I made a punching gesture at the door, and Jen nodded agreement. We were going to have to break it down.
Unfortunately, we hadn't remembered to bring a battering ram. The door looked formidable, its metal painted industrial gray. And once the first blow rang out, we were going to have company pretty soon. We would have to crash through, drag Mandy out, and make a run for the other end of the studio.
I looked around for something to hit the door with and spotted a fire extinguisher hanging in a corner.
Jen stepped in front of me, shaking her head. She pointed back to where we'd hidden.
In the work lights I could clearly see the piece of equipment we had crouched behind. It was a camera dolly, a heavy, four-wheeled cart used for filming traveling shots. Attached to its front was a heavy, cranelike arm for holding the camera.
I smiled. We did have a battering ram.
We stole quickly back to the dolly and gave it a tentative shove. It glided forward easily on rubber tires designed to provide the camera with a smooth, silent ride.
Jen and I grinned at each other. Perfect.
We lined it up with the door, aiming the camera crane dead center.
"One… two… three…," Jen mouthed, and we leaned our weight against the dolly. Engineered to roll fast, it built speed quickly and quietly moved across the smooth floor.
About five seconds from collision the door opened.
Mandy was standing there, a puzzled look on her face, the small room glaringly white behind her. I skidded to a halt, but our battering ram pulled itself from my grasp, rolling unstoppably ahead.
"W-What the…," Mandy stammered as the dolly hurtled toward her; j then, at the last instant, she did the sensible thing and slammed the door shut.
The dolly struck with a bright metal crunch, the sound of a car hitting a garbage can at full speed echoing through the vast space. The door crumpled inward, closing around the dolly's camera crane like a stomach around a fist.
"Mandy!" I cried, leaping forward.
Jen and I pulled the dolly back frantically, and the door swung outward, then tumbled from its hinges, crashing to the floor.
Mandy was standing inside the little room, looking down at us from her perch. I realized she'd jumped up onto a toilet to escape the rampaging dolly—she was in a bathroom. The sounds of flushing noises came from the imperturbable plumbing.
"Are you okay?" I shouted.
"Hunter? What the hell are you—?"
"No time!" I cried, and pulled her down. Jen was already headed back across the studio floor, out of the pool of work lights and into the darkness. I dragged a very stunned Mandy after me, bruising my shins against shadowy obstacles as we charged for the big sliding stage door.j
The sounds of confusion came from behind me, doors swinging open and light spilling into the studio. If only we could make it back to the security guard at the front entrance or even out into the sunlight…
"Hunter!" Mandy screamed, a dead weight behind me.
"Just run!" I yelled, trying to yank her forward, but she planted her heels and pulled me to a stop.
I spun and faced her.
"What are you doing?" she cried.
"Rescuing you!"
She looked at me for an endless second, then sighed and shook her head. "Oh, Hunter, you are so yesterday."
Then the world exploded, buzzing and powerful banks of film lights hitting us from every direction.
"Oh, shit," I heard Jen say.
I covered my eyes against the blaze of color, completely blind. Footsteps and the sound of metal skate wheels closed around us.
Oh, shit, was right.
Chapter 31
A COMMANDING VOICE CAME FROM BEHIND THE BLINDING WALL of light.
"If it isn't Hunter Braque, skinny white boy looking like his mother didn't have time to dress him."
Even blinded and terrified, I flinched at this unfair fashion analysis. I might be wearing gray cords and a dried-chewing-gum-colored shirt, but I was going for social invisibility.
"I am undercover, you know," I protested.
"Yeah, you look it," a deeper voice called from the opposite direction—the big bald guy.
"And who have we here?" the first voice said.
I heard the rumble of skates on the concrete floor. I agonizingly pried my lids apart and saw Mwadi Wickersham gliding gracefully out of the retina-searing glare. I glimpsed more figures surrounding us, covering every escape route. The trucker cap and cowboy boots of Futura Garamond strolled out of the blinding wall of light. He stared at Jen's feet.
"Yo, look, she's got the laces," he said. A murmur of recognition passed through our captors.
"So she does," Mwadi Wickersham said, dark glasses peering down from her skate-enhanced height. "Did you come up with those yourself, honey?"
Jen squinted back at her. "Yeah. What do you mean, the laces?"
"Mandy had a picture on her. We've all been talking about them." Mwadi nodded, an imperious queen pleased with her subject. "Nice work."
"Uh, thanks."
"Let us go!" I demanded, if high-pitched noises can be construed as demanding.
Mwadi Wickersham turned toward me and said, "Not until we get a deal signed."
I turned toward Mandy, who was giving me the glare she reserves for people who perpetually insist that clam diggers are coming back.
"W-Wait," I stammered. "What deal?"
"The biggest deal of my career, Hunter." She sighed. "Do you think maybe you could not screw it up?"
We sat at one of the tables in the fake restaurant: Jen and me, Mwadi Wickersham, Mandy, and Futura Garamond. A few more henchmen stood around, half visible behind the bright banks of movie lights. I caught the flash of Future Sarcastic Woman's silver hair and the silhouette of the big bald guy, their alert poses suggesting that departure was not an option. From our island of light, the sound stage seemed to extend for miles in every direction, lending an echoey grandeur to our words.
"So you didn't get kidnapped?" I asked Mandy for the third time.
"Well… at first, I guess." She looked at Mwadi Wickersham for help
with the question.
Wickersham removed her dark glasses, and I blinked. Her eyes were as ^ green as Jen's but more piercing, narrowed to slits in the bright movie lights. She wore a white wife beater and faded, brandless jeans with a wide black belt, a fake gold chain around her neck: banji-butch street kid, circa mid-break-dance era. In winter you'd add a leather jacket. I knew from cool-hunting history that if you'd grown up in the Bronx in the 1980s, the uniform was practically Logo Exile.
She placed the glasses on the table, in no hurry to answer, possessed of that unquestionable authority achieved by being from an older generation but still totally cool.
"We decided to make a deal."
"You made a bargain with the client?" Jen asked, appalled.
"Sure. The element of surprise was blown anyway. And they wanted them."
"That we did," Mandy said.
"Wait," I asked. "You wanted what?"
"You sold out," Jen said to Wickersham.
I felt like I was reading subtitles that didn't match the dialog. "Huh?"
"It wasn't supposed to work out this way," Wickersham said darkly, the rumble of her skates ominous under the table as her feet slid restlessly back and forth. "We worked on those shoes for two years, getting them just right. We wanted to put them on the street with the sinister swooshes. But certain people in our organization thought they were too cool. A theory was proposed that we'd be making the client hip again by association."
"Kind of like a Tony Bennett self-parody thing," Jen said.