License to Thrill (14 page)

Her brother, on the other hand, seemed to have lost some of the swagger he'd displayed at the start of the trip. Coke was no longer calling himself “Ace Fist”
and bragging about his karate skills. He had become hesitant, tentative, sometimes hanging back and letting his sister take charge of the situation.

The pressure of being chased and hunted down like animals over thousands of miles was starting to wear on both of the twins. Knowing that Dr. Warsaw was building an atomic weapon and might set it off at any time had frayed their nerves. They were less than 800 miles from San Francisco now. Questions were running through the backs of their minds.
Will we get home alive? What's going to happen if we do? Will we be able to live a normal life? Will we be hunted—and haunted—by Dr. Warsaw forever?

The uncertainty was eating at them.

“I don't know what happened,” Pep said on the way back to the hotel. “I think I just snapped.”

Coke flipped on the TV to help them both calm down.
SpongeBob
was on again. A few minutes later, there was a knock on the door. Their parents were back.

“Oh, I wish you kids had come to the vortex with us!” gushed Mrs. McDonald. “I felt the energy. The hair on my arms was standing on end!”

“Personally, I didn't feel a thing,” said Dr. McDonald. “I say it's all a hoax.”

“You're still sitting here watching TV?” asked Mrs.
McDonald. “You kids haven't moved an inch since we left.”

“Actually, we went out for a walk,” Coke said. “We consulted with a psychic healer, and then Pep beat her up.”

“Ha! You kids are a riot,” said his father. “I guess that healer wasn't really psychic, because if she was, she would have known that Pep was going to beat her up, right?”

They went to eat at a little Italian restaurant down the street. After dinner, Dr. McDonald called a family meeting. He had read an article in a magazine that said children enjoy and appreciate family vacations better when they're involved in the decision-making process. Up until this point, the parents had pretty much decided where they were going, and the kids had had no say in the matter.

“We are
here
,” Dr. McDonald said, after spreading his road map across the table and pointing to Sedona, Arizona. “We have two choices tomorrow. We can drive south down to Phoenix or north up to the Grand Canyon.”

“What's in Phoenix?” Pep asked.

“Oh, there's lots of cool stuff,” Mrs. McDonald said as she pulled out her Arizona guidebook. “Let me see. There's the Musical Instrument Museum, and the Hall
of Flame Museum of Firefighting. Oh, and there's also the Phoenix Police Museum. They have a room honoring police dogs that have died in the line of duty. And you get to sit inside a real police car.”

“That sounds pretty cool,” Coke said.

“Wait, listen to
this
!” said Mrs. McDonald after flipping the page. “There's a Cockroach Hall of Fame!”

“You gotta be kidding me,” Coke said.

“It's true,” his mother continued. “An exterminator has a place called the Pest Shop. In the back, he made a museum with dead cockroaches dressed as celebrities!”

“That's ridiculous, Bridge,” said Dr. McDonald.

“Oh, come on!” Mrs. McDonald told him. “It will be fun! It says they have David Letteroach, Marilyn Monroach, Liberoachi, and roach versions of Elvis, Britney Spears, and lots of other famous people. Oh, we
must
go!”

Dr. McDonald closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead silently. He had already endured museums devoted to yo-yos, hot dog buns, mustard, bowling, washing machines, and Spam on this trip. He tried to think of a diplomatic way to get out of driving 117 miles to see costumed cockroaches.

“I think the children would get more out of a trip to the Grand Canyon,” he said gently.

“The Grand Canyon is just a big hole in the ground,” Mrs. McDonald replied. “What's the big deal about
that
?”

“It's one of the seven natural wonders of the world!” her husband said, raising his voice somewhat.

“I'm just kidding, Ben,” Mrs. McDonald said. “The Grand Canyon and Phoenix are both about two hours from here. How about we let the kids decide which direction we go?”

“Fair enough.”

While their parents went to pay the check for dinner, Coke and Pep stayed at the table and talked things over.

“Do you care where we go?” Pep asked.

“No.”

“Me neither,” Pep said. “The important thing is, where are Dr. Warsaw and his pals likely to go? If we go to Phoenix and they go to the Grand Canyon, we avoid them, at least for a while. If we go to Phoenix and
they
go to Phoenix, we're in trouble. We've got to outguess them.”

“Of course, they could track us and follow us
anywhere
,” Coke pointed out. “Dr. Warsaw could be watching us right
now
.”

The twins debated the issue a little while longer, and then joined their parents at the cash register.

“We vote for the Grand Canyon,” Pep said.

“Yes!” shouted Dr. McDonald with a fist pump.

In the morning, the McDonalds set out on Route 89A heading north for 24 miles until it merged into I-17, which intersected with I-40 West. Just before the town of Williams, Dr. McDonald took exit 165 for Route 64, which goes directly north for 50 miles to Grand Canyon National Park. You can follow it on the map.

In the front seat, Dr. McDonald had found a classic rock station on the radio and turned the volume up loud. When Pep tired of looking at the scenery, she absentmindedly pulled out her notepad and realized that she hadn't solved the cipher they received back at the Petrified Forest . . .

EDIWEFER

Pep tried all her usual strategies, but nothing seemed to work. She was frustrated. If she wasn't so stressed out, she figured, she would have cracked the
code by now. Maybe EDIWEFER wasn't a cipher at all. Maybe it was just somebody's name.

While she kept juggling the letters around, Coke borrowed his mother's laptop computer. He went online and searched for an anagram solver—a simple program that can take any group of letters and generate every possible word that can be made from those letters. There were several free anagram solvers online, so Coke picked the one at the top of the list and typed in EDIWEFER. Almost instantly, the computer spit out a list. . . .

if reed we

if deer we

fewer die

die fewer

fried ewe

free wide

deer wife

I were fed

I wed reef

ever I fed

I we freed

I reed few

fireweed

“I got it!” Coke said, poking his sister.

“Got what?”

“The answer!” Coke said. “I think EDIWEFER is ‘fireweed'!”

“Fireweed?” Pep asked. “What's that? I never heard of fireweed.”

“It's a plant,” Coke told her. “A wildflower. It's one of the first plants to appear after a forest fire.”

“How can you possibly know that?” Pep asked. “Nobody knows that.”

“
Lots
of people know that,” her brother told her. “You're just not one of them.”

“But what does a plant have to do with anything?” Pep asked. “How does that tie in with the other clues?”

“Hey, all I know is that EDIWEFER is very probably ‘fireweed.' I can't tell you what it means. That's
your
department.”

Pep sighed and updated her list. . . .

CIPHER #1: MAY 28, 1937, VOLKSWAGEN IS FOUNDED

CIPHER #2: 49:08. 28:40.5

CIPHER #3: FIREWEED

P
ep had been working so hard on EDIWEFER that she hadn't noticed the road led directly into Grand Canyon National Park. It is, of course, one of the most popular tourist destinations in America.

“Did you know,” Coke asked the family, “that if you took four skyscrapers that were a thousand feet high and stacked them on top of one another inside the Grand Canyon, they
still
wouldn't reach the rim?”

“Thank you, Mr. Who Cares,” Pep said.

“Don't be mean to your brother,” said Dr. McDonald.

I know what you're thinking, reader. You're guessing that a
major
scene in this book is going to take place at the Grand Canyon. It's been a few chapters since anyone tried to kill Coke and Pep, and the Grand Canyon would be the
perfect
location for another attempt on their lives.

It's almost
too
perfect. Despite warning signs all over the place, more than five hundred people have died at the Grand Canyon.

Let me count the ways.

There have been lots of hikers who didn't bring enough water and died from dehydration. People have drowned in the Colorado River at the bottom of the canyon after getting caught in a flash flood. People have been struck by lightning and falling boulders. There have been numerous snakebite victims.

Then, of course, there are all the people who have fallen from a ledge. Surprisingly, a number of tourists
have died while
posing for photos
. The photographer told them to take a step back, and, well, you can imagine what happened after that. There have even been reports of men who slipped and fell to their deaths while they were merely trying to pee into the canyon. Look it up if you don't believe me. And I haven't even mentioned all the people who died in airplane crashes and freak accidents.

It's a no-brainer, right? It would be so easy for the twins to become separated from their parents and get lost on a hike in the canyon. And then Dr. Warsaw, John Pain, the bowler dudes, or some other lunatic could conveniently be right there to give them a gentle shove over the edge.

But of course Coke and Pep would miraculously survive the fall somehow, right? Coke's T-shirt would rip in the process, and the chapter would end with their clueless mother complaining that he doesn't take better care of his clothes.

That chapter would practically write itself!

Well, forget about it. It didn't happen that way. Remember what I said about assuming things?

That's right,
nobody
dies at the Grand Canyon in this book. No bad guys show up with evil intentions and unnecessarily complicated devices. There aren't any preposterous accidents or incidents.

No, starting at Grand Canyon Village on the South Rim, the twins and their parents have a simply
lovely
time hiking and enjoying the spectacular scenery and multiple switchbacks on the Bright Angel Trail. Then they enjoy a sumptuous dinner at the El Tovar Lodge dining room and a leisurely, restful night's sleep.

Sorry to disappoint you.

By the way, isn't there
enough
mayhem in this story already? I mean, really, you should be ashamed of yourself for hoping to read about somebody trying to kill the twins at the Grand Canyon! Is that all you care about it? What does it say that you get so much pleasure out of the misfortunes of others? You're probably the kind of person who goes to NASCAR races just to see the cars crash into each other.

Even though there was no attempt on the lives of the twins, something significant
did
happen while Coke and Pep were at the Grand Canyon. The next morning, when they got in the car to leave, Pep opened her notepad and found this. . . .

CIPHER #4:
ATLEDOEMORAHPLAAMILMRO

FINUOVARB

And it was written in someone else's handwriting.

“Did you write this?” Pep asked, showing the page to her brother.

“No,” Coke replied.

“It's not Mom's or Dad's handwriting.”

The twins looked at the page again, and then at each other.

“Somebody was in our car,” they both said.

A
shiver went down Pep's back. She was angry, frightened, and just a little freaked out that some creep had broken into their car while the family had been hiking in the canyon. Not only that, but he—or she—had been sitting in her seat, writing in her private notepad, and possibly messing around with her other stuff.
What if somebody put a bomb in their car?
She looked through her backpack to make sure that nothing had been disturbed.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” Pep told her brother.

But she didn't mention anything to her parents. Dr. McDonald pulled out of the Grand Canyon Village parking lot and got back on the highway.