Mr. Rodriguez had never asked me for anything. Please don’t be the Ku, please don’t be the Ku…
“Do you get the Dallas station?”
“Which one?”
“Any network.”
I covered the phone with my hand. “Screen. I need the feed from WFAA8 from Dallas.”
A screen slid from the wall, blinked, and flared into light. A stretch of a highway, shown from above, clearly filmed from a helicopter. A pack of police cars sped down the asphalt, lights on. In front of them a pale oval of light slid at reckless speed, zigzagging back and forth among the vehicles.
“You know what, Jim, we are some distance away,” a male voice said through the mild static. “We’re going to try to push in on it, but so far we have been unable to see the nature of this vehicle. We are still quite a ways away, so we’ll try to get close and see if we can make out what is underneath that light. We’ll have to see what happens as this vehicle keeps going down the highway here.”
“We know how dangerous these high-speed pursuits are,” a female newscaster said. “Whether on a freeway or on surface streets. But when you have such a bright light obscuring the vehicle, that can’t possibly be safe. It is clearly blinding the officers who are pursuing this person. Can you imagine seeing that in your rearview mirror?”
Sean swore.
Oh no. Please no. I was very clear when Wing checked out of the inn before we went to get Maud. Very clear. I said to stay at Casa Feliz and behave or leave the planet.
“Well, as we can see, Jean, the police aren’t really following too close behind. In fact, they are giving this driver plenty of room, trying to keep him from panicking and doing something reckless…”
“I’m so sorry to ask you for a favor,” Mr. Rodriquez said. “But this is one of my guests. A Ku. His name is Wing.”
Damn it!
“He checked into my inn last night, went out just before sunrise, and now we have this mess happening. I have no idea where he is going.”
I knew exactly where he was going. He was heading down I45 toward me. He was coming back to Gertrude Hunt.
“Thank God someone fitted his boost bike with a daytime obfuscator,” Mr. Rodriguez said.
I looked at Sean.
He raised his hands and mouthed, “It was all you had in the garage.”
“I was his last stop,” Mr. Rodriguez said. “He never checked out.”
Wing was still a guest. If Wing was caught, Mr. Rodriquez would be hauled before the Assembly, and the Assembly wouldn’t be kind.
“He’s barreling down the highway toward you and he’s got half of the Dallas PD behind him. He’s about to clear the city limits and then the State Troopers are going to get involved. I can’t get to him fast enough. We'd have to get in front of him to grab him. Any vehicle we’d have to use to get to that kind of speed would be too attention-grabbing in daylight, and the news channels are having a feeding frenzy. Is there any way you could help me?”
* * *
“Why in the world would you put an obfuscator on his boost bike?”
Sean and I sat in the back of the Ryder truck we had rented forty minutes ago. We’d attached a photon projector to it, drove here, and parked it on the grass well away from the road, on the side of I45. In front of us the highway rolled into the distance, completely empty.
“Because he had nothing at all, and he is a Ku.” Sean rested his arms on the wheel and checked his phone.
“There were refractors in the garage. And a photon projector.”
“I didn’t see those, but even if I did, I wouldn’t have put one on his bike.”
“Why not?”
“Because he is a Ku. We used them as scouts on Nexus. He barely follows the rules as is and he drives like a maniac. If he got it through his thick skull that his boost bike was now invisible, he would zip around in daylight. We’d have a pileup on every major interstate after he was through. I put the obfuscator on there and told him it was only for emergencies and if he used it, law enforcement would come and hunt him.”
Put that way, I had to agree. Wing was a menace. He wouldn’t just cause accidents. He would cause many accidents. People would be hurt, possibly die.
Sean growled under his breath. “Arland is ignoring my texts.”
“Have you tried sending a kissy face?”
Sean looked at me for a moment.
“Maybe he’s just not that into you.”
He tapped his ear piece. “They’ve just passed Madisonville. They threw out the spike strips, but of course he blasted right through them since he’s riding two feet above the ground. He should be in range in about two minutes.”
The Texas State Troopers must’ve reasoned that eventually the unknown vehicle would run out of gas, because all indications said they resolved to run it to ground. They also blocked the highway in both directions around Madisonville, and we had to creep past their road block. I held my breath the whole time. A photon projector could do wonders for making you near invisible, but it didn’t mask sound. Every time the truck springs creaked, I’d braced myself.
We were up against eight police cars and a helicopter. They had helpfully exiled the news helicopters ‘in the interests of public safety,’ so at least we didn’t have to worry about that.
I got my phone out and dialed Arland’s phone. I’d given him one of the spares we kept for guests and showed him how to use it. He didn’t seem enthusiastic.