Twelfth place wasn’t bad, considering the detour. Jasper was more concerned with keeping any more Blades from finding the team than how close she was to victory today.
Not that it wouldn’t have been nice to rub first place in everyone else’s faces.
She stopped outside the courthouse and leaned against her motorcycle, watching people stream out of the building. As Mechwell emerged, a free man once again, she pulled off her helmet. “Mechwell. I want to talk!”
Mechwell’s eyes went wide. “Van Terra! Help!”
“I’m not going to hurt you.” Jasper rolled her eyes. A few people looked her way as she approached him. She waved her sword in their direction. “Mind your own business!”
“What do you want with me?” Mechwell asked. He tugged at the collar of his shirt as sweat beaded on his skin.
Jasper stopped in front of him. “Just a few questions,” she told him. “Do you have any idea why you were framed?”
“What? No!”
“Think.” Jasper gave the sword a few casual swings. “Anything unusual happen recently?”
“Not that I—” Mechwell’s eyes somehow managed to go even wider. “Well, there was the data drive.”
“Data drive?”
“I don’t know what it could possibly have to do with Prime’s murder.”
Jasper raised an eyebrow. “Why don’t you tell me about it anyway?”
“Well, the building secretary was out sick, so my boss asked me to take some files to Kronos’s department. Just some organizational stuff related to the building. He also told me to pick up a data drive with utility information. When I showed up, a manager told me to leave the files on a desk.”
Mechwell’s nervous gaze darted back to the courthouse. He continued. “There was a data drive waiting, so I took it. When I showed it to my boss, he said it was the wrong one, and that I should take it back before I left for the day.”
“Did you?”
“No. I forgot and took the drive home.”
“What was on it?”
Mechwell shrugged. “I never looked at it. I threw it on my desk somewhere and completely forgot about it.”
“It’s still there?” Jasper asked.
“No.”
“For the love of—where is it?”
Mechwell winced at Jasper’s exasperation. “It was on me when I was arrested. I was going to take it back to work and forgot about it again. It should still be at the police station, since I haven’t collected my things from them yet.”
“Great. Thanks.” Jasper stepped around him and headed up the steps to meet the team as they exited the building.
“We have to make a stop,” Jasper told them. “Police station. Mechwell had a data drive on him when he was arrested, and I think it’s connected to Starr.”
Holly groaned. “Do we all have to go?”
“I guess not. Are the police uniforms still in the car?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. Angel, Thea, and I will go into the station while Holly and Dax keep the car running. We’ll swing by the shack when we’re done to pack up. And I have one last thing to take care of.”
“And after that?” Holly asked.
“The next race location is on Sa Ren.”
Dax frowned. “Why would Ringmaster go there?”
“Well, it’s where Aymes’s school is, and it’s about time we started paying attention to him anyway. He’s the weakest link in all this, and our best shot at getting intel we can use.” Jasper adjusted her grip on her sword. “You guys bring the van round front. I’ll throw in my motorcycle.”
Mechwell stared at Jasper as she stalked back down the steps. “Why were you talking to my lawyers?”
“You a cop or something? Mind your business.” Jasper picked up her motorcycle with one hand and slung it over her shoulder, sword still in the other. Holly and the others pulled up in the van, and she tossed the vehicle in the back.
“Let’s take the drive-through warp on Twenty-Seventh,” Jasper said. “It’ll be easier than getting out and going through a spaceport and grabbing the other car.”
“Jasper, drive-throughs require a driver’s license and vehicle registration,” Holly said.
Jasper raised an eyebrow. “Thea?”
Thea sighed. “Give me ten minutes. I need to check out their database connections.”
“It only takes five to get there.” Holly pulled onto the road.
“Oh, good,” Jasper said. “We can stop for food then.”
After a quick detour to Bibi’s, they made it through the warp and to the police station without trouble. Jasper, Grace, and Thea put on their uniforms and went straight for the evidence room.
Jasper had just grabbed the door handle when someone called her name. Sort of.
“Detective Jasper.” Detective Park paused, his eyes darting between the three. “Officer Sparks. Officer Starling. What are you all up to?”
“We were asked to grab Mechwell’s belongings,” Jasper said as she turned the handle. “Get them ready for him to pick up.”
“Weird to ask three people to do that, including a detective.” Detective Park sighed and took a sip of his coffee. “Can’t believe it wasn’t Mechwell. We’re basically back to square one.”
“We have the footage of the guy who took Mechwell’s coffee cup, though.” Jasper nodded for Grace and Thea to go into the evidence room.
“He might be our guy, but facial recognition didn’t find matches in any databases.”
“Damn. Sorry to hear that.”
“What do you think we should do next?” Detective Park asked.
“Uh, unfortunately, my team and I have been transferred. Again. There was this incident at our old station—anyway, we won’t be able to help.” Jasper’s gaze flickered into the room where Grace and Thea were sifting through cabinets. “But you should look into Ringmaster.”
“Ringmaster?” Detective Park asked, frowning.
“I know, I know, it sounds crazy. But I think he was involved,” Jasper told him. “Just look at the past couple locations of those races he’s hosting. I think you’ll find some clues. And the killer might work for him.”
“Got the drive,” Thea muttered into her comm.
“We have to go. Now.” Jasper backed away from Detective Park. “I just realized we left our car—oven—car oven on.”
Thea and Grace left the room and jogged down the hallway. Jasper followed.
“Who are you really, Jasper?” Detective Park called after her.
Jasper kept moving, faster now. “I don’t know what you mean gotta go good luck with the murder case bye!”
She caught up to the other two. “I think we’re in the clear.”
“You sure?” Grace asked.
“Yes.”
“Park seems pretty suspicious,” Thea said.
“Well, we’re leaving, so, whatever.”
They exited the station and waited by the curb for Holly and Dax to pull up. “Thea, can you open up the data drive?” Jasper asked as she removed her sunglasses.
“No way am I plugging this thing into my good tech,” Thea said, waving the drive. “It could have a virus protecting it. I have a spare sphere in the van I’ll use.”
“Okay.” Jasper rose up onto her tiptoes, trying to spot the van over the other vehicles in the parking lot.
Grace looked up at the sky. “Is that a storm coming?” she asked.
Jasper followed her gaze. Sure enough, dark clouds loomed on the horizon. “Huh,” Jasper said. “Looks like it. That’s rare.”
There was a thud behind them as the station doors opened. “Detective!” Detective Park started down the steps.
“Oh boy,” Jasper muttered. She slid her sunglasses back on. “Okay, get ready to run. I’m going to try to convince him—”
“I wanted to thank you for your help before you leave.” Detective Park stopped halfway down the steps. “Even though he ended up being innocent, we couldn’t have found Mechwell without your team.”
“Oh,” Jasper said as she turned to face him. “That was really nice. You’re welcome.”
“Don’t get me wrong, I don’t trust you at all. I sincerely doubt you are who you say you are, and I don’t understand your motives. But you did help.”
“Thanks. I think.” Jasper took a step back. “And hey, keep up the good work. You’ll find the killer. I know it’s tough when it feels like you’re up against everyone else.”
“Thanks.”
The van pulled up moments after Detective Park disappeared inside—it was probably best he didn’t see the stolen vehicle they’d vandalized. As the three climbed in, Grace said, “Did you really mean that?”
Jasper glanced at her. “Huh?”
“The nice stuff you said to Park.”
“Eh. Guy’s doing his best. I kind of feel bad for him.” Jasper shrugged. “Then again, he works for an organization that’s incompetent at best and corrupt at worst, so maybe he should try switching jobs if he’s having such a bad time.”
Jasper, Grace and Thea buckled themselves into the backseat. “Holly, take us to the shack,” Jasper directed. “Thea—”
“Already on it.” Thea plugged the data drive into a black smartsphere that was a few years old, at least. “Still, if this thing breaks, you owe me a new one.”
“You have a dozen of those.”
“Yeah, and?”
“You can steal as well as I can.”
“Yeah, and?”
“Fine.” Jasper leaned back in the middle seat and heaved a sigh. “Sa Ren’s going to be so nice compared to this desert.”
“This data drive’s super secure,” Thea said. “It’s incredible, really, I don’t know if I’ll even be able to—ha, just kidding, I can get in. It will take a while though.”
“Okay, miss ‘I’m the greatest hacker.’ Chill.”
They were pulling up at the shack by the time Thea had an update. “I’ve got a couple of the files open,” she said. “They’re mostly hologram projections.” She tapped the top of the sphere, and a 3D model popped up.
“What is that?” Grace asked, leaning in.
Thea spun the model around. “Design for a machine. Looks a bit like a big satellite dish.” She frowned. “Not exactly the right shape for picking up standard signals, though. I think it’s meant to absorb something more like…energy?”
“Energy?” Jasper repeated.
Thea tapped the right side of the sphere and it switched to a new diagram. “Oh.”
Grace winced. “I’m guessing that’s a spacetime warp?”
Jasper barely heard her. She stared blankly at the warp diagram. Despite the fact that it was a still image, she swore it was moving, throwing off light the way it did that day.
“The machine must be for absorbing energy from the warp.” Thea flipped to a new diagram. “Here, they’ve designed a way to store it—”
“We won’t let them,” Jasper said.
“Huh?”
“No one’s going anywhere near those things.” Jasper rubbed her forehead. “Would the machine even work?”
Thea shrugged. “It could, but the only way to know for sure would be to test it. I think the one we just looked at is a prototype.” She traced her thumb along the side of the sphere. “Also, I can sense more files on the drive, but I can’t get them to open. They’re either well hidden, or poorly deleted.”
“If you find anything else, let me know.” Jasper climbed out of the van. “You all have five minutes to get your stuff out of the shack. Then, I’m blowing this thing up.”
“What?” Holly shrieked. “Why?”
“I promised I would.”
“To who?”
“Doesn’t matter. Now hurry.”
Jasper walked to the back of the shack, to the small pile of rocks she’d left on the grave. She stood over it for a minute in silence before speaking. “Sorry it took me so long to come back,” she said. “And for everything else.”
The gray sky overhead darkened, warning of the oncoming storm.
“I wish you could have had a chance to leave. There’s a lot of terrible things out there, but there’s a lot of cool stuff, too. Anyway, I’m going to blow up the shack now. Like we said.” Her eyes stung. “If you’re somewhere, anywhere…I hope it’s nice there.”
A duffel bag waited by the back wall of the shack, exactly where Jasper had left it after the shopping—well, shoplifting—spree she’d squeezed in before they left for the trial. “Everyone in the van?” she yelled as she began dumping the contents of the bag into a loose circle around the structure.
“We’re all in!” Holly called back. “Are you coming?”
Jasper pulled out a small container of fuel and went back around the circle. A single drop of water bounced off her nose. “On my way!”
She drew out a match. Lit it. Another raindrop hit her skin. She dropped the match and backed up.
The downpour started, but there was no stopping the explosives now. Or the fireworks.
Jasper grinned as her back hit the van. The storm soaked her, but she didn’t climb inside yet. She watched and waited for the colors to stop bursting, for the shack to finish collapsing, for the last of the flames to die out.