Hotwire (Maggie O'Dell #9)
by Alex Kava
Alex Kava is the author of ten previous novels, eight of which feature FBI profiler Maggie O’Dell. A former PR director, Alex dedicated herself to writing full time in 1996. She lives in Nebraska, USA. Find out more at: www.alexkava.com.
TO DEBORAH GROH CARLIN,
the wizard behind the curtain
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 8
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 9
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
THIRTY-FIVE
THIRTY-SIX
THIRTY-SEVEN
THIRTY-EIGHT
THIRTY-NINE
FORTY
FORTY-ONE
FORTY-TWO
FORTY-THREE
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 10
FORTY-FOUR
FORTY-FIVE
FORTY-SIX
FORTY-SEVEN
FORTY-EIGHT
FORTY-NINE
FIFTY
FIFTY-ONE
FIFTY-TWO
FIFTY-THREE
FIFTY-FOUR
FIFTY-FIVE
FIFTY-SIX
FIFTY-SEVEN
FIFTY-EIGHT
FIFTY-NINE
SIXTY
SIXTY-ONE
SIXTY-TWO
SIXTY-THREE
SIXTY-FOUR
SIXTY-FIVE
SIXTY-SIX
SIXTY-SEVEN
SIXTY-EIGHT
MONDAY, OCTOBER 12
SIXTY-NINE
SEVENTY
SEVENTY-ONE
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 8
ONE
NEBRASKA NATIONAL FOREST
HALSEY, NEBRASKA
Dawson Hayes looked around the campfire and immediately recognized the losers. It was almost too easy to spot them.
He could pretend he had some super radar in reading people, but the truth was he knew the losers because … what was that old saying? It takes one to know one. It wasn’t that long ago that he would have been huddled over there with them, wondering why he had been invited, sweating and waiting to see what the price of the invitation was.
He didn’t feel sorry for them. They didn’t have to show up. Nobody dragged them here. So anything that happened was sort of their own fault. Their price for wanting to be somebody they weren’t. Admission to the cool club didn’t come without some sacrifice. If they thought otherwise, then they really were hopeless losers.
At least Dawson accepted who he was. Actually he didn’t mind. He liked being different from his classmates and sometimes he played up the part, purposely wearing all black on football Fridays when everyone else wore school colors. Being the geek got him noticed, even garnered an eye roll from Coach Hickman, who before Dawson started wearing black on Fridays hadn’t bothered to remember Dawson’s name.
At the beginning of the school year, during roll call for history class Coach would yell out “Dawson Hayes” and look around the entire room, over Dawson’s head and sometimes straight at him. When Dawson raised his hand, Coach Hickman’s eyebrows would dart up like the man would never in a million years have put a cool name like Dawson Hayes together with the pimpled face and the hesitant, skinny arm claiming it. Dawson didn’t mind. He was finally starting to get noticed and it didn’t matter how it came about.
Even now he knew the only reason for his continued invitation to these exclusive retreats in the forest was because Johnny Bosh liked what Dawson brought to the party. Tonight that something was burning a hole in Dawson’s jacket pocket. He tried not to think about it. Tried not to think how earlier he had lifted it—that’s right, lifted, borrowed, not stolen—from his dad’s holster while the man slept on his one night off. His dad probably wouldn’t care as soon as he heard Dawson was hanging with Johnny B. Okay, that wasn’t true. His dad would be pissed. But wasn’t he always encouraging Dawson to make friends, go do stuff that other kids were doing? In other words, be a normal teenager for a change.
Dawson thought that was part of his problem—he was too normal. He wasn’t a superstar athlete like Johnny B or a tobacco-chewing cowboy like Trevor or a brainiac like Kyle, but just holding the Taser X26, with its lightweight, bright-yellow casing that fit perfectly in his hand, gave him a new identity and a sense of confidence. All he had to do was point and wham, there goes fifty thousand volts of electricity. And suddenly Dawson Hayes, the powerless, became powerful. He could control anyone and everyone. With this sleek piece of technology in the palm of his hand Dawson felt like he could do anything.
Okay, maybe it wasn’t just the Taser. Maybe the salvia had a little something to do with it. He’d been chewing his wad for about fifteen minutes and he could already feel the effect. That was just one of the highlights of tonight.
Dawson looked for the camera hidden behind some low sweeping pine branches. Though it remained camouflaged he could see the green dot blinking only because he had helped Johnny set it up earlier, making sure the tripod blended in with the trees. No one else knew it was there. Being the geek in residence did have its advantages.
Dawson glanced around at the campground. They had stomped out an area for themselves in a secluded part of the pine forest where they probably shouldn’t have a frickin’ campfire. Johnny B said no one could see them from the road or the lookout tower, though it didn’t matter. Both would be vacant. On one side was an open field, a swell of tall rolling grass separated by a barbed-wire fence. On the other side was the thick beginning of ponderosa pine. About ten yards away the Dismal River snaked by. Dawson could hear the water tonight, just a whisper running over the rocks.
They had left their vehicles about a quarter mile down in a deserted turnoff, a two-tire trail worn into the knee-high grass. They had to climb over a barbed-wire fence to enter the forest. The trek was only the first test of the night but Dawson thought it revealed quite a lot about tonight’s guests. How they maneuvered and crawled over the sharp barbs showed just how capable they were. Whether they turned to help the next person get over or under the fence or if instead, they looked for assistance. Or worse, expected assistance.
That was another thing about Dawson that made him different from other kids his age. He liked watching how people reacted to each other, to their surroundings, and especially to the unpredictable. His generation had become mindless zombies, mimicking and copying each other, caught up in their own little worlds of what is rather than what if. That was probably what interested him most about Johnny’s experiments.
There were only seven of them here tonight and yet they still grouped together in their cliques. Johnny was surrounded by the babes, Courtney and Amanda. Tonight even Nikki had inserted herself into the cool clique, which disappointed Dawson. He had hoped that Nikki would be better than that. All three girls looked like they were hanging on every one of Johnny’s words, laughing and tossing their hair back then tilting their chins in that way girls do to show their interest.