Cassidy Jones and the Seventh Attendant (Cassidy Jones Adventures, Book Three) (16 page)

“Cassidy?” Emery asked.

Pulling my face off the wall, I plastered on a smile that surely looked as fake as it was and descended the steps.

Emery regarded me with suspicion.

“Have you found a cure?” I asked Serena, simply because it was the first thing to come into my head. Of course she hadn’t found a cure. She probably never would.

Serena was leaning over the lab table, jotting notes in her Mutant Girl journal. I avoided looking at Emery, who was perched on the stool next to her, but I could feel him watching me.

“We’ve discussed this, Cassidy,” she lectured, continuing to write and not bothering to look up. Emery couldn’t seem to get enough of my face.

“I’m kidding. How’s Formula 10X coming along?” I inquired, just to make small talk.

Serena cut to the chase. “My dear, you have no interest in my progress with Formula 10X. You want to know what happened with Riley O’Shea. Emery will brief you.” She slid off the stool, brushing some strands of hair off her face. “Emery, I’ll keep your father occupied so you can get Cassidy up to speed. The man is exasperating. He watches us like a wolf. It wouldn’t surprise me if he has my lab bugged.” With that, she walked away.

I glanced around the room nervously.

“She’s pulling your leg,” Emery assured me. “I swept the house for listening devices early this morning. It’s clear.”

“Looking for bugs in your own home? You’re kidding, right?”

Emery grinned. “We’re talking about my dad.”

I nodded, not pursuing the subject further. My conversation with Jared at REI proved how eager I was to spew secrets.

Let spying on the family be the worst of Emery’s concerns in regard to his dad,
I thought, easing onto the stool next to him.
His world will be rocked soon enough
.

“What were you doing downtown?”

“Let the interrogation begin.” I let my backpack fall to the floor. “What would you do without GPS?”

“I’d have to use my other talents to keep tabs on you.” Emery wiggled his eyebrows. “I’ll demonstrate. Look into my eyes.”

Emery stared into my eyes like he was concentrating very hard. I couldn’t help smiling.

“Mm-hmm,” he said, nodding. “Just as I thought.”

“What do you see, besides freaky jade eyes?” I loved it when Emery was playful like this.

“Everything.” He gave me a mysterious look. “Shall I tell you about your excursion?”

“Please do.”

“Note: before I reveal all, I’m not pleased that you took a risk.”

“Noted.”

“You bought gloves and wool socks for Joe.”

Okay, this was creepy. “How did you know that?”

“I can read your mind.” He tapped his temple with that mysterious look. “All right, I admit it—I can’t read your mind. I employed simple deductive skills. Here, I’ll show you. Big-hearted redhead can’t get her cold, homeless friend off her mind. Since she has no power to change his circumstances, she does what she has the means to do: buy him warm clothes. However, her coffer is running low after a shopping spree the weekend before last—thank you again for the T-shirt—and much to her disappointment, she realizes she can only afford a pair of socks and gloves. This realization floods her with soul-racking guilt, because why hadn’t she thought about buying a coat and boots for him when she had the money—”

“You’re giving me chills,” I interjected. “You are seriously eerie. Right so far, and I still feel guilty.”

“That’s my girl.” Emery chucked my chin. “After selecting socks and gloves in the most cheerful colors and patterns she can find, she hunts down her friend—literally—and charms a trustworthy-looking stranger into giving her friend the gifts while she hides and listens in on the conversation.”

“Almost. I did find someone trustworthy to do my bidding, but he isn’t a stranger.”

Emery’s expression darkened. “I wish you hadn’t done that,” he said in a controlled tone, making another spot-on deduction. “I can’t fathom what would induce you to put Jared and Joe face-to-face. That was foolish, Cassidy. Let’s hope there won’t be repercussions. Use your head next time, and don’t let a childhood crush cloud your judgment. Your life and your family’s lives depend on it.”

My face burned with resentment, and I resisted a strong urge to slap him. His degrading my feelings for Jared and speaking to me like I was a toddler infuriated me beyond belief. But my own stupidity was even more maddening. Emery was right. I was a reckless fool.

“I’m sorry.” My response came out frostier than I had intended. Was it Emery’s fault that I was my own worst enemy? “Now that we’ve established the fact that I’m a complete idiot, tell me what happened with Riley.”

Emery didn’t refute the “idiot” remark. “I told her a third party tapped into the security system when I did, and since I suspected they were after the same thing I was, I decided to monitor them to see if they would reveal the item. After doing so, I planned on tripping the alarm to thwart the robbery. All true, more or less.”

“What about me, the mummy? What did you tell her about that?”

“I gave her an accurate account of everything I witnessed on my laptop, though I did play down the shooting. Riley drew her own conclusion from there. She assumes another interested party broke into the museum first with the intention of ambushing Moreau. That would have been my conclusion, too, if I didn’t know about you.”

I nodded, uncomfortable. My parents had taught us kids that silence was as bad as bold-faced lying. But then, who was I to judge?

“I know,” Emery said. “A lie of omission. Guilty as charged.” He raised his hand.

“What?”

“A lie of omission is failing to correct a misconception, which—needless to say—I’m very good at doing. I don’t take pride in duplicity, nor do I feel proud of holding back vital information from Riley, but both were necessary considering the circumstances. I’m not only protecting you, I’m protecting the O’Sheas. The less Riley knows, and the less she’s involved, the better. She’s served enough time in prison.”

“Agreed.” The last thing I wanted was for Riley to become our accomplice and pay the price for our illegal activity, even though we had broken the law in the name of public safety.

“When consulting with Riley on Monday, I held back Moreau’s name.” Emery picked up his phone from the table. “I didn’t want her aware of more information than she had to be, but that’s changed now that Moreau has the microchip. It turns out Riley has heard of him. They ran in the same criminal circles in Europe. Is this the man you saw?” He brought up a picture of an elegant man wearing sunglasses while crossing a street, unaware someone was taking surveillance photos of him. He was definitely Moreau.

“That’s him. What do you know about him?”

“Born on June 18, 1981, in Marseille, France, Julian Anton Moreau is an international art thief and on Interpol’s Most Wanted list. He has been connected with some fairly notorious thefts, his latest being the most lucrative, potentially. Imagine the payday he’ll have if we don’t get the microchip back.”

“We’ll get it back,” I said, not sounding overly confident. We
had
to get the microchip back.
What if it’s right under our noses?
My eyes darted around the room
.
Would Mr. Phillips have hidden the microchip in his home?

“What are you looking for?”

My gaze returned to Emery. His eyes narrowed on me.

“So what now?” I deflected. “How do we find Moreau?”

“Riley is reaching out to her contacts. Hopefully they’ll have information on his current whereabouts.”

I gave him a moment to continue. When he didn’t, I asked, “That’s it? There are no other plans?”

“Other than you scouring the streets for Moreau, none at the moment. I’ve depleted every resource I have online. Even the FBI has little on him—”

I slapped a palm to my forehead. “
You
hacked into the FBI’s database?”

“No need for alarm. They don’t know. Riley’s contacts may have more information. Would you mind switching the laundry?”

“What? Why? You’re making my head spin.”

“Well, I don’t want to do
that
. If you could take care of the laundry?”

“Okay.” Resigned, I slid off the stool. “Here I go to the washer and dryer, playing along.”

“By the way, I was kidding about scouring the streets for Moreau,” Emery said. “Looking for him would be futile.”

“How can you be so sure?” I opened the dryer door to beige towels and slid a laundry basket underneath. “I know his scent.” I reached deep into the dryer to scoop the towels out. “Besides, you don’t have any better plans—” I stopped short as my mummy costume tumbled into the basket with the towels. “Emery,” I gasped, glancing at the stairs. “Are you crazy? What if your dad had taken these out?”

“He wouldn’t have. He told me to do it.”

I twisted around to look at him scrolling through email, wearing a smug smile.

“What are you—a lazy, rebellious teenager?”

He shrugged. “I just don’t like to fold.”

“Well, who does?” I quickly piled towels over the costume. “You take too many chances. At some point someone is going to take
you
by surprise.”

“I know a strong-willed redhead who does quite often.”

“
I’m
strong-willed? That’s the pot calling the kettle black. You want me to wear this again?”

“The costume? Eventually, after we’ve found Moreau. He and his men were terrified—”

“All of them?” Emery’s dad hadn’t looked very terrified to me.

“Granted, they’re professionals. Soldiers of fortune would be my guess . . .”

Squirming, I snagged a towel from the basket to fold. I regretted asking the question. It could cause Emery to meditate on Moreau’s men more than he already had.

Emery went on, watching me a little more carefully than he had been. “The way the gunmen handled weapons and maneuvered through the museum, they’re obviously military trained. Soldiers are taught to hide fear, but that doesn’t mean they don’t feel it. Experienced or not, a frightened person is more liable to slip up.”

“True.” I dearly wanted to change the subject—although, frankly, I was shocked Emery couldn’t see the obvious. The shooter was built like his military-trained father, who had come home three days before the robbery. If clues were snakes, they would have bitten him.

But maybe Emery doesn’t want to see the obvious.

“The costume’s thrashed,” I pointed out.

“Do you think I would send you into the field with unsuitable gear?” Emery clucked his tongue. “Take a closer look.”

Digging the costume free from the towels, I shook it out and examined the front. The rips had been meticulously repaired with tiny, even stitches of cream-colored thread. Without looking carefully, one wouldn’t even notice the damage. “Serena is a great seamstress.”

Emery huffed. “My mother? Please. I’m the seamstress in this family.”

“Well, you’ve got some mad skills, Betsy Ross.”

He gave me a sly smile. “I’m a man of many talents. You know, it would be a shame to waste the effort my mom is exerting to occupy my dad. Why not reward her with a vial of blood?”

~~~

After the blood draw, Emery said, “About those towels . . . why risk blowing your cover? You should fold them and put them away.”

I was about to tell him where he could put the towels when a light bulb went off in my head. The linen closet was located on the second floor next to the master bedroom. Being alone on the second floor would provide a golden opportunity to have a look around. If Mr. Phillips had the microchip, he had to hide it somewhere, right? If anything, I might find a clue to where it was hidden, or to Moreau.

“Well, I don’t want to blow my cover,” I said, adding a nice bite of sarcasm to mask my excitement. “Or have you get off your backside.”

“My thoughts exactly.” Emery flipped open Serena’s Mutant Girl journal, displaying no signs of suspicion.

“Glad we’re of one mind.”

“Well, then, commence folding.” He waved a hand for me to begin.

While folding towels, I watched him transcribe his mom’s notes on her laptop, a task he had been doing daily ever since Silver Tooth, i.e., Raul Diaz, created a bonfire out of Serena’s file cabinet contents in her former laboratory. “Has your mom found anything new?”

“Nothing compelling. But I’m confident you’ll be rid of us one day.”

I stopped folding and stared at him, fear shooting through my heart.
Do they plan to leave when I’m cured?
The thought overwhelmed me.

“In that case,” I said, finishing the last towel, “I hope she never succeeds.”

I set the towel on the pile and swept up the laundry basket, glimpsing a satisfied expression on Emery’s face as I turned to the stairs. I interpreted the look to mean he didn’t want to leave me, either, which pleased me to no end.

“Make sure my dad sees you carry the towels upstairs,” he called after me.

“I will, and I’ll suggest he grounds you—or gives me your allowance.”

“Allowance?” Emery laughed. “Good one, Cassidy.”

I opened the basement door and stepped into the kitchen, pausing to take stock of what was happening in the living room. Serena giggled. It took a second to digest this. Serena wasn’t exactly the giggling type.

Gripping the basket, I stomped loudly down the hall and cleared my throat for good measure.

“Busted,” Mr. Phillips teased his wife in a muffled, husky whisper when he heard me clomping down the hall.

Serena giggled again.

I turned bright red. I had figured they were smooching.

As I entered the foyer, I saw Serena slide off her husband’s lap and onto the sofa.
Couldn’t she have done that, like, two seconds ago?

“Ummm,” I said, feeling awkward. As if I wasn’t embarrassed enough, they sat a foot apart, grinning like a couple of teenagers who had been caught “necking,” as my Grandma Jean would say. “I’m taking these upstairs.”

“Thank you, Cassidy.” Serena straightened her lab coat. “Would you mind taking the dirty laundry from our bathroom down to the lab, too?”