Runaway (Airhead #3) (15 page)

“I think that would be a really bad idea,” I said. And not just because I didn’t want to be distracted from my snooping by her and Steven making out all night. “What if someone recognizes him?”

“Oh, baby,” Lulu said, holding Steven’s face between both her hands, then giving him a big kiss. “I didn’t think about that.”

Gag.

“It’s better that I stay with my mom and Nikki, anyway,” Steven said. “I haven’t seen them since yesterday.”

Yes, I thought. Go back to Gabriel’s now.

The buzzer on our intercom went off. I went to the receiver to pick it up, just as my cell phone vibrated.

“Yes?” I said, lifting the receiver to the intercom. I checked my cell. It was Christopher.

“Brandon Stark is here, Miss Howard,” Karl said. “To take you to his father’s party.”

Perfect, I thought, rolling my eyes. Brandon had been completely ignoring me since my phone call to him yesterday. It was so like him to think his reward would be that it would be all right to show up at my apartment to escort me to his dad’s party without even asking.

“Tell him I’ll be right down,” I said, and hung up the intercom to answer my cell.

“Christopher?” I said.

“Em,” he said. “You can’t go to that party tonight.”

“Uh,” I said. “I have no choice. The million-dollar bra has been taken out of the vault. I’ve been waxed and buffed and shined. I’m in my borrowed dress. The car is here.”

I didn’t mention the part about Brandon being in it. Christopher and I were fighting enough as it was.

“Em,” he said. “You don’t understand.
You’re
Project Phoenix.”

Seventeen

“WAIT,” I SAID, GRIPPING THE PHONE more tightly to my ear. A chill had passed over my body.

But that was surely only because I was standing there in a too-short sleeveless dress on a chilly December 31st evening.

“What are you talking about?” I asked. “How can I be Project Phoenix?”

“I don’t know,” Christopher said. “I don’t— we don’t— still even know exactly what Project Phoenix is. But we’ve found a link from it to the Stark Institute for Neurology and Neurosurgery. And your name.”

“My
name?” I echoed. “Emerson Watts? Or—”

“No. Nikki Howard. Em, think about it. Think about what all these people have in common. They’re young. They’re healthy. They’re attractive.”

“So?”

“Just like Nikki Howard.”

“What are you guys talking about?” Lulu asked me curiously, adjusting one of her fishnets, which had gotten twisted around her leg.

“Nothing,” I said to her. “Go on down to the car and let Brandon know I’ll be right there, will you?”

Lulu shrugged. “Okay.”

“No!” Christopher cried, overhearing me. “Em, you can’t go to that party!”

“Christopher, I have to,” I said. “If I don’t go, Robert Stark will know something is up.” And a billion fans would be tragically disappointed. Not to mention the show’s sponsor, De Beers jewelry. “And, anyway, I don’t see what the connection is between the Stark Institute and all those other people and me.”

“You don’t?” Christopher sounded slightly hysterical. “Em, don’t you get it? Curt? He’s just going on a hiking trip in the Cascades. By himself. He goes missing, who’s going to know what really happened to him? Kerry, going to Guatemala to teach the children to read? She disappears along the way? She’s one of thousands who go missing every year. Same with all these other people. It’s freaking genius, Em. Young, healthy kids…and Stark has its pick. They may have been doing this for years. All these pretty missing girls we hear about on CNN every day…for all we know, Stark may have been behind it all along.”

“Christopher…” I shook my head. I loved my boyfriend. I really did.

But his hatred for Stark— because of what he’d seen them do to me— may have caused him to go around the bend.

I guess I could understand it. He’d seen me get crushed to death right in front of him. The post-traumatic stress this had inevitably caused him had to have been severe. I loved him, but he was one messed-up dude.

And then he’d found out the accident had been no accident at all but had been caused by Stark. And that I wasn’t dead at all but living in some other girl’s body.

No wonder he’d lost his mind and morphed into Iron Man.

Only without the supersuit and in teenage form.

“Em,” Christopher said. He was still speaking fast and still panting a little. “Listen to me. Robert Stark is a marketing genius. He’s dedicated his life to finding a demand, then supplying the product for that demand at a price that drives all other competitors out of business. The question isn’t
whether
he’s doing this.
It’s why hasn’t anyone caught him before now?”

The buzzer to my intercom went off again. It was Brandon’s driver, I knew, wanting to know where I was. Lulu had already gone down.

“Look,” I said. “You’re probably right.”

What else was I going to say? I had to just play along with him. Was this what it was like, I wondered? To be Lois Lane or Lana Lang or Mary Jane Watson or any of those other women who were the girlfriends of superheroes? I mean, those guys were crazy, right? The men who thought they were superheroes. How were you supposed to deal with them? You didn’t want to upset them or get them riled up, or they’d just go and put on their capes and jump out the window to go get shot at.

So you just went along with their craziness, trying to soothe them as best you could in the hopes that they’d stay home, where it was safe.

Then you went out and did whatever you wanted behind their back.

“We’ll talk about it when I get home,” I said, in the most soothing voice I could summon. “We’ll figure out the best thing to do then.”

“What?” Christopher cried. “Em,
no
—”

“You can’t do anything about it now, anyway,” I said. “I mean, what are you going to do? Call the cops? You don’t have any proof. Are any of those people missing yet?”

“Well,” he said. “No. And technically there’s no proof except what happened to you. Which wasn’t an accident, either. But—”

The buzzer went off again, for a much longer time.

“Right,” I said. “Look, I’ve got to run. Everything’s going to be all right. I’ll call you from Robert Stark’s to prove it.”

“Don’t go to that house, Em.” Christopher sounded mad. He sounded more than mad. He sounded furious. And also scared. “I’m warning you, Em. Don’t you even think about—”

“Love you,” I said, grabbing my bag and faux fur and running for the elevator. “Bye.”

“Don’t you hang up,” Christopher said. “I mean it. Don’t you dare—”

“Oh, I’m in the elevator,” I said as I pressed the button. “You’re breaking up. I’m losing you….”

“You are not losing me,” Christopher said. “Em, don’t be stupid. I—”

I hung up.

Really, I wasn’t trying to be mean. It was just that I didn’t have time for Christopher’s supervillain stuff right then. Rebecca’s warnings from that morning were still sounding in my ears. I had to get to Robert Stark’s party, and then to the studio where the lingerie show was being broadcast, or my butt was toast. I completely valued my relationship with Christopher, and I totally thought something was up with Robert Stark.

But I had my professional obligations to fulfill.

And besides. What was Robert Stark going to do to me?

That he hadn’t done already, I mean.

“Where
were
you?” Lulu wanted to know, when I finally fell into the back of the limo.

“Sorry,” I muttered, climbing over Brandon’s outstretched legs. “Important call. Would you
move?”
This last was directed at Brandon.

“My bad.” Brandon was clearly already drunk. Since this was how he was anytime he had to see his father, it was no surprise.

“But really,” Lulu said. “What did Christopher want?”

“I have no idea,” I said truthfully.

“He wanted to come,” Lulu said sympathetically. “Didn’t he? As your date?”

Brandon looked up from his highball glass at this. “You’re back together with that guy? Leather jacket guy?” He looked disappointed.

“None of your business,” I said, wagging a finger at him. “Go back to your drink.”

Brandon glared dopily down at his whisky.

“Guys who wear leather jackets always get the girl,” he muttered.

If only he knew the truth.

Robert Stark’s huge, ten-bedroom, four-story gray town house, with its subdued black trim, private garage, and indoor pool, ballroom, and vast private back garden, was about as far uptown as you could get from my place. Just off Fifth Avenue, it was steps from Central Park and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

His annual New Year’s Eve party was so popular, and attended by so many celebrities and wealthy politicians and Stark shareholders, there was already a traffic jam just to get to his place. Lulu and Brandon and I had to get out and walk the last block, and then fight the crowd of paps that had gathered outside.

The whole time— well, during the walk to his dad’s house, anyway— I quizzed Brandon, trying to see if he knew anything about Project Phoenix.

“What is that?” he’d asked, still slurping scotch from the glass he’d brought along for the stroll from the limo. “A new stadium someone is building in Arizona?”

Seriously. A band? A space elevator? And now a stadium?

“No,” I’d said. “It’s something your dad is doing using data from people who bought his new Quarks.”

“How’s that going to work?” Brandon wanted to know.

“That’s what I’m asking you,” I said, frustrated.

“Well, if I knew that, would I be here with you?” Brandon asked. “No, I’d be in my dad’s office, telling him I knew and to get the hell out. Right? So try again.”

I hunched along beside him, defeated. Christopher and Felix had to be onto something…but that
I
was Project Phoenix? It was all just too crazy.

Still, at least Christopher was trying.

Which was more than could be said for me. I was at a
party.
Worse, a boring party for celebrities. I saw Madonna getting out of a limo right in front of the red carpet leading up the steps to the wide-open front door (which was a bit weird, because she lived right around the corner. She could almost have walked. Although not in those heels, I realized when I looked at her gladiator platforms). The governor of New York was going inside just ahead of her.

“There’s Nikki Howard!” the paps gathered on either side of the gold security ropes cried when they saw me with Brandon. “Nikki! Is it true you and Brandon Stark are engaged?”

“Absolutely,” Brandon said drunkenly into the first microphone thrust in his direction. “Hey, watch the drink.”

“No,” I said. “We’re just friends.”

“I’m engaged,” Lulu said to a reporter who had asked her whether her album was ever going to drop. “Well, okay, engaged to be engaged someday. I’m a bit busy at the moment to be thinking about getting married, recording my new album.”

“Lulu,” I hissed at her. “Can it on the engagement stuff. No one’s supposed to know about You Know Who.”

“Oh, the identity of my husband-to-be is a secret,” Lulu squealed as I dragged her past the uniformed security guards posted on either side of the door and into the town house. “He’s very shy.
You
know. Not used to life in the spotlight yet.”

Inside the Stark mansion, there were models in Stark Angel bra-and-panty sets, complete with wings— not any of the models from the show I was going to do later, though, and their wings were smaller, for better maneuverability— to offer glasses of champagne to everyone and take people’s coats as soon as they entered. Farther into the house, which was sumptuously decorated and made up entirely of marble and black wood paneling, were magicians, jugglers, a fire-eater, and acrobats from Cirque du Soleil.

Lulu took one look at the fire-eater, who had quite a circle of admirers, and said, stomping her foot, “I
knew
I should have a fire-eater at my party.”

Brandon, who’d traded his empty glass from the limo for a flute of champagne from a passing Stark Angel’s silver tray, made a face.

“Fire-eaters suck,” he said. “Your trapeze girl was great.”

“Really?” Lulu looked skeptical. “I don’t think anyone even noticed her. She was hanging way above everybody’s heads.”

I stood there holding my champagne, which of course I wasn’t drinking, wondering what I was even doing there. We’d meandered into Robert Stark’s cavernous ballroom— the ceiling was twenty feet high, at least, and painted with cherubs that looked like chubby versions of the Stark Angels who were wandering around (minus the bras) and dotted all over with humongous crystal chandeliers that glittered like the drop earrings I was wearing. All around us were celebrities who were drinking and chatting and crowding the impressive buffet, where paper-thin curls of roast beef and fat ruby-red strawberries and caviar in gold bowls with mother-of-pearl spoons and huge pink shrimp sat curled in chilled bowls and were being served on fine china plates by caterers in white suits. I saw Madonna again, this time talking to Gwyneth Paltrow, and Jay-Z hanging out with Bono. Everyone was there, at least for a little while. It didn’t seem like the kind of party you stayed at for a long time…just one of those parties where you stopped by, said hello, and left….

Part of that might have been because the French doors leading from the ballroom out to the back garden were wide open, and a chilly breeze was coming in. Then again, the room was roastingly hot because of all the bodies in it. People were milling in and out of it, not even bothering to get their coats to go outside.

“Oh, look,” Lulu said, pointing at someone over by the buffet. “There’s Taylor Swift. I’m going to go tell her about Steven. She’s going to be so happy for me.”

I grabbed Lulu’s arm before she got more than two inches away.

“Would you stop?” I whispered. “No one’s supposed to know about Steven.”

“I won’t tell her his last name, silly,” Lulu said. “But I’m just so happy. I’m busting to tell everyone I know!”

She wrenched her arm out of my hand and hurried off. There really wasn’t anything I could do to stop her, beyond tackling her and sitting on her, which I was pretty sure wouldn’t go unnoticed.

Brandon, who’d disappeared for a minute or two, reappeared holding a plate of shrimp, which he chewed noisily in my ear.

“Have you tried this shrimp?” he asked. “It’s freaking amazing.”

“Would you get away from me?” I said irritably. “I hate you.”

“You’re so moody,” Brandon remarked, chewing loudly. “Just because I kidnapped you and tried to force you to be my girlfriend. I thought you’d be over that by now. Here, just try a bite.” He waved a shrimp in my face. “The cocktail sauce is really good.”

“Stop,” I said, and stepped away from him…

…right into the path of Rebecca, wearing a long black evening gown, which fit her body like a second skin and had a slit up to her pelvic bone, practically.

“Oh, good, there you are.” She grabbed my arm. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you. What are you doing, hiding in this corner with Brandon? Why aren’t you mingling? You’re here to mingle. You’re the Million-Dollar-Bra Girl.”

Brandon let out a giant horselaugh at that.

“Million-Dollar-Brawr Girl!” he said, doing a pretty good imitation of Rebecca. “Better get cher brawron!”

Rebecca sent him a withering look.

“Brandon,” she said severely. “Are you drunk?”

“Of course,” he replied, licking a shrimp.

“Get out of my sight, then,” Rebecca said. She began steering me away from Brandon, toward the center of the room. “Mr. Stark Senior has been asking for you all night. He wants to introduce you to some of his shareholders.”