Trickster s Girl - By Hilari Bell Page 0,41

looking for you here?"

"I'm not sure," Kelsa admitted. "Most of what I know about biker gangs comes from the news. And d-vid. But I've heard that they can tap into police and security nets. The parts that aren't supersecret, anyway. Of course, the government denies that. But I can't get into Canada, with or without a report. I don't have permission to cross the border. And I don't dare get out on the highway, where they could find me."

Her stomach curdled at the thought.

"You don't need to worry about that. Not for a while, anyway. They're heading back to the clinic at Whitefish to get their burns treated. And the red-haired one is riding behind one of the others with a cold compress over his face."

Raven was smiling, fiercely, but Kelsa shuddered.

"Lord, they'll be eager to track me down and kill me. Your friends won't have to do a thing to encourage them."

"So if you sneaked over the border with no one knowing, they'd probably waste a lot of time looking for you around here." Raven sounded disgustingly cheerful. "That's what took me so long. I've found a way to get you across."

***

The arena was about ten miles down the highway. According to the running sign, which no one had bothered to reprogram, the horse show had ended June ninth. Yesterday.

"It's over," said Kelsa, stopping her bike. "What's so exciting about that? Everyone will be gone."

"Not everyone." She couldn't see Raven's face, with him perched behind her, but his voice sounded smug. "There are a dozen horse trailers still there, though most of them are packing up now. And three of them have Canadian labels!"

"Lab - Do you mean license plates?"

"Whatever it is, it means they live in Canada, right?"

"Yes, but - "

"So once they've loaded their horses they'll drive right over the border. If you were hidden in one of those trailers, no one would know you were there!"

"Except for the inspectors," said Kelsa, "who look into the back of trucks and horse trailers to prevent that kind of thing."

"I've watched them do that," Raven said. "They look, but they don't look hard. If you were tucked behind something I don't think they'd find you."

Kelsa had watched the inspectors too, waiting in line at border stations. If the driver didn't act nervous, they didn't look hard.

Of course, they didn't have to.

"The scanner would spot me," she said. "It's mostly set to look for chemicals and chemical weapons. Drugs, nuclear reactives, all sorts of things. But it would pick up a human's biomass and heat source with no trouble. So that won't work."

She was torn between relief - she didn't really want to run the border - and worry. Would the next idea he came up with be even worse?

"I thought about that too," Raven told her. "Would it pick up your presence, your biomass, as you call it, if you were lying on top of a horse?"

***

He switched back into Raven form to scout ahead, while Kelsa waited in a thicket of trees watching people move casually around the distant trailers.

Several people loaded their horses and left. One of the departing trailers had Canadian plates, which made Kelsa wonder what Raven was waiting for. But soon after that he flapped onto his favorite perch, let out a croak, then swooped away toward the trailers.

There was no one visible now.

Kelsa punched in the start code, deeply grateful for the electric motor's quiet hum. The tires rolling over the asphalt made more noise than the motor did.

The trailer on which Raven had perched had a horse in one of the two stalls, with nothing but a net across the back to hold it in. Kelsa rode her bike into the other stall, bumping gently over the low sill. If someone was watching the yard's security cameras and came dashing out to stop her, Kelsa would probably have time to back out and ride away. Her helmet would conceal her face, and the tape still disguised the real number on her license plate.

One of the disadvantages of computer security was that only the places they really needed to keep secure had human guards, who actually watched the monitors. Arenas like this hosted all sorts of events; their security computers were almost certainly programmed to accept a bike being loaded into a trailer as a normal event.

"But the driver will have to close up the back before he leaves," Kelsa told the huge bird as it hopped awkwardly inside. "He'll see the bike."

She