Runaway (Airhead #3) (20 page)

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

Did I really sound like that?

No. Of course I didn’t.

But Nikki did.

“I’ve managed to so far. How long do you think we’ve been doing this, anyway? 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.”

Profit margin. That’s all it had ever been about for Robert Stark.

And that’s what was about to destroy him.

“You destroyed my iPhone,” I said to Robert Stark, in the steadiest voice I could summon, speaking from around Christopher’s broad shoulders. “But you didn’t find my Stark brand phone.”

“The one you’ve been bugging all this time,” Christopher added. “All that film and audio was up on your own mainframe. We just transferred it over to CNN. Wolf Blitzer has it all now. And after this, the world.”

Robert Stark stared at us like we’d just told him Mariah Carey was really a man.

“Stark!” one of the red-faced shareholders shouted. “You told us this would never get out! You swore!”

“—two teen hackers in the New York City area who discovered that the new Stark Quarks actually contain spyware that enables the corporate giant to upload all the users’ data to their mainframe,” Wolf Blitzer went on, “and sent us this recording of Robert Stark and supermodel Nikki Howard at a Project Phoenix auction this evening…”

The Stark shareholders, I noticed, were suddenly beginning to head for the doors of the Sky Bar, their expressions panic-stricken.

But it was going to be difficult for them to leave.

Because just then the doors were thrown open, and dozens of New York’s finest, in their dark blue uniforms, began to stream in, their gold badges gleaming under the disco lights.

“Everybody stay where you are,” one of them said, using a megaphone to be heard over the sudden cacophony of shocked partygoers. “Nobody’s going anywhere.”

“I need my blood pressure medicine,” the husband of the lady with the sparkles at the bottom of her skirt screamed.

“We’ll make sure we get it for you,” a cop assured him, “over at Rikers.”

“Is this really happening?” Nikki came over to ask me.

“I think it is,” I said, feeling as dazed as she felt.

Over by the bar, Brandon, finally realizing this was his big moment, hurried to face the photographers who’d been taking the publicity photos of me and his dad earlier.

“In light of the recent discoveries about my father,” he said, suddenly sounding as if he hadn’t had a single thing to drink all night, “with whom my relationship has always been troubled, I’d just like to say that I’ll be taking over the day-to-day operations of Stark Enterprises for the foreseeable future, and that I’ll be doing my best to make Stark a greener, more earth-friendly corporation. I’ll definitely be thinking of the employees, who for so long have labored without a union or proper health care. I’ll be working to correct that, as well as the impression Stark may have given that it doesn’t care about the small business owner—”

But none of the reporters was listening. They were only interested in what was happening in the center of the room.

“Robert Stark?” asked a police captain, striding up to Brandon’s dad and showing him his badge. “We’d like to ask you a few questions downtown, if you don’t mind.”

“Not without my lawyer,” Robert Stark bristled.

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” the police captain said politely.

That’s when he handcuffed Robert Stark and led him away.

Twenty-Two

IT WAS MONTHS BEFORE IT ALL settled down.

And even then, I couldn’t go anywhere without someone wanting to shove a microphone into my face to ask me about it.

I wasn’t allowed to discuss it, though, because of the testimony I was scheduled to give against Robert Stark— and all the Stark shareholders who’d been at the auction the night of the Project Phoenix auction, and Dr. Holcombe, and yes, Dr. Higgins, too— at the grand jury.

I wasn’t the only one testifying, of course. Because of what we’d done, Dr. Fong was able to come out of hiding and tell what he knew about the goings-on at the Stark Institute for Neurology and Neurosurgery, too, in exchange for immunity from prosecution.

Some of the surgeries, he maintained, had been medically necessary to save the life of the patient, and completely aboveboard.

But a lot of them…

Well, let’s just say, not so much.

The families of some of those “donor bodies” had come forward to testify as well. According to the legal experts I saw occasionally on the news, this wasn’t something Robert Stark was going to be able to wiggle his way out of. This was multiple counts of murder, attempted murder, and in Nikki’s case, assault with a deadly weapon (a scalpel).

Robert Stark, formerly one of the world’s most powerful men, was going to go away for a long time.

A long, long time.

Dr. Fong wasn’t the only one who was safe now. Nikki, Steven, and Mrs. Howard were safe, too, because of what we’d done, and able to go back to their normal lives.

Except, of course, that for some of them, this wasn’t so simple.

Mrs. Howard was excited and eager to go back to Gasper and her dog-grooming business.

I was sorry to see her go. I’d really grown to think of her as a second mother.

But Gasper was the place she knew and loved, and where all her best friends were. And Harry and Winston didn’t like being cooped up in tiny New York apartments. They missed having a yard to play in.

I went with her to the airport and hugged her good-bye. It was sad, but it was better for everyone all around, especially Mrs. Howard. Too much togetherness with her daughter had been giving her chronic migraines, and was perhaps too much for anyone to put up with, long-term…

…including Steven, since he went back to his naval unit. He sort of had to. I guess it had something to do with the fact that he’d signed up to be on this submarine and couldn’t exactly just leave, especially now that he’d found his mother and sister, which was the only reason they’d let him off in the first place.

Lulu was devastated. I had to order her a banana split every day for almost a week before she started to look on the bright side.

“At least,” she pointed out, “he can’t cheat on me. There aren’t any girls on his sub.”

In the meantime, she says she’s really and truly going to finish her album. She’s already finished a song based on their (daily) e-mails to each other called “Hot Love Down Under (the Sea).”

I don’t know. I think it’s got real potential. I’m not the only one. She was the first artist to be signed on the Stark label under Brandon’s new management as CEO.

He hasn’t actually done a bad job of being in charge now that his dad’s in jail (without bail). Of course, Brandon has a lot of talented people to help him (not the least of which is Rebecca, from whom he’s seemed to become inseparable. In fact, she’s quit the agenting business. But that’s all right. Really, it is. I like waking up to find only people I’ve invited over in my bedroom).

One of the first things Brandon did upon taking over Stark Enterprises was hire Felix and Christopher to come up with a free software patch for all the people who purchased the Stark Quarks to download, so they could fix the pesky little spyware problem. This was a far better strategic move than recalling all the PCs (which was what a lot of people advised him to do), and went a long way toward improving consumer confidence in Stark after everything his father had done to ruin the company. Because of the free patch and all the publicity the case is getting, the Stark Quarks are actually the highest-selling PCs of all time.

Which just goes to show: There’s no such thing as bad publicity.

Felix and Christopher did such a good job coming up with the patch solution so quickly (not to mention bringing down his dad as CEO) that Brandon hired them as heads of Stark’s IT department, since whoever was running it before sucked so badly, a couple of teenagers could break into the mainframe and basically run rampant through their entire network.

Now Stark’s firewalls are impenetrable, their encryption codes unbreakable, and their IT department takes a two-hour lunch every day so they can have
Journeyquest
marathons.

And Felix, who got his ankle bracelet removed a few weeks ago, has started bathing and wearing a suit to work. He actually looks almost presentable….

And because of Stark’s newly implemented sexual harassment training seminars (mandatory for all staff administrators —Christopher’s suggestion), Felix can actually speak to women without making lewd and offensive innuendos.

Which still doesn’t make it okay that he asked my sister, Frida, to his alternative high school’s prom.

“It’s not like a real prom,” Frida said, when I made a big deal about this while we were shopping at Betsey Johnson the other day. She was actually planning on getting something there to wear to Felix’s prom with high-tops (thus the “not like a real prom” part. If it had been a “real prom,” she said, she’d have worn heels). “We’re not
going out
or anything.”

“But it’s still a prom,” I said. “He’s still
Felix.
He’s going to try to kiss you. Probably worse.”

“And that is a bad thing…how?” Frida replied.

“You’d let Felix kiss you.” I could not believe this was happening. “Christopher’s
cousin?”

“You let Christopher kiss you,” Frida pointed out, flicking through a rack of off-the-shoulder numbers with big poofy skirts. Total prom wear. “All the time, I might add. I hardly ever see you two when you
aren’t
kissing. Including in school. Which isn’t
too
disgusting.”

“That’s different,” I said huffily.

And it was. Christopher and I had known each other our whole lives, practically. We were made for each other. We finished each other’s sentences.

Sure, we still fought sometimes.

But what two headstrong people deeply in love don’t fight from time to time? Especially two people who’d been friends for so long before falling in love. We knew each other so well, we could tell what the other person was thinking half the time.

Like just the other day, in Public Speaking, when Whitney Robertson poked me in the back before class even started and leaned over to ask, “Hey. Is it true, the rumor I heard… that you had one of those brain transplants they’re talking about on the news all the time, and you’re really…um,
Em Watts?”

She said my name like it was a dirty word.

Also, I could tell there was no way she believed it was true. How could I, Nikki Howard, lithe, swanlike creature, ever be associated with someone as odious as that hideous, hobbitlike Emerson Watts?

It had been Christopher who had leaned forward in his seat and said to Whitney, with obvious pleasure, “You know what, Whitney? It
is
true. And because you were always so mean to her when she was Em, you can pretty much kiss away any chance you might ever have had at getting to meet Heidi Klum and Seal at any of the fall fashion shows. Right, Em?”

Whitney and her little crony, Lindsey, had both turned their horror-and guilt-stricken gazes toward me. You didn’t have to be a mind reader to see what they were thinking:
Please let what he said not be true. Please!

I thought about putting them out of their misery. But the other thing that had come out of all of this (besides an end to Robert Stark’s newest commercial sales campaign, to sell hot young bodies to his old friends, for them to be hot and young again) was an end to all the lies.

“He’s right,” I’d said, with a shrug. “I’m really Em Watts. I just use Nikki Howard as my modeling name now. And I’m not really interested in being BFFs with you guys. Unless, of course, you stop spiking volleyballs at other girls’ heads on purpose. And torturing them about the size of their butts in the hallway. You do remember when you used to do that to me, don’t you, Whitney?”

Now Whitney’s eyes were the size of quarters.

“B-but,” she’d stammered, “I— I was only kidding around.”

“Huh,” I said. “Did you notice how I wasn’t laughing back then? It doesn’t hurt, you know, Whitney, to be kind to people, no matter what they look like. Especially because, these days? You never know who they’re going to turn out to be later.”

“I…” Whitney blinked. “I’m so
sorry.”

“Yeah,” I said. I believed she
was
sorry. Now. “I bet you are.”

The best thing about everyone knowing who I was— who I
really
was— was that my old grades were combined into my new ones and brought my grade point average up quite a bit. Suddenly, I went from being a mediocre student to an above-average one. Not straight As, by any means, like I used to be.

But considering what I’d been through, and how many classes I’d missed, it was still a relief. With hard work, I’d managed to keep my head above water, gradewise…hard work, and Nikki’s career management skills.

Because Nikki, another witness in Robert Stark’s grand jury trial, had decided not to go back to Gasper but stick around in New York…as my new agent and manager.

Well, why not? She knows everything about the modeling business— especially as it concerns Nikki Howard— and obviously has a shrewd business sense (except when it comes to blackmailing people, which she swears on the Lady Clairol Midnight Sky she uses to keep her hair so dark that she’s not going to do anymore).

She turned out to be serious about business school. She took her mom’s advice and enrolled in classes and is already making her professors miserable.

Hey. No one can say Nikki Howard’s not bossy and doesn’t know how to get what she wants…especially for her clients (of which, so far, I’m the only one. But she’s working on that).

It made sense that I give Nikki a cut of what I earned, anyway, since my career was the one she’d launched. We worked out that she got a percentage of all my future earnings, plus everything that had been in the accounts I’d found when I’d been declared “legally” Nikki Howard.

And since, immediately following the makeover Lulu gave her, Nikki regained her va-va-voom factor with men, she lost all interest in swapping brains (not that we’d have been allowed to do this, even if we’d wanted to: There’s been a total ban on the surgeries, except in the case of life-threatening injury). I don’t know how much of this had to do with the fact that Nikki seemed to get really into being Goth “Diana Prince,” the name and persona she took for her new body, and how much of it had to do with Gabriel Luna being…well, into
her.

But I do know she has no interest whatsoever in selling the loft. She’s perfectly happy staying where she is, living in Gabriel’s apartment, driving Gabriel nuts by taking up all his closet space and insulting his bandmates…

…and he, in turn, is the most creative he’s ever been, having written three new
albums
of songs— all about the same wacky girl he lives with— in four months.

Instead, I’m paying Nikki rent, same as Lulu.

My living situation had been the source of heated discussion with my parents, who’d assumed I’d move back home once my true identity was revealed.

But to me, in a weird way, the loft
was
home now. How could I leave Lulu, who had no family other than me and Steven, who was still away at sea?

“Maybe when he comes back,” I’d explained to Mom and Dad over pizza at their place one night— pizza I could now enjoy without worrying anyone was spying on me. “And he and Lulu do get married someday….”

Frida snorted. “Right.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I demanded.

“You’re not coming back, even if Lulu does get married. You like living in a bachelorette pad,” Frida said accusingly. “Face it, Mom and Dad. She only wants to stay there so she can have Christo—”

“That’s not true!” I interrupted, although it was, of course, partly true. “And it’s not that I love you guys any less. It’s just that I still have a very busy schedule, what with work and school and—”

“Oh, please,” Frida snorted.

“She’s gotten used to being in her own space,” Mom said very diplomatically, “and wants to keep it that way. We understand.”

Dad didn’t look like he understood, exactly, but he didn’t say anything. He clearly felt that he was outnumbered by females in this instance, as often happened in our household.

“I don’t care,” Frida said, shrugging. “So long as I get invited over for your parties once in a while…”

“Done,” I said. Like I said, Frida had really gotten very mature lately.

“…and I can bring Felix.”

“Oh, my God, no! Are you serious?”

“Felix saved my life,” Frida said truculently. “And yours. How can you be so mean about him?”

“He didn’t save your life,” I said.
“I
did. Felix and Christopher helped. A little.”

“That’s not true. They were equally as important as you. He told me all about it—”

“Girls,” Mom said. “Please. Both of you are smart, vibrant, beautiful girls with wonderful, talented, handsome boyfriends. Please stop fighting and clear the dishes so your father and I can have some alone time.”

Alone time is important if you want to build a strong romantic relationship. Christopher and I try to grab as much as we can. Especially at Balthazar, which is one of our favorite restaurants to go to together for dinner…

…with an appetizer,
and
dessert, despite Lulu’s assertions that high school boys can’t afford to take their girlfriends there (they can, if they also work part-time in the IT department of a major corporation. And their girlfriend insists she pay once in a while, because I work, too, and it’s only fair for the girl to pay sometimes. I don’t know where this archaic idea that the boy always has to pay comes from).