Countdown (17 page)

Pony was alone in the hotel, eyes and fingers glued to his laptop, when his cell rang. “Jake, what up?” Pony asked, without a trace of humor in his voice. Amy and Dan had left about twenty minutes earlier to meet the blackmailers, and Pony was tracing the ransom e-mails in search of their source. He hadn't found it yet, but he didn't like the direction the trail was headed in.

“We've got the crystal and we're on our way back,” Jake reported.

“Excellent!” Pony said. “Dan and Amy left a little while ago. They're out of cell range by now, but they'll be stoked to hear this.”
Now all we need is the book
, he thought,
and we're almost there.

“We've just crossed the Mendez Causeway,” Jake said. “We nearly got busted by the patrol guards, so we're lying low for a while till they move out of the area.”

“Gotcha. Stay safe.” Pony clicked off and went back to monitoring the blackmailers' line. He'd volunteered to stay behind and track the chatter because he was afraid of action. He could admit it to himself or to anyone who asked him. Those Pierce guys were no joke.

But Pony took the job he did have very seriously. And now that he was doing it, he felt more like part of the team than ever. Practically a Cahill.
If Dan or Amy asked me to go with them now, I'd go.
And he meant it. But he was more useful here in the hotel. No doubt about that. There'd been no electronic activity all night. Dead quiet. That made him nervous. So he tried to trace the original e-mail, see where it came from.

This should have been easy. If the blackmail message came from poachers or villagers, it would have been. But the true source of the message was strangely elusive. Following a hunch, Pony hacked into April May's e-mail.

Bingo.

He couldn't find the actual ransom note, but he did find Amy's fake e-mail address in April's contact list.

So April knew about Amy's fake account, and had had some contact with it.

Her contact list was also riddled with Pierce's addresses, his various accounts, his wife's, his kids'. . . .

He opened a file marked “P.” E-mails from Pierce, including his orders to keep tabs on Amy and Dan and inform him of every move they made. Pony rubbed his eyes and shook his head.
Oh, April May, whoever you are
, he thought sadly. He was seized with an impulse to write to her, and then, just as quickly, seized with a bout of shyness.

Forget the shyness, he said to himself. Go for it.

He'd learned a lot in the short time he'd been with the Cahills, and one of the biggest lessons was not to hold back. Go for it now, because you never knew what could happen the next day, or even the next minute. So he composed a quick note:

Dear April May, my computer compadre,

Someday, when all this craziness is over, I hope to meet you in person. Like enemy soldiers meeting on neutral ground after a truce. We can trade notes and secrets, and who knows, we might find out we have more in common than just lightning fingers. . . .

— P

A few minutes later, his message signal dinged.

I'd love that, Pony. Let's work together to end this war now. Because it is a war.

Take care of yourself. I'm not just saying that. Please watch out. There's danger everywhere.

I'll keep an eye on you.

— AM

Pony felt a tingle rise from his toes to the tip of his ponytail. Someday . . . someday.

He caught himself daydreaming and snapped out of it. The Cahills needed him. Amy and Dan needed him — especially Amy. They'd lured him out of his parents' garage into a world that was more dangerous than he'd ever imagined. But he wasn't sorry. He'd grown to love them, all of them, even that grouchy twit Ian.

His cell buzzed. Text coming in. From Nellie.

THE BOOK'S NOT THERE. PIERCE'S MEN WAITING. I TRIED AMY AND DAN — NO ANSWER. DON'T LET THEM GO, PONY. STOP THEM!

His first instinct was to panic.
What do I do? What do I do?
Dan and Amy were out of cell range. If he ran, maybe he could stop them before they reached the meeting place.

If he ran? How fast could he possibly run on his rubbery, computer-jock, pizza-and-Electroshock-fueled legs? Jake and the others were still half an hour's walk from the hotel. They wouldn't get back in time.

It had to be him.

Just in case, Pony called Amy, then Dan. The calls went straight to voice mail. No service. They were too far out in the jungle. There was only one way to reach them.

Run.

Trilon Laboratories Delaware

“Pssst! Sammy!”

Sammy lifted his head from his microscope. He looked around the room. He didn't see anyone. He went back to his research. He pressed his eye to the microscope, then pulled it away and wrote some figures in his notebook.

From her vantage point — the air vent over Sammy's workstation — Nellie took the luxury of one minute to admire his curly hair, how elegant and serious he looked while he worked. His smooth olive skin had gotten a little sallow from being locked up in an underground lab all this time, but he still made Nellie's heart race.

“Nellie?”

“Up here.” Sure now that the coast was clear, she pushed open the air vent grate and slid into the lab. Sammy went to help ease her down.

“Careful,” he whispered. “There's an armed guard right outside the door.”

Nellie scanned the room. If the guard turned around to look through the window in the door, he'd see her. She ducked behind Sammy's workstation. Sammy squatted down to talk to her, but she said, “No — stay up there and pretend to keep working, in case the guard checks. He'll come in if he doesn't see you.”

Sammy stood up and started to sort some slides. “I'm so sorry,” he murmured. “I've been racking my brain, but I can't think of anything that will help Amy besides the antidote.”

Nellie grimaced, her chest tightening under the weight of her disappointment. “It's okay. You just need more time to focus. No one can work while surrounded by these creepy guards and eating terrible food.” She reached for his hand. “Now can you get out of here? I know a vent we can take.”

Sammy glanced at the door. The back of the guard's head was visible. He wasn't looking — at the moment. But all he had to do was turn his head forty-five degrees and he'd see everything.

“I should stay,” he said. “I can't sabotage Pierce's research unless I'm here.”

“The longer you stay, the more danger you're in. You've done enough, Sammy. More than enough. And I'm going to destroy this place.”

He looked down at her and sighed. She could see on his face that he could hardly stand another minute of captivity. “All right. Let's go. Quick.” He pulled Nellie to her feet and boosted her up to the vent. She crawled in, then turned around and reached out to pull Sammy up. He put a chair under the vent and started scrambling up when the door burst open. Nellie dragged him into the vent and pulled the grate shut.

Had the guard noticed?

She held her breath. She was desperate to crawl away but afraid it would make too much noise.

Sammy gripped her hand. He'd just barely made it into the vent. One of his feet was pressed against the grate. That's when she noticed his shoe was untied. And the lace was dangling outside the vent.

She pointed to his foot and pantomimed,
Pull it in!

Too late.

“Hey — what's that?” the guard asked.

“Come on, Sammy!” Nellie yanked on his arm and started crawling through the vent, but the guard had seen the shoelace. He tore the grate off the vent, jumped up on the chair, and reached inside. He grabbed Sammy's legs, yelling, “Stop!”

“Nellie! He's got me!”

Nellie turned and grabbed Sammy's arms in a tug-of-war with the guard, but the guard was too strong. He yanked Sammy out of the vent and down to the floor. Another guard had heard the shout and ran into the room just as Nellie tried to disappear the other way. He jumped up on the chair, dove into the vent, and grabbed Nellie by the feet. “Let go of me!” She kicked him right in the face.

“Oof!” The guard grunted but didn't let go. He pulled her down through the vent opening and back into the lab. The room was full of guards now, five of them. They'd already restrained Sammy. Nellie screamed, “Five against two? Try fighting fair, creeps!”

She pulled out her best move, the three-kick special: a roundhouse kick followed by a knee to the chin, finishing with a high front kick. But five serum-enhanced thugs were too much for her. They gagged her and tied her hands behind her back. “Let's go.”

The goons marched Sammy and Nellie out of the lab and down the hall to an elevator. “Just to be safe,” one guard said, taking two blindfolds out of his jacket pocket. He blindfolded Sammy and then Nellie. “In case you get any clever ideas.”

“There's no escape from where they're going,” another guard said. Nellie heard the elevator door open. The guard forced her forward. She stumbled. She heard the door close, felt her insides rise as the elevator dropped.

Going down.

The door opened and she felt a blast of chilly air. She was marched forward a few yards. Keys jangled. A lock turned. A door opened, and she was shoved through it.

Her blindfold was lifted. She and Sammy were in a small, windowless room. A cell, really. The air vent was tiny, rat-sized. The door had no window.

The guards untied her and left, locking the door behind them. Nellie looked at Sammy. “I'm so sorry.”

Nellie knew it was hopeless, but she couldn't stop herself from trying the door. The knob didn't turn. She banged and pounded on it, desperate to get out. Sammy slammed himself against the door, hoping to break it down. The door barely vibrated. Through the thick metal, Nellie thought she heard the guards laughing.

They were trapped, with no way out. “They've got to come back,” Nellie said. “How can you do their research for them if you're locked in a cell?”

Sammy's large brown eyes looked tired. “Believe me, they can do whatever they want.”

She pressed her back against the wall and slid to the floor in despair. Sammy sat beside her and rested his head on her shoulder.

She couldn't get to Amy. Fiske was dying, too. And now there was nothing she could do.

That knowledge nearly killed her.

Tikal, Guatemala

“There it is.”

Amy and Dan crouched in the brush just outside the poachers' camp. The full moon was both a blessing and a curse — a blessing because it was so bright that Dan and Amy didn't need to use their flashlights, which would have given them away. And a curse because it was harder to hide from the park guards swarming the forest. But at the camp there was no sign of life, not even the smoking ashes of a campfire. Where were the blackmailers hiding?

There were definitely poachers here, or had been at some point. Loggers had cleared about an acre of mahogany trees. The wood was stacked on the back of a truck, ready to be sneaked out of the forest. Tents were set up at the far end near a crumbling temple. The poachers had ruined part of the jungle and endangered the habitat of multiple birds and animals.

On top of that, they were apparently eager to accept Pierce's dirty money and hide his men for him. “Do you remember the instructions?” she whispered to Dan.

Dan nodded, hefting the small sack of cash. Earlier in the evening the blackmailers had e-mailed specific instructions on how and where to leave the money and find the book. “Leave the money at the foot of the temple. There will be a note on the bottom step telling us where to find the book.”

“There had better be.” Amy gritted her teeth. She was itching to get the book and get out of there. The nerves just under her skin prickled with electricity. She wasn't sure if that was the serum acting on her nervous system or if her sharply honed instincts for danger were trying to warn her of something.

“You give the signal,” she told Dan. He nodded again, scanning the clearing carefully. They watched for any sign of movement. Behind them, the jungle teemed with nocturnal life. But in the clearing, all was still.

They had to cross the clearing to get to the temple, a crumbling, half-excavated pyramid still covered with vines. The poachers might have started excavating it, hoping to find some treasures to sell. One side of the temple looked like a simple mound of dirt, while on the other side some dirt had been dug away to reveal part of a stone step pyramid. The moon lit up the clearing like a searchlight. There was no way to cross it unnoticed, nowhere to hide. That was where they'd be most vulnerable.

Dan watched for another moment. Just as Amy was thinking there was no point in putting it off any longer, Dan tapped her on the forearm.
Go.

Crouching, they crept out into the open. Amy braced herself for attack, but nothing happened. They were a few yards away from the temple when they heard a shout.

“Amy! Dan! Stop!”

Amy whirled around. Pony was streaking toward them across the clearing, his ponytail flapping.

“Pony!” she called. “Get down!”

But he kept running. “The book's not here!” he shouted.

“Let's get out of here,” Dan said.

They started back for the cover of the jungle. There was a sudden tearing noise near the temple as the tents burst open and out jumped three large, muscular men.

“Goons!” Dan cried. “Run!” They raced across the clearing for the jungle. But the trees shook in the windless night, and out of the shadows stepped more of Pierce's men, at least a dozen, blocking their way back to the hotel.

They were trapped. And this time there were more thugs to fight than ever.