Chupacabra (5 page)

The only reason she would hide the journal was so that no one could read what’s inside.

Grace had been the perfect granddaughter since she’d arrived at the Ark. At least on the surface.

She might be able to fool Butch
, Noah thought,
but she can’t fool me.

He redoubled his efforts, checking again in the places he had already looked. He called Butch to make sure Grace was still in Lab 251. It wouldn’t do to have her discover her grandfather ransacking her bedroom.

“She’s in the nursery,” Butch said. “I’m right outside the door. Yvonne and her are watching the dinos belch and fart — you’re going to have to put them behind hermetically sealed glass so the visitors don’t faint. Yvonne and Grace are acting like they’re long-lost sisters. I guess Grace has forgotten that Yvonne helped us snatch her from the
Coelacanth
. Can I get outta here?”

“No. Stay where you are. Call me the second Grace leaves the lab.”

Noah ended the call and walked back into the bedroom’s closet. The mansion was riddled with secret passages. He’d designed it that way. There wasn’t a room in the house, including the bathrooms, that didn’t have another way out. It was one of his most carefully guarded secrets. Not even Rose, when she was alive, knew about the passages, despite the fact there was one right in her closet. It had been years since he had used any of them. Some he had never used.

Click
…

A panel slid open with barely a sound. He reached through the opening, switched on the light, and stepped in. It didn’t look like anyone had been there in years. The dust was undisturbed. The Moleskine was not there.

He took a few steps down a narrow aisle. He pushed another button and a second panel slid open, revealing the shower stall in Grace’s bathroom. He stepped through and closed the panel.

Where did you hide it, Grace?

He went through the bathroom cabinets again, then pulled the vanity drawers all the way out to see if she had hidden the journal behind them.

The only place I haven’t looked is …

He walked over to the toilet and pulled the lid off the water tank. Inside, double-wrapped in Ziploc bags, which she had no doubt taken from Lab 251, was the sixth Moleskine.

“Exactly when did your parents text you?” Marty asked. He and Luther were on their way down to the dock where the
Coelacanth
was moored, to retrieve their gear.

“Good news about your parents,” Luther said.

Marty stopped. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“Huh?”

“Spill it,” Marty said.

“They didn’t exactly text me,” Luther admitted.

“What did they do …
exactly
?”

Luther shrugged.

“Where are they?”

Another shrug.

“They didn’t contact you at all.”

“I’m sure they would have if they’d had the time.”

“You lied to Wolfe.”

“I prefer to think of it as distorting the truth.”

“Why did you lie?”

“I wish you’d quit using that word.”

“Okay, why did you … uh … distort the truth?”

“Because of Grace, you dunce. Someone has to get her out of the clutches of Noah Blackwood.”

“We aren’t sure she’s
in
his clutches. You and everyone else said she went with him willingly.” When Grace was boarding the chopper, Marty was belowdecks trying to defuse a bomb.

“She didn’t have a choice. She was under duress. If you’d seen it go down, that would have been crystal clear to you like it was to me. We need to get her away from Blackwood.”

“What if she doesn’t want to leave now that she’s there?” Marty did not believe his cousin (and former fraternal twin sister) would choose Noah Blackwood over him and Wolfe, but she was up to something.

“We at least need to talk to her and find out if she’s okay,” Luther stated.

We need to talk to her and find out if she’s lost her mind!
Marty thought.

“As much as I’d like get back to Cryptos Island and look around,” Luther continued, “we can’t. If we leave the mainland, we’ll be off the grid. Stuck.”

There were a lot worse places to be stuck than Cryptos, but Marty got the point.

“How do you plan to contact her? Walk up to the mansion, knock on the door, and ask if Grace can come out and play?”

“That’d work,” Luther said with his goofy grin. “Or we could just head over to the Ark, see where she’s hanging out, and talk to her.”

“Yeah,” Marty said. “And maybe while we’re there we can find Butch McCall and Yvonne and have lunch with them. Maybe Noah will join us for a bite. I’m certain they’d be happy to see us.”

“You’re right,” Luther said. “We’ll have to make sure they don’t spot us.”

“With your hair?”

“What’s wrong with my hair?”

“Nothing,” Marty said. “Except that it looks like it’s on fire and it can be seen from the moon.”

“Disguises!” Luther said. “Like Ted Bronson. I’ve been watching how he does it. I think I can do it better.”

“You’re dreaming,” Marty said. “But there are a couple of things we could do. And we’re the last two people they’ll be looking for.”

“So you’re in?”

“Duh
du jour
,” Marty answered.

 • • • 

Marty and Luther had loaded two small backpacks with things they thought they might need. Sitting on the nightstand in their cabin aboard the
Coelacanth
were Rose’s last two Moleskine journals. On the trip back from New Zealand, Marty had read all but these last two. He’d discovered virtually no useful information about Rose and Noah Blackwood. He thought about leaving these last two behind, then thought better of it. If he didn’t get time to read them ashore, maybe he could pass them on to Grace. He slipped them into his pack.

He and Luther were just about to leave when a boy with dark hair stepped into their cabin.

“Are you Marty and Luther?”

“Yeah. I’m Marty.”

“I’m Luther.”

“I see that,” the boy said, staring at Luther’s hair. “My name’s Dylan Hickock. I guess we’re going to be bunking with each other for the next couple of days. I’ve been looking for you. Did you know the ship’s about ready to cast off?”

“Now that you mention it, yeah,” Marty said, noticing the vibrations and loud rumbling of the engines. “We better hurry. Cap doesn’t care who’s on board or who isn’t. When it’s time to go, it’s time to go.”

A small yapping black dog the size of a squirrel ran into the cabin between Dylan’s legs, making him jump. “What’s that?” he blurted out.

“Teacup poodle,” Marty said. “PD. Short for Pocket Dog.”

A second later a gray parrot flew in, screeching. Dylan covered his ears.

“That’s Congo,” Marty said.

“You’re kind of jumpy for someone who’s seen Bigfoot,” Luther quipped.

“You heard about that,” Dylan said.

“Not in any detail, but Marty had a Bigfoot encounter, too. Of course, it really wasn’t Sasquatch, it was a chimp.”

“Shut up, Luther,” Marty said.

Luther grinned. “Are we going to take these two with us?”

Congo had landed on his perch and started to loudly crack sunflower seeds. PD had stopped yapping and was running circles around Marty’s feet.

“They’re too much trouble together. I’ll take PD.” He held his baggy cargo pocket open. “Snake!”

PD jumped into the pocket and disappeared.

“Hence the name,” Dylan said.

“Yeah.” Marty said. “She’s terrified of snakes. Saying
snake
works every time.”

The three boys hurried out of the cabin and ran across the deck, reaching the gangway just as it was being winched up.

“Jump!” Luther yelled.

They leaped the four-foot gap. Marty and Dylan made it with several feet to spare. Luther stumbled and plunged into the cold waters of Puget Sound.

“Can he swim?” Dylan shouted.

“Not very well.”

Dylan ran back toward the gangway and dove off the dock and into the water like a cormorant. By the time Marty reached the edge and looked over, Dylan had the sputtering Luther in a headlock and was towing him toward a ladder attached to one of the pilings. Marty helped them onto the dock.

“I can’t believe we fell!” Luther said. He looked at Marty. “And I can’t believe you didn’t, as clumsy as you are.”

Marty was a natural athlete and didn’t have a clumsy bone in his body, which Luther was well aware of. Luther also knew that Dylan had jumped in after him, but Dylan didn’t correct him — it would have been bad form to do so. In fact, his cold bluish lips were grinning. You either loved Luther or hated him. There was no in-between. Luckily, Dylan seemed to like him.

“We need to go to the Ark,” Luther said through chattering teeth, pouring salt water out of his backpack. “Where’s the car?”

“In the lot,” Dylan said. “Maybe we should stop by the condo and get dried out first.”

“I’m fine,” Luther said, wringing out the bottom edge of his T-shirt, “but if you need to, I guess that would be okay.”

Marty gave Luther a humongous eyeball roll.

“What?” Luther said.

They followed Dylan to the parking lot, where he unlocked a battered crew cab truck with a cracked windshield and a missing hubcap.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Luther said. “Ted …” He looked at Marty. “I mean Theo Sonborn drives a junker?”

It seemed Ted did not limit his disguise to his body. A trashed truck was exactly the kind of vehicle that Theo would drive.

“Not much to look at,” Dylan said. “But it runs. I’m just happy to have wheels. It was nice of him to loan it to me.”

“How long have you had your license?” Marty asked.

“A couple of months.”

“Shotgun!” Luther jumped into the passenger seat.

Marty wedged himself unhappily into the crew cab but was soon redeemed when Luther started sneezing from his plunge into Puget Sound.

“We need windshield wipers on the
inside
!” Dylan said, his head pressed against the driver’s side window, trying to duck the fallout.

Marty decided that he liked Dylan.

Twenty-seven sneezes later, they arrived at a condo that overlooked Lake Washington.

“Nice digs …”
Haa-choo!
“… dude.”

As soon as they were inside the foyer of the condo, Dylan handed Luther a box of tissues. Farther down the hallway, he opened a door. “My bedroom’s in here. Spare clothes in the closet. The bathroom has a washer and dryer.”

“My clothes don’t need washing,” Luther said, “but the dryer will come in handy.” He looked at Marty. “Lucky I fell in
the drink and not you. You have the graphic novels in your pack. That would have been a disaster.”

Marty had more important things than their novels in his backpack, like the Gizmo and the dragonspy and the Moleskines. It would have been an even worse disaster if they’d lost any of those. He fished the Gizmo out of his backpack and slipped it into another cargo pocket for safekeeping. PD was still dozing in his makeshift papoose.

“Graphic novels?” Dylan said.

“We’re artists,” Luther said grandly.

Marty gave him an eye roll, which Luther ignored.

“I love graphic novels,” Dylan said. “Can I see them?”

“They’re kind of rough,” Marty said.

“Two volumes so far,” Luther said. “They recount our adventures all over the world.”

Our adventures
was an exaggeration. Luther had not been in the Congo when Marty and Grace found the Mokélémbembé eggs, but he had been aboard the
Coelacanth
when they hatched.

“The third volume is a work in progress,” Luther continued. “We live these stories. That’s where our inspiration comes from. I can’t promise, but we might be able to turn your Bigfoot encounter into a graphic novel — if it’s interesting enough.”

“It’s pretty interesting,” Dylan said. “I actually wrote the story down, but didn’t want to put it out there for public consumption.”

“You have a title?” Luther asked.

“Right now I’m just calling it
Sasquatch
.”

“Bet I can come up with a catchier title,” Luther said.

Marty gave Luther yet another eye roll, then looked at Dylan. “I’d like to read it.”

“Sure. As long as you keep the story to yourself.” He turned to Luther. “I’m surprised Dr. Wolfe let you write about his exploits. I thought he liked to keep what he does quiet.”

“They’re not just his exploits,” Luther said. “He’ll come around.” He walked into the bedroom and closed the door behind himself.

Dylan looked at Marty. “Is he always like this?”

“Sometimes he’s weirder,” Marty answered. “And he’s wrong about my uncle. Wolfe will never change his mind about going public. He likes to keep things secret.”

“Cryptic,” Dylan said.

“Yeah,” Marty agreed.

Dylan reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded sheet of paper.

“What’s that?”

“A note to you from Wolfe.” He handed it to him. “Theo gave it to me.”

“What do you know so far?” Marty asked.

“I know about the dinosaurs and that Noah Blackwood nabbed them from the
Coelacanth
. I know your cousin Grace went with Blackwood. I assume that’s why you want to go to Noah’s Ark?”

Marty nodded.

“Does your uncle know?”

“Not exactly.”

Dylan grinned. “Like in, not at all.”

“He wouldn’t be too happy if he knew.”

“I’m not your babysitter.”

“Lucky for you,” Marty said. “When we were kids, Grace and I drove every nanny we had stark raving mad.”

“Imagine what Luther did to his sitters,” Dylan said.

“I think he had keepers rather than sitters. You want to look at the graphic novels?”

“Yeah. And if you’re hungry, there’s plenty of food in the kitchen.”

Marty let PD out of his pocket and followed the poodle into the kitchen.

 • • • 

Forty-five minutes later, Marty came out carrying a huge platter of food with PD at his heels.

Dylan looked up from the dining room table, where he was reading the second graphic novel. “These illustrations are great.”

“Thanks. Half of them are Luther’s.” Marty set the platter on the table.

“What’s this?”

“Middle Eastern food. Stuffed grape leaves, hummus, baba ghanoush, flat bread, and tabouli.”

“There wasn’t any Middle Eastern in the kitchen the last time I checked.”

“Yes, there was,” Marty said. “It was just in a different form, except for the flat bread.”

“So you cook, too?”

“I can get around a kitchen.” This was an understatement. The only thing Marty liked doing better than drawing was cooking. “Where’s Luther?”

“Haven’t seen him.”

That can’t be good
, Marty thought, looking at the bedroom door.

Dylan pointed at one of the drawings. “Is Theo Sonborn really Ted Bronson?”

Marty nodded. “The illustration doesn’t do the real transformation justice.”

“You’ve got that right,” Luther said, coming through the door.

PD barked and jumped back into Marty’s cargo pocket.

Marty and Dylan stared at Luther in shock. He was completely bald, except the bits of tissue stemming the flow of blood from dozens of nicks on his pale scalp.

Luther gave them a triumphant grin. “I bet Noah Blackwood wouldn’t recognize me now if we tripped over each other.”