WRAITH CASE STUDY AUGUSTA PINE #3
“Well, look at the evidence,” I said, voice still low.
“You’re alone, you’re headed to a tech conference, and I’m pretty sure I just saw you texting when no one was looking.
Give me the phone, tablet, whatever you have.
Or this is going to get ugly very quickly.
” I nodded toward Shin and his children, only a few rows away.
“Parents get very upset when someone threatens their kids. And I may not be big enough to make you do something, but he definitely is.”
I wasn’t bluffing; there was a palpable tension in the air. Fear was like gasoline—all it would take was one accusation to spark into violence. People were scared and they would be looking for an outlet to vent that fear.
Unless he was armed, in which case this would get very messy.
For a few long seconds, Archer did not answer. I tensed, readying myself. If he made a move, I would have to react fast. He’d disabled the driver, so hurting someone else wasn’t an impossibility. I’d need to disarm him, get the phone, find a way to break the hack—
Archer pulled his hand out of his pocket. I flinched but it wasn’t a gun. Or even a phone.
It was a small, velvet box.
And then I realized what he’d been doing with his hand, his head tilted downward: opening and closing a jewelry box. He flicked it open with his thumb. A diamond glittered in the orange-tinted sunlight.
“You want this so bad, go ahead,” Archer said. He leaned in closer, voice conspiratorially quiet. “Take it.” He angled the engagement ring so I could take it.
Well. There went that theory. I slouched a little in my seat.
“Disappointed?” asked Archer.
“Well, you just made such a clear-cut villain,” I said. “I was imagining you going to this tech conference with tales of how you effortlessly hijack public transportation.”
“Sorry,” he said a little dryly. He reached up and pulled his sunglasses free. And I realized why he wore them—a scar ran beneath his left eye. He must have gotten tired of people staring. “Next time I’ll try to be more villainous.”
I gave him an even look. “You’re also way too calm for someone on a hijacked bus.”
He shook his head. “This isn’t even close to the worst situation I’ve ever been in.”
I considered him. He could have been ex-military, but I wouldn’t know until I ran his tattoo through a few databases. Which I couldn’t do at the moment; his tattooed hand was tucked into his pocket.
“Fine,” I said. “Who do you think the hijacker is?”
His gaze was a calculating one. “You.”
I tensed again. “What?”
“You accused me, threatened me,” he said. “And you don’t know if I’m armed or not. Only person who does that either knows I’m not the hijacker and won’t hurt them or is stupidly confident.” His chin moved as he gave me a once-over. “So which is it? Guile or stupidity?”
I blinked in surprise. I was usually the person who got underestimated, not the person who did the underestimating.
“You forgot one other motive,” I said.
He raised an eyebrow in silent question.
Before I could answer, my phone rang. I picked up at once, rising to my feet in the same motion. “Yes?”
“We have a problem,” said Prefect in my ear.
“What is it?” I asked.
“You’re headed for the Rogue River,” he said.
It took a moment for his words to sink in.
We were headed for a river.
A river.
A—
Panic burned hot in my chest. Memories flooded back, and for a moment I was frozen by the sensations of pain and cold and the knowledge that death was inescapable.
No. I was on a bus. I wasn’t in a car.
I was still alive.
“Shit.” The word slipped out before I could bite it back. One of Shin’s toddlers looked up at me, her small mouth silently framing the curse. I hastily took two steps away before I could accidentally teach her more new vocabulary.
“You do have a way of summing up these situations,” said Prefect, a slight edge in his voice. He had a good poker face, but his words always became a little more clipped when he was anxious.
“What’s your ETA?” I asked.
“There’s a helicopter headed for you,” he replied. “It’s about twenty-five minutes away.”
I gritted my teeth. “That long?”
“You’re in the middle of nowhere, Augusta.”
“How long until we hit the river?”
Prefect hesitated.
Prefect never hesitated.
“Ten minutes,” he finally said.
And again I was there, in that place I only visited in my nightmares.
The plunge and the jerk of impact—the cracked windows, water streaming inside.
I pinched my wrist hard. The pain drew me back to the moment. “Okay, then.”
“Augusta, what are you—”
I hung up on him. It wasn’t the first time and hopefully it wouldn’t be the last. Then I set my phone to silent.
I couldn’t have Prefect buzzing in my ear, not when I needed to think.
I turned to face the driver. He was still unconscious, one arm dangling limply by his side.
For a moment, I felt an angry stab of envy.
He got to sleep through the chaos behind a layer of bulletproof plexiglass.
If he was conscious, maybe he could stop this.
Maybe he could reprogram the destination.
He’d be motivated to help; the front windshield would probably shatter on impact when we plunged into the river.
A thought snagged in my brain.
The windshield. It would shatter.
I sucked in a sharp breath.
Well. That was a plan.
It was a bad plan. But I didn’t see any better ones.
Hastily, I returned to my seat. There were a few tools I always kept in my backpack: Edgar, some food, a solar charger for my ringware, fingerless gloves with reinforced knuckles, my bump keys, and a window breaker.
Peter watched me as I pulled something out of my bag. “What’s that?”
“Hopefully a way out,” I said.
And before anyone could think to stop me, I hurried to the front of the bus. The doors were all tinted glass, sleek as the rest of the vehicle. I touched the window breaker to the surface. Inside was a spring-loaded trigger. All it would take was one good, hard press.
I jammed the window breaker against the door. In a fraction of a second, the glass frosted over, cracks spiderwebbing over the surface. The glass door shattered and hot summer air rolled into the bus. A few people cried out behind me, but I ignored them.
Chunks of glass fell to the road below, scattering along the pavement and vanishing.
“What are you doing?” A familiar voice came from behind me and I turned. Archer had come up the aisle, one hand gripping the back of a bus seat and the other extended toward me.
Like he was trying to help me.
Or he was trying to hold me back.
There was no way to tell, not right now.
But I had to trust someone.
“Listen,” I said. The wind nearly swallowed my words; I had to half shout them. “I’m going to try and reroute the bus from the driver’s cabin. If I don’t make it or if I can’t, you have to get the kids off this bus before it hits the water. Break the back door open, jump if you have to.”
Archer’s eyes widened. “We’re headed for…”
“Yes,” I said. “In less than ten minutes.”
For a moment, he seemed frozen. Then his expression smoothed out, his shoulders straightening. He nodded sharply. “I’ll do what I have to.”
“Thanks.” I gave him a tight-lipped smile.
“Good luck,” he said simply.
I inhaled, once, twice, bracing myself.
“Prefect,” I said through gritted teeth, “that coffee maker better be worth it.”
And then I stepped outside.
The hot wind hit me like a physical thing.
The air smelled like burned pine and dry sun.
It whipped at my hair, dragged at my clothes, roared in my ears.
You don’t really understand how fast a vehicle is moving until you’re clinging to the side of one.
My fingers clutched so hard to the doorframe that my knuckles ached.
I forced myself to look up from the blur of concrete beneath me. I could see the shape of the forest all around: the skeletons of dead trees, a flicker of deer as they bolted from the road, and the shimmering surface of the distant river.
I reached for the side-view mirror as I edged forward. The bus’s front was mostly flat, with a bumper that wrapped around beneath the side mirror.
I managed to put my foot on the bumper, trying to dig my toes into the small seam between metal and metal. I imagined what it would feel like to be run over by a bus and tried to quash that thought.
It’d be a faster death than drowning, at least.
Still clinging to the side-view mirror, I reached around to the front windshield. Silently hoping that I wouldn’t drop it, I jammed the window breaker against the glass. Squeezing my eyes shut, I pressed harder. For a long heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then I felt the windshield shatter. Glass tinkled all around me; something sharp grazed my cheek.
The bus hit a pothole and the world jerked. I dug my fingers into the seam of the hood. The bus jounced over another rough patch of pavement.
I held on.
There was nothing else I could do.
Finally, the road smoothed out. I used my forearm to push more of the glass away and then I hauled myself upward.
I heaved myself onto the dashboard, using my legs to propel me forward. I half dropped, half fell into the driver’s cabin. Glass crunched beneath me, biting into my palms as I caught myself.
For a few heartbeats, I couldn’t move.
Relief flooded my body, making me unsteady. I leaned over the driver, ready to examine him, and then jerked back. The stench of whiskey rolled off his warm breath.
Drunk.
He was drunk off his ass. He hadn’t been drugged. Which meant—
I checked the navigation screen and saw our destination. “Oh,” I said. And abruptly, a few things became clear.
I picked up the driver’s hand and used his ringware to unlock the cabin door. I stepped out and found an entire bus of people gaping at me.
I must have looked a sight: wind-blown hair and glass clinging to my clothes. “Good news,” I called. “We’re going to be all right.”
Elle had half risen from her seat. “What did you do?”
“I’ll explain everything soon,” I said. “First I have to make a call.”
Prefect picked up halfway through the first ring. “Augusta—”