The 39 Clues [Cahills vs. Vespers] 05 - Trust No One (13 page)

Dan was still conscious, but seemed unable to speak.

“DOCTOR!” Jake shouted. “Help, help! Is anyone here a doctor?”

A woman stepped forward out of the small crowd that was already forming. “Someone call an ambulance,” she said. “And can the rest of you give me some space?” She had a brisk Irish accent.

“Here,” Jake said. “He got hit with this.” Carefully he handed the woman the dart.

“You’re joking,” she said, but saw immediately that he wasn’t. She nodded, tight-lipped, then knelt next to Dan.

Jake’s shouts brought Amy running from the other side of the walkway. “What’s going on — oh, my God — Dan!” She threw herself down next to him.

“Is it his asthma?” she asked frantically. “But he’s been so much better lately — he’s never collapsed before — where’s his inhaler?” She began scrabbling around, trying to check Dan’s pockets.

“It’s not asthma. Help me roll him onto his back, please,” the doctor said, distracting Amy just before her panic soared out of control.

They got Dan onto his back, then the doctor asked for a jacket. Amy whipped hers off and folded it into a pillow, which was placed under Dan’s head.

By now, Dan was clutching at his throat and gasping for breath. The helplessness in his eyes as he looked at her made her want to howl like a wounded animal.

“Take it easy, Dan,” she said. To her astonishment, her voice was steady, even as tears began streaming down her face.

This can’t be happening. No no no no no . . .
Amy reached out her hand without even knowing it, clawing mutely at the air in the direction of the doctor.

“I’m guessing curare,” the doctor said, calm and urgent at the same time. She shook her head. “How in the world — never mind.” She rolled up her sleeves and took Amy by the shoulders. “Are you his sister? You can stay here, but I need to work on him, all right?”

The doctor began performing CPR on Dan, pumping his chest rhythmically.

Dan looked so frail now, under the doctor’s insistent hands. Didn’t people’s breastbones sometimes break if CPR wasn’t done correctly? But she was a doctor; surely she knew what she was doing.
Please please please . . .

“Can I help?” Amy was sobbing, but still managed to get the words out.

“Just hold his hand,” the doctor said. “You can talk to him if you like.”

Amy wiped her tears with her sleeve. “Dan? Hang in there, Dan. There’s a doctor here helping you —”
What a stupid thing to say, with her leaning right on his chest.

She couldn’t go on, couldn’t do anything more than squeeze his hand.

Atticus scooted around until he was next to Amy and crouched beside her. “Amy?” he said in a low voice. “She said ‘curare.’ I’ve read about it; it comes from tropical plants. You put it on a dart and shoot it, and it paralyzes your prey. It stops breathing, that’s what kills —”

Amy’s mouth opened, closed, opened again.

She needed to scream. And hit something. Or somebody.

But she couldn’t move or make a single sound. It was as if she, too, was paralyzed.

“Atticus, stop it!” Jake said angrily.

“I wasn’t finished —”

“Shut up! You’re not helping!”

“No, YOU shut up!” Atticus retorted fiercely.

The outburst was so un-Atticus-like that Jake and Amy both stared at him, mouths agape. In the silence that followed, they could hear the doctor counting quietly as she continued working on Dan.

Atticus spoke earnestly. “The effects of the poison aren’t permanent. If she does CPR on him, keeps his blood pumping and getting oxygen to his brain, it’ll wear off, and he should be able to breathe on his own again.”

“Atticus, are you sure about this?” Jake asked. “You better be —”

“I’m sure, I swear it! Animals that get hunted, nobody does CPR on them, that’s why they die. That’s why she’s doing CPR now!”

Amy grabbed Atticus’s arm, feeling almost torn in two between fear and hope.

“How long?” she gasped out. “How long until he can breathe by himself?”

Then the doctor spoke, in between counts. “One — two — three — four — Depends,” she said, “on how much — two — three — four — poison got into him — two — three — four. Where is that ambulance?”

It was a few hours after the attack. Amy sat next to the hospital bed, her face blotchy with tearstains,

He looks younger somehow,
she thought. For a moment, Amy felt like she might never be able to move again. But she forced herself to reach for Dan’s hand and hold it.

Which he would ordinarily have never let her do in front of the other boys.

Thanks to the good work by the doctor on the scene, as well as the fact that Dan had plucked the dart out almost immediately, he was already breathing on his own. But Amy wouldn’t relax until a doctor gave the all-clear sign.

“I’m fine,” he declared for about the seventh time. “My arm feels a little weird, that’s all.”

The nurse put another pillow behind him.

“I should send a — a thank-you note or something,” he said. “Did you get her name?”

“The doctor who came in with you? That was Dr. Hubble-Machado,” the nurse said. Her English was really good; she had acted as translator for them since their arrival. “She’s on the staff here. Lucky she was there, yes?” She pointed to a cord at the head of the bed. “The call button, you need something, okay?” She smiled at him and left the room.

“So what happened?” Dan asked.

Amy was relieved by the question.
Maybe he won’t remember too much about it. What I remember is plenty enough for both of us.
She crossed her arms, trying to rub away the shivers brought on by the memory of seeing him lying there. . . .

Jake gave a quick rundown on the evil Mr. Blowpipe. “But here’s the weird thing,” he said. “I could have sworn that he was aiming at Atticus.
Not
Dan. It’s almost like Dan was — you know, collateral damage.”

Amy saw the expressions that flashed across Dan’s face: surprise that he hadn’t been the target, resentment that he’d been hit anyway, and finally, concern for Atticus, who was looking guilt-stricken now.

“No problem, Atticus,” Dan said. “I’ve always wanted to be collateral damage.”

Amy refused to joke about it. “You’re sure you’ve never seen this guy before?” she said to Jake.

“No, but almost the whole time at the falls, I had the feeling someone was following us.” He shook his head in distress. “I should have said something. But it probably wouldn’t have made any difference, because it wasn’t the blowpipe guy I was worried about.”

“There was someone else?” Amy said.

“Yeah. Well, maybe.” Jake looked confused.

“Just tell us what you saw,” she snapped.

“I kept seeing the same person,” he said. “But like I said, it wasn’t the guy with the pipe. It was a woman.”

“What did she look like?” Amy and Dan spoke at the same time.

“Taller than average. Pretty good-looking for someone her age — dark hair, sunglasses. Oh, and she was really well dressed. I remember that, because I thought it was a little weird to come to a place like this wearing such nice clothes.”

Amy felt the blood draining from her face. Jake had just described someone the Cahills knew all too well.

Isabel Kabra.

Isabel.

A vial of the serum in one hand and a gun in the other, her fine features contorted by the ugliness of evil.

This was the image that first came to mind for Amy. Then, oddly, it was replaced almost at once by a memory of the female capoeirista:
“Um, dois, três —”

Why? Why am I thinking about that now?

Like a radio being tuned from static to clarity, Amy could suddenly hear the capoeirista’s next words. Her mouth went dry. She tried to swallow.

Not “more . . . a little less . . . a bell,” but —

Amor to the littlest, from Isabel.

“It’s definitely her,” she said hoarsely. “And she’s after Atticus.”

Nellie had always thought of herself as the tough and feisty type. Not aggressive or mean, but determined to achieve what she set out to do, loyal to those she loved, and fierce when it came to standing up for what she thought was right.

She was utterly unfamiliar with how she was feeling at the moment.

Defeated. Exhausted. Hopeless.

But that wasn’t the worst of it. Try as she might, Nellie couldn’t summon any anger. Since the moment she was kidnapped, she had been furious with the Vespers, and that fury had been like a flame inside her. Keeping her going, helping her keep the others going.

The flame had flickered out, extinguished by grief over the losses of Phoenix and Alistair.

I thought — I was sure — that somehow, we’d all get out of this alive.

Not that she hadn’t been truly frightened any number of times. But deep down inside, it was in her nature as both a fighter and an optimist to expect good to prevail in the end.

Now she knew that, however this ended, Alistair and Phoenix would not be part of it.

Nellie looked around the room and saw her mood reflected in each of the others. Fiske lay stretched out on the floor, eyes closed most of the time. When they were open, he stared out into space, looking at nothing. Natalie sat with her back against a wall, her knees drawn up in a fetal position, hunched over and picking at her cuticles until they bled. Reagan was no longer working out. Instead she paced the bunker restlessly, prowling back and forth with no purpose, muttering to herself, driving them all crazy.

And Ted . . . well, it was hard to tell with Ted.

Because I can’t look into his eyes.
Nellie hadn’t realized before spending all this time with Ted, how much she “read” people through the expressions in their eyes.

She looked at him now. He was sitting next to Natalie.

Huh — I
can
read him. I can tell that he’s not just sitting there. He’s thinking — his brain is really working.

Nellie walked over to Ted and sat down on the other side of him.

“I’ve remembered something,” Ted said slowly. “The hiker. His voice — I was sure I’d heard it before, but I wasn’t sure where at first.”

He paused. Nellie felt her neck muscles tense up.

“And?” she prompted him. She clenched her fists to stop herself from shaking Ted to knock the memory loose.