The 39 Clues: Unstoppable: Nowhere to Run (14 page)

Text from April May to J. Rutherford Pierce, routed to Security 1:

Pony was surrounded by scones, whipped cream, jam, and cake when Amy, Dan, and Ian caught up to him in the Greensward Hotel restaurant. Jonah lounged nearby, his famous face obscured by a slouchy cap and tinted glasses. He jumped up when he saw them.

“My homeys!” Jonah hugged Amy and bumped Dan’s and Ian’s fists. He gestured at Pony. “This is his second tea. He digs clotted cream.”

Though Jonah’s words were light, Amy could see how relieved he was to see them. Pony jumped up, wiping his mouth, and they introduced him to Ian.

They pulled up chairs, but Amy anxiously kept her eye on the lobby doors. Jonah had chosen well. They were on a balcony overlooking the lobby, with views in all directions. From here, they could go down the stairs to the main entrance, or take a side entrance down a short corridor. The lobby was thronged with tourists, but the restaurant was half empty. They had privacy, and yet a full view. Perfect.

“Let’s bust out the new tech, son,” Jonah said to Pony.

Pony grinned with pride and slid new smartphones across the table. “These are totally fortress-safe. Encryption, et cetera — your basic moats and barbed wire and electric fences. A program will constantly run security checks. I’ll put the same thing on Atticus’s and Jake’s phones.”

“This is Jake’s phone,” Amy said, pushing it over. “They should be here soon.” She crossed her fingers underneath the table. She knew it was a childish gesture, but she was too anxious to care.

Ian and Dan quickly filled Jonah and Pony in on what they had discovered in Ireland.

Amy felt too nervous to listen. She uncrossed her fingers and checked her watch. Where
were
they? If anything happened to Jake and Atticus . . .

Then suddenly there they were, hurrying through the doors into the lobby. Amy felt sweet relief pour through her. She wanted to jump up and shout, but instead she waited quietly until Jake’s gaze moved around the lobby, then up to the balcony. She lifted her hand.

They climbed the stairs quickly and joined them at the table. “Were you followed?” Amy asked.

“We lost them,” Jake said, sitting down. He tossed a newspaper on the table. Amy winced when she saw the TRUE LOVE AT LAST headline about her and Ian, but Jake just flipped the paper over to point to another headline. PRESIDENT PIERCE? A photo of J. Rutherford Pierce shaking hands with an uneasy-looking prime minister dominated the page.

“I read the article. Pierce is on his goodwill tour, and it’s going to end at a press conference on his island in Maine. In two weeks. It’s expected that he’s going to announce that he’s running for president. He’s throwing this huge clambake for his supporters.”

“That might be the perfect opportunity to slip him the antidote,” Amy said. “He’ll be mingling, shaking hands, eating and drinking. . . .”

“Good plan,” Dan said. “Except that we don’t have the antidote. We haven’t cracked the code yet.”

“Or discovered the formula,” Jonah said.

“Or gathered the ingredients,” Ian said.

“Let’s hope there’s not thirty-nine,” Amy said, and they smiled ruefully at each other. Amy looked into Jake’s eyes. He quickly glanced away.

“Two weeks? No problem,” Atticus said. “Let’s get started.”

Pony looked up from his cream puff. “You dudes are awesome,” he said.

Nellie had booked them a hotel room, just in case. Pony loped downstairs to the lobby to pick up the key. They all piled onto elevators to the fourteenth floor and set up camp. They moved the desk to the middle of the room and put Olivia’s book on it with a pile of paper and pencils.

Amy watched as Atticus kicked off his sneakers and sharpened a pencil. Jake pored over the book. He hadn’t looked at her once. He would never forgive her for kicking him out of the house in Ireland.

In her heart, she vowed that nothing would happen to them. She would die first.

Text Message from Security 1 to Security 3:

“‘Now take what thee owns outright, count eight and on the sixth do pause. / Take that sixth, match to first that Romans brought’ . . . What does she mean, ‘what thee owns outright’?” Dan asked.

“I own a plane,” Jonah said. “Three cribs. But not outright. One has a mortgage.”

Jake smiled wryly at Jonah and gave him a fist bump. “From what Amy’s told me, once Olivia Cahill lost the family estate in a fire, they had to make their own way. So if she’s talking to her daughter, they might have had nothing at all.”

“We own who we are,” Dan said. “I mean, basically, when you have nothing, at least you have that.” He thumped his chest. “Me, Dan. You, Atticus.”

Atticus laughed, but Jake looked at Dan for a long moment. Amy looked at Jake. His gaze slid from her brother to her.

“Her name,” they said together.

“‘That which you own outright’ is her
name
,”
Amy explained to the others.

“Madeleine. Nine letters,” Jake said.

Amy shook her head. “Can’t be, then. Olivia says ‘eight.’ ”

Dan padded over to them in his socks. “‘Her Joy, her
Song
,’ ” he said. “Isn’t a madrigal a song?”

“A medieval song without instruments,” Jake said. “For four to six voices . . .”

“Olivia had five children,” Amy said. “She wanted Madeleine to reunite the family.
Madrigal
could have been a pet name for her!”

“Eight letters,” Jake said.

Atticus’s pencil was moving quickly. “It’s a simple alphabet code!” he burst out. “‘Match to first that Romans brought’ . . . the Romans brought us the alphabet!”

“Stop on the sixth,” Jake said.

“M-A-D-R-I-G,” Amy counted. “Start with a
G
. Match it to first — means —”

Atticus was already working, his pencil flying. “Substitute
G
for
A
as first letter,” he muttered. “That means
G
is really
A
, and the next letter,
H
, is really
B
, and so on . . . easy peasy.”

He held up the paper. “This is the new alphabet. Now I can really get to work.”

Jake was busy decoding. “Wait . . . there’s a null,” he told Atticus.

“A null?” Dan asked.

“A cipher term. It’s a letter or a number, usually, but it means nothing. It’s just thrown in the mix to confuse. This one is just a consecutive letter. Easy to strike out.” Jake bent over his page again.

“No
clue
what he means,” Pony said, stretching out on the bed, “but he’s my hero, man.”

“The rest of this is in Italian. Jake — you’re better at translating. I’m all about dead languages,” Atticus said.

“That’s because you’re a zombie student of doom,” Dan told him.

Atticus stiff-walked across the room at him and they began to zombie-wrestle, but they stopped and drew closer when Jake began to read aloud, translating as he went.

“‘After my mother’s death, such profound grief we felt that my father decided to journey to the land of his youthful study. At the age of fourteen I traveled first to Milan, where I met the companion of his youth, now the great and famous teacher. He took me on secretly as his apprentice, though I was a girl, after his eye fell upon some drawings and sketches of mine. We studied in secret, and perhaps it was that conspiracy of learning that led us to the deepest friendship of my life.’ ” Jake looked up. “She calls him
maestro di vita
, just like in the poem. It’s Leonardo, of course. She continues that he taught her botany, anatomy, drawing, painting. . . . And then, when she was seventeen, ‘My destiny appeared one day at the doorway of the studio. My Gideon.’ ”

Jake paused, translating as he spoke. “They marry when she’s nineteen. There’s some kind of dowry. . . .”

“The dowry!” Ian crowed. “I knew it! What was it?”

“‘Bequeathed to me by my teacher, who knew Gideon would use it well.
Urbes Perditae Codex
,’ ” Atticus translated over Jake’s shoulder. “The Lost Cities Codex. ‘Copied and written herein.’ ”