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Kellerman still lies hog-tied on the floor of the unit, staring from one face to another, uncomprehending. He looks like he's in shock.

“I don't get it,” he keeps repeating over and over.

Isabel looks at me and shakes her head.

“I don't either,” she admits. “What just went on in there?”

“May I?” asks Caleb with a hint of pride.

“Be my guest,” I say.

“Ted's great-uncle left one more test before someone could take the falcon. You had to arrange the boxes in the storage unit to match the diagram on the ceiling. Otherwise, if you tried to open the compartment and remove the bird, well…you saw what happened.”

“But how?” demands Isabel.

“There's some sort of pistons or springs set underneath the unit,” I explain. “If the weight wasn't distributed properly, opening the panel would trigger them—”

“—tilting the whole room and trapping whoever was in it inside!” Caleb finishes triumphantly.

“So the only way out…,” Isabel reasons, “was to put the boxes in the right pattern and hope it reset the mechanism?”

“I figured there had to be a reset,” I say. “In case of some sort of accidental triggering, or if we'd placed the boxes wrong the first time and had to try again.”

Isabel stiffens. She looks wildly at me. “Did you hear that?”

In the distance, the sounds of shouts and running feet.

“No one knows we're here,” Caleb says anxiously. “But someone sounds like they're in an awful hurry.”

I kneel down next to Kellerman. Now I'm the one who's not playing. “Do you have friends? Are there people who were going to meet you here?”

Kellerman just looks at me and smiles. “Why don't we find out?”

I spin around. The voices are getting closer. There's shouting, but it's indistinct.

Isabel grabs my hand. “We have to get the falcon and hide.”

I look down and raise my eyebrows. Isabel drops my hand.

“I don't think so,” I say as the voices grow clearer.

The words are becoming easier to make out in the echoes of the big warehouse.

They're calling, “Ted! Isabel! Caleb!”

“It's a trap!” Caleb shouts.

“No, it's not, you idiot. That's your mom's voice.”

“I know.” Caleb grins. “But I've
always
wanted to say that.”

We yell back, and the excited cries of the rescue party let us know that they're only a few rows away.

“Row P, row P!” I call, and Caleb and Isabel join me in a sort of improvised school cheer. “Row P! Row P!”

And now here they are.

My mom, running in her scrubs, followed closely by Graham Archer, with Caleb's parents, followed by the now-familiar form of a squat, burly man with a fringe of black hair around his ears, chunky black glasses, and a unibrow.

Behind them, taking his time, ambles good old Dad.

“Man, your mom can book it,” Caleb says.

“She used to run track in school,” I remind him proudly.

And then we're crushed in an avalanche of hugs and kisses as each of us is tackled in turn.

Graham Archer holds Isabel in his arms, tears streaming down his face as he strokes her hair.

Isabel looks uncomfortable at first, patting her loving father awkwardly on his shoulder. Then she grabs him as hard as she can.

“I'm okay, Daddy, really….I'm okay now….” But looking over, I can see that her eyes are glistening too.

And she called him Daddy.

Looking over isn't easy; Mom seems permanently attached to me, like a giant squid, sucking the life out of me with her hugs. She's also openly sobbing.

I note with satisfaction that Dad is doing his best to hold it together by talking to the burly man as the two of them peer into the structure.

Doris and Gene Grant are trying to concentrate on their son.

“By the way, Doris, I didn't mention it before, but you're looking good. Have you been working out?” says his dad.

“As a matter of fact, I have. Thank you for noticing,” Doris says proudly, flexing her biceps.

Caleb pulls himself away and joins Isabel and me, once we've both pried our respective parents off our bodies.

Dad comes over with a big smile on his face.

“I know…I never listen…but I
knew
something was wrong when you said Isabel didn't return to Osmond,” Dad tells Isabel. “I just didn't know
what.
”

“I knew you'd get my clue,” Isabel replies, nodding vigorously. “
Ted,
of course, thought it was a stupid thing to say.”

“Well, Ted should trust his Dear Father. So I told your mom, who kind of freaked out—”

“Why did Mom freak out?” I ask.

Before Dad can answer, my mom turns to the burly man, who is having a one-sided conversation with Kellerman, who is glaring at him.

“Kellerman!” Mom shouts.

“Yes?” both men answer.

My mom marches over, sheer fury in her eyes. The fake Kellerman looks terrified.

She reaches back and wallops…

…the real Kellerman, who falls over, coughing.

“Amanda!” Dad rushes over but freezes as she glares at him.

The real Kellerman has gotten to his feet, looking baleful.

Then Mom says, through gritted teeth, “You
promised
us! You #$%# liar!”

Whoa.

I did
not
see that coming.

Wait, this is my mom? The “for heaven's sake” mom?

He must have messed up big-time to get her this mad.

“Everything we were told suggested he was not violent or capable of doing what he did.” The real Kellerman speaks with a thick New York accent, kind of like he could be Mrs. Krausz's son.

Mom smacks him again, hard. “Our children could have
died.
We trusted you when you said he was just a harmless antiques dealer. You said to say nothing to them, that he'd show himself and you'd take care of it.”

The real Kellerman raises his hands. “Whaddaya want me to do? I'm not the FBI, for God's sake. We're just an organization looking for artwork.”

“That is
unacceptable.
” My mom is fuming. “I am writing a letter to whoever runs your organization.”

“Fine! Write a letter!” the real Kellerman shoots back. “Get a lawyer! Sue them! See if I care! I didn't even want to do this! I wanted to be an orthodontist, but
no,
I had to run around the world looking for artwork, because that's what Kellermans do. Seriously, go ahead.”

This stops Mom for a moment.

“HE KIDNAPPED OUR KIDS!” she screams at him.

I walk over to Dad. “Wait, so you
knew
that Kellerman was a phony and you let him take us?”

“I wasn't there when that guy talked to your mom. I kind of wasn't paying attention when she told me,” Dad answers.

“But you put two and two together when Isabel said something wrong about a book?” I ask incredulously.

“Well, that's different,” Dad says, impossible as ever. “I mean, if it weren't for Isabel—”

“I know,
I know,
” I say.

As Mom continues to beat the living daylights out of the real Kellerman, Caleb joins us.

“Okay,” he says. “Your mom. Isabel. Steel cage match. Your thoughts?”

“Well,” I say appraisingly, “Isabel definitely has the height and the reach….”

“Yeah, but your mom has age and experience,” counters Dad.

“That's true.” Caleb nods.

“Definitely,” I agree. “You know what they say: Asian blood is
strong
in that one!”

The real Kellerman then turns to the other parents, who by now have gathered around him, and is once again telling anyone who will listen that they should go ahead and do whatever they want, it's fine with him.

Dad turns back to Isabel as if nothing has happened.

“So, as I was saying,” Dad goes on, as if this is a funny story from his class. “Ted's mom went a little nuts. I guess your father went a little crazy too when this Kellerman fellow showed up and mentioned that
other
guy pretending to be him.”

One thing doesn't make sense. “But how did you find us?”

“I know you don't think so, but I'm not completely stupid.” Dad smiles. “I went to your room to see if I could discover anything, and you'd left your laptop on. I hit the History button, and it pulled up Google with the address on it.”

I nod. “You are definitely not completely stupid. You teach college and everything.”

“Wait. If you had the address, what took you guys so long?” Having gotten bored with watching the real Kellerman being berated, Caleb is now part of the conversation.

“We've been here for a half an hour looking for you guys,” Dad explains. “Do you know how big this place is? How many floors? It wasn't until Graham heard the noise of the gate opening down here that we had an idea of the general direction to follow.”

I turn and see something out of the corner of my eye that makes my stomach drop into my shoes.

During all the yelling and catching up, no one has kept an eye on the fake Kellerman.

There on the floor are four zip ties, neatly cut. He has somehow managed to find his douk-douk in the rubble and release himself.

“Kellerman's gone!” I shout.

“Whaddaya mean? I'm right here!” yells the real Kellerman. He looks around and, as the realization sinks in, says simply, “Oh…”

He turns to my mom. “See?
This
is what happens when you get angry at the wrong person.
He's
the one who threatened your children. I didn't see you beating
him
up.”

Before Mom can answer, a deep voice calls out, “Anyone looking for this?” We're met with the welcome sight of half a dozen LAPD uniformed police turning the corner, one of them pulling a disheveled fake Kellerman with him.

“Well, you certainly took your time,” Graham Archer says.

“It would have helped if you'd given us some idea
where
in the building you were,” the officer answers coolly.

The police need a statement, so Caleb, Isabel, and I go with one of the officers to file a report. As we turn to leave, I see the real Kellerman emerge from the dust and debris of the storage unit, clutching the velvet drawstring bag.

I stop.

“Can we see it, please?”

All eyes are on the real Kellerman as he carefully undoes the string and lowers the bag.

There in his hand is a statue of a falcon covered in black paint, looking just like the one on the cover of the book Isabel Archer read and told me and Caleb about, what feels like a lifetime ago.

There's silence in the room.

“It don't look like much, right?” the real Kellerman says softly. “But it'll clean up real good….”

He takes a small penknife out of his pocket. Unlike the douk-douk, this knife looks friendly and cute, like one you might use to sharpen a pencil. He opens it and scraps the blade against the black paint.

In the bright lights of the Valleyview Long-Term Storage Facilities (open by appointment only), there is the unmistakable glitter of gold beneath the black.