by Jenny Goebel
“Yo, we’re not giving up that easily, are we?” Jonah said, then plastered his face to one of the windows. “Dude, there’s a light on in back. Help me make some noise.”
Hamilton nodded. “Oh, yeah, it’s Hammer time.”
They beat the glass so hard, Amy feared it would break. “Let us in!” the three kids screamed in unison.
To Amy’s surprise and relief, an employee entered the dimly lit corridor. Amy wasn’t as happy about the peeved expression on the woman’s face. She glared at them through the glass, lifted a solitary finger, and pointed it at the CLOSED sign.
“Hey, bro,” Hamilton whispered to Jonah, “you’re up.”
“Nooo,” Jonah groaned. “Not again.”
“Totally. You gotta play the celebrity card. If not for us, do it for Saladin.”
Jonah reached up with both hands. With one, he ripped the ridiculous handlebar mustache from his face. With the other, he tore the tinted glasses from his eyes.
Recognition hit the shelter employee like a Mack truck. She staggered backward a few steps, her eyes wide with excitement, before nearly tripping over herself as she rushed to unlock the door.
“Jonah Wizard!” she said breathlessly. “I had no idea it was you.”
Up close, Amy could see that the woman was barely older than the three of them—fortunately, an age well within Jonah’s fan demographic.
As the young woman self-consciously fidgeted with her uniform and dealt with a wayward strand of hair, Amy pushed her way past.
“Wait, you can’t go back there!” the woman yelled, but Amy was already halfway down the hall. Trying not to notice how cramped the cages were or how the animals cowered in the corners, she charged from room to room, searching for Saladin. Her panic flared each time she came to a cage and her cat wasn’t in it.
She checked four rooms before coming to one with a sign that read EMPLOYEES ONLY. Without hesitation, Amy burst through the door.
A scowling employee stood in one corner, holding a pointy syringe. His face was marred by a puffy red scratch. Blood trickled down his cheek, and one entire sleeve of the man’s uniform was shredded. “Help!” the man whimpered.
There was a loud hiss and then a silver ball of spotted fur soared through the air and clamped onto the man’s pant leg. The man yelped. He shook his leg, but Saladin’s teeth and claws were sunk deep and guttural rumbles were rolling out of the cat’s mouth.
“Saladin?” said Amy.
The cat abruptly changed his tune. He delicately detached four legs from the man’s pants, sauntered over to Amy, and with a graceful leap, was in her arms.
Amy stroked Saladin’s gleaming fur and nuzzled her face against his back. Throat closing and knees nearly buckling, Amy gave one giant sigh of relief. “Oh, Saladin, you poor thing!”
“What?” the man shrilled. “Are you serious? I’m the poor thing!”
Hamilton and Jonah burst in, eye-daggers trained on the man with the pointy syringe whimpering in the corner. “That cat is pure evil!” the man shouted.
“Let’s get out of here,” Amy said, still snuggling Saladin. “If we hurry, we can probably make it to the fish market before it closes. Red snapper, here we come.”
* * *
Once Saladin had devoured a healthy helping of red snapper and was curled up cozily beside her on the hotel bed, Amy cracked open Beatrice’s diaries.
Jonah, reading over her shoulder, groaned in disgust. “Ugh. Listen to this part: ‘My daily beauty routine appears to be paying off. Everyone says I’m as stunning as any Hollywood bombshell. I cannot argue, as I’ve been blessed with a complexion to rival Bette Davis’s and shapely lips that even Joan Crawford would envy.’ ”
“Sounds like important Cahill documentation to me,” Hamilton said, unable to keep a straight face.
Amy smirked—she couldn’t argue with his sarcasm—and kept flipping through the journals. The first diary contained entries ranging in date from when Beatrice had been in her late teens to her early twenties. Most of the accounts were viciously told. Beatrice’s resentment of her younger siblings, Grace and Fiske, was painfully clear.
Amy read an entry dated shortly after Fiske was born:
I am still in a state of shock and utter disbelief. How is it possible that my dear mother could have traded her life to bring such a vile creature into this world? The infant does nothing but wail all hours of the day. It is his own fault that no one but Grace comes to soothe him—he, who has ended all brightness for the rest of us.
Father has left. It has fallen on me as the oldest to name the unwanted child, and I have decided upon the name Fiske—an Old Norse word for fish. I will not lie; it is with sweet vengeance that I have settled upon this name, as fish are something that I thoroughly detest.
Amy resisted the urge to pitch the journal across the room. She had left Dan in serious danger for this? To do nothing more than read her aunt’s worthless vitriol?
Her frustration mounted as she scanned several more entries in which Beatrice lamented life with a newborn brother. Then she found one about Grace that gave her pause. Granted, the diary only contained Beatrice’s side of the story, but it did make Grace sound rather vindictive.
Fiske remains quite irritating, but recently Grace has proved to be the very bane of my existence. Everyone else seems to find her spirited temperament quite charming, but they haven’t seen the calculating, vengeful side of her willfulness, the way I have.
For weeks now, I have noticed an odor when applying my facial cream at night. I am quite diligent about skincare, but I will not digress … The pungency of the cream became quite unbearable, at times even interfering with my sleep. However, I was reticent to dispose of the cream as the bottle was nearly full and very expensive.
It was only late last evening that I discovered the source of the stench. When I returned to the powder room to fetch a bobby pin, I discovered Grace adding several drops of fish oil to my night cream. I can only presume that she is still cross with me for picking such a name for our brother, and I suspect that she has secretly read the reason I chose it for him. Needless to say, I will need to find a better place to conceal my diary.…
Amy’s stomach churned with worry. Once, she would have thought Grace’s prank was funny. But was this an early glimpse at a darker, more menacing side of Grace? It was one thing to pour fish oil in your sister’s facial cream, but something else entirely to put a hit on your estranged husband. Wasn’t it? What if Grace hadn’t known where to draw the line?
It wasn’t until Amy had browsed through two more journals that she found what she was really looking for—Beatrice’s account of Grace’s marriage to Nathaniel Hartford.
“Okay, I think this is it,” she said.
Saladin mewed, but no one else responded. By then, Hamilton and Jonah had already faded. Amy had no idea at what point they’d fallen asleep.
She kept reading. It was difficult to weed through Beatrice’s ramblings and retellings, but it was clear that Beatrice had been jealous of how young and in love Grace and Nathaniel were when they wed, poised to lead the Cahill family. Where things went sour wasn’t quite as clear, especially when every passage was tainted by Beatrice’s spiteful viewpoint.
However, one entry stood out:
I’ll admit, my relationship with Grace has been strained, to say the least, but it’s certainly not for lack of trying on my part! Why, just this evening I invited my sister and her husband to dine at my home. Was Grace even appreciative of all the trouble I went to in contacting the caterer and making certain the maid thoroughly cleaned the house before they arrived? I should say not!
She squabbled with her husband the entire time. From the moment she stepped through the door, she was irate. Nathaniel stormed in after her. “It’s not like the Ekats aren’t already using the latest technology to keep tabs on all the other branches,” he said.
I politely offered to take their jackets, but Grace ignored me. She spun around and fired back, “I kno
w where you’re heading with this. I know you, Nathaniel! This is just the first step for you in establishing total control.”
Personally, I like the idea of being able to snoop on family members without their knowing. Just think of all the juicy gossip I could capture!
While the kitchen staff passed out hors d’oeuvres, I voiced this opinion and, oh, how Nathaniel grinned at me. That man has charisma in spades.
The look on his face was not nearly as charming, however, when he turned back to Grace and said, “Just because you don’t agree with my tactics, don’t fool yourself into thinking that we’re not after the exact same thing.”
I’d like to point out that this is the very reason I never get involved in Clues matters. In my opinion it’s all too bothersome.
Grace glared at her husband and had the audacity to say, “I may want the same thing as you, Nathaniel, but I will never sink to your level to get it.”
Ah, the drama. I certainly do not condone their behavior, but what a thrill to witness such an ugly quarrel!
For a second something very dark crossed Nathaniel’s face. If I didn’t know better, I’d almost have thought Grace looked afraid. “You’ve sunk to my level and beyond it,” Nathaniel replied. “What about your black files, Grace? Did you think I don’t know about those?”
After that, Grace clammed up and the night was ruined! We spent the rest of the evening eating beef Wellington and my favorite carrot-and-lime gelatin mold in silence.
That was it. Bea’s account of the evening cut off there. That her grandparents had been hunting for the 39 Clues was old news to Amy, but the black files certainly piqued her interest. They sounded important. It sounded like, with them, Grace was compiling information on all the Cahills. Did that mean she’d kept one on Nathaniel, too? Did she spy on her own husband? Amy swallowed.
Amy quickly scanned through the diaries a second time. She skimmed for any hints as to where Grace may have hidden the files but came up empty-handed. Asking her aunt was obviously out of the question, and there was only one other person she could think of who might be able to tell her: her Great-Uncle Fiske.
Amy flipped open her laptop. Saladin saw the action as an invitation to prance across her keyboard. He purred as she nudged him aside and then dialed Fiske’s number for a video chat.
When her uncle answered the Skype call, two things became immediately clear. One: Her call had awoken him. Two: He’d relapsed since she’d last seen him.
Instead of the healthy glow he’d sported after his first few months in Mexico, his skin was pallid. And his cheek and collarbones protruded as though he’d lost a significant amount of weight.
“Sorry to bother you, Uncle Fiske,” Amy said, forcing her lips into a smile. She didn’t want her face to betray how much his deteriorating state upset her.
“No, my dear! Don’t be silly. It’s never a bother to chat with you. I’m afraid I nodded off in my hammock, but I’m fully awake now.” Amy had never known Fiske to be unfriendly. Sometimes it was hard to believe that he and Beatrice were even related—or that he and Grace were siblings, too.
“Tell me, how did the reading of the will go?” Fiske asked. “It’s a pity I wasn’t up to being there. Although, I must admit, Beatrice never had a kind word for me. I can’t imagine anything—not even death—could’ve changed that.” An expression of deep sadness flit across her uncle’s face. “What a terrible end to an unhappy life.”
Beatrice had included some words in her will regarding Fiske, but not a single one of them was worth repeating. “Oh, she really didn’t have much to say … ” Amy hedged. “But I did manage to get ahold of her diaries today, and I found something in them that I’m hoping you can assist me with—something that might help us to identify the Outcast.”
“Of course, I’ll help in any way I can,” Fiske said. Then he succumbed to a fit of coughing.
She wasn’t sure how much she should tell her uncle. He didn’t know about Grace’s kill order. Part of Amy wanted to share the secret just because she knew he’d make an attempt to set her mind at ease.
Fiske had idolized Grace. Maybe he could reassure her that his sister had been the wonderful person Amy always thought she was. But no matter what kind of front Fiske put on, the news would rattle him. His health couldn’t take that. She could protect him from the knowledge of Grace’s murderous intentions, but she couldn’t protect him from everything if she was going to find the files.
“Aunt Beatrice wrote about Grace keeping black files on all the people in her life,” Amy said, watching for her uncle’s reaction.
Fiske hesitated, then nodded his head.
“You knew about them?” Amy asked incredulously.
He averted his gaze. “It wasn’t something Grace was proud of. But, yes, she confided in me about the files. She was recording all the feuds and any secrets she thought might be useful somewhere down the road. It was how she determined who was fit for high-ranking positions and who wasn’t, how she kept some people in line, and how she justified casting out certain members of the family. It’s likely that she kept one on the Outcast—whoever he is.”
Amy thought she knew. But for that huge of an accusation, she needed confirmation. “Do you have any idea where to look for the files, if they still even exist?”
Fiske rubbed a hand across his sallow face. He seemed to be considering a long list of possibilities. At last, his eyes darted back to Amy’s. A smile lit up his pale face and he said, “Whenever Grace was stuck on a problem, or on how to settle a family dispute, she always went flying. She always came back with her most daring and devious solutions.”
“You think the black files might be at her private airplane hangar?”
“Yes, I do.” Fiske nodded.
Amy felt her face stretch into a smile, too, only to have it fall a second later. Grace’s hangar was in Attleboro—deep within Outcast territory.
Boston and Attleboro, Massachusetts
After hanging up with Fiske, Amy checked in with Dan.
“So we think the Outcast has a broken arrow that he found and fixed somehow,” her brother said. To anyone else, the wobble in his voice would have passed unnoticed. “And he’s going to detonate the nuke tomorrow during this huge national outdoor party. When the spray hits land, he’s literally going to rain on the Netherlanders’ parade. Can you believe it? That Outcast is one demented old dude.”
Amy’s breath caught in her throat. She felt a throbbing knock against her rib cage. “Dan.” She whispered his name like a lifeline tossed across the ocean that divided them. “You can’t stay there. You have to go.”
The smile on Dan’s face dissolved, allowing her to catch a glimpse of the fear he’d been trying to mask. “I can’t leave,” he said. “All these people, this beautiful city.”
Saladin must’ve recognized Dan’s voice. He meowed plaintively in the background.
“Whoa! Please tell me that was who I think it was.” Dan bounced back to life on screen.
Amy pulled herself together for Dan’s sake. She caught him up to speed on what was happening on her end and stopped asking him to vacate the Netherlands. As much as she wanted him to be far away from the danger, she knew her brother. He would never walk away.
A bolt of shame speared her. Was she just going to accept the risk to her brother’s life? Perhaps she was as ruthless as Grace. But what other options were there? Ian was smart, capable, and strategic, but the pressure of leadership was getting to him, causing him to make mistakes. The Netherlanders needed someone who also possessed tried-and-true instincts.
They needed Dan.
* * *
“I can’t believe we’re this close to Grace’s house—make that your house, Amy—and we can’t even stop in for a snack or to use the toilet,” Ham said as he slid back in behind the wheel of the Ghost.
“I know, right? Gas station bathrooms stink. Literally,” Jonah said. “Why do you think I’m holding it until we reach the hangar?”
“Wha
tever, man, it was worth it. Now I can sit in comfort while I eat my Funyuns.” Hamilton cracked open the bag of onion-flavored rings that he’d picked up inside the convenience store.
“Not while you’re driving, you can’t,” Amy said, snatching the bag from his hands and tossing it into the backseat with Jonah.
Jonah scooped it up and started munching on the rings.
Glancing back at him in the rearview mirror as he pulled out of the gas station parking lot, Hamilton cried, “Hey! Leave some for me.”
Jonah took another ring out of the bag and popped it in his mouth. “Consider this payback for the Shakespeare clip.” His eyes narrowed. “Payback number one, that is. You’re not getting off that easy.”
Within minutes, they were pulling up to a large grassy field surrounded by a high-security fence. Amy held her breath as she punched in the code to open the gate securing access to Grace’s private hangar and airstrip. She half expected the numbers to set off an alarm and for Grace’s luxury sedan to be swarmed by a fleet of armed guards. When the light turned green on the keypad and the Ghost rolled through the gates, she let her breath out.
The padlock on the hangar door was a different story, however. It took every trick Amy had learned from her lessons with an old cat burglar, but a good fifteen minutes later they were in. Amy’s breath caught in her throat again.
The hangar reflected more of her grandmother’s personal tastes than any room back at the estate. Grace had once told Amy that flying was the one thing that made her feel most alive. The goggles Amelia Earhart had worn when she became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic were stored in a glass cabinet atop a marble stand. A model of the Wright brothers’ Flyer I hung from the ceiling. Tacked to the wall beneath the Flyer was a black-and-white photograph of the first flight. It was even autographed by Wilbur and Orville Wright.
The hangar felt like a museum honoring Grace and her deepest passion. When Grace was alive, she’d kept the place spotless. Seeing the layer of dust coating everything now affected Amy more than it should have. Grace had been gone so long now. Those happy afternoons Amy had spent here with her grandmother felt so achingly distant. But the layer of grime over everything felt almost deserved after how tarnished Grace’s memory had become.