By the time Jax had completed a third stanza, people had abandoned their signs and protests and were standing in line for their own Freeze food. If super hot Jax Whitver thought it was super cool to eat at the Mini-Freeze, then so did they.

I hurried to change out of my "wet suit" and into a pair of Levi shorts and a white T-shirt with a black st.i.tched horse and golden sun that proclaimed "Born to Ride".

I caught sight of Jax at a nearby table, signing autographs and schmoozing with the crowd. I hurried over to join him, but before I could thank him for saving the day for Uncle Frank, Vinny Vincent red-faced and toupee askew, stomped up to Jax.

"Whitver! What the h.e.l.l do you think you're doing? You've got no business being here. You and Keelie are over. Finito. Yesterday's news."

"Well, well, well. If it isn't Vinny Vincent, agent and promoter extraordinaire. Still as much fun as ever, I see," Jax observed.

"Jax Whitver. Still as much of a pain in the a.s.s as ever," Vinny shot back. "And up to no good, as usual. What's this?" He stuck a hand out in my direction. "Some sick 'sleeping with the enemy' gig?"

"Now just a minute!" I objected. "You're wrong. I'm not anyone's enemy."

Vinny shot me a dark look. "Except for rats maybe."

Again with the rats? Who knew people were so concerned with the welfare of a species complicit in a pandemic that wiped out like a gazillion Europeans. (Amazing what you can recall from a high school history report.) "How many times do I have to say this? It wasn't me."

"Keep saying it enough, and you start to believe it, kid," he said.

"Vinny? Jax! What are you doing here?"

Oh, G.o.d. Another country heard from.

"It's a free country, Kay-Kay," Jax told his ex.

Keelie set her water bottle, sungla.s.ses, and cell phone on the table with a shaking hand and crossed her arms over her chest. "Yes, it is. And you're free to go to any of forty-nine other states," she pointed out. "So why are you here?"

"Iowa has its manifest attractions," he said, and gave me an audacious wink.

"Keelie, I told you, if he turned up, I'd handle it," Vinny said.

"Yeah. Vinny's good at handling things for you," Jax replied.

"That's my job, punk."

"And you do it with such...obsessive compulsive vigor," Jax jabbed.

Now that Keelie had joined the spectacle, the crowd around Jax grew even larger. Taylor and Frankie, along with Drew Van Vleet and Kenny Grey, the groupie I'd met at the bike night party, volleyed for position along with Tiara and Langley.

"Jax! Go home!" Keelie ordered. "Just go home."

"Sorry, Kay-Kay, but I'm just havin' way too much fun," he said."

"You'll regret this, Jax," Keelie said, leveling a dark look at me. "You better believe. You'll regret this."

She stomped off in a huff.

"You really should take her advice, Jax," Keelie's agent said. "You're not wanted here. So, beat it." Vinny stomped after Keelie.

Jax grinned and picked up the cell phone Keelie had forgotten on the table with her sungla.s.ses and water bottle. He fiddled with it and shook his head.

"She never changed her pa.s.sword," he observed. He put his head next to mine, held the camera out, and snapped a picture, Seconds later, our picture appeared on the phone's background.

"I'd rather you didn't do that," I told him. "Keelie already has it in for me."

Jax grinned. "Join the club, Tressa Turner," he said. "Join the club."

Red alert! Red alert! I finally make it on someone's A-list only to find out it's a hit list.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

The heat was on. The sun beat down on us, unforgiving and unapologetically brutal. We trekked on with nary a cloud in the sky to give us a respite from dew point and humidity that duked it out in an atmosphere you could wring water from. Twice, we'd gotten off our bike to push it up hills neither of us had the fort.i.tude to tackle.

"How much further?" I sounded like a spoiled brat on a road trip for the first time.

"About half a mile less than the last time you asked," Van Vleet responded. "We'll get there when we get there."

"But we'll get there, right?"

"If we don't expire first." Even Van Vleet's characteristic smug pettiness had evaporated in the steamy haze of an Iowa summer.

"On your left! On your left! On your friggin' left!" The now familiar alert warning you a cyclist was about to overtake and pa.s.s (a polite way of saying, don't turn, look or swerve into my path, or I'll hit you, moron) reached us with an anxiety level I hadn't heard before. We pulled the bike close to the shoulder of the road. I gaped as Keelie and her street team raced past us-Keelie's face the color of my Trekkie shirt.

"Wonder what's up with that." I said, and Van Vleet shrugged.

"Who cares? You ready to ride again?"

"I guess."

I mustered as much enthusiasm as I do for dental visits and big girl exams and mounted. We caught up to Keelie's team parked alongside the road and pa.s.sed them.

"Weird place to take a break," I commented.

"Just shut up and pedal," Van Vleet snapped.

We rode in silence for several miles.

"On your left! On your left!"

Once more we slowed our bike and hugged the yellow line.

"On. Your. Left!"

"Show offs," I mumbled as Keelie and Company raced by us again.

A mile down the road we pa.s.sed Keelie's crew taking another roadside break.

"I wonder what they're up to," I said.

"Just pedal," Van Vleet ordered.

We'd chugged up another small hill and were enjoying the reward of a downhill respite when- The warning, high-pitched, panicky-and not suitable for young ears, pierced the afternoon malaise.

"On your left! On your left! On your frigging, blankety-blank left!"

I watched Keelie pa.s.s us, and suddenly slow up and stop at the side of the road again. Before you could say, "Vrroom, Vrroom," she was off her bike and heading for the ditch and the green fields beyond.

"I wonder what's up with that!" I said.

Van Vleet pulled his phone out of his pack.

"My guess? Another unscheduled stop in the cornfield."

"You mean-"

Van Vleet winced. "The big D."

"You mean-"

He nodded.

I gagged.

"In the cornfield?"

"It's better than the alternative," he said and fiddled with his camera.

"You mean-" Holy c.r.a.p! (Pardon the pun). This gave a whole new meaning to "stop and go" traffic.

Van Vleet nodded again, and held his phone up at the general area of the field Keelie disappeared into.

"Wait! What are you doing? You're not thinking of-. No way. You couldn't! You wouldn't!"

"Hey, Blondie. I'm a journalist. I report news. It's what I do."

"What's newsworthy about a bodily function run amok?"

"Not a thing if it's your bodily function. But Keelie Keller's? Enquiring minds want to know."

"Sick, pathetic, dangerous minds want to know," I said. "Not normal, healthy, sane ones."

"Oh, get over yourself, Red Shirt. Who are you to tell people what's news and what isn't? Great! Here she comes!"

I took one look at the pale, bedraggled creature plodding through the high gra.s.s back towards the road and knew, despite our... er...misunderstanding-that I couldn't in all good conscience let Drew Van Vleet humiliate her like this. It was so not the right move.

"Oh, no, you don't!" I covered the camera lens on his phone at the same time a big ol' shadow covered both of us.

"Not a smart choice, pencil neck." Manny the mind reader, appeared out of nowhere, his ma.s.sive paw encasing Van Vleet's. I sucked in a better-Van Vleet-than-me breath and let it out in a hiss.

"Ow. Hey, man. Ever heard of Freedom of the Press?"

"Pencil d.i.c.k ever heard discretion is the better part of valor?" Manny asked, giving Van Vleet his don't-eff-with-me look. (I'm familiar with the look although, thankfully, I've never been on the receiving end of it.) I did a double take. Since when did Manny DeMarco use Shakespearean phrases in the course of a conversation?

"You have a point," Van Vleet conceded, withdrawing a hand that now looked like it belonged on a bird of prey, and trying his best to act like it was no big deal. "It's tabloid journalism and, therefore, beneath me and my exacting standards of ethics."

All right. I admit it. I lost it on that one. I laughed so hard I almost wet my pants. I was still laughing when Keelie staggered up, her camera crew circling her in a way that made me wonder how anyone put up with this circus without feeling claustrophobic.

"How dare you! How dare you stand there and laugh! This is all your doing!" She stuck a finger in my chest. "You are responsible for this!"

I frowned down at the finger violating my Star Trek insignia.

"We know what you and your sister did! You put something in Keelie's drink at noon. We all saw you there," Tiara defended her friend. "And we saw you-cozying up to Jax."

"I don't know what you're talking about. I didn't put anything in anyone's drink."

Jeez-a-lou. I'd issued more denials in the last two days than government officials in the latest whatever-gate.

"Liar! You spiked my water with a laxative! You or that stuck-up sister of yours!"

For the briefest of seconds, I let myself appreciate Keelie's characterization of Taylor as "stuck-up." Then it was up with the metaphorical dukes again.

"Listen, I don't know why your people chose us to use as props in your ridiculous reality charade, but would you cool it, already? There's enough drama in life without inventing it. Trust me on this one. I know of which I speak."

"You're saying someone on my crew is creating and manipulating this situation for ratings?" Keelie responded.

I thought for a moment. Was that what I was saying? I thought some more. Yes, I guess I was. I just didn't realize I was. (Are you following this at all? It's clear as an intergalactic dust storm, right?) Sigh.

I lifted my shoulders. "You'd know better than I would who on your crew might be sufficiently motivated, and er...devious enough...to stage this kind of theatrical intrigue."

"None of my people would dare perpetrate the type of outrageous stunts you're suggesting. You're just trying to divert suspicion from you and your hoity-toity sister. That's what I think."

"Then you'd be wrong. And no closer to finding out who's really behind the mischief."

"I know who's behind it."

"Prove it," I heard myself saying.

"I don't have to prove it, Trekkie. All I have to do is say it. I'll just tell my half a million friends and followers that it was your uncle's concession stand slop that made me so violently ill. And adios to Uncle Frank's Mini-Freeze featuring Frank's infamous belly burner burrito." She crossed her arms. "It's either you or your uncle's eatery. Pick your poison, sweetie."

"You wouldn't," I said. I took a step toward Keelie.