Phantom Wheel

by Tracy Deebs

“That’s a terrible way of looking at the world!” she answers as we climb out of the Escalade.

  “I never said it wasn’t, but terrible doesn’t mean untrue. If it did, we wouldn’t be here trying to stop a money-hungry, power-mad corporation from exploiting the work we did for it under false pretenses. So save the Disney-princess attitude for Seth, will you, and let’s get to work.”

  12

  Issa

  (Pr1m4 D0nn4)

  “Hey, how’d I get in the middle of this?” Seth squawks as he slides his laptop into his backpack. “I’m just sitting here minding my own business.”

  “Really?” Owen glares at Ezra as he steps out of the SUV. “We’re really going to do this now?”

  “I’m pretty sure I made it clear we don’t have time to do anything now, except get this hack done,” Ezra replies.

  From anyone else it might sound like he was backing down, but the look on Ezra’s face is a giant screw-you to the whole group of us. And even though he’s put my teeth on edge from the first time we met, there’s a part of me that doesn’t blame him.

  Sure, Alika looks like a puppy who just got a boot to the face, but accusing Ezra of being soulless was a pretty crappy move on her part too. Especially when he’s gone out of his way to be accommodating from the moment we first got to San Francisco. The food, the place to stay, taking Harper and me shopping for the types of outfits and all the equipment we’d need to run this con.

  Which only makes it stranger that he sets all of us on edge. But he does, most of the time without even trying.

  It’s not the money, because Harper and I are the only two here who aren’t loaded. I mean, sure, no one else has the kind of money Ezra’s family has, but once you break the million-dollar mark, I feel it’s pretty hard to quibble.

  It’s not the looks—even though he’s probably the hottest guy I’ve ever seen. But Owen’s crazy hot too, and he doesn’t get my back up the same way, and neither does Seth, who is also really cute in his own way.

  So what exactly is it? I wonder as I double-check to make sure I’ve got everything I need for my portion of the plan. His smoothness? His attitude? The fact that none of us is good at following orders—except maybe Alika—yet somehow we find ourselves following Ezra’s more often than not?

  That doesn’t seem right either, though. Sure, it bugs me sometimes, but it’s not Ezra’s fault that he knows San Francisco better than anyone else—and that he’s so good at taking control.

  Still, it bothers me that I can’t figure this out. I don’t like mysteries I can’t solve, and I definitely don’t like questions I can’t answer.

  How can you trust something when you don’t know what makes it tick?

  “It’s two o’clock,” Harper says, breaking into my reverie. “The big entertainment starts at three, which means we’ve got one hour to do what we need to do and make it to the rendezvous spot. So can we shelve the petty BS for right now and just get on with it?”

  “Consider it shelved,” Alika says as she shrugs out of her coat for the first time since she came down the stairs this morning. And all I can say is… Wow. Just wow.

  I’m pretty sure if Ezra had seen her like this five minutes ago, he never would have made that Disney-princess crack. Because there’s nothing princess about the vibe she’s throwing off right now. I don’t swing that way, and even I’m having a hard time looking away. I’ve got no clue how Alika is actually going to run in that red leather dress if we need to, but she’ll definitely cause a diversion.

  “You look amazing,” I tell her.

  Harper nods.

  All three guys stare like they’ve never seen a hot girl before.

  Alika smiles sweetly at me and says, “I chose this dress for a very specific purpose.”

  Before I can ask her to elaborate, Ezra takes my elbow. “You ready?” he asks me as he nods toward the party.

  “As I’ll ever be.”

  Alika makes a point of knocking into him, hard, as we start to walk away. He looks at her in a Do we have a problem? kind of way, but she just raises a Do you have a problem? brow at him in return. I’d be lying if I tried to pretend I didn’t love the whole exchange.

  Alika may look like Little Miss Perfect, but that doesn’t mean she’s a pushover. The more I get to know her, the more I realize the girl has big brass ovaries.

  After leaving the others to their parts of the plan, Ezra and I make our way toward the people milling around the huge stone fountain at the center of the compound.

  “Remember, we can get what we need from four people,” he murmurs as he guides me through the well-dressed crowd. “So keep your eyes peeled. Whoever we spot first is the lucky winner.”

  “I got it,” I tell him, trying to ignore the way his palm feels pressed against my lower back. My dress has a dip in the back low enough that the tips of his fingers brush against my bare skin with each step we take. I know he’s just sticking close because he doesn’t want to lose me in the crowd, but a little shiver goes through me every time our skin touches.

  I may hate it, but I can’t help it.

  Any more than I can help how out of place I feel at this party. And not just because we’re running a con. I’ve never been anywhere like this before, have never seen anything like it outside of movies and magazines. We’re supposed to blend in, be invisible, but how can I do that when I have no idea how to act? And when I’m with the hottest guy here?

  Maybe Ezra and Alika should have teamed up. They’d be a hell of a distraction. The rest of us could walk straight into the server room stark naked, and no one would notice.

  “Let’s get a drink,” Ezra says, guiding me toward the mobile drink station set up a few feet away. As we make our way there, I get a glimpse of Niklas Otto. He’s IT director of Jacento’s North American branch, and one of the four people who can help us get past security for the internal servers.

  “There’s Otto,” I hiss as I stop dead in my tracks.

  “Where?” Ezra scans the crowd with sharp eyes.

  “Near the main bar,” I tell him. The tiny earbud in my ear comes alive as Seth and Harper find their target too. I block them out so I can focus on what we’re supposed to be doing. “To the left. Do you see him?”

  “I do.” His eyes narrow as they lock on our prey.

  I fluff up my hair and smooth my dress. “Do you want me to—”

  “Change of plans,” he says with a grin so sharp that it’s almost feral. “I’ve got this.”

  “Wait, what? I thought we agreed I’d—”

  But I’m left talking to myself, as he’s already making his way toward Otto like the man’s got a homing device in his back pocket.

  I stay where I am, not wanting to blow the con, but I shift a little to the left so I can keep both Ezra and Otto in my sights. I don’t have a clue what game Ezra’s got planned, but he looks so confident that I’m not worried. He might have shaken up the game plan, but if he’s proven nothing else over the last few days, it’s that he knows what he’s doing.

  After grabbing a bottle of water from a nearby display, I settle in to watch the show. Then I nearly choke on my first sip as Ezra approaches Otto and says, “Well, hello there, gorgeous.”

  Otto’s eyes widen at the greeting. But then he’s looking Ezra up and down, a slight grin on his face as he leans back against the bar. “Hello yourself, stranger.”

  “I’m Elliott,” Ezra tells him as he crowds up close to Otto, hip to hip. “And you are?”

  It takes a minute for him to get his name out, but that’s because the guy’s almost choking on his own tongue. I’d feel sorry for him—being the object of all that sex appeal—if he wasn’t at least peripherally involved in Jacento’s horrible plot.

  “Niklas,” he finally gets out. “I’m Niklas.”

  “Nice to meet you, Niklas.” Ezra slips Otto’s drink out of his hand and drains it in one long swallow. “And see? Now we aren’t strangers anymore.”

  “Umm, I guess not.” As Ez
ra crowds even closer, the guy looks like he’s hit the lottery on Christmas morning. Not that I blame him. Sure, he’s okay-looking, but definitely not in Ezra’s league. “Can I, umm, get you another drink?”

  “You can.” Ezra eyes him like he wants to eat him up. Not going to lie, it’s hot. Really hot, and that’s just from a spectator’s perspective. I can’t imagine what it would be like to actually have him look at me like that. I’d probably melt on the spot.

  Ezra spends the next ten minutes flirting so outrageously that I expect Otto to catch on. I mean, come on. Sure, having all that intensity focused on you addles the brain a little, but at some point you have to get used to it, right? And start wondering what the guy wants because he can’t actually want you.…

  Obviously not everyone thinks the way I do, because Jacento’s IT director is eating it up. So much so that when Ezra asks for his number, it looks like he’s going to swoon right there. He doesn’t, though. Instead, he holds it together long enough to rattle off his digits so Ezra can add them to his phone. And when Ezra asks to take a picture to go with the number, Otto never hesitates. He just gives the camera—and Ezra—what I’m sure he thinks is a sultry smile, though it actually looks more like indigestion.

  I should know. Chloe gets that look a lot.

  Ezra keeps him chatting for a couple more minutes—mostly about imaginary dates they can go on—before slipping away “to find the restroom.”

  I meet up with him around the corner of the nearest building.

  “I’ve already sent the photos to your phone,” he says as he blocks me from view.

  “I didn’t know you were gay,” I comment as I pull up the text attachments with steady fingers.

  “Who said I was gay?” he responds with a shrug. “People are people. Why limit yourself any more than you have to?”

  I grab the best picture, then enlarge it so I can see what we’ve got to work with. “That’s a very enlightened attitude.”

  “I’m a very enlightened guy.” He leans closer, trying to get a look at what I’m doing. But he’s so close that it freaks me out a little, even makes my fingers tremble as I isolate what we need.

  “Is it good enough?” His breath is hot against my cheek.

  “I think so.” I pull up the scan I got when I finally managed to hack into the system yesterday morning. Once I do, I superimpose the picture Ezra took over the scan and play with it a little bit, cleaning things up the best I can. “But I’ve never done this before, so I won’t be sure if I’ve chomped it until we’re actually at the door.”

  Still, I’ve read every article I could get my hands on about this over the last two days, so I’m hoping for the best. Even before Ezra runs a hand down my back and says, “You’ll get it. I’ve got total faith in you.”

  “We’ll see.” I hold the picture up to him, refusing to let myself react to all the sexy heat pouring off him. He was throwing so much of it at Niklas Otto that he probably hasn’t had a chance to rein it all in yet. Or at least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

  “You were a lot closer than I was. Does this color look right?”

  “It looks perfect.” For the first time, he sounds excited. “You’re really good at this.”

  As he steps back, he takes the blatant sensuality down about ten notches, and I can finally breathe again.

  And that’s when it hits me, what has me so on edge around him all the time. What has all of us so suspicious of him, no matter how many nice things he does.

  It’s that even after all the time we have spent with him, none of us has any idea who the real Ezra Hernandez is.

  Maybe it’s the guy whose place we’ve been staying at for the past two days.

  Maybe it’s the douchebag who got us into this party.

  Maybe it’s the supersmooth, supersexy operator who just had Niklas Otto—a man our research never identified as anything but straight—eating right out of his hand.

  Or maybe he’s all those things—and so many more that there is no “real” Ezra Hernandez. Maybe he really is just the human version of a chameleon—someone who can so easily become anything to anybody that it’s impossible to know who he really is outside that. Or if he even exists outside it at all.

  The realization is enough to blow my brain wide open, so I shove the idea back into the dark corners of my mind and focus instead on finishing my task. A few more clicks, and I’m printing out the photo on my Polaroid Zip and holding it up for Ezra’s approval.

  “Good?”

  “Beautiful,” he answers, but his eyes are on me.

  As we walk toward the cordoned-off area—and the building where the servers are housed—I pretend he was talking about the picture.

  It’s not as exciting, but it is easier. And right now it’d be really nice if just one thing in my life could be easy.…

  13

  Harper

  (5p3ct3r)

  I don’t have a clue how we’re going to do this. I mean, the technology is there, but I’ve never used it before, and neither have any of others. There’s a first time for everything, but still. I’m more nervous than I want to admit.

  Mad Max seems optimistic, but that’s kind of like saying the sun is hot. I’m not sure the boy has any other mode.

  He’s tamped down his style a little bit for the party—instead of his usual outrageous color combinations, he’s dressed in a pair of dark jeans and a button-down, limiting the loud colors to the funky bow tie he’s wearing. With his usual red Mohawk in place and the addition of a pair of designer sunglasses he borrowed from Silver Spoon, he looks every bit the cool California hipster.

  What surprises me is how much I miss his typical goofy appearance. Who knew it was even possible to miss checkered pants?

  We work our way through the crowd, listening through our earbuds as Silver Spoon charms some guy out of his mind, among other things.

  “I can’t believe they’re already working their target,” Mad Max says in a stage whisper so loud that it’d be a miracle if half the party didn’t hear it. “We haven’t even found ours.”

  “They had four to choose from,” I remind him. “We’ve got one.”

  “Still, how hard can it be to find a six-foot-three Samoan woman in this crowd?”

  “Obviously harder than we anticipated.” I just hope Talia Latu didn’t skip out on the party. If she did, this whole thing is going to take a lot longer than we hoped.

  Maybe too long.

  Thinking that way isn’t going to do us any good, however, so I keep working my way through the crowd, scanning, scanning, scanning. And pretending that Mad Max’s optimism hasn’t already started to rub off on me.

  As we pass the new product booth they’ve got set up on the lawn, I notice a video of Roderick Olsen running on a loop. He’s talking about the kiosks and how they’ll make Jacento more than a household name. How they’ll make the brand—the company—as indispensable to people as their wallets. Jacento will be at the top of their minds all day, every day.

  Considering what those kiosks—and Phantom Wheel—will give Jacento control of, listening to him talk about world domination freaks me out, to say the least. No way is this guy innocent.

  “There she is!” Mad Max crows about ten minutes later, so excited that he nearly spills his cranberry juice down my light gray dress. I dodge, but it’s a close call, and he mutters his apologies over and over again as we weave our way toward the very tall, very large woman standing with an equally tall, equally large man right outside the circus tent.

  They’re engaged in a pretty animated conversation. Great—just great. That’s going to make this a whole lot harder than I was hoping it would be.

  “Let’s go.” Mad Max starts all but dragging me her way.

  “What are we going to say to her?” I demand, digging my heels into the grass to stop his forward momentum. “I thought she’d be by herself—we can’t just break into their conversation!”

  He looks at me like I’m crazy. “O
f course we can. Now turn your recorder on and come on!”

  Seconds later, we’re standing in front of Talia, and I still have no idea how to get her attention off the man I think is her husband and on to us. Mad Max, thankfully, doesn’t have the same problem.

  “Excuse me, ma’am, do you know what time the entertainment is supposed to start?” he asks, all wide eyes and innocence.

  “Three o’clock,” her husband answers. Of course he does. So glad Mad Max thought this was going to be easy.

  I’m already frustrated, but he looks completely relaxed as he continues, “Thanks so much. Do you know where we’re supposed to line up or—”

  “The entrance is right over there.” The man answers again.

  Fantastic.

  “But there’s no line,” Talia adds. “I think you just wander in and find a seat whenever you’re ready.”

  I perk up a little—at least she’s talking. Maybe this won’t be a total disaster after all.

  “Cool. I’m really excited to see it—I’ve never been to the circus before. Have you?”

  Talia chuckles. “Many times. But I agree, it is exciting.” She’s an older woman and, for whatever reason, seems totally charmed by Mad Max’s enthusiasm.

  “As long as there are no clowns. Clowns completely freak me out.”

  “Right?” Her husband jumps back into the conversation. “I told Talia to make sure there were no clowns. They give our grandchildren nightmares.”

  “They give me nightmares!” Mad Max answers enthusiastically. “Though I did hear they were going to have zebras, which sounds totally cool.”

  “Zebras?” Talia’s husband shakes his head. “I don’t think there are going to be any zebras. Are there, hon?”

  “Nope. Not a one. But there will be horses.”

  “Oh, that’s cool.” Mad Max manages to look just the right amount of disappointed. “I love horses.”

  “Me too,” Talia agrees. “We used to have a couple.”

  “Wow! Me too! What were your horses’ names?” He pauses, then before they can answer, says, “No, wait. Let me guess. Zephyr and…”