Runaway (Airhead #3) (17 page)

But I wasn’t sure that she didn’t know I had no right to be on that floor.

“I— I think I made a wrong turn,” I stammered. When all else fails, and you’re a blond supermodel, acting like an airhead never fails to work wonders. People pretty much expect it of you, anyway, and invariably find it charming. It’s stupid and sexist, but it works.

Even on other women, especially if they’re older than you. It brings out their maternal instinct or something.

Well, it probably wouldn’t work on my mother. But it works on almost everyone else.

“I— I was looking for— for the little girls’ room,” I stammered.

Thank you, Lady Whose Name I Forget.

“Oh,” the maid said, with a laugh. “It’s two more doors down, honey.”

“Oh, sorry,” I said, giggling. “I’m such a ditz. I was wondering where all these stairs were going. Thanks so much.”

“You’re so welcome,” she said warmly.

It had worked. Thank you, God.

I slipped past her and out into the hallway. Unlike the scene downstairs, it was hushed and quiet. There was deeply piled carpeting on the floor— gray, of course— and stark seascapes hanging on the walls, each lit with its own individual painting light…the only lighting to see by. I waited until I couldn’t hear the maid anymore on the stairs, then listened to hear if I could detect any other sounds.

And soon enough, I heard it: the drone of a human voice coming from a room a few doors down from where I stood. I padded toward it, my stilettos silent on the plush carpeting.

Pressing my ear to the thick door, I listened as closely as I could. It was a woman’s voice. It sounded nice.

But I couldn’t tell what she was saying. I could hear no other sounds.

What should I do? Open the door and go in? Who knew what lay on the other side? What if I walked into some kind of Stark shareholder business meeting or something, and everyone turned and looked at me?

And Robert Stark— who had to be in there— had one of his security goons shoot me?

Or worse, drag me out in front of everyone? I’d be so embarrassed. Getting shot would be preferable. Then I’d just be dead, not mortified.

What if it wasn’t just a business meeting, though? What if Project Phoenix was really what Christopher said it was… whatever that had been? I had a moral duty to go in there and find out. He was trusting me to find out. My whole relationship depended on it.

Turning that doorknob and seeing what was going on in there was what I’d gone to all this trouble for in the first place, right? I had to do it.

My heart was beating so hard in my chest. I was acting, I realized, like one of those heroines in Frida’s books— the Too Stupid to Live kind. Going into that room would be a stupid thing to do. Any girl who’d do it was an idiot. If I was watching this unfold on a movie screen, I’d yell, “Go home!” at the TV.

“Excuse me?”

I jumped nearly a mile and whirled around, then relaxed a little as I saw that the maid with the tray was behind me. Only she’d restocked her tray with glasses that were now full to the brim with sparkling champagne.

“I just have to get by you,” the maid said, sounding embarrassed.

“Oh, of course,” I said, and then, like it was the most natural thing in the world, I opened the door for her, since she had her hands full.

And after she went in, I followed her.

Nineteen

IT WAS DARK INSIDE THE ROOM.

That’s because it was some kind of media room, like the one Brandon had at his beach house, for showing movies. There was a huge screen at one end of the room, where images were flashing. All the Stark shareholders— even in the dark, I recognized the ladies I’d met downstairs from the diamonds around their necks— were seated in wide, comfortable, red velvetcovered chairs in front of the screen. They were watching the images flashing on the screen with rapt attention.

I shouldn’t have worried about anyone noticing me come in. No one cared. They were too busy watching the presentation.

I found an empty chair and sat down to watch the show. The maid, noticing this, offered me a glass of champagne, which I accepted with a smile, just to be gracious. There was a little table next to my high-backed theater chair on which I could set the glass, so I did, knocking something over in the dark. This was embarrassing. Also dangerous. I didn’t want to draw attention to myself, even though I was in the back, and there were only a few other people seated in my row.

I scrambled around on the carpeted floor for whatever I’d knocked over. I found it almost at once. It was some kind of gaming joystick, I realized as soon as my fingers closed over it. It had a cord attached to it that disappeared into the floor, but only a single button on the joystick. I was careful not to press the button, but I kept the joystick in my lap, since I noticed everyone else in my row was doing the same thing.

After that, I turned my attention to the presentation that was going on. The nice female voice I’d heard out in the hallway was much louder now. It belonged to an immaculately dressed, very beautiful Frenchwoman who was standing to one side of the screen. She was in charge of the presentation, I saw. She was holding a joystick, too, but it was more of a clicker, like the kind you use during a PowerPoint presentation. In fact, that’s what the presentation we were seeing was. PowerPoint.

I had to stifle an automatic yawn. Seriously? PowerPoint? I almost wished someone
would
shoot me.

Then I saw what the PowerPoint was about and sat up a little straighter in my seat.

The slide the stunningly beautiful Frenchwoman was showing us was a photo of a muscular, slim-hipped young man who wore cargo pants and no shirt, grinning into the camera with his arms around a collie. The collie had a bandanna around its neck.

“This is Matthew,” the Frenchwoman said in her cool, emotionless voice. “Matthew is a twenty-year-old college student studying philosophy and is on his dormitory’s Frisbee team. Matthew is six foot two and one hundred and seventy pounds and has a small tattoo of a fish on his left ankle. Matthew is a vegetarian and believes in abstaining from drugs and alcohol to keep his mind and body pure.”

With fingers that felt numb, I opened my purse and took out my cell phone. It wasn’t easy to do without drawing attention to myself.

But I found the film application. And I pressed record.

I wasn’t sure what was happening. But based on what Christopher had said on the phone, I was beginning to have a very creepy feeling.

And I just wanted to be on the safe side.

“Matthew has no history of heart disease or cancer in his family,” the Frenchwoman went on. “And will become available when he leaves for a trip to Honduras to volunteer for Habitat for Humanity over spring break this April. Matthew’s starting bid is at five hundred thousand dollars. Please begin your bidding now.”

Around me, I heard the sound of clicking joysticks. I looked up from my cell phone, wondering if what I thought was happening could really be happening.

Because it just didn’t seem possible to me that Christopher could have been right.

“Five hundred fifty,” the Frenchwoman said tonelessly. She was staring at a little computer monitor on her desk. “Six hundred. Six fifty. Do I have seven hundred? Seven fifty. Eight hundred. Eight fifty. Matthew has a naturally fast metabolism and grew up in an area with fluoridated water, so no cavities or dental issues at all. He really is a prime specimen. You could not ask for a healthier young man. Nine hundred thousand. One million. I have a bid for one million dollars. Matthew, going once. Going twice. The bidding for Matthew is now closed at one million dollars. Thank you.”

The image of Matthew vanished from the screen, and the clicking of the joysticks around me stopped. Almost immediately— way before I’d even had time to process what I’d just witnessed— a new image appeared on the screen. It was of a young woman with long, straight black hair. She was lying on a bed, laughing up at the camera, holding a gray-and-black tiger-striped cat. She was wearing a pair of cute shorts and a tank top. On her wall was a poster that said
Save Tibet.

“This is Kim Su,” the Frenchwoman said, in the same slightly bored but completely businesslike voice. “She is nineteen years old and is five foot two and weighs one hundred pounds. She has no tattoos and is a lifelong vegetarian. She has no health problems, including no history of dental issues. She’s a freshman at a prestigious university and works out regularly. Her family is extremely long-lived, including one set of great-grandparents who are still living and are now in their hundreds. Having yourself transplanted into Kim Su would make an outstanding investment, as she has not only incredible beauty but longevity on her side. Because Kim Su is such an amazing find, the starting bid for her is eight hundred thousand. Kim Su will become available this summer when she leaves to be an au pair in the Hamptons.”

The clicking was even more enthusiastic for Kim Su than it had been for Matthew. Bidding immediately went into the millions. I wasn’t that surprised when the lady with the sparkles on the bottom of her dress got her for a cool three point five.

“Yes!” she cried, almost jumping out of her seat.

Several of the other ladies leaned over to congratulate her on her excellent buy.

I just sat there, feeling kind of sick. I think maybe I was in shock. I couldn’t believe it was true. It was all true, everything Christopher had said on the phone. Project Phoenix was exactly that: people buying more attractive people’s bodies to have their brains put into them.

Those kids we’d seen online— well, most of them had been kids. Teenagers, really— all the ones who’d bought Stark Quarks. The reason Stark had saved their information…the reason they’d combed through it so carefully, saving some and not others? It was because Stark considered them donors.

Like me.

I
was Project Phoenix. The prototype.

Of course. The doctors at the Stark Institute for Neurology and Neurosurgery had said there was a waiting list of wealthy candidates wanting the surgery— candidates with perfectly healthy brain function but whose bodies maybe weren’t all that they used to be— a little flab here, a little wrinkle there. Maybe some male pattern baldness. And that the only thing stopping the institute from doing more surgeries was a shortage of donor bodies. And that the donor bodies they had weren’t always the most desirable…the body Nikki got was of a drunk driver killed in a DUI.

And Nikki nearly died during her surgery because the body she got was so unhealthy. So why wouldn’t Stark do this? What was stopping them?

Nothing. Nothing at all.

I felt cold all over. And it wasn’t because of my way-too-short dress.

I don’t know how long I sat there, watching image after image flicker across the screen and get bid on, before my view was obscured by a large male figure.

Not one of the males on the screen that I’d just seen sold off, either.

This was a male dressed in Stark security garb.

“Miss Howard?” he said softly. “Will you come with me, please?”

I was busted. I shouldn’t have sat there so long.

But how could I move? What Robert Stark was doing…

…it was the most disgusting thing I’d ever seen in my life.

All the Stark shareholders turned to look as I was escorted from the room, even though the Frenchwoman said in her calm voice, “Please pay no attention to the slight disturbance in the back. It is only a minor interruption. Shall we turn to the next candidate?”

I heard the murmurs and whispers. And then I heard Robert Stark himself assure his shareholders, in his booming voice, “Don’t worry, everyone. It’s only Nikki Howard. You’ve all met her! She’s one of you…or what all of you will be shortly. She just wanted to stop by to make sure you’re choosing wisely!”

This caused a ripple of laughter through the room.

I didn’t hear any more. That’s because by then the guard had pulled me out. I stood there in the hallway, staring at the floor, not really caring what was going to happen to me next. So what if Robert Stark had me killed, like he’d tried to do to Nikki?

I wasn’t sure I wanted to live in a world where people did this kind of thing, anyway.

“Well, that wasn’t smart, now, was it?”

I glanced up from my feet to see Robert Stark himself standing in front of me, adjusting his tuxedo’s bow tie, looking like a cat someone had stroked the wrong way.

“What did you hope to accomplish in there, anyway?” he asked. He leaned over and snatched my purse away. Then he opened it and dumped the contents on the floor. My iPhone fell out with everything else. He leaned down and picked it up.

“I suppose you were recording all that,” he said. “And thought you’d be slick and send it to someone. CNN? Well, nothing’s going to come of that.”

With surprising force, he turned and hurled the phone as hard as he could toward the far end of the hallway. It smashed into a thousand pieces when it hit the wall.

I flinched. The phone exploding reminded me of the way my body must have looked to Christopher, exploding under the weight of that plasma TV.

No wonder he was so messed up now.

Except…

Except that everything he’d been insisting was true about Stark Enterprises?

It had actually been true all along.
He
wasn’t the crazy one.

The rest of us were, for not believing him.

“And not just because you don’t have the recording anymore,” Robert Stark said, turning back to me. He was speaking absolutely without rancor. That was the scary part. He wasn’t even mad at me. He didn’t care. He was completely cool and collected.

Except for the part about destroying my phone.

“Those kids you saw in there?” he went on. “The ones my friends just purchased? They’re going to meet with accidents during their travels soon. The same kind of accident your sister is going to have this evening on her way back from her trip to cheerleading camp if a word about any of this gets out. Do you understand? Because believe it or not, I have people who would happily bid on her, as well.”

I stared at him, my heart suddenly feeling frozen. How had he known about Frida and her cheerleading camp?

But of course.

Frida had a Stark Quark. Robert Stark himself had given her one.

I nodded slowly. I understood. I understood perfectly well.

“One word,” he said. “One word tonight when the Stark Angel show goes live— even though you might want to get cute and try something?— and your sister never makes it back tonight to that little apartment she and your parents share down at NYU. Understand?”

“I understand,” I unglued my tongue from the roof of my mouth to say. “You don’t want me to tell anyone that Robert Stark is providing his shareholders with healthy donor bodies so that they can have their brains transplanted into them and be young again. If I do that, my sister dies.”

Robert Stark just looked down at me. His expression wasn’t as cool and collected as it had been before. Now one of his dark, slightly graying eyebrows was raised a little.

“You just don’t get it, do you?” he asked. “We gave you an incredible gift— the gift of beauty— something most women would kill for. Do you know how many women would die to be in your shoes right now? You have the world on a string. And all you can seem to think about is bringing me down.”

“What about Matthew?” I asked him. “And Kim Su? Do you think they’re going to appreciate your
killing
them so that those rich old folks in there can live their lives for them?”

“Oh, they’re not going to be living their lives for them,” Robert Stark assured me. “They’ll be living their own lives, just with new bodies. Sure, they’re going to have to explain to their friends about how they had more than a ‘little work done.’ But that will only bring more clients in to me. And it will be worth it, not to have to wake up every morning with creaking joints, to have to take nine different kinds of heart medications— believe me, it will be worth every penny to them.”

“But what about Matthew’s family?” I asked. “What if they see him one day, walking around with some other guy’s brain in his head, and he doesn’t recognize them?”

“These people live in far different social strata,” Robert Stark said with a sneer, “than the donors’ families. They’ll never see one another. You can be quite sure of that.”

I shook my head at his snobbery.

“You’re going to get caught,” I said. “It’s murder. You can’t keep it a secret forever.”

“Why not?” he asked. And now both eyebrows were lifted. “I’ve managed to so far. How long do you think we’ve been doing this, anyway?” That’s when he laughed. “Nikki— and to me, darlin’, you’ll always be Nikki— we’ve been doing this for years.
Years.
With this latest technology, we’ve been able to offer our clients a more diversified and unique selection of products over a broader range, while still increasing our profit margin.”

Then he looked at the security officer and said, “Clean that up”— he meant the mess emptying my bag had made on the carpet— “and escort her back downstairs and to the car that’s waiting to take her and her friends to the studio. She’s late enough for the Stark Angels show as it is.”

To me, he said, “The least you could do is say thank you, you know.”

Now it was my turn to raise my eyebrows. “For
what?”

“I’ve
given you the greatest gift anyone could ever give another human being,” he said. “A second chance at life. Only this time,” he added, “you get to do it beautiful.”