Alibi High

“No,” I told him. “We're going.”

“Awesome,” Johnny said, barely able to contain his excitement and squirming . He squirmed in his seat. “Hey, did Brenda clear next Friday night with you?”

“Yeah, I think so,” I said. “We have your kids that night, correct right ?”

He nodded. “Yeah, if you can.”

“Of course,” I said. “We have to start paying you back for this week.”

“Aw, it's been fine,” he said , shrugging . “They all get along and they've had fun. We might be a little late dropping them off next week Friday , though. I've got a contractor guy coming by and he can't get there until the afternoon. Not sure how long he'll be.”

“Are you having some work done to the house?”

He shook his head. “No , we're t anything major. We're just having some holes patched. Derek likes to punch the walls in his bedroom.”

I looked out the window so he couldn't see me laughing. “Gotcha.”

“I need to get him into boxing classes or something,” he said. “Maybe some mixed martial arts. Something to burn off all that energy.”

“Probably be cheaper than wall repair.”

He laughed. “For sure.”

He navigated the traffic on Main and cut over to the other side of town.

“Where exactly are we going?” I asked, realizing I hadn't asked before we'd left.

“Some computer place,” he said. “Just up the road here, above the highway.”

I nodded , distracted ly. , now worried that Worry was beginning to set in as I realized we I should've called Jake and told him where we were going. What if it went bad and no one knew where we were? I hadn't even told Will where we were headed. I had visions of them all trying to piece together our whereabouts based on Phil Johnny 's phone call cell phone log and my interactions with the Prism teachers.

They'd never find us if it went bad.

Maybe I wasn't really cut out for the spy/investigator business.

“This is it,” Johnny said.

I snapped out of my ruminations and looked up.

And did a double-take.

“This is it?” I asked.

“Yeah. Why?”

“This is Data Dork,” I said, staring at the sign.

“Yeah, I know,” he said. “This is where he said to meet him.”

“At Data Dork?”

“Yeah,” Johnny said, looking at me like I'd lost my mind. “Is that not okay?”

“I...I just wasn't expecting to be...here,” I said. “Are we meeting with Harold?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “ Who's Harold?” We're just meeting in the strip mall . He didn't say anything about the computer store. Or Harold.”

“ The guy who owns Data Dork. His wife is the president of the PTA at Prism. I came over here to talk to him the other night.” Are you sure it wasn't Harold you talked to?” I quickly told him about my visit to the store.

Johnny adjusted his glasses. “ Oh, wow. I didn't know any of that. Obviously. This guy's name is Nate. Or at least that's what he told me.” He pulled the car into the lot and parked at the end of the strip mall. “He said he'd meet us down here at the end of all the stores.”

My head was spinning. Did this mean that the Hollenstorks did have something to do with the computer theft? Who was this Nate guy? Was Nate actually Harold?

“I don't know why he said here,” Johnny said. “This was just the place he gave me and I knew it was close, so...” His voice trailed off.

I was still trying to sort it out in my head when a guy in his late twenties in an oversized Vikings sweatshirt popped out from around the corner of the building s . He stood there for a moment, rubbing the scraggly goatee on his chin, squinting at us. Johnny rolled down his window and waved. The guy stood there a second, then headed our way, checking over his shoulder as he walked.

He peered down into Johnny's window when he reached the car. “You Johnny?” he asked,leaning close. The breeze blew his long black through the open car window.

“Yeah,” he said. “And this is my friend Daisy.”

He glanced quickly at me and smiled. His teeth were coffee-stained crooked and his nose was crooked just off-center , like it had been broken once or twice. “Hey. I'm Nate.” He moved his gaze back to Johnny. “So.”

“ Uh, so.”

“We still looking to make a little deal here?” Nate asked , raising his bushy eyebrows. .

Johnny's cheeks colored. “Uh...”

“I'm actually the one,” I blurted out. “The one that's looking to buy. The computers.”

Nate nodded a couple of times , assessing me . “Cool, cool. Alright. So, you're interested?”

“Yeah,” I said, trying to think fast, then pointed at the Data Dork sign. “Are the computers in there?”

Nate turned around like he didn't know what I was pointing at. to look. When he turned back around, he had kind of an amused look on his face.

“In there?” he said, then shook his head. “No. No way.”

“It's a computer store,” I said.

“Yeah, but it's, like, totally legit,” he said, frowning. “Dude that runs it, he'd never be in on any action like this. Speaking of that action — ”

“So he has nothing to do it with it?” I interrupted him. “The guy who runs the store?”

“Nah.”

“Why are we meeting here , then?”

He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “I work there part-time. I just finished my shift a little bit ago. Trust me . T , t hat guy has no clue about this kind of stuff.”

Okay. I felt a little better than Harold wasn't involved. For some reason, I didn't want him or Harriet to be the culprits. I liked him and his old little store and I really hoped he wasn't getting into something like stealing to keep his store doors open.

“You said the computers aren't here?” Johnny asked.

Nate shook his head. “ Nah. They're in a safe place, you know? Can't just be lugging them around with me, meeting strangers in parking lots.” He chuckled. “That wouldn't be very good business.”

“So how , uh, do we know what we're buying?” I asked.

He reached into the front pocket of his Vikings sweatshirt and handed Johnny a couple of photos. Johnny scanned them, nodding, then passed them to me.

I looked at the pictures. They were computers. I didn't see anything that identified them as the ones stolen from Prism, but they looked like computers that could've been in a computer lab.

“Cheap systems,” Johnny said to Nate. “Like they were purchased in bulk, yeah?”

Nate nodded.

“Like for a church or a school or a library, yeah?” Johnny asked.

Nate hesitated, then nodded again. “Pretty much, dude.” He ran down the specs on the computers, rattling off a bunch of numbers about memory and speed and software. “Standard stuff.”

Johnny nodded, then glanced at me. He adjusted his glasses. “I think it sounds like what you're looking for.”

I wasn't certain because Johnny and I hadn't exactly run any secret spy missions in the past, but I was pretty sure he was telling me that he thought the pictures were of the Prism computers.

“We'd need to see them,” I said. “Before I buy any of them.”

Nate rubbed at his chin and nodded like he'd expected that. “ Cool, cool. Alright. Well, h H ow many you think you want? Just one? A couple? What are your needs?”

“How many do you have?”

He raised the bushy an eyebrow. “How many like the ones in the pictures?”

“Yes.”

He pursed his lips. “About thirty.”

“Okay,” I said. “I want them all.”