Dan’s phone rang, and she checked the screen before she pressed it to her ear. “Caleb,” she mouthed.
Well, that was one small piece of good news.
Or was it?
As Dan listened, the colour drained out of her face, and I began to get a bad, bad feeling in my gut. Dan had trekked through the jungle to start a war with a drug-peddling psychopath with barely a hint of nerves. She chased terrorists for fun.
“Hide.” She listened a moment. “No, no, no! Promise me you’ll hide. We’re on our way. Love you, okay?”
On our way to do what?
Suddenly, being stuck on the wheel with Bradley was beginning to look like the more attractive option.
CHAPTER 4
“WHAT’S WRONG?” I asked the instant Dan hung up.
“There’s a man with a gun inside the sphere, and he’s taken everyone on the ride hostage. Fuck, I feel sick.”
Oh. Fuck indeed.
I was already evaluating. The sphere was closed, cordoned off due to a technical fault. Was there genuinely an electrical or mechanical problem? Or was that a ruse? If it was the latter, that suggested at least some degree of organisation rather than a total nutter acting on impulse. Plus he’d managed to sneak a gun past security. Sure, we’d all managed it too, but we’d also had plenty of practice at that sort of thing. Who were we up against?
And more to the point, how the hell were we meant to get inside the oversized ball bearing? Apart from the entrance at the front—now closed—I couldn’t even see a door.
“What else did Race say?”
“Not much. I didn’t want him talking. The train pulled up to the empty platform, and the man was there waiting. Race was sitting at the back with Vine, and he managed to wriggle out of his restraints and crawl back along the track, but everyone else is stuck in the cars. Last thing Race heard, the fucker was demanding everyone’s phones.”
“Any idea what the guy wants?”
“No clue. We’ve got to get in there.”
This was as shaken as I’d ever seen Dan, and considering she’d nearly been burned to a crisp by a madman earlier in the year, that was saying something.
“And we will get in there, but we’ll do it the right way. We’ve spent half our lives training for this shit. It’s one guy and a roller coaster. A walk in the park.”
Quite literally, and as we hustled back across the plaza to the Steampunk Saloon, I called Ana with an update. I was in two minds about developments. Yes, I’d been bored out of my skull, but did I really want to get into another gunfight?
“Hey, suka. So there’s a teeny problem.”
“They can’t find an engineer? Everyone just ran off to the east side of the park, and Bradley won’t stop singing.”
In the background, I heard three voices mullering one of the songs from Frozen, and when I looked up at the pod on the right-hand side of the wheel, Ana was sitting on the floor at one end with her knees drawn up to her chest and her hands over her ears. I took her foul mood and raised it to heinous.
“They’re probably chasing the capybaras.”
“The what?”
“Never mind. We’ve got bigger things to worry about—apparently there’s a hostage situation in the giant silver sphere. Can you see any unusual activity from up there? A guy came out and closed it ten minutes ago, but I wasn’t paying much attention after that.”
Now Ana got to her feet, and her assessment took seconds. We’d both done it a thousand times, looked over a scene a regular person wouldn’t blink twice at and identified areas of concern. People out of place, objects where they shouldn’t be, counter-surveillance, possible dangers.
“Nothing’s happening. Doors are locked. A teenager just tried them, but now he’s walking away. There’s a notice pinned to the outside. What kind of a hostage situation?”
“Not sure at the moment. Race got away, but he couldn’t talk much. One guy with a gun that he saw, but maybe more.”
“Is he in danger?”
“Depends whether they realise he’s missing or not.” Dan stiffened beside me. “Can you see any other doors?”
“Not on this side.”
“Keep watching, okay? We need to get gear from the cars.”
And brief Mack and Carmen. And keep Dan calm. And come up with a coherent plan, all while avoiding packs of marauding wildlife. No biggie.
Mack and Carmen were relaxing with their drinks and a platter of nibbles when we jogged up the outside stairs to the terrace. Thankfully there was only one other occupied table, and that was in the far corner. I did not want to be having this conversation with an audience.
“A bunch of capybaras escaped,” Mack told us. “Did you know they can run as fast as a small horse, and if they get into water, they can stay under for five minutes?”
“We heard, but there’s a more pressing matter right now.” I took the cocktail out of her hand. “You need to put that down.”
Her smile faded. “Why? What’s going on?”
I gave her a brief overview. “Can you find us any more info? I know damn well you can’t spend more than five minutes in front of a computer without attempting something illegal. Are you in their network?”
“Just the outer fringes. But the security was set up by a first-grader, so it shouldn’t take long. Can you believe their Wi-Fi passwords are only six characters long?”
“We need camera feeds. And we also need to find a way inside the sphere. Look for staff maps, floor plans, anything. And find out who the supervisors are. One of them informed the rangers there’d been a power failure over there, and we’re not sure if that genuinely happened, or whether he was forced to say it, or if he was even involved somehow.”
“What if the power failure at the wheel was a distraction?” Dan asked, and I was pleased she’d got her head back into the game. “The monkeys would make a convenient scapegoat.”
“Anything’s possible. But we can do the post-mortem later. Let’s get our kit.”
A scream from below made me swivel in a heartbeat. A quick scan of the plaza around the sphere didn’t reveal the source, but then Carmen elbowed me in the side.
“¡Qué hostia! She’s insane.”
Now what? When I turned, I saw Ana had pried open the hatch on the glass pod she was in, and now she was halfway along one arm of the wheel with her arms stretched out to the sides like a high-wire artiste. Bloody hell.
“Can’t disagree with you there.”
Bradley was busy sealing the pod with what looked like neon-pink washi tape while Josh and Tabby sat on the bench seat. Bradley may have been a lunatic, but in a situation like this one, he’d step up to the plate. And I was glad Ana would have my back when we went into the sphere. We connected. I knew how she’d react in any given situation and vice versa. If I couldn’t have Black by my side, then Ana made a worthy substitute.
Gasps came from below as she slid down a vertical support pointing to six o’clock as if it were a fireman’s pole, and she neatly sidestepped when a ranger tried to speak to her. Moments later, she disappeared into the milling crowd. Nicely done.
Of course, she didn’t come in our direction. No, she’d drawn too much attention to herself and we didn’t need any extra scrutiny, not with what we were about to do. The lack of activity around the sphere suggested nobody except us had realised what was going on in there. That gave me hope that we could do a quick smash-and-dash. Get in, get our kids, get the hell out of there, then leave the cops to clear up the aftermath.