Criminal Destiny by Gordon Korman Page B

school.
    I try to pass the hours by going over what little we know about Tamara Dunleavy. Now sixty-three years old, she’s one of the richest women in the world. She started out a daring and brilliant computer hacker, but later founded VistaNet, the company that made her a billionaire. She’s currently retired, living on a ranch somewhere outside Jackson Hole.
    â€œSomewhere outside” might be the operative words here. I gaze at the endless miles passing by the window. We don’t even know if we’re going to be able to find her, or what kind of reception we’ll get if we track her down. But we do know that she walked out on Project Osiris, which could mean that she objected to the idea of creating human beings just for the purpose of experiment.
    Maybe—just maybe—she’ll be on our side.
    According to Tori, the scenery around Jackson Hole is supposed to be some of the most beautiful in the country. We have to take everybody’s word for that. It gets dark before we get a chance to see anything. We pull into the bus station after midnight, and wander the main strip, taking in our surroundings. At least we’re allowed to be four kids again. There’s no way the Denver police followed us up here.
    The town, Jackson, is nice. It’s the first place we’ve seenthat’s as neat and clean, up-to-date, and shiny-modern as Serenity. I can’t even find a crack in the sidewalk or a single piece of litter. In school, my mother told us that our town was completely unique in that way. Lie number ten thousand, or maybe more.
    One difference, though—Jackson seems to be all stores and restaurants, and most of the shops sell either ski equipment, fancy candles, or T-shirts.
    â€œPeople here must be real dopes,” Malik concludes. “They can’t remember where they live unless it says ‘Jackson Hole’ on their clothes and coffee mugs.”
    â€œThat’s not it,” Eli puts in. “People come here on vacation to go skiing. These shirts and things are souvenirs.”
    Vacation. Souvenirs. These are alien ideas to us. I have to say I’m not impressed. Life has big challenges, and deciding between the Jackson Hole steak knives and Ski Wyoming alpine bobblehead shouldn’t be one of them.
    â€œWe’re not going to find Tamara Dunleavy now,” Tori points out with a yawn. “It’s the middle of the night. We need a place to crash so we can go after her in the morning.”
    â€œHow are we going to do that?” challenges Malik. “I don’t think any of these stores went to Hawaii like the Campanellas.”
    We walk a little farther. After hours of sitting on the bus, it feels good to stretch our legs. The high-class shops and eateries thin out a little, giving way to the less fancy kind of places that we saw in Denver—convenience stores, burger joints, and something called a pawn shop, with a variety of unrelated objects in the window. You can’t tell what kind of store it really is. I’m pretty sure they’re not selling pawns, like in chess.
    The farther we go from the center of the strip, the less Serenity-like it gets, until at last we come to a neon sign that reads: MOTE , which is really MOTEL , but the L is burned out. Underneath it says Reasonable Rates , which sounds like us, since we’re running low on cash. It actually says Reasonable Rats , but that’s only because the E fell off and is lying on the grass.
    â€œI don’t want any rats, even reasonable ones,” grumbles Malik.
    â€œI thought your problem was bugs,” I needle him.
    Malik scowls. For a guy who makes a lot of jokes, he has no sense of humor.
    Tori comes up with a plan. I take our money and head into the small office. The clerk, who doesn’t seem that much older than me, has been sleeping, no doubt about it.
    â€œA room for one night, please.”
    He blinks at me, trying to wake up. “How old