sure everyone could hear it.

  Three guards stood out front. There was no sign of Dana. Where was she? Where was everyone else? Nerves hit me as I skulked closer. Had they noticed my dad and me drive by? Still safely out of earshot, I jogged to the corner and around to the mouth of the driveway. As I double-checked the street, I counted six Bar Tech cars. It was unlikely any of the guards had parked there and walked home in this posh neighborhood.

  Then through the large picture window I spotted a figure pacing by the Foxe’s large Frasier fir Christmas tree and their equally enormous fireplace. Even though Christmas was almost a month away, the Fox family was already prepping for a very happy holiday now that beloved Dana was back home. As I squinted, I could make out a few more people in the living room. Not leftover kids from the party, however. These were the missing Bar Tech guards, warming their hands by the fire. I could barely make Dana’s face out, though. Was she merely a nervous teenage girl, unsure of how to deal with a group of authoritative men demanding answers she couldn’t give? Or was she a collaborating narc, selling out Jackson’s secrets and celebrating over the unconsumed party food spread?

  And where was Jackson? Was he okay? Or had he been carted off and locked away, never to be seen again?

  I pushed closer to Dana’s house. Each step was careful now. More measured. I was near enough to the guards that they’d hear a clumsy clod or two.

  Focus, Nica.

  Just past the guards, I pivoted to head toward the window, but a glittering expanse of fresh snow powder that had started to fall stopped me in my tracks. One more step, and I’d be two feet into a ghostly footprint the nearby guards would certainly take an interest in. Was it worth a try? Or was I just trying to talk myself into risky behavior because I was so anxious to find out what words Dana was exchanging with the guards inside.

  As soon as my dad’s voice chimed in, “Be careful, Nica; be safe, Nica,” I deflated and knew the plan was toast. Of course the snow was going to keep me from getting to the bottom of this post-curfew Bar Tech house call.

  What options did I have left?

  I turned on my heels, slinking away as quickly as I’d come. Disappointment sucked the adrenaline from my veins, and the bitter-cold Colorado air wrapped around me as I hustled back to my dad’s idling Prius. What good was my power if I couldn’t even use it to help the guy who made my heart go crazy?

  My dad was inside his car, neck anxiously craned around to the backseat, probably counting down the seconds as he awaited my return. I gave a dispirited shrug, but he continued to stare straight through me. It wasn’t his fault, though. As physics would have it, he could stare straight through me. A few deep breaths, a cold front to shock my lungs, and I popped back into visible reality. Dad heaved an enormous sigh of relief as all the tension drained from his body. He turned around and quickly started the car as his free hand massaged his cramping neck.

  I collapsed into the seat next to him and leaned into the heat pouring from the Prius’s vents. Being invisible didn’t do shit with the cold. We pulled away from the side of the road before Dad pushed for a full report.

  “They were inside. I couldn’t hear anything,” I lamented, visibly upset at my inability to find out anything of substance.

  “I’ll see what I can find out tomorrow,” Dad promised sympathetically. He knew Jackson weighed heavily on my mind.

  I stared out the window, worrying about Jackson, as we sped back home before Bar Tech ever became aware of us.

  The ordinary chatter in the quad was exactly the small talk one would expect after a weekend: whispers of hookups, the flaunting of new outfits and electronics, and kids bitching about homework and their weird families like badges of honor. But this was the kind of catching up to be expected at a normal school in a normal town with normal kids, not surreal Barrington, where Jackson Winters
had just publicly given his best Dr. Manhattan impression. Maybe it was worse in my mind, but an electric-blue-tinged snowboarding star conducting serious voltage through his body? Granted, I was biased, but how could the student body be talking about anything else? And where was Bar Tech Security?

  The last day and a half of intensifying cabin fever had stoked my paranoia beyond reason. Dad had insisted I stay home behind locked doors after Dana’s party had run so completely and thoroughly amok. He was aided by Bar Tech Security’s own request (which really amounted to an order) for Barrington’s citizens to stay indoors while the town’s electrical grid was repaired. They blamed the downed cell and online services on a freak weather microburst. The company’s latest tall tale would usually have resulted in an instantaneous explanation via Google, but the downed Internet gave me an excuse to crack open a book. Marcus Ashley’s Encyclopaedia Britannica did not disappoint. The M volume was happy to be of service, its satiny pages delivering me a succinct summary of the localized weather oddity—an upside-down tornado of sorts. I had to give it to them. A microburst was a creative cover for Barrington’s latest pulse, albeit still leaving the flash of green light, mass irritability, and resulting superpowers thoroughly unexplained.

  My only contact with the outside world was a surprise package from my mother. The small box included a bunch of photos of Lydia outside and around the base, a social butterfly even among cloistered researchers. She’d also included a small jar of snow—long since melted, but impressively clear—and a few strange crafts she’d traded other residents for. Most of it was ostensibly junk, but it just made me miss her more.

  I tried phoning her several times, but each attempt was met with the same infuriating “all circuits busy” recording and to try again later. I threw the phone across the room. Screw later. I was going crazy and needed to talk to my mother pronto. I needed a lifeline to some kind of normalcy outside the craziness that was my life. And at that moment my mother filled the bill. This so-called idyllic all-American, small-town existence my mother desperately wanted for me was proving to be way more treacherous and hazardous to my health (and that of my friends) than the stealth anacondas in the darkest Amazonian jungle.

  Despite a brief text exchange Oliver was mostly unreachable, keeping vigil at his mother’s hospital bedside. Considering she’d been bruised, battered, and tossed around during the accident itself, Mrs. Monsalves was in remarkably good condition (no broken bones, no internal injuries). So much so that she was discharged from the hospital by late Sunday afternoon.

  Risky as I knew it was, I wished I could reach out to Maya. My anxiety level was reaching a feverish pitch, and I had to know she was safe. But I knew I couldn’t. That was how people got caught.

  Whatever Bar Tech was really doing with free rein of the deserted streets, I had no idea. The interminable isolation was maddening. My dad tried to find out more about what happened at Dana’s without much success. Instead, he did his best to keep me from pulling my hair out: X-Files marathon! Father-daughter cook-off! All just momentary distractions from my biggest concern: Jackson.

  What exactly happened to him after the party? I tried calling and texting him but couldn’t reach him. Had his massive explosion of power altered and changed him? What if it were Jackson and not the pulse that had shorted out the entire town? As I stared out of my bedroom window at all the well-kept houses in our well-ordered town, each paranoid scenario I concocted in my head grew darker and more ominous. I had visions of Jackson being waterboarded in some abandoned warehouse or locked up behind Bar Tech bars or alone in the woods, burning up, unable to harness the electricity coursing through him. Or my worst nightmare of all: Jackson recovering from the pulse in Dana’s loving arms. Did Dana now know everything about Jackson’s power? And maybe Oliver’s and mine as well? Our deepest secret had cemented our friendship. Had Dana’s sudden reappearance weakened or destroyed it? Developing our powers together had taken our friendship to a whole new level. Or so I had thought.

  At least now that I was finally at school, the horrid anticipation could come to an end. Was Bar Tech waiting to pounce on me as soon as I set foot on school grounds? Would they spirit me away to some deep, dark, secret location? I trod carefully as I scanned the quad for Jackson and Oliver. I just needed my friends to be alive and safe.

  As if on cue, a hand on my shoulder sent a shudder up my spine. I turned, ready to wrap Jackson in the most platonic hug I could muster. But instead of looking up into his blue eyes, I looked straight ahead into Dana’s emerald-green ones. She followed through on the hug before my body language could rescind the offer.

  “It’s so good to be back.” Dana beamed at me, her smile wrongfully suggesting we were the closest of friends reuniting after a long separation.

  “Yeah, I’m sure.” I wriggled out of her embrace, my discomfort as obvious as Dana’s ease.

  “I’m ready to start over. Take on whatever’s thrown my way. Tabula rasa. The possibilities seem endless.” Dana oozed sincerity even though the sentiments were Hallmark at best.

  “Uh-huh. So much . . . potential.”

  “Speaking of clean slates . . .” Dana’s glossed lips curled as her voice took on a throaty, conspiratorial tone. “I saw Chase over the weekend.”

  “At the hospital?” I leaned back on my heel, immediately suspicious of how she’d dodged the town’s house arrest.

  “Yesterday afternoon,” Dana volunteered.

  “How is he?” While I’d heard that Chase was recovering, I hadn’t heard he was well enough for visitors. My father hadn’t said anything about that.

  “Much better. He’s been through a lot,” Dana lamented with a sympathetic sigh. “I feel so bad. I had no idea . . .”

  “He’s not the only one who’s been through a lot,” I replied pointedly but cryptically, wondering what she was driving at.

  “I heard how messed up things had gotten between Maya and him. Can’t say I’m surprised. I always knew she was erratic. High-strung. He’s lucky he wasn’t more seriously injured.”

  “Sounds like he remembers what happened.” I stepped closer to Dana, worried about what details Chase had shared with her.

  “Bits and pieces,” Dana recounted cryptically.

  “Must be hard, not remembering everything,” I said, laying on the compassion, hoping Dana would feel the need to divulge more.

  “It is,” Dana confided with a look of hesitation and uncertainty, which seemed unusual for her.

  “What do you mean?” I was curious at what could possibly unbalance the indomitable Dana Fox.

  “It’s a little embarrassing.” Her eyes bounced from me down to her rustic-chic Frye boots. “It’s about my party.”

  “What about it?” Was the Chase discussion merely a pretext to knock me off guard? What did Dana know? I took a deep breath, trying to temper my pounding heart.

  “I don’t remember what happened,” Dana continued. “I remember everyone being there. I was having so much fun . . . and then nothing but a blank. A memory gap.”

  I studied Dana’s perfect face, searching for the truth. Had she actually forgotten what happened to Jackson? Or was she just playing me, hoping to trip me up? Did she somehow know that I’d returned to her house? I had to step carefully. One tiny slip of the tongue and my cover could be blown.

  I mulled the possibilities. Perhaps Dana was just another unwitting victim of Bar Tech’s machinations. Maybe they were behind her memory blackout and her brainwashing conveniently dovetailed with a night of teenage self-indulgence. The alternative, however, was much more troublesome. What if Dana’s memory loss was all an act? A convenient solution, which painted her innocence in a seemingly foolproof lie? As sweet and as friendly as Dana presented on the surface, I didn’t quite believe her sincerity. She seemed just a tiny bit eager to get me to like her. For all Dana’s natural confidence and popularity, there was just something about her t
hat felt forced and phony. Inauthentic. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what was off about Dana Fox, but I knew I wasn’t ready to trust her. She really was tabula rasa—a clean slate. And I was determined not to let her read me either.

  “Wish I could help,” I said with an empathetic smile and my best poker face. “But I wasn’t the last to leave. You should ask Jackson.”

  “I will,” replied Dana with a warm, friendly smile, not betraying any hint of anything being amiss with my suggestion. “But first I need to work out my stupid schedule. See you later.”

  I stood in the middle of the quad and watched Dana strut off, smiling and greeting her old friends, eager to reclaim her rightful place in the Barrington universe. In the meantime, I was left with no real answers, only more questions.

  “Lucky for Dana your eyes don’t shoot lasers,” Oliver quipped as he strolled up and parked beside me seconds later, “or she’d be one crispy critter.”

  Oliver and I stood side by side and surveyed everyone’s faces as they strode by. I was struck by how disturbingly normal everyone appeared. No anxiety, no fear, just smiles and laughter. It was as if it were all for show.

  “By the way,” I said, looking at Oliver, “what are you doing here?”

  “Mom’s much better, so I decided to risk being rounded up by the Bar Tech storm troopers,” he said, eyes on alert as he scanned the campus quad for impending danger.

  “All quiet on the western front,” I confirmed, letting him know that our favorite goon squad was nowhere in sight.

  “For now,” Oliver said as he gave me a wary sidelong glance. “Three days ago it seems like the world was coming to an end. Today it’s sunshine and lollipops. A guy could get whiplash. What the hell’s going on?”

  “Beats me.” I shook my head and shrugged, truly mystified. “But there’s one person who might have a clue.”