“What are you talking about?”
He let out a feeble sigh. “Look, we’re obviously going back to the police station. There’s not much we can do about that. But if we coordinate our story, only one of us will be put in a holding cell. All you have to do is tell them I kidnapped you—”
“No!”
“No way!”
“It’s the only chance we have of escaping!” Zack insisted.
“For us,” Amanda shot back. “Not for you.”
“There has to be a way through the barrier!” Mia exclaimed. “Why would I write it to myself if it wasn’t true?”
Amanda winced in frustration. She could feel the tempic wall in her mind. She could even touch it, in ways she couldn’t explain. But as sure as she knew anything, she knew she couldn’t do more than make a few ripples in the surface.
Twenty feet from the passenger side, a policeman shouted through the ghosted window. “Turn off the engine and step outside with your hands up. It’s the only way you’re getting out of this in one piece.”
Theo lifted Rebel’s gun by the edge of the handle, then carefully placed it under his seat. “I hate to say it, but I think we’re out of options.”
“Let’s just do what they tell us,” Hannah said, her eyes welling with tears. “I don’t want to die. I don’t want to see any of you die.”
“But what’ll they do to us?” Mia asked.
“I don’t know, sweetie, but is it any worse than getting shot to death?”
David shook his head in bother. “I can’t believe what I’m hearing. We just survived six murderous people who had talents like ours. They attacked us without warning and we still beat them. Now after all that, you’re looking to surrender to four mere coppers?”
“It’s not that simple,” Amanda said.
“Of course it is. They have weapons. So do we. We know theirs. They don’t know ours. If we work intelligently, we could disarm them before they even know what hit them.”
Once again, everyone leered at David in dark wonder. He was getting used to the look.
“That’s crazy,” Hannah griped. “You’re going to get us all killed.”
Theo nodded. “She’s right. We only got out of that building through dumb luck. We push it again and someone’s going to die.”
Mia bit her thumb in tense deliberation. She fell well on the side of the cautious majority, and yet she knew that without David’s reckless gallantry, she’d be a frozen corpse in the security room.
Zack kept his tense gaze fixed on the windshield. He could see hints of the tempic barrier through the clouds and cracks, an urgent puzzle that taunted him. If only Quint hadn’t been so damn stingy with his information.
His brow suddenly rose. His mouth fell open. “Oh. Wait a second.”
While David continued to argue with Theo and the sisters, Zack turned around in his seat.
“Wait a second! Guys!”
He got their attention. Between his wide eyes and hanging jaw, his friends saw a glimmer of hope.
“I know how to get through it.”
—
Zack’s good news wasn’t good at all to the Great Sisters Given.
“No!” Amanda yelled. “Absolutely not!”
It took him just nineteen seconds to explain his idea. While he filled in the others, he removed the Salgados’ nightstick from the door holster and passed it to an incredulous Hannah.
“One of those two posts has the generator. It could be on the outside. It could be on the inside. In any case, you break it and the wall goes away.”
Two weeks ago, when Quint demonstrated a tempic barrier in action, Zack had noticed a thermos-size power pack on the frame. According to Quint, tempis didn’t run on electricity. It was fueled by something called solis. But power was power. Lack of power, in this case, was freedom.
There was, however, one significant drawback to the plan.
“You’re risking my sister’s life!” Amanda snapped.
“It is a risk,” Zack acknowledged. “I’d do it myself if I could. But Hannah’s the only one who can smash it. She’s the only one fast enough to get away.”
“It could work,” David said. “If she attacks from the woods, as Zack suggested, they won’t even notice her until the barrier’s down.”
Mia peeked out the ghosted window as stealthily as she could. “But the motorcycle cops are wearing speedsuits . . .”
“Yes, but they’re not wearing shifters,” Zack replied. “The shifters are in the bikes. They can’t speed on foot.”
“How the hell do you know that?”
He looked back to Amanda, suddenly sheepish. “I saw it on lumivision.”
“Oh my God . . .”
“I’m right about this. I’m telling you.”
“No. I’m not letting you do this. You’re not throwing my sister’s life away on some stupid—”
“I’ll do it.”
“—half-assed plan that doesn’t even make sense.”
“I’ll do it,” Hannah repeated, in a tiny voice. She held the nightstick with white-knuckled fear. Rubber and wood, against two metal posts and four men with guns.