The 39 Clues: Cahills vs. Vespers Book 2: A King's Ransom (21 page)

“‘
Moon face
,’ yeah, I know, you told me a billion times,” Dan said.

“You both would flash this big, identical grin,” Amy said. “Mom said you were twins separated by a generation. The man wasn’t capable of evil. His life was not a lie. If you really knew him, you’d never say the names
Vesper
and
Arthur Trent
in the same breath.”

“People lie, Amy,” Dan protested. “People pretend —”

“Dan, there were two bodies in the fire,” Amy insisted. “No one could have lived through that. Besides, if he were alive, he’d be with us. He wouldn’t have stayed away from the Clue hunt. He would have led it.”

Dan spun around. “The bodies were burned beyond recognition. They could have been anybody. Uncle Alistair survived a cave collapse, Amy! Cahills do things like that. And if Dad tried to save Mom, then watched her burn to death — in a fire set
by her own family
? Because Isabel Kabra thought they were hiding one of the thirty-nine clues? You think he’d just be a happy Cahill after that?”

Amy’s face drained of color. “What are you saying, Dan?”

“Remember Grace’s note — the one we found after discovering the secret to the clues?” Dan said. “She said the Cahill family was broken. Untrustworthy. Isabel set the fire, and no one helped out — the Holts, Uncle Alistair, none of them. I’m saying Dad would have seen them for what they are. Murderers.”

Amy’s face darkened. “So you think he went over to the dark side, just like that?”

“He would have seen it the opposite way, Amy,” Dan said. “The dark side was what he left.”

Amy reared back her hand to slap Dan. He reeled in shock.

Before she could move, a beep sounded from Dan’s smartphone.

They both froze.

Dan stooped to pick up the phone and noticed a blinking icon across the top of the screen. A GPS signal. He opened the app and saw a signal moving across a map of western Europe. Its origin was
RUZYNE AIRPORT, PRAGUE
. It was moving east.

Along the bottom was the name
A. ROSENBLOOM
.

“Wake up and smell the limestone,” said Cheyenne Wyoming, yanking the blindfold from Atticus’s face.

He blinked. On the plane, hours earlier, he had lined up his worst fears — torture, plane crash, poisoning, being shoved out at thirty thousand feet.

Waking up at Site Number Seven on his Cool World Travel Wish List would not have been anywhere near the top.

Awestruck, he stared into a scene of lopsided, cone-shaped mountains, like giant castles made of dripping wet sand. “We’re in Göreme, Turkey?” he said, his voice still froggy from a forced sleep.

“You’re familiar with this dump?” Cheyenne said.

“In actuality,” Atticus said, “it’s one of the most interesting geological formations on the planet. If I weren’t with you, I’d be running around like, woo-hoo —”

Casper pushed him hard. Atticus stumbled forward, his sleepy eyes focusing. His brain suddenly connected with something that had been dulled by sleep.

His terror.

Bread truck. Sack. Handcuffs. Jet. It all rushed back.

They had knocked him out on the plane. Cheyenne insisted on it. She was afraid he’d get sick.

He glanced around for a way to escape. He was no longer handcuffed, but there was nowhere to run. It looked as if they were in a vast moonscape, the monstrous rock formations casting deep shadows in the afternoon sun. He’d seen photos, but in person they were much bigger — like giant rock fingers poked through with enormous holes. Caves.

They were heading toward the largest rock, shaped like a sinking ship. At its base, an ominous-looking sign had been tied to a trash can:

Atticus rubbed his eyes, recalling his years of online language tutorials. “Wait, that’s Turkish,” he murmured. “And it means ‘Danger: Collapsed Cave.’ ”

“Don’t believe everything you read,” Cheyenne said.

She shoved him in before he could protest. He hit his head and had to duck low to fit through. His ankle twisted as it landed between two wooden planks, rotted and termite-eaten. Cheyenne scampered on ahead, waving a flashlight.

“I can’t see!” Atticus said.

“Casper, where are you?” Cheyenne called over her shoulder.

“Emptying my pockets.” Another flashlight beam, behind Atticus, began illuminating the planks. “A trash can outside. All the convenience of home.”

Atticus stumbled along, his head scraping the low ceiling. “Wh-where are you taking me?”

“To a place where we can talk in private.” Cheyenne stopped short. She gestured into a corner of the cave, sweeping aside a thick spiderweb. “Go.”

Atticus peered into the pitch darkness. The cave seemed to end there, a tiny, dank chamber big enough for one person. Nothing beyond. Just a cranny in a cave where a dead body could rot and no one would ever see it.

Cheyenne pushed him in. As his back hit the cragged wall, she and her brother crowded close to him. A light blinked on above, bathing them all in a greenish white glow. “Unrecognized DNA,” a mechanical voice droned.

“Allow access!” Casper called out.

A series of beeps was followed by “Voice recognition accepted.”

The ground rumbled. With a loud scraping noise, the floor beneath their feet began to move. They were on a circular platform, slowly sinking.

“No!” Atticus reached for the lip of the floor, but Casper batted his arms away. Bright lights flickered on below their feet, and soon the cramped, stinking cave gave way to a vast underground chamber.

The place was freezing. Enormous maps spanned the walls. A news ticker scrolled headlines near the ceiling. A bank of clocks ticked in unison, telling time in different parts of the world to the thousandth of a second. Brushed-steel cabinets lined the walls near empty computer workstations, their black, webbed chairs gathering dust.

The platform reached the chamber floor with a dull thump. Casper grabbed a chair. “Make yourself at home.”

Atticus sank into the chair, sending up a small cloud of wispy dust. His throat was dry. He had to swallow twice before he could eke out a sound. “What am I supposed to do?”

Cheyenne pulled a handkerchief from her bag and dusted off two seats. The twins sat. “Tell us what you know.”

“About what?” Atticus asked.

Cheyenne glanced at her brother, rolling her eyes. “The genius thinks he’s too smart for us nincompoops.”

“About being a Guardian!”
Casper exploded, lunging forward.

Atticus screamed. His leg dug reflexively into the floor, propelling the chair backward. He crashed against a computer table, the impact knocking the wind out of him.

Casper cracked up. “Brave kid.”

“I suggest cutting to the chase,” Cheyenne said, looking brightly around the room. “No one can hear you in here. No one knows where you are. You will not leave until you answer. And you will not live if you don’t.”

“I don’t know anything!” Atticus insisted. “I told you! My mom was dying. She said I was a Guardian. She said we were enemies of you guys. The Vespers. She said you were after some secret. It was all in fragments — I can barely remember.”

Casper grinned. He stood slowly and sauntered to the wall. There, he opened a cabinet door. “Maybe we can change that,” he said.

Inside were a series of long knives. Casper pulled one out, a thin blade that made a high-pitched shhhhink.

Atticus felt the blood rush from his head. For a moment he could see only white spots. The room around him seemed to shrink, its frigid temperature warming, the walls rushing in, everything decaying into a tiny trap… .

His brain flashed an image of the tiny room at the airport. A men’s room. A tiny can.

Germ Away.

“I know! I mean, I don’t know!” he blurted, words propelling through his mouth before he could think. “That is, in actuality, I don’t know the information. In my head. But I have it. All of it. That’s how we Guardians do it. Even though we’re, like, nerds and geniuses, all we know is the inscription.”

Casper cocked his head. “The what?”

“Encryption!”
Atticus said.

Slow down. Think.

Casper came closer, casually sliding the blade along his fingernail and shaving off a thin slice as if it were butter. “Go on… .”

“It … it’s a precaution,” he said. “To avoid hypnosis. And torture. And truth serums. We just know the key sequence, that’s all. So we can decrypt it.”

Casper flung the blade’s tip forward, sending a fingernail into Atticus’s face. “What. Exactly. Is it.
That you decrypt?
”

“It’s all in my flash drive!” Atticus said.

Cheyenne looked dismayed. “The one I smashed under my foot at the airport?”

“No!” Atticus shot back. “Another one. Hidden on my key chain.”

Casper’s face darkened. He lifted the blade carefully over his head. Then, with gritted teeth, he hurled the knife at Atticus.

Atticus screamed and ducked. The blade tore through the fabric of the seat and impaled itself into the table behind.

“That’s for making me have to go and get that stupid key chain,” Casper said. “I threw it in the trash can outside. It was ruining the hang of my pants.”

As he left, Cheyenne walked over to the bank of clocks. She stopped near one that said
EASTERN STANDARD TIME, US,
which read 7:02
A.M.

“This is Boston time, set precisely by the atomic clock,” she said. “All your little friends are waking up and getting ready for school. In a half hour, at seven thirty-two, they will be running for the school bus. And you, halfway across the world, will have decrypted your flash drive and given us all your supposed information.”

Atticus was shaking too hard to agree.

A half hour?

Even if he could make contact — with anyone — a half hour was not enough time. “I — I — m-m —”

“Chill out,” Cheyenne said. “You’re among friends.”

“
I may need more time
,” Atticus blurted out. “I need to … write code.”

“It’s a fast computer,” Cheyenne drawled.

“But I’m a human,” Atticus said. “Not even Mark Zuckerberg can code that fast!”

Cheyenne walked to the table where the knife was lodged. She yanked it out and held it toward the light. “Well, then … epic fail.”

Copyright © 2011 by Scholastic Inc.

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