Echoes of Danger

“I won’t put you in danger. I’m going to fight this, Emma, but I have to come up with a plan. I can’t fight if I don’t have any ammunition, and if I don’t know who I’m fighting.”

“Bless your heart. You be careful, you hear?”

“I’m afraid for Stevie,” Dana replied by way of an explanation.

Emma nodded. Family came first, no matter the cost. “Go to Tony then. Let him help you. He’s always wanted you with him, anyway.”

Dana looked away. “But he doesn’t want Stevie.”

“If he loves you, he’ll take Stevie, too.”

And so Dana and Stephen had taken off into the night, fleeing. Dana had never run from anything, not hard work, not tragedy, not her responsibilities, but now, for Stephen’s sake, she was officially on the lam.

She couldn’t help but wonder how long it would be before she found her way home again.

“Do people really get up this early?” Tony asked, one eye cocked toward the digital clock over his elaborate computer system. “And did I ask you yet, what in the world are you doing here, and what’s that smell?” He held two long, white fingers to his nostrils, pinching them together while making a disgusted face.

Dana pushed Stephen onto a nearby black leather sofa, ignoring the clutter of newspapers and high-tech magazines littering one corner. “Try to go back to sleep, sport.” Then she turned to Tony again. “Tony, we need your help. Otto got shot, then half the house got blown away in a tornado, then they burned down the rest. Somebody’s trying to either scare us or get something from us. Or just plain murder us.”

Tony was wide-awake now. “All of this happened in Prairie Heart? Maybe I’m living in the wrong town.”

Dana looked over at the man she’d once thought she loved. Thank goodness she’d figured out it wasn’t love that held her to Tony. Convenience, friendship, companionship, loyalty—it was all of these, but not love. She hadn’t realized that until this moment, when in the light of harsh morning, she saw him for himself.

He was handsome, in a scrawny Nicholas Cage kind of way. He looked like a Kansas farm boy, but he had the brains of a rocket scientist. His entire head was covered with red tufts of thick, coarse hair that looked like rusty steel wool. Dana had never once seen him comb it. He wore a holey Star Trek T-shirt that featured a faded Mr. Spock and Captain Kirk. Tony was a Trekkie, but he was also a Techie. People teased her brother, calling him a geek, but Tony was the real geek. He was very smart. Too smart.

In their junior year of high school, he’d been one of the best basketball players on the team. But during a play-off game, he’d been fouled and injured. Laid up with a broken ankle, he’d turned to his computer for comfort. Since then, he lived and breathed technology. His ankle still gave him trouble now and then, but he was in pretty good shape considering he rarely moved from his desk except to go down to the nearby park and shoot a few hoops with the inner-city boys.

Tony didn’t drive a car; he cruised the Internet. Even now, his e-mail was signaling that he had an incoming message. He ignored it, a rare concession to Dana’s paying him a visit, and took another less sleepy look at her. “You’ve been through a fire.”

“Yes,” she said, plopping her elbows on her knees so she could bury her smutty face in her hands. “I’ve been through more than a fire. I’ve been through the worst kind of destruction.”

“I’ll make coffee,” he said, tugging at his faded red sweat-pants. “Then you tell me exactly what’s going on.”

She did, spilling the entire story out between fits of crying and fits of anger. “This woman wants to either scare us or kill us, for some reason. They said I had something they needed. They torched my house. And I know in my heart these people shot Otto. But the worst of it—they said they’d get Stephen.” Glancing over at her sleeping brother, she whispered, “You know how he is. He’s friendly to everybody. He’s too innocent to know that some strangers are dangerous. I had to get him away from there.”

Tony nodded to the same rhythm his fingers drummed on the cracked yellow countertop of the island bar that served as dining table and control station central in his kitchen. “Yeah, I know how he is. That boy’s a handful, for sure. What can I do?”

She pushed back a red-brown wave of hair, the hurt of his jab toward Stephen’s hyperactive nature making her feel small and doubtful about asking for his help. “Just let me stay here a couple of days. I need a place to hide, while I decide what to do. I went to the sheriff, but there’s no help there. He might be in cahoots with Caryn Roark. He thinks I’m just ranting because I’m under so much stress—ha, this is beyond stress.”

“Yeah, I’d say you’ve been through it.” Tony took her empty coffee cup and uneaten cornflakes. “Go take a long shower and let me absorb the scarce data you’ve given me, then we’ll talk some more after you’ve rested.” When she glanced at her brother, he added, “Stevie’s okay. He can clean up when he wakes up.”

Dana nodded, then rose to move down the short hallway to Tony’s bedroom, her entire body sore and bruised, her entire system begging for a meltdown. She turned at the bathroom door. “Thanks, Tony.”

He winked. “Hey, I’ve been trying to get you to Kansas City. I’m sorry about things, but I’m glad to have you here.” His computer beeped and said something and he absently turned back to the blinking lights of his monitor. Somebody badly wanted him to respond to his e-mail.

Dana came out of the bedroom feeling refreshed if not recharged. She wore her only other set of clothes, a pair of Levi’s and a T-shirt with a huge sunflower painted on the front. Now she needed to find something for Stephen to wear when he got up.

Digging through the tote bag she’d brought, she found Stephen’s new Ruby Runner shoes. They were clean and smoke-free at least. But Emma had given Stephen the wrong pair of shoes. This wasn’t the pair Dana had ordered. These shoes were the latest model, more expensive and much more cushioned than the ones she could afford, but they were the right size at least. They were white with a wide red triangle that resembled a real ruby on either side—the symbol of all Ruby Runner shoes. That same design pattern was molded on the thick soles, too. Stephen would love that continuing pattern.

As Dana turned the shoes over in her hands, the little ruby designs seemed to glow from inside. She was too tired to appreciate it, however. “Fancy,” she mumbled, thinking Emma normally didn’t order such expensive shoes. Well, she certainly couldn’t return them now. She’d settle up with Emma later.

Coming out of the bedroom, Dana saw that Stephen was still asleep, and he still smelled of smoke. She’d have to get him cleaned up and into his new shoes. That would perk him up. She was worried about how all of these changes were going to affect her brother. He didn’t take change very well. Kids like Stephen needed routine and structure; in fact, they demanded it.

She looked from her brother to Tony. Still in his T-shirt and sweats, he was engrossed in the many machines that covered one wall of his tiny apartment. Three monitor screens, several powerful system units and a whole lot of multimedia equipment—scanners, fax machines, telephones, modems, printers and cell phones—all sat like dominoes, leaning here and there, arranged in and on each other, just waiting to set things in motion with the touch of a button.

Dana had never understood computers. Her father had bought her one years ago, at Tony’s insistence, and she had used it to keep up with the farm’s business. Other than that, gadgets didn’t impress her much. They did Tony, however. He was almost like an appendage of his many machines. A walking, talking computer, programmed and ready to run as soon as he saw the blinking cursor. He didn’t even know anyone else was in the room.

“Tony?” she called.

His long fingers danced across the keyboard in front of him, his thick glasses reflected the bright green lettering on the screen he was studying so intensely. His hair seemed to be glowing, as if the entire process demanded that the energy flow directly through his fingers into his brain, bypassing his heart and soul. “Tony?”

“What? Huh?” Absently he held up one hand.

How many times had Dana seen him do that? How many times had she left him in his room back in Prairie Heart, with his machines and his programs? They’d start out studying for a test, and he’d invariably wind up at the computer, under the pretense of typing up some study sheet. Before long, Dana would be left with her textbooks and Tony would be lost in the vast world of a tiny one-inch microchip.

A girl couldn’t compete with that kind of power.

“Tony?” she said again. “Is there any way we could pull up my bank account? I don’t know how much cash I can get my hands on.”

Now she had his attention. Next to setting up computer systems, Tony loved nothing better than hacking into one.

“Sure,” he said, his eyes already back on the screen before him. He was in a chat room on the Internet, and apparently the conversation was lively. “Just give me the name of the bank and your account number.”

Dana dug through her purse and handed him her checkbook. She stood over his shoulder, waiting for him to take the information. “Here.”

Tony stopped typing, then pushed his glasses up on his nose. “I got the funniest message on e-mail. Wanna read it?”

This was part of the routine. Tony loved sharing his e-mail.

“Okay.” Dana took the printout he handed her, not really interested, but needing something to focus on. The words on the page brought her head down. With both hands clasping the sheet of paper, she brought it closer to her face, so she could be sure of what she was reading.

“‘What’s more precious than rubies and gold?’”

Somewhere in the tired recesses of her mind, Dana connected on the familiar, but it slipped away in a pool of cold fear. She didn’t like the tone of this message.

“Who sent this?” she asked Tony, her eyes shifting from the words to the back of his head.

“Don’t know,” he admitted. “They didn’t sign it and I couldn’t trace it. Got jammed out on the first try. Whoever it is, they’re good. They don’t want to be found. But it’s pretty obvious they’re using a forged e-mail address. Their IP numbers are way off and they used a single cap in the address for the Received heading—Uareit.” Still keying in information, he added, “Pretty weird name, though, huh? Almost as if they’re saying ‘You are it.’”

Dana sank down in an old overstuffed beige plaid armchair. “Yeah, too scary. I think this message was sent to me, Tony. I think I am it.”

Tony’s head peeled around. “You? How? Who knows you’re here?”

“Only Emma and Frederick,” she said. “And they don’t know a thing about e-mail.”

“That’s for sure.” He went back to his typing. “Hey, maybe you’re just tired. Getting a little paranoid?”

“Maybe,” she said, her eyes automatically going to Stephen. “And maybe not. Have you ever heard of the Universal Unity Church?”