Free Xenofreak Nation by Melissa Conway Page A

Toyota keypads were notoriously easy to hack into and Padme had shown herself in the past to be handy in a technological pinch.
    She turned the keypad and tapped some numbers with her thumbs. Several cars down, a black Camry II beeped. She looked up at Scott and grinned.
    He drove.
    “I’ll bet you a million bucks we’re being tracked,” he said as he turned out of the parking lot onto the street.
    “It seems likely. How did you get out of your handcuffs?”
    Scott raised his right hand and extended his forefinger claw. “Picked it.”
    “We should ditch the car and split up,” she said.
    He nodded, even though the plan was for him to stick to her like glue. “Where’d you want me to drop you?”
    She didn’t answer, so he glanced at her. She was looking at him with a mixture of distrust and something else. Pity maybe? Whatever it was, he didn’t like it. She’d already given him notice that he wasn’t trusted. Nothing about their ‘escape’ had rung true. There was only one thing he could think of that might erase that look from her face.
    He turned onto a residential street and parked. Shasta’s wallet quite conveniently had several hundred dollars cash in it. He handed Padme half, slipped Shasta’s phone into his pocket and without a word got out of the car and started walking. Every step took him further and further away from his duty. He didn’t look back until he got to the end of the block.
    She was right behind him.
     
     
     

Chapter Seventeen
     
    It only took Bryn about ten attempts to change the subject before Kim stopped trying to discuss the kidnapping. Not that Bryn didn’t necessarily want to talk about it—she couldn’t.
    “It’s an ongoing investigation,” she parroted Mr. Quick, the stiff, prissy prosecutor who’d met with her and her father several times. “I’m not allowed to say anything.”
    Kim finally got the message and the girls dug out Bryn’s yearbook and began rehashing their senior year highlights. Bryn knew it was supposed to cheer her up, so she did her best to laugh in all the right places, but she couldn’t shake a pervasive, disassociated feeling, like the girl in the yearbook was someone else. Like there was an acrylic bubble separating her from the past.
    Maria reached for another of the birthday chocolates she’d brought and said, “Oh! Did you hear about Paul?”
    “Do I want to?” Bryn asked.
    Paul, the ex. She’d thought about him when she’d touched Nurse Nancy’s fur beard. Would she ever be able to think of Paul again without remembering that grimy exam room and the stench of the Warehouse? Without thinking about how shocked Scott’s face looked when she’d begun screaming?
    “Sheila’s pregnant,” Kim blurted.
    That made Bryn laugh, the first genuine one she’d produced in weeks. “Oh, my gosh, that’s exactly perfect. Are they getting married?”
    “Are you kidding? He’s going around telling everyone he’s having a paternity test done. What a jerk.” Maria had never liked him, which had been a sore subject between she and Bryn even a year later, but not now. Bryn found she no longer cared the smallest bit what happened to Paul.
    The bedroom door suddenly opened and her father barged in. He always knocked, so right away she knew something was wrong. Without any preamble, he said, “Turn on the holovision.”
    She reached for the remote and at her father’s direction, tuned her small H.V. to a local news channel. Whatever he’d wanted to show her had ended and now a commercial for an electric Harley Davidson motorcycle was playing, so he took the remote out of her hand and began switching channels.
    “There,” he said. An older man sat at a news desk with a recent picture of Bryn superimposed behind him. She’d never seen the shot before; none of the ‘after’ pictures of her were supposed to have been released. It showed her resting her chin in her gloved hands with a pensive look on her face and a faraway look in her