Jin agrees. “I mean, I’ve never met him, but that’s the kind of thing I imagine him saying.”
Dad would have anticipated the ivy problem. Dad would have seen the double cross coming. Dad would never have turned over the stone in the first place, no matter what. He would have had a proper plan. Me, I’m just making stuff up as I go.
Hunkered down on the balcony, I pull Frank out of Jin’s backpack. Hannah’s right that he is kind of a mess, but I love him anyway. I fix his pipe cleaners to give him some dignity. “Frank,” I say, in all seriousness. “You cannot mess this up. You have to do what you were meant to do. Shine, little guy.” Jin swallows a few times but doesn’t say anything. Hannah rolls her eyes. “Ready?”
Jin nods. His hands shake. I flip the switch. Frank glows. Frank hums. My shoulders tense, waiting for him to blow, but miraculously he doesn’t. Settling into a low hum, he radiates a soothing blue light, hopefully scrambling all the video surveillance and computers in the house.
“Frank is good to go,” I say after a minute.
“You think?” Jin is barely breathing.
“Eighty-five percent sure.” Actually, more like eighty-two. But they don’t need to know that.
“As long as you don’t cross the purple and yellow wires, we’re good,” Jin says.
“What happens when that happens?” Hannah asks.
There’s a pause. “Stuff,” Jin says finally.
“Here we go,” I say. It’s the moment of truth. I grasp the door handle. Gently, I pull it open, waiting for a screaming alarm.
But nothing happens. I open the door a little more and still there is no sound but the hum of our machine and the din of faraway traffic. I look at Jin and grin. “He works.”
“Wait a minute,” Hannah whispers. “You weren’t sure?”
Jin high-fives me and dances around in a circle. I grab his jacket just as he is about to twirl off the balcony. When we enter the dark interior of the mansion, the floor creaks ominously beneath our feet. Hannah pulls out the night vision goggles and slips them on. She looks like a walrus.
“Follow me,” she says. And we do.
CHAPTER 34 A KNIGHT IN SHINING ARMOR
I’M HIT BY PUNGENT ORANGE, a harsher version of what I smelled the first time I was here. Does Lipstick just walk around spraying her perfume like air freshener? This room is bigger than the one where I found the ballerinas. It’s a grand office, just the kind I’d envision an evil tech mogul having. Or a king. And there are cameras everywhere. Ones that look like giant fish eyes on the ceiling, ones fixed and bolted to the wall, and others that pivot and scan. Boy, Tewksbury sure is paranoid, but I guess I can’t blame him. After all, this is the second time I’m creeping into his mansion uninvited. I say a silent prayer that Frank is up for the job.
The office is paneled in dark wood. Large paintings, vivid with color, line the walls. On one side is a desk the size of a small car. In the middle of the room, two crimson sofas face each other and behind one is a console table bearing a sculpture of two silver balls welded together to resemble a decapitated snowman. Very modern. Probably expensive. And much less likely to stab me in the butt.
“Don’t even think about it,” Jin warns. He’s right. After I rescue my father, art theft will no longer be necessary. Figures. Just when I was getting good at it. Well, not really. Hannah pulls out her hearing amplifier and taps the little blue light. The weird device glows in the darkness.
“Won’t Frank mess it up?” Jin asks.
“It’s on a radio frequency,” Hannah says, plugging in the headphones. “Totally basic and totally fabulous. It’s so sensitive that I can hear people breathing.” Holding it up, she waves it around looking for a signal. She turns a dial. She mutters to herself.
“No people close by,” she announces. “Come on.”
We pass out of the office, leaving behind all that valuable and easy-to-steal art, into a dark hallway. Hannah leads the way and we follow on padded feet, trying for complete silence. But as we turn the corner, we plow right into a tall shadowy figure. Naturally, Hannah screams and throws up her arms. But it’s not a person. It’s a suit of medieval armor that explodes with a spectacular crash. Metal parts rain down on us. The voice amplifier in Hannah’s hand erupts with gruff, surprised shouts of alarm, loud enough we hear them through the headphones. We need to get out of here. And fast.
“Go back,” I whisper. Scrambling out from under a heavy helmet and other bits of armor, we charge to the office and throw ourselves behind the sofa, under the table with the headless snowman. We are folded together like a puzzle. My nose is in Hannah’s armpit. Gross.
“This is bad,” Jin mutters. “This is so bad. We broke a knight.”
“Be quiet,” I hiss. Jin clamps his lips together. I can’t see her clearly, but I think Hannah might faint. That would also be bad.
I recognize the voices. They belong to Plaid and Buzz, the two burly men we saw at the Embarcadero. We don’t need an amplifier to hear them in the hallway. They flick on the lights to find armor scattered all over the place. Obviously, this is cause for concern.
“The dog?” Buzz asks.
“Nah,” Plaid responds. “He’s down in the kitchen with our guest.”
“You make it sound like we’re running a luxury hotel here or something. Maybe it was the wind that knocked it over?”
“Like, someone farted and blew out the armor?”
Snort. Laugh. “Not that kind of wind, you idiot.”
“Oh, outside wind. I get it. But the windows are closed.”
“Maybe the rats did it?”
Did he just say rats? A little shiver runs up my spine. We have enough going on, hiding out from these two. I can do without rats.
“They’re getting bad, aren’t they? Fancy house like this, you’d think they’d do something about them. Maybe send in the dog?”
“That little thing? They are twice his size.”
Giant rats? Well, that’s just great.
There’s a pause. We don’t move a muscle. This is much harder than it sounds, considering we are tucked in here like sardines.
“Wish Jones would get those security cameras back online,” says Buzz. “It’s creepy up here.” He sneezes. “And dusty. Well, let’s have a look around anyway. Not getting paid to stand around and do nothing.” I experience a little thrill. Frank is working!
They throw on the office lights. This is it, the end. I set my jaw, determined to get captured with some dignity. Not that dignity is easy with an armpit in my face. Images of Buzz and Plaid are reflected in the glass of the French doors. We could definitely outrun Plaid, but Buzz might give us problems. He looks mean. Plus, there is nowhere to run.
But lucky for us, Plaid and Buzz are not very good at their jobs. They glance around the living room while discussing what kind of lattes Buzz should bring back on his upcoming break. They settle on vanilla soy, extra hot. They never even enter the office. Turning off the lights, they disappear the way they came, leaving the armor in a heap. “They don’t pay me enough to clean up medieval messes,” Buzz says with a sniff.
Under the table, we collectively exhale. “That was close,” Hannah whispers, wiping sweat from her forehead.
It was. And while I was a little fixated on the idea of giant rats, I also heard them say they had a “guest.” They have to mean my father.
“Your dad must be in the kitchen,” Jin says.
“And the cameras are still down,” Hannah points out. “Frank may look like a demented bunny, but he works.”
Jin glows in the praise. “Pretty cool, right?” While Frank still shields us in a cloak of invisibility, we have to find the kitchen. And fast.
CHAPTER 35 UNDERGROUND
WE PROCEED WITH AN ABUNDANCE of caution, on account of randomly placed knights and giant rats. The amplifier doesn’t pick up any noise of human activity, so it’s safe to assume Plaid and Buzz are busy drinking lattes and not lying in wait around the next corner.
&nbs
p; Using the night vision goggles, Hannah guides us down the long dark hallway to another wing of the house. There are bedrooms and a home gym and a door leading to a narrow set of stairs. These would have been used by the servants a hundred years ago when this house was built. Servant stairs usually lead right to the kitchen. Silently, we nod at each other and creep down the stairs. We are stealthy, invisible, concealed in the shadows. And there are no rats, so, by my measure, everything is going pretty well.
And that’s usually when I should get nervous.
At the bottom of the stairs is a corridor leading to the kitchen. The lights are on, but the amplifier is silent. I gesture for Jin and Hannah to stay put while I scope it out. Of course, they ignore me and we tiptoe closer in a tight cluster. But the kitchen is empty. No father. Sharp disappointment pokes me in the ribs.
“Maybe they meant under the kitchen?” Hannah whispers, pointing at a door. The basement. Not many houses in San Francisco have basements, but it seems like a great place to hide someone. We creep across the kitchen and tentatively pull open the door to reveal a rickety wooden staircase.
Hannah adjusts her night vision goggles. Between the goggles and the headphones, she looks like she’s going into outer space. But space cannot be darker or more foreboding than this basement. With each step down the slatted stairs, I’m completely sure a giant rat is going to drag me away to his rat lair and devour me. To say my heart races is an understatement. It’s about to bust clear through my chest.
“Lola,” Jin pleads, “your fingernails.” I have Jin’s arm in a death grip and there is really no excuse for mauling him.
“Sorry,” I mutter. We continue down the steps until we hit the concrete floor. It smells moldy and dank down here and it’s cold. There is not a glimmer of light. Without Hannah’s goggles we’d be in serious trouble. “Do you see anything?” I ask Hannah.
“Just boxes and old paint cans.” She scans the room. “Oh wait. That’s weird.” She lurches forward and we stumble after her.
“What is it?” Jin hisses.
“Look.” She pulls the goggles off her head and pushes them against my eyes. Everything is shades of gray and black, but I know what she’s looking at. It’s like a watertight hatch on a ship, opened using one of those circular spinning handles, built into the stone wall of the basement. “Weird, right?”
“Very.”
“Give me those.” Jin yanks the goggles from my eyes, grabbing a handful of my hair in the process. Ouch! “Okay. I agree. Weird.”
“I guess we go through the weird door?” I ask.
“Nothing else down here.” Hannah shrugs. It takes all three of us to rotate the wheel and open the door. It creaks and moans and finally swings open. Hannah bravely steps through first.
“It’s a tunnel.” I pull out my flashlight and cover it with my palm to dim the light. She’s right. A tunnel carved out of the rocky underbelly of San Francisco, heading off into darkness in both directions. An inch of dirty water covers the ground. The tunnel’s ceiling is high enough that I can stand up straight but just barely, and it’s about as wide as the three of us shoulder to shoulder.
“What the heck is this?” I shine the light on a rounded wall covered in cobwebs, and shiver.
“The World War Two tunnels,” Jin whispers. “I’ve heard about these.”
“But they were sealed up years ago,” Hannah explains. “People were coming down here and causing all sorts of trouble.”
“I think the Shadow drilled his own entrance,” I say. It’s brilliant. No one is ever going to find him down here.
“Which way?” Jin asks, pulling out his light. I have no idea. Both ways are dark, wet, and uninviting.
“That way,” I reply, pointing left. Slopping through the smelly water, we trudge off down the tunnel. This would be the perfect place for giant rats to live, right? No, Lola. Do not think about the rats!
“What are we looking for exactly?” Hannah asks. I’m not sure, but I feel like we will know it when we see it.
“Just keep going,” I urge. The ground is strewn with garbage and hunks of broken brick. I trip over a piece of debris and nearly take a header into the dirty water. We come to a fork in the tunnel. “Left.” I try to sound confident, like I know where we are going, but it’s possible we will be lost down here forever and in two hundred years some intrepid archaeologists will discover our fossilized remains and wonder why we were so stupid.
This new tunnel is darker and tighter. I’m sure there is enough oxygen down here for us. Of course there is. We are about fifty feet past the intersection when butterfly wings tickle my ear. But there are no butterflies down here.
You are going the wrong way. What you are looking for is in the other direction.
Huh? “Do you guys hear that?” From their expressions, the answer is clearly no. It must be an echo, some distant sound distortion due to the rocky walls. Yes. That’s what it is. “Never mind. Keep going.”
Hello? What’s the problem? I said you are going the wrong way.
I stop dead in my tracks. “Lola? Are you okay?” Jin shines his flashlight right in my face. “You look weird.”
Tell them.
“Stop that,” I say, swatting the flashlight away. “I think we need to turn around. This is the wrong direction.” Hannah steps closer, next to Jin. They study me while I squint in the bright light.
“What do you mean?” Jin asks.
“What we’re looking for is back that way.” I point down the tunnel.
They exchange a glance. “How do you know that?” Jin asks.
I shake my head. It feels sticky and slow. “I don’t know. There was something in my hair. Like a bug. And then a whisper. It said we were going the wrong way. It was probably just some weird echo thing. Sound bouncing off the walls maybe?”
Jin and Hannah stare at each other. “No. Way.” Jin falls back a step.
“It’s the stone,” Hannah says, shocked. “It’s talking to you?”
“That’s insane. Probably I’m just dehydrated.”
“Say something back,” Jin urges. “Quick!”
“No!”
“But what if it really is the stone trying to communicate with you?” Hannah asks. “Just try. Come on, Lola. It’s the stone.”
Fine. To be honest, the whisper sounded pretty friendly, if a little aggravated by my slow response. It didn’t feel evil. And if I try, I will inevitably fail and they will leave me be. A win-win, like Jin is always talking about.
Ah. Hello? Stone? Are you there? Um, this is Lola calling.
We wait. Jin and Hannah eyeball me. I feel like I have spinach stuck between my front teeth. I turn my back a little, shielding my face. But there is no soft breath at my ear. No butterfly in my hair.
“It’s not answering,” I say. “Because the whole idea is just insane. And the longer we stand here, the more likely it is that we get caught.”
But without argument, we turn around, passing the door we came through and heading off in the other direction. We walk in silence for a while. What if it really was the stone? I know it didn’t sound scary, but why would I trust it? Maybe it’s just using me to get out of here? Maybe it has its own agenda?
Stop it, Lola! Right now! You’re just tired and hungry and you’ve had a lot of stress in your life. Just ask Emily. You are here to get your father. Don’t forget your mission. And there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for the weird mosquito butterfly whispering in your ear. Perfectly. Reasonable. I think?
Great.
CHAPTER 36 LISTEN UP, WORLD.
IN THE DISTANCE, LIGHT FLICKERS. There is something up ahead. As we draw closer, voices drift toward us. To one side is a bunker, about the size of a large bedroom and designed to shelter San Franciscans in the event of an attack during World War II. We creep closer, using the shadows for cover. The bunker has smooth concrete walls and a single bulb dangling from the ceiling, casting eerie shadows. We hunker down just short of the wide entrance, invisible.
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br /> Lipstick faces our direction. Even down here, at this point, the Shadow lets her do the dirty work. He’s a terrible boss even if she is a terrible person for agreeing to work for him in the first place. She stands over a person bound to a metal folding chair. Dad! He slumps miserably. A lump fills my throat and tears threaten to spill. I squeeze my eyes shut and inhale through my nose.
Lipstick appears annoyed. But that might be her default expression. “Do you know that EmoJabber is worth billions of dollars? Cute, right? But when I first conceived of the idea to create a platform where emojis did the talking, no one would listen to me. No one would take my calls or listen to my pitch or invest in my idea or anything. I thought it must be because it wasn’t a very good idea. I spent a lot of nights telling myself I was worthless.”
My father’s face remains neutral. What is she saying? She invented EmoJabber? But that’s not right. Tewksbury did.
“But the idea wasn’t worthless,” she continues. “And neither was I. I just needed to present it differently. So I invented Benedict Tewksbury.”
The little hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention. She invented Tewksbury? As in, Tewksbury doesn’t exist?
“Excuse me?” my father snaps. It’s the tone he uses when I do something dumb and I should know better, like not watching my feet and almost falling into a crevasse in the Himalayas. “What exactly are you saying?”
Lipstick’s mouth curls into a sharp toothy grin. “You fool,” she says. “I’m Tewksbury. I’m the Shadow.”
Hannah elbows me hard between the ribs, wide-eyed with surprise. Jin’s mouth is a perfect O of shock. I’m suddenly breathless. I considered a lot of scenarios when I realized that the Shadow and Tewksbury were connected, but no way I saw this one coming. They are all the same person and that person is Lipstick.
My father gasps as if someone just punched him in the gut. I know how he feels. Lipstick grins. “Bet you never thought the silly little assistant could actually be the master?” She circles my father. “How easy it was to disguise my voice, to play up the mystery of a tech genius never being seen in public! How happy everyone was to accept his backstory of fancy schools and deep connections. And did the money ever flow when they thought I was just one of the boys. The heart of gold stuff just made my invention more irresistible, STEM fairs and school scholarships and all that goody-goody stuff. People are so easily fooled. They see what they want to see.”
Lola Benko, Treasure Hunter Page 14