“So you can turn invisible?”
“I can,” she said. “With limits.”
“Pretty awesome.”
“You know what I used to do with it?” She was talking now mostly to keep herself awake.
“What?”
“Shoplift. That was my big contribution to society.”
“Like, steal jewelry?”
“Nope,” she said, enjoying the reclined seat. “Just crap. Clothes. I stole school supplies, if you can imagine it. Pens. Paper. Notebooks. I always really wanted to have a nice stapler, so I stole one.”
He laughed. “Rebel.”
“As bad as they come. Who would have thought we’d end up here?”
He paused. “Where?”
“Running from the army,” she said, suddenly a little more alert. He was testing her.
“What do you think we should do next?” he said. “I mean, I know what Laura thinks. What do you think?”
“I don’t know,” Aubrey said, shaking her head. “Maybe go to Mexico. Maybe something else.”
“Don’t you have a family back home?”
“I have a dad,” she said. “Who sold me and Jack out for beer money. I’m in no hurry to see him.”
“What about Jack?”
“He has family. Well, parents.”
“That’s not what I mean,” Dan said. “I mean, is Jack like family?”
She paused. She wasn’t expecting that question, especially not from someone like Dan.
“I . . . I don’t know. I mean, yes, I think. The closest thing I have.” She turned in her seat. “What about you? Family?”
“My old man was from Denver,” he said. “But he died a couple years ago.” Aubrey had read something like that in Dan’s military file—that he was from Denver.
“What about your mom?”
“My mother?” he asked, with a little smile. “Old. I don’t see her much—haven’t seen her in years. She didn’t like the way my dad was raising me.”
“She in Denver, too?”
“No,” he said. “Chicago.”
Aubrey sat upright in her seat.
“Are you serious?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Haven’t you heard?”
Dan’s face went pale. “Heard what?”
“Where’s the smartphone?”
“Laura took it with her.”
“You need to find a computer,” Aubrey said, opening the car door. It was dark, and she was incredibly shaky on her feet, but she pointed to the house in front of them. Dan was out the door and at her side, holding her up by the elbow.
“What happened to Chicago?”
“It’s not good.”
Dan almost carried her the remaining steps up the path. The house was completely dark, and as Dan strode forward the cement porch buckled upward, splintering the wooden door in half.
A man in his underwear ran out into the living room.
“What are you doing?”
“Where’s your computer?” Dan demanded.
“We’re not going to hurt you,” Aubrey said. “Please tell us where it is.”
“I have cash,” the man said. “Just leave us alone.”
“Tell us where the computer is,” Dan shouted.
The man pointed down the hall.
Dan almost ran, leaving Aubrey to rely on the walls to support herself. She got to the room just as the start-up screen began to glow.
“It’s not good,” Aubrey said again.
“It’s the third-biggest city in the country,” he said, seething. “Second-biggest financial district. Second- largest labor pool.”
“What are you talking about?” Aubrey sat down in a chair behind him. She heard the man in the other room calling the police.
“Kraft Foods, McDonald’s, Motorola, Sears, United Airlines, Abbott Labs. Railroads. Ports. Tech companies.”
He opened a browser and began typing into the search bar.
“It was supposed to be off-limits. It was supposed to be off-limits.”
The pictures were worse than Aubrey had feared. The entire city was on fire. A thousand columns of smoke all merging into one.
“That bastard,” Dan seethed, his teeth clenched. “It was supposed to be off-limits.” He smashed his hand into the end table, punching the wood over and over until it had broken and his hand was a mess of blood and cuts.
He went back to the search engine, his blood dripping on the keyboard. He pulled up a blog.
It was purple lettering on a pink background: “Susie’s Musings.”
The posts were all short, and he scrolled through them, his finger leaving a red dribble down the screen.
“There it is,” he said, leaning back in the chair. “I try to save his worthless life, and this is how he repays me.”
Aubrey read over Dan’s shoulder.
User: SusieMusie
Mood: Pissed off
Have you ever seen that movie Chicago? Erica = Roxie, and Sara = Velma. Both should be locked up ASAP. They’re both crazy and they deserve each other. They are a severe, SEVERE pain in my butt.
He smacked the screen, leaving a handprint. “Seventh word is the target. Eighteenth word is the time frame. Thirty-first word is additional notes. Chicago, ASAP, severe.”
“What does that mean?” Aubrey said, but Dan was up out of his chair. He pushed past the bewildered man and charged back out the front door. The man tried to grab Aubrey and she disappeared just long enough to slip from his grasp, then reappeared and ran after Dan.
“Where are they?” Dan said to Aubrey.
“I don’t know.”
“Spray that stuff,” he said. “That perfume.”
FIFTY-EIGHT
JACK SMELLED IT ALMOST IMMEDIATELY. A strong—a very strong—whiff of Flowerbomb.
“I’ve got to go,” Jack said, turning away from the rocks that overlooked the Coronado Naval Base.
“Do you have a count yet?” Laura asked, peering into the darkness.
“Why are we doing this? I thought we were going for supplies.”
“We’re doing this first.” She had hold of his wrist.
“I can smell the perfume,” Jack said. “They need us back there. Didn’t you hear that big crash a couple
