by Jenny Goebel
“That’s what we’re doing,” Sammy said, “hiking to the summit.”
Nellie kicked him beneath the table, but the damage was already done.
As Sammy bent over to rub his shin, she searched the restaurant owner’s face. He didn’t have an Outcast-turncoat look about him. There were laugh lines around his mouth and kindness in the wrinkled folds encircling his dark eyes. There was also concern and what Nellie perceived as fear for her and Sammy’s well-being.
Maybe Sammy’s slipup hadn’t done any harm after all.
As the man gave a polite bow and backed away from the table, Nellie heard him whisper under his breath, “Avalanche season.” Then, even quieter, “Cho beriba.”
“Avalanches? Cho beriba?” Sammy asked as soon as the old man was out of earshot.
Nellie was well versed in several foreign languages, although her Japanese was rusty. “The avalanche risk is high right now … and cho beriba is slang. It means ‘very bad,’ I think. No. Not ‘very bad’ … ‘extraordinarily bad.’ I’m pretty sure he thinks climbing Mount Fuji is a rotten idea. At least it is this time of year.”
Sammy whipped out his own phone and began researching the treacherous trek ahead of them. “The resting huts and facilities on the way to the top are all still closed for the winter,” he reported gravely.
“Uh-huh.”
“You knew that already?”
Nellie shrugged. “Maybe … but you know as well as I do that we don’t have the luxury of waiting around until the snow melts and the resting huts open. We have to find out what the Outcast is up to. Today.”
“How do the Tomas do it?” Sammy wondered aloud.
“You forget that the Tomas are all adrenaline junkies,” Nellie said. “They live for testing their endurance.”
When she noticed the anxiety rising on her boyfriend’s gorgeous face, she added, “Don’t worry. We’ve got the right gear. Plus, we’ll stop at Fujiyoshida Sengen Shrine to say a prayer before ascending.”
“Yeah, that’ll keep us safe for sure.” Sammy cracked a lopsided smile.
Nellie clutched his hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “Can’t hurt, right?”
They stood from the table and exited the restaurant with their fingers still woven together. But when they stepped outside, Nellie saw something that changed her mind about the shrine. A stop was definitely off the docket: The mercury in the thermometer hadn’t dropped the hand a single notch. The air was balmy and the sun was still shining, but the dark clouds on the horizon were more than a little unsettling.
They’d need every last minute of fair weather to scale the mountain.
Lake Como, Italy
There was a reason her friend had been nicknamed the Hammer. Before Amy had a chance to let him know that the man holding the camera wasn’t the intruder, Hamilton wound his arm back and let it fly.
The man doubled over in pain.
“Wait, Ham!” Amy said, stopping her brawny friend from landing a second punch. “The intruder was a woman.”
“Oh, dude. I’m sorry,” Ham said, reaching out to the man. “Can I hold your camera for you? While you, uh, recover?” Something about the grin on his face told Amy that Hamilton had known all along that the man wasn’t their burglar.
The stranger recoiled, still bent over, and clutched the camera to his chest. “Get away from me!” he groaned. The man was obviously American—white T-shirt, Oakland Raiders hat worn backward, holey blue jeans. He stuck out in Lake Como even more than Jonah’s villa did.
“Who are you?” Amy asked, narrowing her eyes at the stranger. Then the pieces clicked into place. Her cousin Jonah Wizard was a teenage superstar, and the man was here to take photos and sell them to the media. Hamilton was Jonah’s bodyguard. He’d dealt with paparazzi many times. No wonder he didn’t look remorseful for having knocked the wind out of this guy.
The man didn’t answer Amy’s question. But he didn’t have to. The way he and Hamilton were staring each other down basically confirmed it.
“There were two flashes. Did you take a photo of anyone else?” Amy asked. “There was a woman who came this way … ” she added, trying to prod the man along.
The man glared on.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Ham said.
The paparazzo straightened his back, then spit on the gravel near their feet. “Who are you two?” He glanced back and forth between Amy and Hamilton and the striking glass-walled villa at the end of the drive. A light seemed to reenter the man’s eyes and he set his jaw and jutted his chin. “Wait a minute. I know you.” He stared right at Amy. “You’re one of those rich Cahill kids, am I right?”
No. Not a light. A money-hungry gleam.
Amy fought the urge to wallop the man herself. Disgusted, she spun toward Ham. “Look. You get the camera. I’ll go wake the others.”
Hamilton nodded. He grinned menacingly at the paparazzo.
The man whimpered and clutched his camera tighter.
“Oh, and try not to hit him again,” Amy said. “Too hard.”
* * *
Dan Cahill stirred when Amy flicked on the lights. “Why aren’t you sleeping?” he asked blearily. His sister was moving too quickly and talking too fast for him to keep up.
Before he’d fizzled out, the shocking news about Grace had been swimming around in his head like a barracuda doing laps in a swimming pool. A little sleep should’ve helped. But now that he was awake, he was more confused than ever.
Amy was saying something about a burglar and a Popsicle, or maybe he’d been dreaming about a Popsicle, but Amy had definitely said something that started with a P. “Did you say a burglar stole a Popsicle?” Dan mumbled. That seemed ridiculous, even to his sluggish brain.
Dan almost closed his eyes and went back to sleep, hoping things would seem less garbled in the morning. But the grave expression on Amy’s face told him that this was serious. Not just a cruel prank, waking him up after not nearly enough Zs. Besides, a cruel prank was something he would pull. Not Amy.
His head hurt from lack of sleep, but Dan slowly drew himself to an upright position on the couch. The world had seemed a little upside down since he’d found out about Grace. Now it was virtually spinning. He blinked his eyes rapidly. As his surroundings finally came into focus, he noticed that someone was missing. “Where’s Ham?” he asked.
“Outside. Dealing with our rodent problem,” Amy said. Then she gently shook Ian and Cara awake on opposite ends of the sofa. Too tired to get up, Dan tossed a pillow at Jonah where he lay drooling on the rug.
“A burglar, a Popsicle, and a rodent problem?” Dan wondered aloud.
“What?” Amy questioned. “I never said anything about a Popsicle. I said the paparazzo.”
Amy repeated the entire story for everyone to hear. It made much more sense now that Dan was fully awake. “Let’s figure out what the woman took,” he said, glancing around. The room certainly didn’t appear to have been ransacked.
Jonah’s decor took minimalism to an extreme, but there were still a few expensive vases and brightly colored art on the wall. There wasn’t much in the way of things to be looted. And, scarce as they were, all the pricey pieces appeared to have been untouched.
“Check your personal belongings,” Amy directed the group. “The Outcast might be trying to lift information off one of us. He could’ve sent someone to steal our devices.”
Ian scoffed at the idea. “He humiliated me in front of all the branch leaders. He had me forcefully escorted out of my own home. He’s taken my family and my pride. What more could he possibly want?”
“This isn’t all about you, Ian. Remember?” said Dan. “Four disasters. There have only been two. Maybe this has something to do with the third.”
“Or maybe the whole thing is entirely unrelated,” Cara Pierce offered. “I’ve checked my stuff. Laptop, cell phone, wallet—it’s all here. Maybe Jonah has a stalker.” She turned to face the teenage superstar. “Doesn’t that happen to you all the time?
Maybe the intruder wanted a memento. Maybe she took something that you wouldn’t expect anyone to want. Maybe she took something creepy.”
“Yeah, like your toothbrush,” Dan said, “or a lock of hair.”
Jonah’s hand shot to his buzz cut and he fingered it for bald patches as Dan continued surveying the room. An unusual object sitting on the glass coffee table caught his eye. “Or maybe she didn’t take anything at all. Maybe the intruder left something. That’s not really your style, is it, Jonah?”
Dan pointed and everyone’s eyes followed. Jonah seemed thankful for both the diversion and the fact that his hair was still intact. Jonah scooped the item up. It was a wooden shoe, and the clog was intricately painted. It showed a pretty scene with a windmill overlooking a canal. The canal was lined with colorful tulips that extended down and graced the rounded toe with a splash of red.
From where Dan was seated, he could make out words painted on the bottom, but not what they said. “Flip it over, Wiz,” he muttered, his words heavy with foreboding. It would’ve been nice if things had calmed down for at least a few days. Instead, not only was the storm not letting up, it was picking up. A sense of dread pierced Dan’s gut as Jonah read aloud:
“ ‘Disaster Three. Water marches on land.
Inaction leads to more blood on your hands.
Arrows are broken, lessons unlearned.
Inert responses, power unearned.
Katrina wreaked profound devastation,
The same fate awaits a new coastal nation.…
The Gateway floods when autonomy fails,
The torrent erases the Dutch king’s trail.
A violent surge, a breach in the wall,
The House of Orange will crumble and fall.’ ”
While everyone else sat there, stunned into silence, Dan moaned. “The Outcast is going to attack Holland.” He’d always been fast at piecing things together. The wooden shoe, the windmills, the Dutch king, the coastal nation—it was obvious where the next disaster was going to take place. And Katrina? The storm wasn’t just picking up. It was going to reach fever pitch.
There definitely wouldn’t be any rest. They had to plan for the largest catastrophe yet—devastation to rival Hurricane Katrina.
Lake Como, Italy
Ian Kabra wanted blood. And what a Kabra wants, a Kabra gets, he thought.
“Forget Holland,” he commanded. If there was anything a Lucian knew, anything a Kabra knew, it was how to cut to the chase. “We know where the Outcast is: at our home in Attleboro. We know the house better than anyone. We built the defenses. It’s time to go nuclear.” He paused, making sure all eyes were on him. “I say we orchestrate our own disaster and rain it down on the Outcast’s head. We’ll need poison, a team of assassins, and—”
Amy and Cara exchanged a look. “What?” he snapped.
Cara cleared her throat. She did that adorable thing where she rolled her lips inward and smiled while her face pinched with concern. “It’s just that you seem a little … unhinged.”
Ian’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t know what you’re saying. My response is entirely justifiable, and retaliation is clearly in order. Those were Lucian leaders who died when the airship exploded, may I remind you. Some of their children were friends of mine. Take Duncan Wittenberg, for example. He and I played cricket together in primary school. Now both of his parents are gone.” Ian threw out his arms. “I can’t just let that go.”
“Nobody is denying that what happened is terrible, or saying that you shouldn’t be upset. We’re just worried about you,” Cara said. “We don’t want you to crack. The airship was a hard blow, but—”
“We don’t kill people. We save people,” Amy jumped in. “That’s the difference between the good guys and the bad guys.” She paused like she was thinking of something or someone else, before adding, “We don’t want to sink to the Outcast’s level.”
Heat burned Ian’s cheeks. It was bad enough to have Cara needling him, but to be double-teamed was utterly unacceptable. He needed a retort. It shouldn’t be hard, considering his outstanding intellectual acumen. But before he could find the proper words to put them both back in their places, Hamilton burst in through the sliding glass door. “What’d I miss?” he said.
“Well done!” Amy said, then snatched an expensive-looking camera from his hands. “Now we can see who the Outcast sent to do his dirty work.” She whirled around and held the camera out to Cara. “Will you do us the honor?”
Cara nodded. With the speed and fluidity of a natural born hacker, she whipped out her laptop, flipped it open, and reached for the camera.
While she was busy clicking through a number of images on her screen, Hamilton sidled up next to Ian. “Everything okay? You seem a little … unhinged,” Ham said.
Ian turned his scowl on Ham, crossed his arms over his chest, and smoldered. Why does everyone have to keep saying that?
“How’d you get the camera, Ham?” Amy asked. “You didn’t … ” her voice trailed off.
“He’s not on his way to the hospital or anything, if that’s what you mean,” Hamilton replied. “It just took a little bargaining, but we finally settled on a price.”
“You paid that scumbag?”
“Not with money.” Hamilton’s eyes shifted to where Jonah was sitting nearby on the leather couch.
“Yo, why are you looking at me like that?” Jonah had been giving the wooden shoe a closer examination. He set it back down on the glass coffee table.
“You remember a few weeks back when I caught you reciting Shakespeare?” Ham stifled a laugh. “And you were, like, practicing your duckface in the mirror between lines.”
“Yes,” Jonah said through clenched teeth.
“Remember how I caught some of it on video with my phone? Well, the paparazzo seemed really interested in the clip. I thought it was a decent trade.” Hamilton’s mouth stretched into a grin.
Jonah picked up the wooden shoe again, gripped it like a weapon, and charged.
“Guys, I hate to interrupt,” Cara said, “but I have something here.”
Skidding to a halt, Jonah let the shoe fall to his side as everyone gathered around Cara’s laptop. They stared at the image on the screen of a stunning woman with dark skin and dreads peeking out from under her hood. Her deep brown eyes had been wide with surprise when the paparazzo snapped the photo. Ian’s heart sank. Even with the hood, he recognized her immediately.
So did Jonah. “Mom?” he croaked. Jonah’s face went carefully blank, as if he had retreated to someplace deep inside. Ian looked away. Contrary to what Cara and Amy thought, Ian was quite capable of empathy. He knew how it felt to have your own mother betray you. He knew how it felt to swallow so much hurt and humiliation that you thought you might drown.
Ian sank a little in his expensive loafers and concentrated on all the fine qualities he possessed. He was talented, charming, intelligent, and strong-willed, along with the added bonus of being dashingly good looking. He was born and raised to lead. Obviously.
So why am I starting to hate it?
The answer was, in part, because of moments like this one. Ian wasn’t done ranting. There was nothing he wanted more than to continue his outburst. Even if a deadly assault wasn’t the proper play, he still had plenty of rage to purge. But his friend was hurting, and as leader, it fell on Ian to turn the tide.
Ian walked over to Jonah and awkwardly placed a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “I know this is rather unsettling for you, Jonah. For all of us, really, but we need to focus. The Outcast has sent us a message. What do we know?”
“Well,” Cara said, glancing up from her computer, “for one thing, this disaster has the potential to be even deadlier than the Hindenburg and Titanic reenactments combined. Hurricane Katrina caused more than 1,800 deaths and was the most costly catastrophe in American history. When the levees failed following the storm, there were places in New Orleans submerged under as much as twenty feet of water. More than one hundred billion
gallons flooded the streets, and hundreds of thousands of people were displaced from their homes. The scale of this disaster … it’s massive. It’s something much larger than the Outcast’s first two reenactments.” Cara’s eyes were huge as she looked up at him. “I just don’t see how we’re going to be able to contain something like this.”
Quiet overtook the room and all eyes fell on Ian. For a fleeting moment, he missed the old days, when expectations dropped like lead on Amy and Dan instead. He smoothed the wrinkles in his slacks, and for the first time, noticed that a shirttail was hanging out. He swiftly tucked it back in. “Okay. Then we need to track any storms brewing in the vicinity of Holland.”
“I’m already a step ahead of you,” Cara said. In a gesture that was vexingly cute, she shot him a crooked smile before she continued. “It’s officially called the Netherlands, by the way, and the weather patterns look clear for the next ten days.”
“Perhaps we have the location wrong, then. Perhaps it’s not the Netherlands that the Outcast is targeting,” Ian responded. “Have you looked for tropical storm warnings anywhere else in the world? Is there a typhoon headed for Japan, perhaps, or a hurricane in the Caribbean?”
Cara shook her head. “I don’t think so. The Outcast has been overt this time. He mentioned the Dutch king and that ‘The House of Orange will crumble and fall.’ The House of Orange is another name for the royal family of the Netherlands. We should focus our attention there.”
Hamilton let out a sigh of relief. “Then we can all just go back to sleep, right? No big storms for the next ten days. We have some time to recover. I, for one, am looking forward to swimming laps in Jonah’s pool tomorrow. A little stress relief, a little planning, and then we hit the Netherlands.”
“I don’t think that’s such a hot idea either,” Cara said. “The rest of the riddle—inaction, arrows that are broken, inert responses, lessons unlearned—it’s seething with double meaning. Much of the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina wasn’t blamed on the storm itself. Experts called it a systemic failure.” She caught Ian’s eye. “Those who were charged with preventing this type of catastrophe let down the people of New Orleans. And so did all the emergency responders after the levees failed.”