Ali Cross Read online

  I looked up from my texting to see Nana standing in the door from the kitchen. She’d already seen my phone and had her hand out to take it away. I didn’t have much choice, so I gave it over.

  “I was working on the Gabe stuff,” I said. Confessed. Whatever.

  I thought I was about to get a Nana-sized lecture, but instead, she just sat down and looked me in the eye. In a nice way.

  “And how are we doing on that front?” she asked. “I imagine it’s all very hard on you.”

  “I’m okay,” I said. “I just can’t stop thinking about it.”

  “Oh, I know,” Nana Mama said. “I see it in you every day. The constant thinking, thinking, thinking. It’s the price you pay for that fast running brain of yours.”

  “I just wish there was more I could do about it,” I said. “To be honest, I feel like I let Gabe down by getting grounded. While I’m stuck here at home, he could be out there hurt, or hungry, or scared, or in a hundred different kinds of trouble—”

  Nana cut me off. “That’s the blessing and the curse of a mind like yours,” she said. “An active imagination is a wonderful thing. But it can also be a burden, if you focus too much on the dark side of the street.”

  “It just all seems kind of impossible,” I admitted. “I mean, I want to help, but how am I supposed to find Gabe if the police can’t?”

  “Impossible, huh?” Nana Mama sat back and eyeballed me, like she wasn’t buying what I was selling. “Is that how all those detectives you admire so much get it done? Mr. Holmes? Monsieur Poirot? Olivia Benson? How far do you think any of them would have gotten if they worried too much about what was and wasn’t possible?”

  This is the thing with Nana. I knew she was right. I just didn’t know how to take what she was saying and put it into action.

  “Here’s another name for you,” Nana went on. “Do you know who James Baldwin is?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. I knew he was somebody famous, but that was it.

  “James Baldwin was a great American writer, poet, and thinker,” Nana Mama told me. “And it was he who called black history a ‘perpetual testimony to the achievement of the impossible.’”

  I had to say that one out loud to really get it. “‘A perpetual testimony to the achievement of the impossible.’”

  Nana explained some more. “The life I get to live today would have been impossible for my great-grandmother, or even for my mother,” she said. “And the things you can do now, as a young black man in this country, the things you can achieve? It all would have been impossible for me when I was your age. But it takes some faith, so don’t ever let this notion of what’s not possible stop you from trying. Anything is possible, Ali. And I mean that.”

  I saw what she was doing. She was telling me not to sell myself short. And I guess she’d know. She came up from nothing in North Carolina, and here she was, being a total boss in a house with two of Washington DC’s baddest cops. Not too shabby.

  “You’re saying I can find Gabe if I set my mind to it,” I said. “Is that it?”

  Nana shook her head. “I don’t know if you can,” she said. “But there’s one way to find out.” Then she slid the phone back across the table to me. “No idle shenanigans, no chitchat with your friends. But if you want to work on your investigation, I’d call that a worthy bit of homework, after all.”

  “Thank you, Nana,” I said.

  “Don’t thank me. Just do good work,” she said. “And that includes all of your regular assignments for school, too. This isn’t a free pass I’m giving you. It’s more responsibility, not less. You got that?”

  And of course I gave the only possible answer.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said.

  So maybe Nana Mama is kind of old school, or a lot old school, but I’ll tell you what else: she’s also one of the best, smartest, and, yes, coolest people I know.

  No question.

  THE GOOD NEWS—part one—was that I got my laptop back from the police lab the next day. They’d dusted it for fingerprints, and I’m not even sure what else, but Dad brought it home for good that night.

  And no, he told me, Gabe didn’t have any fingerprints on record, so they couldn’t check that. But I liked that he knew I was going to ask. It meant I was thinking about it like a real detective.

  The other good news was that Damon’s college team, the Davidson Wildcats, were playing the Wake Forest Deacons that night, and the game was going to be on ESPN2.

  I’d seen Damon play a million times, but never on TV. Nobody in the family had. And now he was playing for the same college team that Steph Curry had put on the map. It was like a national holiday at our house. Dad was even lifting my “no television” rule just long enough for me to get to see it.

  I don’t think our living room had ever been stuffed with so many people. Sampson and his wife, Billie, were there with their kids. We also had Dad’s cousin Tia and her boyfriend, and Jannie’s best friend Shaniece, who’d had a crush on Damon since forever. Nana had two friends from church, along with Father Bernadin, and a whole bunch of Dad and Bree’s cop buddies were there from MPD, too. I wasn’t allowed to have any of my own friends, since I was still grounded. But at least I got to watch the game.

  Once everyone was there, I took a spot on the floor near the back of the room. That was for a couple of reasons. I was tired of everyone staring at my black eye and asking questions I didn’t want to answer. Also, it was easier to sit back there and work on my laptop during the commercials if people weren’t looking at me all the time. Now that I had my computer back, I wanted to load all my Gabe notes onto the hard drive so I could have it with me wherever I went.

  “Let’s go, Davidson!” Nana called out from the couch. She was all set up with her new app, so she could use her phone to track every move Damon’s team made, down to the last block, shot, and assist. Anyone who thinks they know more about college ball than Nana Mama is probably mistaken.

  Still, it was awesome to hear the ESPN guys talking about the Wildcats during their warm-up, and even better when they showed Damon on-screen.

  “That’s Damon Cross, who’s been knocking down threes like nobody’s business this season,” one guy said. “I’m sure Coach Bolton has some high hopes for this sophomore starter from Washington DC.”

  Everyone went crazy when he said that, but Nana Mama made us all shut up when it was time for the tip-off.

  Not that it stayed quiet for long. As soon as the Wildcats took possession, it was like a screaming contest in our living room. And when Damon grabbed a running pass and landed the first dunk of the night, it felt like the whole house was going to come down. He really did play like Curry, and I was hoping maybe Damon was headed for the NBA himself. How cool would that be? I don’t think I’ve ever watched a game as closely as I was watching that one. In fact, I didn’t even look down at my laptop until they went to the first commercial break.

  But what I saw then changed everything.

  The first thing I noticed on the computer was that it had a screen saver running. Which was weird. Usually, laptops just go to sleep to save the batteries. Not this one. It had a word rolling and bouncing around the screen.

  Then I looked closer and saw that it wasn’t a word, exactly. It was just a bunch of random letters: QUBUQ. Which is when I also realized, no. Those weren’t just random letters. Not at all. QUB was Gabe’s screen name in Outpost. And QUBUQ was the same thing, forward and backward.

  It was also five letters long, which is exactly what I needed to get past that combination lock on the door to Gabe’s bunker, inside the game.

  Was I right? Was it really Gabe who broke in and stole our things? And then gave it back? Why would he do that? Where was he living, if he wasn’t at home? What kind of trouble was he in?

  So while some Geico ad played on the TV, and everyone else headed to the kitchen, or to the bathroom, I was sitting there completely zoned in on my computer.

  This was no coincidence. That much I knew
. It put a tingling, Spidey-sense kind of feeling right through me. Gabe wanted me to have this information, didn’t he? And he made sure in his genius way that it would just be between the two of us. Why else would he go to all the trouble of smuggling it in to me like this?

  In other words, I’d just gotten my first really big break in the case.

  MY HEART WAS making like a jackhammer in my chest by now, and my head was spinning around faster than that screen saver. I didn’t know where this was leading, but one thing was for sure: I needed to get into Outpost, ASAP.

  I still had the no-PlayStation rule from Dad, but that was like the least of my worries. The harder part was going to be getting to the basement without anyone knowing I was down there. At least I’d been sitting behind everyone so chances were good no one would look back and notice I wasn’t there.

  Once Damon’s game was back on and everyone was re-glued to the TV, I ducked out the back of the living room and into the kitchen. If anyone saw, it was just going to look like I was getting something to eat.

  I stood by the basement door after that, waiting for Davidson to score. When they did, everyone went crazy in the living room all over again, and I used the noise for cover. I eased open the door, stepped onto the stairs, and closed it again behind me.

  About thirty seconds later, I was logging onto Outpost with the sound muted, just in case. The good news inside the game was that I’d already been to Gabe’s home base once. That meant I could fast-travel there with one click now. It cost me half my energy reserves, but that didn’t matter. I wasn’t there to play.

  Click.

  As soon as I landed outside the bunker, I took a quick look around to see if anything was different this time. I made sure to look up, too, like Dad told me to do in the street that night. But I didn’t see anything. No sign of any random players, and more important, no sign of Gabe. Not that I knew what to look for. He was already good at going unnoticed in real life. How hard would it be in a virtual world where he could make himself look like anything he wanted?

  What really mattered right now was the fact that the clock was going tick-tick-tick-tick, and anyone might come looking for me at any second. I needed to get this done now. I didn’t even have time to text the squad and tell them to log in with me.

  I went to the bunker door and slid open the panel Ruby had found. Then I touched the keypad inside to bring it into close-up.

  I typed in Q-U-B-U-Q. Took a deep breath. And hit Enter.

  Right away, the screen changed. I could see Cassius Play from behind now, standing in front of the bunker door as it slid open. Yes!

  Just then, another big yell came from upstairs. It sounded like the Wildcats were turning that game around. I really hated missing it, but there was zero chance I could stop what I was doing right now.

  I stepped through the doorway.

  Inside the bunker, all I saw was something that looked like an old dusty storage unit. There were shipping containers, metal crates, and wooden boxes everywhere. Also, stacks of furniture and a bunch of stuff covered in tarps.

  I’d been expecting some kind of dope bachelor pad, or a crazy high-tech lab, or I didn’t even know what else. But not this. Which is why I knew there had to be more to it. This was Gabe, after all. No way he was going to bring me all this way for a dead end.

  I started by clicking everything in sight. I touched every box, every piece of furniture, every section of wall, working my way from front to back. Still, nothing was happening. It was all just background art and I couldn’t interact with any of it.

  Not until I got to the very back of the room. I’d clicked about a hundred different things by then, but when I touched this one crate that looked like all the others, it slid off to the side. And right there in its place was a trap door with a recessed handle in the floor.

  I knew it! And Gabe knew I’d find it, too. He knew I wouldn’t give up on this. Just like I wasn’t giving up on him.

  When I lifted the trap, I saw a metal spiral staircase winding down into the dark. I couldn’t see where it was headed, so I pulled a flare off of Cassius Play’s tool belt, lit it, and started down. The whole thing was legit creepy, like something out of movies Gabe and I had seen together. He was probably laughing his butt off about this somewhere. I’d kill him later. Just as soon as I made sure he was okay.

  At the bottom of the stairs, I found another door. This one was unlocked, and the room on the other side was fully lit. That’s where I found a crib like the one I’d been expecting from Gabe all along.

  It looked like some kind of awesome penthouse apartment, minus the windows, since I was underground now. Gabe had it all decked out with virtual furniture, virtual rugs, and virtual electronics, although I wasn’t going to be surprised if those electronics were functional, too. For all I knew, he’d figured out a way to put actual AV into this place, so he could come here and chill, or watch a movie, or whatever else he did with all that time he spent alone.

  There was only one thing that looked out of place. At first, it seemed like some random yellow rectangle on the floor. But when I got closer, I saw it was an envelope. In Outpost, you can leave messages for anyone you want, as long as you play on the same server.

  When I clicked the envelope, I expected it to come in close so I could open it, but that’s not what happened. Instead, I got a pop-up with another message:

  To continue, choose the correct answer. WARNING: You will only have one chance to get this right.

  A) Did you know, you have your own Facebook group now?

  B) Did you know, you have your own FB group now?

  C) Did you know you have your own FB group now?

  D) Did you know you have your own Facebook group now?

  E) Did you know there’s a FB group for you now?

  F) Did you know there’s a Facebook group for you now?

  G) Did you know, there’s a Facebook group for you now?

  H) Did you know, there’s a FB group for you now.

  Oh, man! This, right here, was Gabe’s genius in action.

  What I had in front of me were a bunch of different versions of a text that I’d sent him. And now I was supposed to identify the version that showed an exact match. Which was information that only I could put my hands on.

  Like I said—genius.

  I pulled my phone out of my pocket, scanned through everything I’d sent him for the last sixteen days, and found exactly what I was looking for. Then I checked it against the versions he had up there on the screen, down to the last period and comma.

  I double checked. Triple checked. And then I clicked on option D.

  Right away, the pop-up window disappeared and that yellow envelope came back into view. While I watched, the envelope flapped open and a yellow page slid out, then came into close-up. It was a note, and all it said was—

  BE BACK HERE

  2 A.M. TONIGHT

  SHARP

  I almost shouted out loud when I saw that. This had to be from Gabe, didn’t it? Just like the laptop clue and the passcode. But what did he mean, “be back here”? Was he going to show up? Is that what he’d been doing every night at 2:00 since he’d returned that laptop to my front porch? Or was he maybe surveilling my moves right now somehow?

  I didn’t have a whole lot of answers. In fact, I didn’t have any. But there was one thing I knew for sure.

  I knew exactly where I was going to be at 2:00.

  I COULD BARELY look at anyone when I got back to the living room. Lucky for me, nobody even noticed I’d been gone. Damon’s game was off the hook, one of the best college ball head-to-heads I’d ever seen. Davidson had dropped behind Wake Forest in the first half but they came back hard in the second, and ended up winning, 89–82. Sixteen of those points were Damon’s, too. He was tearing it up.

  And maybe, just maybe, so was Gabe.

  When I went to bed that night, I kept my phone under the covers with the alarm set for 1:45 a.m. Which was like a joke. I mean, did I really think I�
��d be going to sleep any time before two? Yeah, right.

  Instead, I just lay there, staring at the ceiling until it was finally time to sneak back to the basement. Then I soft-stepped down the quiet side of the stairs and stopped in the kitchen long enough to get a bowl of Rice Chex. Nana’s room is right there, and I figured a midnight snack was the best alibi I could give, in case she got up to see who was prowling around.

  But by 1:55 a.m., I was parked downstairs in front of my PS4. My hand was shaking on the controller as I logged in and got myself back over to Gabe’s bunker. I used the QUBUQ entry code, made my way to the trap door, and went down the spiral stairs.

  When I opened the door to the main part of Gabe’s crib, it wasn’t quite as empty as the last time. Someone else was there—another avatar. One I hadn’t seen before. He was wearing an all-black superhero skin from head to foot, like Black Panther’s or Venom’s. It almost looked like a shadow standing there, but my mind was exploding with a pretty good idea of who this was.

  I threw on my headset as fast as I could.

  “Hello?” I said.

  Which is when I heard Gabe’s voice in my ear.

  “Hey, man. What’s up?”

  I actually slapped a hand over my mouth just to keep from shouting, and waking up Nana. It was like fireworks going off in my brain. Like getting a full-body electric shock. Gabe Qualls was right there in front of me. As much as an avatar counts, anyway.

  “Don’t freak, okay?” he said. “I know this is crazy, but I just wanted to let you know I’m not cut up in pieces somewhere, or halfway to Alaska, like you might have been thinking.”

  Gabe didn’t usually make a lot of jokes, but when he did, he had a weird sense of humor—even right now. As for me, I didn’t know what to say. Which was crazy, since I’d been sitting on a giant pile of questions for sixteen days.

  “Gabe… dude… I… Where are you?” I finally asked.

  “It’s better if we don’t talk about that,” Gabe said.