by Jude Watson
Suddenly, she heard the door behind her clang shut. She spun around. The woman was smiling pleasantly at her through the bars of the cell. She was beautiful, with huge amber eyes and gleaming dark hair that feathered against her face. Her skin was so smooth and perfect that it looked like a china doll’s.
“Don’t be alarmed. This was the only way I’d get to talk to you,” she said in a British accent. Her voice was thick and creamy, as if she was holding a spoonful of yogurt in her mouth. She leaned closer, as though confiding in Amy. “We Cahills have a way of running away from each other, don’t we.” She winked.
Amy wanted to kick herself. The woman was a Cahill! Amy casually looked around for another exit.
“Still a worrier, I see.” The woman’s smile didn’t waver. “You never trusted your own courage. Grace used to say that.”
Amy felt a stab of pain at those words. She lifted her chin. “D-d-don’t tell me about my grandmother. Who are you?”
She cocked her head and studied Amy, an affectionate smile still on her lips. “Ah, the regal stare. Now I see Grace in you. I’m Isabel Kabra.”
“Ian and Natalie’s mother?”
She nodded. “I’ve tried to stay out of the hunt for the thirty-nine clues. Tried to keep Ian and Natalie out of it, too. Unfortunately …” She gave an elegant shrug. “They pay more attention to their father. But things have gone too far. My children need me to step in. So, I’ve tracked them here.”
“They’re in Sydney?” That wasn’t good news.
“They’re checking into the Observatory Hotel right now. Natalie is probably going through the complimentary bath products, and Ian … well, Ian is probably thinking about you.”
Amy hated the spurt of pleasure that made her heart race. Even though she didn’t believe it for a minute. She rolled her eyes. “Please.”
“His behavior has been disgraceful, I admit. He’s afraid of his feelings. He confessed to me how much he admires you.”
“Do I look like I just fell off the turnip truck?”
Isabel Kabra’s eyes glinted. “What a delightful expression. Ian is all show. Underneath that superior exterior is a normal boy with his own insecurities. I have … complicated children.” She waved a manicured hand. “I wanted to keep them away from this Cahill nonsense, believe me. We have such a lovely, fragrant life in London. Cars, clothes, a private plane. What more do they want?”
“Apparently, to be the most powerful people in the world,” Amy said.
“And what does that mean, exactly?” Isabel asked. “Have you thought about that?”
She had. She still hadn’t grasped it. It just seemed so unreal, like something out of a movie or a video game.
“What would be the source of your power?” Isabel asked softly. “And how would you wield it? I mean, really,” she said, chuckling, “a fourteen-year-old and an eleven-year-old ruling the world? You have to admit it’s rather ridiculous.”
“Wow,” Amy said. “Can you do that again? I mean, insult me in a really nice way?” Amy couldn’t believe the cool, sardonic voice was her own.
“I don’t mean to be insulting,” Isabel said in a kind tone. “Just realistic. Do you think that even if you win the hunt for the clues, the danger you face would be over?” She shook her head. “It would be just the beginning. One only has to look at history to see that. My children are poor students. But you are a great researcher. You know that history has proved that every conqueror has a fall.”
Why does she know so much about me? Amy wondered. I know nothing about her.
“I was so fond of your parents,” Isabel said. “They had such beauty and promise…. I was devastated when I heard about the fire. Maybe if they had lived, things would be different today. Maybe the Cahills would be a little more … civilized. But as it is, we have only one hope. The Lucians.”
Amy snorted. “There’s a shocker. You’re a Lucian.”
“Naturally, I feel the Lucians are best equipped to handle ultimate power. We combine the best qualities of all the Cahills. We are leaders. We have a global network in place. But you and your brother … you’re so alone. Your parents are gone, Grace is gone, there’s no one to protect you. I only want the little girl I remember—the girl in the nightie I cuddled in my lap so long ago — to grow up safe. If you only knew what …” She hesitated.
“What?”
Footsteps echoed down the hallway. Isabel turned in the direction of the noise.
“Trust me,” she whispered. And then she hurried away.
CHAPTER 3
Amy pounded on the cell door. “Hello? Help?” she yelled.
Dan appeared and looked inside the bars. “Whatever you did, I’ll always stand by you,” he said.
“Don’t be a dweeb. Get the guard and open this door!” Amy yelled.
Dan pushed on the door, and it slowly swung open.
Amy blinked. Why had she thought the door was locked? Come to think of it, Isabel had never said that it was.
She felt her legs trembling. She was more shaken up than she wanted to admit.
“C’mon,” Dan said. “I found this awesome collection of knives. One of them still has bloodstains on it!”
“Dan, Isabel Kabra was here,” Amy said.
“Isabel Kabra? Multiplying Cobras. Which one is that?”
“Ian and Natalie’s mother!”
“Oh, man. Those kids have a mother?”
“She was almost … nice,” Amy said. “She actually apologized for Ian.”
“Too late. Her kids are the hounds of suck.”
“She said the Lucians should win—”
“Duh.”
“—and that I should trust her. She was about to tell me something.”
Dan made a face. “Let me guess. Go home, little children, this game is too dangerous for you, you’re going to lose. Blahbaddy blah. We’ve heard it a million times since we started. So which branch got the originality gene? They all sound the same.”
Amy decided to leave out the part about Ian really liking her. She wasn’t buying it, of course. But Dan definitely wouldn’t buy it.
“She said she met me when I was little, but I don’t remember her at all,” Amy said.
Dan was barely listening. “We’d better get outside or Nellie is going to have a freak attack.”
As they walked toward the exit, Amy stopped in front of the wall of mug shots. “Why was she here?” she wondered. “It wasn’t just a coincidence. She stopped here, at the mug shots. She was leaning in, right—” Amy stopped. “Dan! One of the mug shots is missing!”
Neatly cut out from behind the Plexiglas, one small photograph was gone.
“Now we’ll never know who it was,” Amy said.
Dan closed his eyes. Amy knew he was going over the photographs in his mind. Even though there were about a hundred on the wall, she knew he’d remember the one that was missing.
“Follow me,” he said. Amy hurried after him to the gift shop. There was a framed poster on the wall showing the same criminal faces. Dan put his finger on one, a youngish man with dirty hair and a blank expression. One side of his face showed white scars from his forehead to his chin. “Him.”
“Bob Troppo,” the clerk behind the register said.
“Is that some sort of Aussie greeting?” Dan murmured to Amy. He waved. “Bob Troppo!” he called.
The clerk came from around the counter. “The bloke you’re looking at. He was called Bob Troppo. Nobody knew his real name because he never spoke. ‘Gone troppo’ is an Australian expression for someone who’s lived in the tropics so long he’s gone a bit weird. He lived in Sydney in the 1890s.”
“What did he do?” Dan asked. “Feed someone to a croc? Tie him to the railroad tracks?”
“He tried to assassinate Mark Twain.”
Amy and Dan exchanged a glance. Mark Twain was a Cahill descendant. He was a Janus, the clever, artistic branch.
The clerk, a burly young man in khaki shorts, leaned against the counter. “
Twain was on a lecture tour, you see, back in 1896. Troppo was seen talking to him in an alley outside the hall where he spoke. Apparently, they had words, and Troppo smashed him on the shoulder with a cane!”
“That doesn’t sound like an attempted assassination,” Amy said.
“The cane had a knife concealed in it. That was enough to convict him, especially since he never spoke a word in his defense. Anyway, he escaped in a totally ingenious way.” The clerk leaned forward as if he was about to impart a secret. “He was in jail, but he had the job of cleaning the floors at night, you see. So every night he scraped the wax off the wood and kept it in his cell. Then he made a wax impression of a key! Is that clever or what?”
Dan and Amy exchanged another glance. They knew each other so well and had depended on each other for everything for so long that they could communicate without speaking. Ekaterina? The Ekat branch was ingenious and inventive.
“What happened to him?” Amy asked.
“Nobody knows. Rumor has it that he took off into the bush. Would you like to buy some handcuffs? A book?”
“Handcuffs?” Dan asked.
Amy pulled on his shirt. “No, thank you. We have to be going. Thanks for the story!”
Amy and Dan walked out of the shop and headed for the door.
“Bob Troppo sounds crazy,” Amy said.
Dan nodded. “Gotta be a Cahill.”
“But what does Isabel want with him?” Amy wondered. “Is he the reason the Kabras are in Sydney? Or …”
“… is it us?” Dan asked.
Amy, Dan, and Nellie stood in front of a metal door. There was no nameplate, just a grimy button that could be a doorbell. The building was made of corrugated steel and brick, with long shuttered windows. It looked like a warehouse.
“Maybe this isn’t it,” Amy said, suddenly nervous.
“It’s the address,” Nellie said. She pressed the bell.
They waited. Amy shifted from one foot to the other. She felt heat rise in her cheeks. How crazy was it to travel halfway around the world and show up at someone’s door? Someone who hardly managed to stay in touch with his own cousin and best friend?
“Can you say ‘wild goose chase’?” Dan whispered after a few moments.
“We should go,” Amy said. She took a step back.
“Yo!” The voice came from inside.
A moment later, the door was flung open. A middle-aged blond man stood looking inquisitively at them. Everything about him seemed sun bleached, from his hair to his yellowish T-shirt to the golden hair on his tanned, muscular forearms. He was wearing board shorts, and his feet were bare.
“G’day,” he said pleasantly. He used the Australian greeting they’d heard several times today, but he still had his American accent. “Can I help you?”
“Uncle Shep?” Dan asked. “It’s Dan and Amy. This is our au pair, Nellie Gomez.”
Shep looked puzzled.
“Dan and Amy Cahill,” Amy added. “Y-your cousins.” How awkward was this? He didn’t even recognize them!
Shep looked stunned for a moment. Then a grin lit up his face. His light blue eyes almost disappeared, and lines radiated out from the corners.
Amy felt as though she’d been punched in the stomach. She had blurred memories of her parents, but seeing that grin, suddenly her father came back to her. He used to smile that way just before he scooped her up in one of his big hugs. She felt tears sting her eyes, and she quickly looked away, as though she was checking the address.
“You’ve got to be kidding me. Dan and Amy?”
“We were in the neighborhood,” Dan said.
Shep stepped forward so quickly it alarmed them. But he embraced Dan, almost crushing the breath out of him. Then he hugged Amy.
“Well, stone the crows! Come in, come in!” He ushered them inside.
The house was just one huge open room divided by sofas and stacks of shelves. The long far wall was filled top to bottom with shelves crammed with books. Amy longed to explore the titles. Another wall was all glass and led to a patio. Groupings of furniture separated the room into living, dining, and playing areas, apparent by the piles of audio equipment, the guitars, keyboards, surfboards, computers, pinball machines, three carousel horses, and a Foosball table. Brightly painted wooden crates held items that spilled out onto the floor—clothing, more books, athletic equipment, DVDs, and computer parts.
“Wow,” Dan said. “This place could have been designed by me.”
“Have a seat.” Shep quickly rushed to push a load of surfing magazines, T-shirts, and sandals off a couch. “What are you doing in Sydney? Last I heard you were living with your aunt.”
“Um, we still are,” Amy said. “Technically. But we’re on vacation. Sort of.”
“I see. I think. Man, you two sure have grown.”
“Well, it’s been eight years since you saw us.”
He nodded, and the brightness left his gaze. “I know.”
Amy, Dan, and Nellie sat on the couch.
Shep took a seat on the coffee table made out of a surfboard in front of them. “Listen, first off, I’m sorry about not keeping in touch,” he said. “I’m just not the keep-in-touch sort.”
“It’s okay,” Amy said. But suddenly, she realized that it really wasn’t. They didn’t know Shep, but he was their father’s closest relative and best friend. Except for postcards and a couple of Christmas cards of kangaroos in Santa hats, they’d barely heard from him.
“It’s not okay.” Shep looked down at his clasped hands. “I was sorry to hear about Arthur and Hope. Devastated, actually. I didn’t get the message until after the funeral that they … were gone. I called, but some old bat kept telling me you had enough to worry about. That wouldn’t be your auntie, would it?”
“That would be her,” Dan said grimly.
“She never told us you called,” Amy said.
“Do you have a place to stay? I’ve got plenty of room. No beds, but plenty of room.” He grinned at them, and Amy had a weird sensation like she wanted to cry and laugh at the same time. He looked so much like her father.
“We tried to call,” Amy said.
“I just have a mobile now. Sorry I’m such a hard bloke to find.”
Amy leaned forward. “We wanted to ask you about our parents’ last trip here. Did you see them?”
“See them? Of course I did. That would be about … five years ago?”
“Eight, actually.”
“Yeah, time flies.” Shep shook his head. “It was the last time I saw Artie.”
Artie? Nobody ever called their father Artie.
Saladin mrrped loudly. Shep leaned over. “Hello there, Mister Chow,” he said. “You look hungry. Would you like to get out of there?”
“Careful, he’s been in there awhile,” Nellie said. “And he’s not so good with strange—”
Shep was already lifting Saladin out and twining him around his shoulders like a fur stole. Saladin blinked, then purred happily. “Bet you’d like a dish of something,” Shep said to the cat. He crossed to the kitchen area. He poured water into a shallow bowl and stuck his head in the fridge. “How about some barramundi?”
“Barracuda?” Dan asked.
“Barramundi,” Nellie said. “It’s a delicious fish.”
“He only likes snapper,” Amy said.
“Then he’ll love barramundi,” Shep said. “Best fish in the world.” He forked some into a bowl and put it on the floor. Saladin smelled it, looked up at Shep, and gave a great, happy me-WOW!
They all laughed as Saladin dived in.
“I practically grew up with your dad,” Shep said, crossing back to them. “Our mothers were cousins and best friends. They grew up together, and Artie and I did, too. Until we were twelve. Then my mom and dad got divorced and the next thing I knew I was in Oahu with my mom. Art and I tried to stay in touch, but … well, twelve-year-old boys don’t make the best pen pals. But every time I saw him, we just picked up where we left off.”
“Do you know where our parents went when they were here?” Dan asked.
“Sure. I ferried them around.”
“You have a ferry?” Dan asked hopefully.
“Better than that,” Shep said with a laugh. “A plane. A sweet Cessna Caravan, so—” His cell phone trilled, and he reached into the pocket of his shorts. He listened intently for a moment, said “Right-o,” and hung up.
He jumped to his feet. “We’ve got to get out of here. Now!”
CHAPTER 4
Amy, Dan, and Nellie were used to quick exits. Dan stuffed his feet back in his sneakers. Amy leaped over the back of the couch. Nellie charged for the door, opened it, and waited until Amy and Dan were clear.
Shep leaped into the Jeep parked outside. “Get in!” he roared.
A surfboard stuck out of the back, and Dan and Amy had to wedge themselves in next to it while Nellie swung into the front seat. Shep took off with a squeal of tires.
Nellie leaned closer to Shep as they rocketed over the bumpy road. “What happened? Where are we going?”
“Bondi, of course!” Shep yelled over the rushing wind. “Surf’s up!”
“Surf’s up?” Nellie asked incredulously. “I thought the place was going to blow!”
Dan crashed back against the seat in relief. Amy blew out a breath.
“You’ve got to drop everything when the call comes,” Shep said. “I have to say, you three are aces at clearing out.”
“We used to be fire drill monitors at school,” Dan said lamely.
“Don’t worry, there’re plenty of shops,” Shep yelled over the rushing wind. “You can pick up your gear there. And I’ve got plenty of surfie mates with long boards, short boards, body boards — we’ll set you up.”
“I never understood surfing,” Nellie said. “I’m a New England girl. Why jump on a board and get creamed by giant waves? I’d rather just swim.”
Shep chortled. “You’ll love it. Just watch out for the bluebottles, and you’ll be fine.”
“Can they kill you?” Dan asked hopefully.
“Nah, but the pain is excruciating.”
“Cool!”