Dial (13 page)

•  •  •

Storm had just ridden off on his white stallion, leaving Adrianna to take care of her family's farm all by herself. Ouch! Why were there always so many obstacles on the path to true love? Life just wasn't fair. Nor was it fair that Jo had to sit around and read this stupid book while she waited for Chico to hit the sack. She had been sitting in the den for almost two hours, waiting, waiting, waiting. . . .

“Jacinta, I leave now, yes?” Chico suddenly called from the doorway. Uh-oh. Was he going to the Big Boss mansion? That could spell major trouble. “Tonight I play cards at La Americana with my old friends.”

It wasn't bed, but it would do. All she cared about was Chico staying as far away from her and Diva as possible. “Have a great time!” Jo said cheerily. “I'll see you tomorrow.”

Chico frowned, his blue eyes concerned. “You will be good alone?”

Jo made a show of yawning and stretching her arms above her head. “Oh, don't worry about me. I'm just going to head up to bed and read for a while.”

Chico nodded. “Have nice dreams, then, Jacinta.”

Jo sat rigidly on the sofa as she waited for Chico's footsteps to fade down the hall. A moment later the front door opened and closed. Phew. He was gone. Time to set into motion part B of this totally insane plan. Jo picked up the phone at her side and dialed the number of El Centro.

“Yes?” Diva answered the phone on the first ring.

“It's on,” Jo said quietly. “Meet me behind the house.” Then she hung up the phone. Three, two, one, zero. Showtime.

“Josefina? Is that you?” Diva's whispered voice was coming from somewhere behind a large patch of rosebushes.

“It's Jo, actually,” she answered as Diva emerged from her hiding place. “Everyone calls me Jo—only my dad called me Josefina.”

Diva smiled shakily. “Jo, then. Thanks for coming. I promise, I'm telling you the truth about Chico.”

The girls walked toward the side of the house and crouched in the well of a door that led to the basement. “I don't know if you're telling the truth or not,” Jo answered, not ready to risk being betrayed by her friend again. “But I'm here. So let's do this thing.”

“We have to find the gun,” Diva said. “The gun is the key.”

Jo glanced around the backyard. “What's the security situation? Should we be expecting dogs, and alarms, and
spotlights shining in our faces?” She hadn't noticed heavy-duty equipment during the last couple of days, but one never knew.

“Nope. Carlos is on duty tonight. He always drinks himself to sleep by eight o'clock or so.”

Jo raised an eyebrow. “You don't say?”

Even in the dark, it was obvious that Diva was blushing. “What can I tell you? We went out for a while back when I was a rebellious young teenager.”

Jo was tempted to laugh, but she didn't. “You're still pretty rebellious,” she commented dryly. “Most good little girls would wind up arrested by government agents for participation in a major drug operation.”

It was Diva's turn to glare. “Do you want to find the gun or not?”

“Any ideas on where it might be?” Jo asked. “This place is packed with stuff—a thorough search could take hours.”

Diva nodded. “Chico showed me a secret door when I was a little girl. He was showing off for me . . . calling himself Uncle Chico and saying I was like his own daughter.”

“What a scum.” Slowly Jo was starting to buy Diva's
story. There was too much detail, too much pain in her voice whenever she mentioned Chico or her father for Jo to believe that Diva was lying.

“The door leads to a private den,” Diva continued. “And at the back of the room there is another door—one that Chico warned me
never
to open.”

“Do you think we'll find the gun in there?” Jo asked.

“Yes, that is what my heart tells me,” Diva said. “If I'm wrong . . . well, then it could be anywhere.”

“Do you remember how to open the secret door?” Jo asked.

“Yes—when I was young, we lived for a time in this house. I would sneak into that den often . . . but I never, ever had the
cojones
to go in that other room.”

“No time like the present,” Jo said. “You lead.”

•  •  •

“This is it,” Diva whispered ten minutes later. “This is the secret door.”

The girls had slipped into the house through a first-floor window just in case Maria was still around and moni­toring Jo's comings and goings. As Diva had predicted,
Carlos was snoring loudly in the TV room off the front hall. Without a moment's hesitation, Diva had guided Jo down several long hallways. Finally she had stopped in front of a large oak bookcase that Jo had noticed the day before. In fact, it had proved the home for
Storm Clouds through Town.

“The door is disguised by a
bookcase
?” Jo whispered. “Man, this is like an episode of
Scooby Doo.
I just hope we have enough Scooby snacks to keep the dog quiet while we search for clues, Velma.”

“What?” Diva stared blankly at Jo.

“Never mind. Just a bit of American pop culture humor.” She pointed at the bookcase. “Open sesame.” Jo was trying to keep the mood light, but her heart was racing a thousand beats a minute.

Diva removed a copy of Machiavelli's
The Prince
—how fitting—from the bookshelf. Then she reached to the back of the case and began to spin a combination lock. “I'll never forget this combination,” she said. “Chico used to mouth the numbers as he opened the lock . . . and I've remembered them ever since.”

“You really should be a spy,” Jo commented. “Your instincts are amazing.”

Jo heard a soft click from the back of the bookcase, and Diva smiled with satisfaction. “Stand back,” she instructed.

As Jo stepped away from the bookcase, it began to move. After several seconds a door was revealed. “Wow!” Jo exclaimed softly. “This adventure is getting more Nancy Drewish by the second.”

“Be serious, Jo,” Diva warned. “You have no idea what Chico will do if he finds us. . . .”

Jo didn't need to be told twice that she was facing almost certain death if they were discovered by the wrong person. Whether or not that person was Chico . . . time would tell.

The girls slipped through the door and were immediately enveloped in one of the blackest blacks Jo had ever seen. She felt as if she were standing in a cave five miles below sea level. Yikes. Maybe she
should
have told ­Theresa and Caylin what she was up to. Until this moment she hadn't realized just how likely it was that she would never return from this leg of the mission. A girl could be locked
up in this place a long time before anyone found her—especially if it turned out that Diva had lured her here on purpose out of sheer evil revenge. Now
that
would suck.

“Are you sure you're a good guy?” Jo whispered. “ 'Cause I'm putting a lot of trust in you right about now.”

In the darkness Diva reached out and squeezed her hand. “Believe me, Jo, I'm in just as much danger as you are. It's only my love for my father that's allowing me to overcome my fears in order to prove his innocence.”

“We'll do it for both of our dads, then,” Jo said, echoing Diva's sentiments from the night before.

“Keep ahold of my hand and we'll go down the stairs together.” Slowly the girls descended the steep stone staircase that led to the Big Boss's private sanctuary.

At the bottom of the stairs Diva stopped. “Aha!” She flipped a switch, and the room they had entered was immediately flooded with light.

“Nice clubhouse.” The room was large, furnished with antiques and Tiffany lamps. A huge zebra skin rug covered much of the hardwood floor, and the heads of big-game animals lined the walls. Yep. This was pretty
much what she'd expect the Big Boss's lair to look like. It was textbook.

Diva gazed around the room. “I used to come here and pretend that I was a princess locked away in a tower . . . waiting for my knight in shining armor. Back then, I didn't realize that I really was a prisoner.”

“I guess that's the door with a capital
D
, huh?” Jo pointed to a normal-looking door at the back of the room.

Diva nodded. “Chico didn't even bother to put a lock on it. He knew that no one would ever dare go in there without permission.”

“He didn't bet on us,” Jo said. “Let's do it.”

Her heart thumped painfully as the girls walked slowly toward the door. They had to find the gun. There were simply no ifs, ands, or buts about it. Jo didn't have a plan B. If she was ever going to discover the truth about her dad's murder, she was going to find it in that room.

“You do the honors, Jo,” Diva said, gesturing toward the doorknob.

Jo grabbed the knob. It turned easily in her hand, and the girls tiptoed into no-man's-land. From the light in the
den, Jo was able to spot a floor lamp next to the door. She turned on the light, then gasped.

“Holy mother . . . What is this place?” Diva whispered.

Jo was speechless. The room was nothing short of an arsenal. It was a weapons collector's heaven on earth. Swords, shields, and spears took up every inch of wall space. Several large gun cases dominated the small room. There was even an ancient suit of armor in the corner.

“I'm glad I never came in here,” Diva whispered, her voice shaky. “I would have had nightmares for months—if I didn't accidentally shoot myself.”

“The gun has to be here,” Jo said. “I saw a picture of it in one of the articles I read online, so I'll know it when I see it.”

“In that case, let's start the search,” Diva said. “I'm starting to feel a little claustrophobic—not to mention terrified.”

Jo walked to one of the gun cases and peered inside. The thing was secured shut, but Jo predicted she could pick the lock with one of her Spy Girl gadgets in under fifteen seconds. She began to reach into her pocket but froze when she felt an unfamiliar presence behind her.

Jo whirled around. And there was Chico, looking not at all like the mild-mannered retiree who had bid her sweet dreams an hour ago.

“Looking for this, Josefina?” Chico asked. In his hand was the Jack Major Longhorn pistol that Jo had been searching for.

“Uh . . .” Plan B! Why didn't she have a plan B? Jo gulped. Had Diva set her up after all?

Before Jo had time to react to Chico's presence, Diva leaped out from behind the suit of armor and rushed their intruder. Diva dove toward Chico's back, but she was too late. He raised his arm and banged her on the head with the pearl-plated butt of the pistol.

Diva crumpled silently to the floor, knocked completely unconscious. Chico shook his head sadly. “Tsk, tsk. I always treated little Diva like she was my own daughter. It's such a shame when the young ones turn out to be ungrateful brats.” He stared at Diva's lifeless body. “Still, if she wakes up, I may let her live. After all, she does such a magnificent job running El Centro for me.”

Suddenly Chico's broken English had turned fluid. His
whole persona had been a calculated, manipulative mask to protect himself from authorities. Dirtbag!

“You—you're evil,” Jo said, staring into Chico's eyes. “How could anyone be so cruel?”

Diva had been telling the truth from the beginning. And Jo had doubted her. A wave of guilt washed over Jo as she remembered all the mean things she had said to her new friend during the last couple of days.

Chico was turning the gun over in his hand, studying the weapon from all angles. “You know, young Josefina, I found using this gun to take your father's life to be quite a pleasurable experience.” He pulled a handful of bullets from his pants pocket and jingled them in the palm of his hand.

Jo felt a flush of blackness threaten to overtake her, but she fended it off. She wasn't going to give Chico the satisfaction of passing out. No, she was going to look into the eyes of her father's true murderer and tell him face-to-face how much she hated him.

“You are the lowest, most despicable form of human life,” Jo said, her voice like stone. “You didn't deserve to walk the same planet as my father.”

As she spoke, Chico had been carefully loading the bullets into the pistol. Now he raised the gun. “Hush, ­Josefina. You teenagers are so rude.”

Jo shut her mouth. With that gun in his hand, her options were limited at best.

“In fact, I enjoyed killing Judge Carreras so much that I have been unable to find a subject as worthy of these priceless bullets since.” He took a moment to flash her a cold, brutal smile. “But you'll do quite nicely. A fine bit of symmetry, don't you think?”

He pointed the antique weapon directly at Jo's head. She shut her eyes. “I love you, Dad,” she whispered.

“Prepare to join your beloved father, Josefina.” He laughed. “You're going to die.”

“Tell me what you want, what you really, really want!” ­Theresa shouted along to the music blaring in Club 222. “I say, if you wanna be—”

“Trixie, I never knew your real name was Off-key Spice,” Caylin yelled in her ear as she danced past Theresa with Pedro.

Okay, so Theresa was never going to be Barbra ­Streisand. Wasn't she allowed to have a little fun once in a while? Even geeks had to let loose after a superhard, superemotional mission. And she
was
having a good time with . . . well, she had forgotten his name. But as long as the guy kept telling her how great she was at the samba, Theresa didn't care if his name was Satan.

Theresa leaned close to Pedro's friend. “Hey, what's your—” She broke off as she felt her cell phone vibrating
in the pocket of the ultratight black leather pants Caylin had persuaded her to wear. “Never mind.”