Loose ends

21.

Shoot-outs. Kidnapping. Chases. This is more than I bargained for!" the science guy shouted over the wind blowing in their faces. Behind the wheel of the blue convertible, he sounded positively hysterical. "You just said that you needed a couple of tests done, that there was no danger, damnit! Now look at us. We're fugitives!"Shut up and drive!" Morton ordered from the backseat, where he kept guard over Liz while glaring back at the vehicles doggedly pursuing them. He fired again, bang, bang, then swore venomously as his shots missed their targets. "Who the hell are these kids?"Trapped in the back of the Chevy with the enraged gunman, Liz flinched every time the gun went off, throwing her hands over her ears. Morton's unhappy curses came as a relief to her, since they meant his bullets had not yet found her friends. Be careful! she silently urged Max and the others, deathly afraid that someone she cared for might be hurt or killed while trying to rescue her. She felt like she was caught in an endless, recurring nightmare, one that had started two years ago in the Crashdown, when Max first risked everything to save her. How many times, she despaired, is Joe Morton going to make my friends place themselves in jeopardy for my sake? A siren cried shrilly somewhere behind them, and Liz didn't know whether to welcome or dread the advent of the police. She was being kidnapped, true, but she also had way too many secrets of her own, secrets that, at all costs, needed to be hidden from any and all official attention.

The driver's reaction to the distant siren was a good deal less ambiguous. "Oh, God," he moaned. "I'm going to jail." He peered, ashen-faced, into the rearview mirror, watching for the inevitable appearance of a police car in hot pursuit. "This can't be happening! I'm a scientist, not an outlaw!"Stop whining!" Morton berated the terrified techie. "Hit the gas! Faster!" He looked like he wanted to strangle the driver and take the wheel himself. "No ones locking me up now, not this close to the big payoff!" Liz knew he was talking about the briefcase full of alien hardware, now resting on the passenger seat beside the self-proclaimed scientist. "Hit the gas or I swear I'll blow your head off right here and now!"The Chevy sped up dramatically, the sudden acceleration throwing Liz back against the padded seat cushions. "That's better," Morton muttered, twisting around to check out the road behind him. "What the-!"His florid, bloodthirsty features went pale and slack as he witnessed something that shocked him to the core. "Okada!" he called hoarsely to the science guy, whose name Liz finally learned. "Look behind us. Am I going crazy or are those cars changing color?"Liz risked a peek back over her shoulder. Sure enough, both the Jeep and the Jetta were acquiring new paint jobs right before their eyes, the surprising new hues flowing over the cars' old colors like a high tide washing over a sandy shore. Liz felt a stab of guilt, knowing that Max and the others must be frantic to rescue her if they were willing to use their powers so flagrantly in broad daylight.

"Holy cow!" Okada exclaimed. For a moment, he sounded more intrigued than panicked, his scientific curiosity piqued by the two automobiles' inexplicable transformations. "How is that possible?"The switch occurred in seconds; only moments later, the red Jetta and olive Jeep had been completely replaced by their green and black counterparts. Infuriated by his inability to comprehend what he had just witnessed, Morton turned on Liz, jabbing his semi-automatic pistol under her chin. The steel muzzle felt hot against her tender skin. "Who are you kids?" Morton demanded, spittle flying from his blubbery lips. His face was so close to hers that she could taste his sour breath, see his yellow, tobacco-stained teeth. "What are you?"The blaring police siren, growing louder by the minute, spared Liz any need to reply immediately. "Oh crap!" Okada screeched, his voice cracking. Flashing blue lights were now visible behind them, passing the transformed Jeep and Jetta to chase after the speeding convertible and its passengers. "It's the State Patrol!"Later," Morton promised Liz ominously, before giving the cop car his full attention. "Faster!" he ordered Okada, yanking his face and gun away from his frightened hostage. "Give it everything you've got!"The Chevy shot like a rocket down the lonely desert road, leaving the Jeep and the Jetta far behind, but the black-and-white police car continued to gain on them. "ATTENTION: YOU IN THE BLUE CHEVROLET," an amplified voice addressed them sternly. "THIS IS THE STATE PATROL!" Liz heard Okada whimper pathetically; the distraught scientist was definitely not cut out for a life of crime. "SLOW DOWN AND PULL OVER AT ONCE. I REPEAT: SLOW DOWN AND PULL OVER!"The hell I will!" Morton snarled, aiming his pistol at the oncoming police vehicle. "Nobody's taking my merchandise away from me now!"He opened fire, unleashing an ear-splitting salvo of gunshots against the cops, who must have gotten nearer to the Chevy than the Jeep or the Jetta ever did, because Morton's bullets inflicted a lot more damage this time around. One shot perforated the hood of the police car, causing an eruption of steam and smoke from the engine below, while another shot tore apart the besieged car's right front tire. Morton chortled with vicious glee as the injured vehicle lost control and swerved off the road into the desert, bulldozing through a stand of thorny mesquite before coming to rest amid a miniature sandstorm generated by the car's own bumpy landing.

"Hah!" Morton gloated. "Serves them right!" Iiz crossed her fingers, praying that the officers were okay. She stared intently, hoping to see the troopers emerge unscathed from their wrecked vehicle, but the gritty cloud obscured her view, and the Chevy literally left the crash scene in the dust as they made their getaway, Okada still whimpering quietly to himself.

Liz searched the empty roadway stretching out behind them. She spotted no sign of either the Jeep or Maria's Jetta. Had the police car chased them off? She didn't need extrasensory perception to appreciate the dilemma her friends must have been in. I'm on my own, she realized, numb with horror. No cavalry was coming, not right away, leaving her alone and helpless with a man who had already come close to killing her once before. Maybe this time, she thought, my luck has run out.

Consumed by a crazed desire to get as far away from the stranded State Patrol vehicle as possible, Okada kept his foot to the. Gas pedal, tlov s\onnv!\%\xwqL \3ncj nwr. vte.U into the foothills of the looming Guadalupe Mountains. "I don't believe this! This can't be happening!" Okada kept repeating over and over, apparently unable to believe that his career as a legitimate scientist had led him to this bullet-strewn flight from justice; Liz would have felt sorry for him if her own future career prospects, along with her life, weren't also hanging by a thread.

"I've been thinking," Okada said, glancing nervously back at Morton. "Maybe we should just turn ourselves in, before anybody gets hurt." The Chevy slowed to under fifty mph, so that the reluctant fugitive could concentrate on persuading his volatile partner. "I mean, this whole thing is getting way out of control. Testing some spacy metal you liberated from the feds is one thing, but taking hostages, shooting at police cars-that wasn't part of the deal!"Forget it!" Morton said forcefully. "Nobody's talking to the police about anything." He gave Liz a murderous look. "Let me worry about the girl."But Okada wasn't taking no for an answer. "I'm serious, Morton. You're going to get us both killed, in a police shoot-out, probably!" Mustering all his courage, the rebellious scientist tried to lay down the law. "Well, no way. I'm a PhD, not a desperado. My life is worth more than that!"Why, you-!" Morton lunged from the backseat, losing his temper, but stopped himself before actually attacking the man driving the car. He took a deep breath, regaining control, then contemplated his mutinous accomplice with a calculating look upon his ruddy face. "Okay," he said eventually. "Pull over to the side so we can talk this over."Liz didn't like the sound of this, but she kept her mouth shut. If there was any chance that Okada could talk Morton into letting her go, she was all for it, even though that prospect struck her as extremely unlikely. Stay out of this, she told herself prudently. You don't want to get between two desperate men, especially when one of them is armed.

Coming to a halt next to some desert shrubs, Okada parked the Chevy, then turned to confront Morton. "About time you started seeing sense," he said, wiping the perspiration from his forehead. "Things are bad enough already. We don't want to let this disaster escalate into a full-fledged bloodbath!"Yeah, whatever you say," Morton grunted. He shoved Liz down into her seat. "Don't move a muscle!" he threatened her before swinging open the back door and stepping out of the convertible, where he then yanked open Okada's door as well. "Get out," he ordered the scientist.

"What? I don't understand?" Okada peered up fearfully at Morton, suddenly very reluctant to surrender the wheel.

His Adam's apple bobbed up and down like a sine wave as he made another stab at reasoning with the stocky gun man. "I thought we were going to talk about this "Get out, I said!" Morton bellowed. He plucked Okada's glasses off the shocked scientists nose and hurled them into the gravel at his feet. Liz heard glass and plastic shatter beneath the gunman's cowboy boot. "Talk time's over," Morton snarled, grabbing hold of Okada's collar and dragging him out of the parked convertible. He spun the smaller man around so that Okada's back faced the desert scrub, then pushed him away. Sneering coldly, Morton raised his gun. "Guess I don't need you anymore, professor."No, wait!" Okada cried out, trying to ward off death by throwing up his hands. He stumbled backward, almost tripping over a patch of plump cacti. "Let's work this out!"Liz knew she should look away, but all she could do was cover her ears as a single gunshot permanently ended Okada's scientific career. His crumpled body lay amid the cacti, a crimson stream irrigating the sun-baked soil. Morton gave the body a savage kick that sent it rolling into a deep ditch beside the road. "How much is your life worth now, Mr. PhD?" he remarked snidely.

"You-you killed him," Liz stammered, the callous execution nearly triggering another post-traumatic flashback to her own shooting. She clutched her stomach protectively, but, with considerable effort, forced her tumultuous thoughts to stay firmly rooted in the present. I have to keep my wits about me, she realized, if I want to get out of this alive.

The odds of that were looking slimmer and slimmer, though. Liz knew that Morton would not have shot Okada right in front of her if he had any intention of letting her go. The only reason she wasn't dead yet, she figured, was that Morton still wanted to know how she and her friends were connected to all this, not to mention how they man- aged to generate force fields, change the color of moving cars, etc. Couldn't hurt to remind him of all those unanswered questions, she judged, just in case he was thinking of disposing of her at the same time as Okada.

"You know, my friends are going to keep looking for me," she warned him, crouching in the backseat of the Chevy. "They're very talented. They can do all sorts of things." It felt weird to hint, even obliquely, at the hybrids' special abilities to such an untrustworthy character, but at this point, Liz reasoned, the paranormal cat was pretty thoroughly out of the bag. "You don't want to make them too angry."Was that a flicker of fear in Morton's bloodshot eyes? "Yeah? Well, you don't want to get me mad, little lady." He placed a fresh clip into his handgun and lumbered toward the front seat of the convertible. Before he could sit down, however, another siren wailed nearby. The same patrol car, Liz wondered, or reinforcements? For her friends' sake, she hoped Max and the others were keeping a low profile.

"Damn!" Morton cursed. He eyed the Chevy dubiously, suddenly seeing it as a liability. He checked the dashboard and grunted. "Almost out of gas anyway," she heard him mutter, moments before he grabbed the attache case from the passenger seat and picked up a canvas backpack from beneath the glove compartment. He tossed the backpack, which she recognized as the one Alex had donated to Michael and Isabel's con routine, at Liz, hitting her in the chest. "Take that," he ordered brusquely, taking a long, hard look at the arid wasteland and the ocher foothills beyond. "We're going for a hike."