A King's Ransom

Guardians were mixed up with the Cahills. Mom must have known something like this would happen. She had been taking precautions for years. She had secret papers. A weird tech guru on retainer.

Beezer.

The name popped like a flash of neon out of an inky mental cloud – Max Beezer, Mom’s tech guy. Atticus and Jake had found tons of his little gadgets after Mom had died. Max had turned most of them over to Mom’s assistant, Dave Speminer, but he had saved some of the cool ones for Atticus. Like the miniature tracker that he and Jake had been tinkering with yesterday. Neither of them was sure how it worked. It was nanotech. Weird design, way too tiny.

But worth a try.

He needed a moment alone. With his key chain.

Frantically he felt in his left pocket, but the chain was gone. He slowed down and moaned deeply, doubling over.

Cheyenne glared at him. “What?”

“Nothing. I’m okay. Really.” Atticus convulsed again. “All those pastries on the truck … plus motion sickness. Bad combo. But I’ll be f-f-fine.”

“Oh, great -” Cheyenne stopped.

Casper’s voice bellowed from within: “What do you mean, the plane isn’t ready? Hello? Earth to old guy? We paid you in advance.”

Cheyenne rolled her eyes. “Don’t ever treat your elders like that if you grow up.” Glancing toward the battered men’s room door, she said, “This isn’t a stupid trick, is it?”

Atticus gulped down some air. “I’ll just” – breath – “sit next to you on the plane” – breath – “and hold it in.”

“No, you won’t.” She pushed him toward the men’s room door, kicked it open, and immediately blanched. “Ucch. That is the grossest thing I’ve seen in my life.”

“I don’t mind.” Atticus pulled her inside, but she yanked back.

Reaching into her pocket, she took out a set of cuff keys and unlocked him. “You have two minutes. And don’t try anything funny, or you will be so sorry.”

Atticus peered into the bathroom and grimaced. “I need my key chain. So I can use my disinfectant.”

“Your what?” Cheyenne said.

“My Germ Away,” Atticus replied.

“What kind of eleven-year-old boy takes disinfectant into a men’s room?” Cheyenne snapped.

“A clean one?” Atticus offered with a shrug. “It’s just that … well, you see the sink and the toilet… . I mean, we’ll be handcuffed together and all… .”

Cheyenne’s face was turning green. She reached into her pocket and pulled out Atticus’s enormous key ring. It contained seven keys, five plastic store rewards cards, a screwdriver, a flash drive, and a tiny but festive-looking can of Germ Away. She carefully examined the ring, item by item.

Atticus held his breath.

A slow smile crept across his captor’s face as she held up the flash drive. “Ooh, clever boy. A transmitter!” She unhooked the drive, dropped it to the ground, and crushed it beneath her boot. With a triumphant, malevolent grin, she handed the key ring to Atticus. “Welcome to the big leagues, where IQ runs a distant second to street smarts. You have two minutes.”

Atticus’s jaw dropped. He cast a forlorn glance at the shattered pile of plastic and steel on the ground. As he turned to the men’s room, he fought back a sob.

Slamming the door behind him, he flicked on the light.

One minute and fifty-four seconds.

He turned the sink taps all the way. Brown water gushed out loudly into a stained basin. He moaned. He could hear Cheyenne calling out to her brother.

Atticus held up his key ring, separating out the small can of Germ Away. Carefully he twisted open the cap.

It beeped.

Fingers shaking, he tapped an app on the tiny screen. And he began typing a code into the keypad.

“Honestly, you stood there while they took the boy away?” asked Ian Kabra.

Amy shrank into the hotel room sofa. She felt numb. On Dan’s laptop, Ian’s features were exaggerated, his eyes wide and accusing. Behind him was the gleaming high-tech Cahill headquarters in Attleboro, Massachusetts, which Amy had designed. Once upon a time, Ian’s dark, dreamy eyes had made her melt inside. The angle of his head, the wrinkle in the left corner of his lip – they’d obsessed her. And he’d been obsessed right back.

Now all Amy wanted to do was throw her shoe at the screen. She hated him. She hated his tone of voice.

She hated that he was right.

Reagan Holt, Ted Starling, Natalie Kabra, Phoenix Wizard, Alistair Oh, Fiske Cahill, and Nellie Gomez – seven people she cared about were festering in a jail cell. And now Atticus was gone.

What kind of family leader lets those kinds of things happen?

“Yeah, that’s exactly what they did,” Jake Rosenbloom blurted out, pacing the floor. “Nothing!”

“It’s my fault.” Amy glanced at her brother, who was curled up on the sofa in the fetal position. “Just me. Not Dan. I should have seen this coming.”

On the screen, Sinead Starling elbowed Ian aside. Her red hair was pulled back with a rubber band, her delicate features taut with urgency. “I’ve alerted every Cahill in the area, our contacts at the Prague police, the Czech embassy, airports, limo services, every bakery from Pilsen to Hradec Kralove. Nothing yet. I’m thinking the Wyomings used a private jet. Short flight, no conspicuous-looking fuel drain.”

“They told me not to call the police!” Jake fumed, as if Sinead hadn’t said a word. “Then they shoved me into a cab and took me here! Some family you have – thieves and cowards.”

Amy bit her lip. She wished she could have called the authorities. But she and Dan were wanted for stealing a world-famous Caravaggio painting called the “Medusa,” at the demand of Vesper One. Jake himself had turned them in to Interpol. Police were the last people they could afford to see now.

“Coming to us was the right thing to do,” Sinead said. “We’ll find him. We have the resources.”

“What if you can’t find him?” Dan’s outburst startled them all. He looked up from his smartphone, his eyes streaked with tears. On his screen was an image of a skinny kid with dreads and a goofball smile. Atticus.

Amy ached for her brother. It hadn’t been easy for Dan to make friends after the Clue hunt. He’d survived a collapsing cave, been helicoptered to the top of Mount Everest, become trapped in an Egyptian tomb, watched a man die in Jamaican quicksand, and been entrusted with a complex five-hundred-year-old formula. What other kid could relate to that?

Atticus could. He was the only one who really “got” Dan.

“I jinxed him …” Dan murmured. “It is my fault.”

Jake’s breath caught in his throat. He let out an explosive moan, more animal than human. A sound impossible to hear without becoming physically ill.

Amy knew what it felt like to fear for your own brother’s life. She had been lucky. Dan was alive.

And she felt guilty she hadn’t shown Jake the text message Dan had received from Vesper One:

You had Il Milione all this time. You really shouldn’t keep secrets from me. Your punishment this time: A Guardian goes down.

Despite all her training, she’d been caught totally unaware. Because she and Dan had been

making a drop, and drops were always safe.

I should have been watching Atticus like a hawk. How could I have been so stupid?

As much as she’d wanted to tell Jake about the note, she couldn’t. Jake was a powder keg. He hated the Cahills and he’d betrayed Dan and Amy once. If he did it again, it meant jail time. Which meant death to the hostages.