“Doesn’t feel very good either.”
“How’d you get it?”
“I fell. I was hiding in the parking lot . . .” Words clogged in Emily’s throat. How had she ever gotten away?
God. Nothing but God.
“Sorry I don’t have tissues or anything in the car,” Dave said.
“Doesn’t matter. Blood’s drying now anyway.”
Dave tapped the steering wheel. “I suppose you won’t be surprised to hear I kept looking at that video after you left.”
“Yeah. I figured.”
“I saw something else at the end. Just before the encryption. I had to enlarge it just like the message at the beginning.”
“And?”
“One word. ‘Abort.’”
Emily gasped. “Abort?” She rolled the word around in her mind. “That has to mean the encryption that follows tells how to stop the plan.”
“Guess so.”
Emily’s eyes fixed on the dashboard as she checked her logic. She could see no other reason for the word to be there. “So I was right. There is a way to stop this.” Excitement and hope shot through her. “We just have to find the key.”
“Big ‘just.’”
Emily ran a hand through her hair. So much of this made sense now. It was one thing to possess a video that depicted a terrorist plan. But to possess the means to stop it . . .
“Dave, I need your cell phone.”
He handed it to her.
Wait. She’d captured her mom’s last incoming call from her aunt’s number on her own phone. Emily hit the seat with her fist in frustration. She’d have to turn her phone on again.
What might that cost her?
“What’s the matter?” Dave glanced at her.
“I want to make a call now.”
“So make it.”
“I’m afraid to turn my phone on in case they’re tracking it. Better wait at least half an hour, until we’re out of this area.”
For thirty interminable minutes Emily scrunched down in the seat. Her muscles went numb, and her knee hurt, but she tried to ignore the pain. Meanwhile her mind raced. All her conjecture was proving true. Morton Leringer had told her mom how to stop the terrorist attack.
Raleigh.
This was way too much for her and Mom to handle.
Emily rubbed her forehead. “You might as well know it all, Dave.” Hidden down in the seat, she told him about Morton Leringer’s accident. His message to her mother.
He frowned. “What’s Raleigh mean?”
“That’s what we have to find out. Mom and me, that is. Not you. I just want you to drop me off and head home. Erase that video on your computer. If we fail, you’ll at least have time to get home before the electricity goes off.”
Dave’s mouth thinned. “Part of me can’t believe this is happening.”
“Nobody in America wants to believe it. And look what happened on 9/11.” Bitterness tinged Emily’s voice. “Total surprise and shock. Terrorists like this—they want us to think our safe little lives will go on forever.”
She cradled her head in her hands. “But why us? Why me and Mom?”
“Wrong place, wrong time.”
Too pat an answer. Emily couldn’t bear the randomness of it. Who was she to stop this? Or her mom? They were just normal people.
She swallowed hard. “Where are we?” They’d head north on the freeway for about eighty miles, then go east toward Fresno.
“Just turned onto 101.”
Time to make the call.
Emily twisted around to fumble her phone out of her bag. She turned it on, found her aunt’s number and dialed it on Dave’s phone, then turned her own cell off.
Her phone had been on less than a minute. She prayed it wouldn’t matter.
“Hello.” Her aunt’s voice sounded cautious.
“Aunt Margie. It’s Emily.”
“Emily, dear, how nice to hear from you.” The edge in her tone remained. “Your mother and grandmother are both napping. Well, maybe they’re awake now, with the phone ringing.”
“I need to talk to Mom right away.”
“I’ll get her.”
Emily heard footsteps, then low voices. The click of a second receiver being picked up.
“Emily, hi.” Her mother’s greeting sounded thick with sleep and fear. “Where are you?”
“In a car on the way to Fresno.”
“What?”
Keeping her voice as factual as possible, Emily told her mom what had happened. She didn’t mention her hurt knee or how close she’d come to being caught. Her mom was already worried enough. “We’ve been driving a half hour. So we’ll be there around”—she calculated—“2:30. I’ll need directions.”