Zeroes

  “Oh my God,” she muttered.

  Dad?

  CHAPTER 7

  SCAM

  HE MUST HAVE SPACED OUT, because one moment the bank was shuttered and dark and the next a line of people was streaming in.

  Ethan stood and hoisted the duffel bag onto his shoulder. He left money for the check, then added another twenty bucks from the bundle he’d shoved into his pocket.

  The bag had no drugs in it, just like the Craig had promised. Only rolls of money wrapped in bright blue rubber bands—wads of used-looking twenties and tens, all smelling of beer and sweat.

  Ethan hadn’t counted the bills, but it was more than he’d ever seen. He got a funny thrill from not waiting for his change. Suddenly twenty bucks seemed like nothing.

  Besides, he owed that waitress. Apart from the fact that he’d been a jerk to her, she’d helped him decide what to do next. When he’d ordered his first coffee, the voice had asked her what she’d do if someone gave her a big stack of money. Just outright asked her, like that. Say, what would you do with a big ol’ stack of money? And she’d said, “Put it in the bank, I guess.”

  Not very imaginative, but it was all he had right then. Put it in the bank. Get it out of sight. Ditch the green duffel bag.

  Ethan’s legs were rubbery from sitting so long. And from nerves.

  He left the diner and crossed the road, checking the shadows of the park beside the bank. No black Jeep, no sign of the Craig. Taylor and him were probably busting heads somewhere, trying to discover how some kid knew so much about their operation.

  The good thing was, they’d never figure that out.

  Inside the bank there was already a short line of people waiting for tellers. Ethan hesitated. He wasn’t stupid enough to deposit this much cash into an account. What if Mom found one of his bank statements?

  Forget it. He’d get a safe deposit box. Then he’d have plenty of time to figure out what to do next.

  He joined the back of the line. Maybe he could get his own apartment, away from the prying eyes of his mother. Maybe take a road trip. Leave Cambria behind for a couple months. Ethan eased the bag onto his other shoulder. This could be a great summer.

  The line edged forward slowly, like a glacier receding. The gallon of coffee he’d consumed was wringing every nerve in his body. He kept waiting for the Craig to come through the door and beat him to a pulp.

  A security guard sat in a corner of the bank. He caught Ethan looking at the door every few minutes and gave him a flat, blank stare. He didn’t seem like he’d be up to stopping an assault from the Craig. In fact, he seemed more interested in Ethan. Probably wondering why this seedy-looking teenager was so jumpy.

  Ethan tried to give the security guy a reassuring smile. The guy continued to stare.

  The duffel bag grew heavier with each passing minute. Ethan dropped it to the floor in front of him and nudged it along with the toe of his shoe. He’d be glad to have all that cash safely stored in the bank’s basement. Then he could relax.

  “What’s taking so long?” he muttered.

  The girl in front of him half turned his way. She had short, straight hair, the tips dyed in a pink sawtooth pattern. Weird but kind of cool. She was wearing a crisp blue-and-white uniform, like she was about to start a shift as a flight attendant. Back in the fifties. She held a phone in a sparkly case, and pink headphone cables disappeared under her hair. She bobbed in time to whatever she was listening to, sending her glossy hair bouncing.

  The next time the line shuffled forward, Ethan kicked his bag so it bumped the girl’s ankles. She turned a blank expression toward him. Her eyes were unnaturally green, her mouth painted into a cute little pout.

  Ethan smiled at her. Suddenly what he wanted was to be in familiar territory. Not driving stolen cars or getting shot at—just charming someone.

  “I like your hair,” he heard the voice say.

  She frowned and pulled out one of her earbuds. “What?”

  “I said I like your hair.”

  “Thanks.” She turned the rest of the way around, looking him up and down. She was wearing a name tag: MARJORIE.

  “You don’t look like a Marjorie,” Ethan’s voice said.

  She made a puzzled face, glanced down at her name tag, and shrugged. “They recycle these things. Like, for decades.”

  “That explains it. You look more like a Sophie.”

  She smiled. “Close. Sonia.”

  Ethan nodded. The voice always guessed girls’ names almost right. Maybe it figured that exactly right was creepy.

  “Wait. I get it now,” the voice said. “Your hair. Low Brow.”

  Sonia’s eyes widened. “You know Patty Low?”

  “I so know Patty Low.” Ethan had never heard of Patty Low in his life, but he could feel his muscles relaxing as he spoke. Like someone who knew all the answers. “I even know that photo, the one you based your hairstyle on.”

  “No way,” Sonia said.

  Ethan gave her a confident smile. “Not the cover of Low Brow, but the special booklet that came with the acoustic versions.”

  “Oh, wow.” Sonia nearly leaped into the air. “I can’t believe you know those! That’s, like, her most obscure stuff.”

  “I know all her stuff.” The voice knew everything, after all.

  Sonia was ecstatic now, launched by his lies into her own little reality. “That’s so awesome. I got this stupid job just so I could buy Low Brow. You get the joke on the cover, right?”

  “Sure! Where she’s posing with Jay White—” The sound of the name in his own mouth made Ethan sputter to a halt. “Wait. The Jay White?”

  Sonia frowned. “What? Of course.”

  “Ah, man.” Ethan hated Jay White. Producer and pop supremo White’s crimes against humanity numbered in the thousands. One for every tune he released. Rumor was he could record twenty a day. Before breakfast. “The guy who ran over a couple girls while he was high?”

  That was his real voice talking. Ethan tried to slip back into the passive role, the listener. But he was too exhausted, too wired from coffee and anxiety. The ache from speaking with the voice was back now, as if the Craig had socked him in the jaw.

  “He was in a bad place then,” the girl muttered, turning away.

  “Sure.” For a moment Ethan wanted to reconnect. But Sonia’s pout was back in place, and it was beginning to annoy him. “I mean, those two girls were probably having a crappy day too. Especially after they messed up the paint job on his SUV.”

  She turned back to him, her expression one of complete betrayal.

  Ethan hadn’t said that last part; the voice had. He’d only wanted her to stop talking to him. But the voice always gave Ethan exactly what he wanted.

  Sonia did exactly that, of course: stopped talking and turned away. She cranked her music until a tinny Jay White–produced tune was spilling out of her skull.

  Great. Now he felt like crap. He hated when the voice insulted people. It was hard to take that stuff back. And the awful thing was, half the time he didn’t even remember exactly what the voice said. They weren’t his words, after all.

  Last summer he’d lost his three best friends in a single spray of insults. He’d been so angry, wanting those guys to hurt, really hurt. Wanting them to leave him the hell alone. And, just like Sonia, they had.

  Those three were the only people who really knew what Ethan was. They had their own powers to deal with. They understood.

  The Zeroes, they’d called themselves as a joke. Like heroes, but not. They’d even tried to act like superheroes, with stupid training exercises and code names. But at least they’d all been friends.

  Until he’d let the voice lash out. None of them had spoken to him since.

  The line inched forward.

  He tapped Sonia lightly on the shoulder. “Hey.”

  She turned and glared at him, head still bopping to the music.

  “I’m sorry.” He mouthed the words clearly.

  Sonia hesit
ated, her eyes narrowing. Finally a half smile crossed her face. After all, he was a fellow fan of Patty Low. At least, she thought he was.

  She pulled one earbud out, like she was about to say something. But then her gaze swiveled to a point over his shoulder and she froze.

  Ethan turned. Three guys with very big guns had entered the bank. They wore all-black clothes and white hockey masks. One of them lifted his rifle and shot it directly into the ceiling.

  The world flew apart into dust and noise.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” the gunman said through the ringing echoes of the boom. “Get your asses down on the floor!”

  CHAPTER 8

  MOB

  KELSIE HEARD THE MUFFLED GUNSHOT through the bank wall, but mostly she felt it—the sudden focus of everyone inside, that wave of heat that came from a group of people united by a surge of adrenaline.

  There was a flood, a tsunami of energy from the customers—fear, shock, disbelief. All of it spinning together, strong enough that for a moment it was beyond Kelsie’s control. It threatened to drown her, to drag her over into panic. But then her instincts kicked in and she pushed back, fought her way to the top to ride the wave.

  It was like blocking a fire hose with her hands. The spooked crowd was a geyser of energy, hot and furious. But she drew them up, up, up into her own calm place. She channeled them into peace. She fed them stillness. Numbness. Quiet. And she held them there.

  They all wanted the same thing—to be safe. That unity of purpose kept Kelsie in charge. It was all going to be okay.

  As long as no one got hurt. As long as nobody hurt her dad.

  She backed away from that thought, which threatened to spill over into the crowd. Of course it was all going to be okay. Of course it was.

  Kelsie had been waiting in the park by the bank since breakfast, trying to look inconspicuous. Just a bored kid, killing time before the mall opened. The blue car had returned right after she’d gotten rid of Ling and Mikey, telling them she wanted to walk home. This time the car had pulled up right behind the bank.

  Three men had gotten out, wearing hockey masks. She’d recognized her dad from his walk. The limp that he claimed was a knife wound but was really from the time he’d blown out his knee stealing a two-hundred-pound poker machine.

  For all his screwups, Dad had never done anything like this before. He’d never robbed a bank. As far as she knew, he’d never even held a gun. So what on earth did he think he was doing at Cambria Central Bank wearing a hockey mask and carrying that shotgun?

  She’d tried to call out, to stop him. But all alone, without a group around her, she’d never have the guts to accost three men with masks and guns.

  “Damn it.” Kelsie rested the back of her skull against the bank wall and closed her eyes. It helped her stay connected to the storm of emotions from the crowd inside. She couldn’t find her dad in the sickly wash of fear. She’d never been able to pick out individuals once a group took on its own identity. This one was like a big, scared animal with all its nerves jangling.

  She kept channeling the fear, replacing it with calm. The sooner this was over, the sooner everybody could go home. And that included her dad.

  Something was blinking, flashing above her. On the corner of the bank building, way up high, a blue light was pulsing. It made no sound, but it was bright enough to bleach the early morning daylight.

  Someone inside had triggered the bank’s silent alarm. No doubt another alarm was pulsing at the central police station a few miles away. The cops would be here soon, and they’d take her dad away. After a screwup as big as this one, maybe he wouldn’t come back.

  Kelsie felt herself seizing up with panic.

  She hauled herself from the wall, breaking the connection she had with the crowd inside. The last thing she needed was for her fears to spread into the people in the bank.

  “Come on, Dad. Get out of there.”

  There was nothing she could do now but watch.

  CHAPTER 9

  SCAM

  “LET’S GET THIS OVER WITH, people,” the gunman was saying. “We all want a nice quick job here, right?”

  He sounded like he meant it.

  Ethan stared at the man in the hockey mask. He felt anesthetized. The shock of the gunshot was wearing off, replaced with a wave of numbness. Like someone was pumping liquid valium into his veins. He knew he should feel more panic, but all he could think about was that he really wished he’d taken a leak before leaving the diner. All that awful coffee, plus lying facedown on a cold marble floor, was doing no favors to his bladder.

  He shifted his head to see the rest of the room. The whole place had fallen to its knees in one movement. People had screamed when the first shot went into the ceiling, and yet still dropped. Like they couldn’t wait to get to the ground. Even the security guard, who’d had a gun pointed right at his face until he’d tossed his own aside, seemed weirdly calm.

  The quiet felt unreal.

  Ethan looked at where Sonia lay, one cheek against the floor. She seemed as spacey as he felt. Her phone was clutched in her hand like a talisman, something bulletproof. She gazed back at Ethan, her eyes shiny in the morning light that streamed through the bank. He tried to give her a reassuring smile. She didn’t smile back.

  He took a wary glance at the men with guns. Far as he could tell, none of them was the Craig. These guys were all too skinny. In Ethan’s mind, Craig’s neck had taken on epic proportions. Like maybe it was the thickest part of his entire body.

  Okay. So this whole robbery thing had nothing to do with Ethan’s stolen duffel bag full of money. It was just an amazingly shitty coincidence. The perfect end to his night.

  He eased the bag closer to him, willing it to disappear against his body.

  The gunman was talking again. “We all want to get out of here safely and enjoy the rest of our lives, don’t we?”

  Ethan found he did—he really, really did. Still, it was kind of perverse for a guy to keep talking about safety while he was carrying the biggest gun Ethan had ever seen. If the gunman hadn’t unloaded that thing so convincingly into the ceiling, it might’ve passed for something out of a cartoon. Plaster was still drifting through the air like fake snow in a crappy school play.

  The two other gunmen were behind the tills, scrambling through cash. Funny how they were the least calm people in the room. With their hockey masks and frantic movements, they seemed to belong to some separate, insectoid branch of humanity. The sort of creature that didn’t care about getting home safely.

  Ethan felt a spasm of fear low in his gut. But then, just like that, it was gone again, smoothed over by the valium in the air.

  “The vault’s shut!” one of the gunmen shouted. “Someone pushed the panic button!”

  He started swearing. He seemed to swear for a long time without breathing.

  The guy with the giant gun lowered his aim, till the barrel was pointed at his own toes. Ethan reflected calmly how that seemed like a really bad idea. That same gun had taken out a sizable part of the ceiling, and the guy was already limping. He probably couldn’t afford to lose a foot.

  Now he was tapping the rifle muzzle against the marble floor. Glaring at the customers like the locked vault was their fault.

  Ethan tried to become one with the marble.

  Beside him Sonia let out a whimper.

  “Time to move,” Big Gun said. “Bag the cash. I’ll see what I can scrape up from the civilians.”

  The other two scrambled into motion. They began stuffing wads of cash into the canvas bags they’d brought with them. A bill floated down and landed a few feet from Ethan’s face. A fifty.

  He was in no way tempted to reach for it.

  Big Gun was walking through the crowd slowly, his hockey mask swinging left and right. He was sizing them up, maybe trying to work out who had the most money in their pockets. Ethan’s hand tightened on the straps of his duffel bag.

  Suddenly Big Gun knelt. There was a muffled shriek from a
n elderly woman in a patterned dress.

  “It’s okay,” Big Gun said. “Just taking your watch, ma’am.”

  At least he was polite. Which only made him scarier. The woman let out small sobbing noises, but she let him have the watch.

  Ethan shut his eyes to stop himself from staring at the duffel bag.

  Footsteps came toward him across the marble floor, keeping time with the pulse going off in Ethan’s neck.

  Big Gun was nearby. “Nice ring, little girl.”

  “It’s nothing” came Sonia’s voice, defiant.

  “Then you won’t mind if I take it.”

  Ethan opened his eyes. Sonia’s hand was wrapped around her phone. On her middle finger was a ring with two concentric circles overlapping. Like owl eyes.

  When the gunman reached down, she drew back her hand. “They’re not real diamonds or anything. They’re totally fake.”

  The man seemed to hesitate.

  “Just give him the ring!” Ethan hissed.

  “Do what your boyfriend says,” Big Gun told her.

  Sonia glared at Ethan. “He’s so not my boyfriend!”

  But at least she pulled the ring off and sent it rolling across the floor. The gunman swept it up.

  He stayed on one knee, his hockey mask hanging in the corner of Ethan’s vision.

  “Hey, kid. What you got in the bag?”

  CHAPTER 10

  SCAM

  ETHAN GAVE HIMSELF OVER TO the voice. He didn’t care what it said, as long as it distracted this bank robber from the duffel bag.

  It came out low and raspy, like nothing Ethan had ever heard from his own mouth before. “You know this is all going to hell, don’t you, Jerry?”

  The gunman froze. “How do you know my name?”

  Ethan shut his eyes, but the voice didn’t stop talking. “That’s a great question, Jerry. You should think about that. How does some kid with his face on the floor of the biggest bank in Cambria know your name?”

  Jerry didn’t answer.

  The voice was taking one hell of a chance, talking to an armed robber like they were old friends. And, just like always, there was no turning back.