Trouble Makes a Comeback

by Stephanie Tromly

  “You and Digby can switch keys tomorrow at school,” I said.

  “I guess that’s your way of telling me we’re not hanging out tonight?” Austin kissed me on the cheek. “That’s okay, babe. You know, I think I see how this could be fun.”

  Seeing Austin in Digby’s clothes was a shock. I’d expected him to be bursting out of it like Henry had when he’d borrowed Digby’s jacket but somehow, Digby’s suit fit Austin. And it looked great.

  “Is it just me or do I look sharp in this suit?” Austin said.

  “Looks sharp on everybody, man,” Digby said.

  “And I didn’t think it would be this comfortable,” Austin said.

  Digby, meanwhile, looked comical in Austin’s off-hours jock uniform. The sweatpants, the letterman jacket, the baseball cap . . .

  Digby slipped his feet into Austin’s running shoes. “Echhh . . . they’re warm,” he said. “God, I hate this stupid plan.”

  “It’s your plan,” I said.

  “Will it work?” Austin said. “Or will they, like, attack me when they realize I duped them?”

  “Oh, it’ll work. The only question I have is, will I get athlete’s foot?” Digby said.

  Austin slung the decoy bag over his shoulder. “All right. Let’s do this.” And then he clapped like he was breaking from a huddle.

  “Austin, you know you don’t have to . . .” I said. “But thank you.”

  “No, I want to,” Austin said.

  “Just be careful, please.” I said. I kissed Austin. I didn’t care that Digby was rolling his eyes at me and I kissed Austin a second time before letting him go.

  Austin jogged to Digby’s mother’s car. I noticed that he even changed the way he ran to imitate Digby’s loping stride.

  We watched Austin drive off and my heart lurched when the black SUV drove off behind him seconds later.

  “You know, sometimes, I hate it when I’m right,” Digby said. “But interestingly, I mind it a lot less now that those guys think Austin is me.”

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  Austin followed Digby’s instructions perfectly and got out of the car at the supermarket parking lot. He turned and looked around so the people in the SUV could get a good look at his face. Clearly, it came as a surprise to them that it hadn’t been Digby in the car, because the SUV actually parked for a while, probably so its driver could regroup. After the SUV set off again, Digby was careful to keep a good distance as we followed in Austin’s mother’s car.

  “By the way, it was super-devious the way you got Austin to do this by calling it a ‘play’ and making it sound all football-y,” I said.

  “Tapped into his lizard brain, you mean?” Digby said.

  “Yeah. Makes me wonder . . . how do you tap into mine to get me to do things?” I said.

  “Oh, come on, Princeton. I don’t do that to you,” he said. “You’re too evolved.”

  He exhaled and shook his head.

  “What?” I said.

  “I guess maybe I’m nervous?” Digby said. “I haven’t really worked out a plan, exactly. In my mind, it’d always been a question of figuring out who did it and then telling the police.”

  “Well, but, I mean, like you said, we’re just following to see where we end up,” I said. “You don’t have to have the whole thing worked out.”

  • • •

  We eventually turned onto the interstate and went on what turned out to be a long ride before the SUV signaled to exit.

  “I should’ve guessed,” Digby said.

  The SUV was headed for Bird’s Hill, the same place as Sloane’s family’s summer home. We turned onto the road that wound upward. Digby stooped over the wheel, peering through the windshield at something farther uphill.

  “What’s that?” he said.

  All I saw ahead were huge old-growth trees and a spectacularly steep rocky slope all the way down toward the river. “Trees? What? I don’t see anything.”

  Digby held me by the chin and turned my face. “Look.”

  “But—”

  “Look with your eyes, Princeton.”

  I was about to protest that I still didn’t see anything when the hilltop glinted in an unearthly way. “What . . .”

  “It’s a huge mirror.” Digby pointed. “Watch that bird.”

  A big black crow swooped past a patch of hilltop and was abruptly doubled. Its reflection indicated that the mirrored façade stretched at least a hundred yards across.

  We watched the SUV disappear through a discreet gate set into a huge stone wall. “When people work this hard not to be seen . . .” Digby drove a little ways past, parked on the side of the road, and killed the engine. “. . . I really want to look.”

  Digby got out of the car. I opened my door but didn’t commit to following him.

  “Digby, we’re going to get busted for trespassing.”

  Digby threw the car keys for me to catch. “Say you got lost,” he said.

  “Why don’t you say you got lost?” I threw the keys back to him.

  “They’d believe it more if you were driving.” Digby threw the keys to me again.

  This time, I threw the keys at him. Hard.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “That was sexist,” I said.

  “I’m not sexist. I’m saying they are.” He shook off the hand he’d used to catch the keys and said, “Now help me punish those sexist pigs with some trespassing.”

  We hiked past the gate and went along the stone wall. Soon we were in the trees, where the ground was a combination of mud, slippery rocks, and gnarly roots.

  “Aha,” Digby said.

  “What ‘aha’?” I didn’t see any vulnerabilities.

  “They cut all the lower branches by the wall.” He pointed at a nearby tree. “But they missed this one.”

  The branch he was talking about wasn’t much more than a nub. “That thing’s not going to take your weight,” I said.

  “Oh, come on, Princeton . . . what’s happened to you?” He shimmied up the tree and straddled the branch.

  “Well?” I said.

  Digby put his finger to his lips, pointed at the scene over the wall, and held up two fingers. I assumed he meant there were two people on the other side who’d hear me. He took out his phone and wiggled it at me so I’d put it on vibrate. Then he texted: “Need some big rocks.”

  I found one and used both arms to throw it up to him. I overestimated the distance it had to travel, though, and if Digby hadn’t ducked, I would’ve taken his head off with it. He reemerged from ducking down low on the branch, angry. I grimaced and pantomimed my apology.

  He texted: “holy cow P put some smaller ones in ur pocket n get up here.”

  I’d never climbed a tree before, but I went. One foot up, one hand up, and repeat until I was easing myself onto the branch behind Digby. Only then did I notice how high up we were.

  The compound beyond the wall was enormous. It was a cluster of big buildings covering the entire hilltop. Some were old and ivy-covered while others were starkly modern. The compound had obviously grown over a long time. The mirrored building facing the public road was closest to us and judging by the many black vehicles parked outside it, it was some kind of garage.

  “This is huge,” I said.

  “It has a helipad.” Digby pointed at the back of the property.

  “What is this place?” I said, even though I suspected we already knew.

  There were three identical black SUVs and a dark blue sedan parked side by side. Two men in coveralls removed one of the SUVs’ wheels and walked into the garage.

  “Hand me those rocks.” When I gave him the two rocks I’d brought with me, he said, “Two? That’s it? How good do you think my aim is? Oh, I forgot. You’ve been dating a jock.”

  Digby hurled the rock ov
er the wall toward one SUV that had an opened door. I cringed, anticipating the crash of breaking glass. Instead, the rock thunked off the windshield without breaking it.

  “Look how thick that is.” Digby pointed at the cross-section of the SUV’s opened door. “All that is armor and the glass is obviously bulletproof . . . they probably all are.” He threw the second rock at the sedan, expecting the same ineffectual thunk he got from the first rock. This time, though, the sedan’s windshield blew up into a cobweb of broken glass.

  “Ooops.”

  I heard the mechanics shouting and without discussion, Digby and I swung off the branch and partially climbed and partially slid down the tree. We hit the ground running.

  TWENTY-ONE

  For a brief second, as we rounded the tree line, I thought we were going to get away. But then I saw two men in matching buzz cuts and suits standing near Austin’s mom’s car, all business and unspoken threats. Their differing heights were the only feature I could use to distinguish one from the other.

  The taller one said, “Would you two come with us, please?”

  “Hey, guys. We were goofing around and we seem to have broken a window. Sorry about that,” Digby said. “Kids these days, amiright?” He kept walking to the car. “I’d be happy to get my mom to mail you a check.”

  Taller Guy stepped in front of the driver’s-side door.

  “The boss said he wants to talk about your sister,” Shorter Guy said.

  “Is this an invitation or a demand?” Digby said.

  I took out my phone and after a quick round of calculations, chose to send an in-case-we-go-missing message to Sloane. True, we still hadn’t made up from the last fight we’d had at my house, but she was part of our unholy alliance and I knew that if things went wrong, she’d mobilize for Digby and me without needing a ton of explanations. Plus, her house was just down the hill. “I’ve let our friend know we’re here,” I said.

  “The boss just wants a chat,” Taller Guy said. “He even ordered you food.”

  When Digby and I didn’t move, Shorter Guy said, “You can keep your phones. Honestly, it’s okay.”

  Digby and I followed them on foot through the gate and up the long driveway to the main house. As we walked, Digby said, “Should I have left you behind so you could call the cops if I didn’t come back?”

  “I wasn’t going to let you go alone. You aren’t even thinking straight,” I said.

  “Not thinking straight?” Digby said. “Says who?”

  “If you were, you would never have let me come with you and you certainly wouldn’t have thrown that second rock,” I said.

  Digby tapped Taller Guy on the shoulder. “So, are we being kidnapped?” When he didn’t get an answer, Digby said, “Do we get to see a de Groot in the flesh?”

  “It’ll be just a few more minutes,” Taller Guy said.

  “Yeah, no spoilers. The boss likes to manage his appearances,” Shorter Guy said.

  “With a build-up like this, I’m going to be disappointed if he doesn’t come out high-kicking in sequins and feathers,” Digby said.

  Shorter Guy laughed, but Taller Guy looked at him hard until he stopped. Shorter Guy cleared his throat and said, “Anyway. It’ll be just a few more minutes.”

  They ushered us through the predictably grand main house done in what Sloane had called fake American castle style. We passed room upon stuffy room, including one with a dining table long enough to seat everyone I knew.

  Taller Guy led us into a renovated hallway entirely unlike the rest of the stone-and-woodwork mansion. The glossy white annex beyond was lit to convey cleanliness and hygiene. It smelled like disinfectant and there were no dust-gathering edges or corners anywhere. Even the lights were sunk smooth into the wall.

  “Like a hospital spaceship. I love it,” Digby said.

  We all went through into a sitting area with multiple doors leading off it.

  One of the doors slid open. “Come in, Mr. Digby.” The voice that wheezed out was faded at the edges but it was obvious that it had spent most of its life bossing people around.

  The room we entered was crowded with medical equipment and nursing staff. Everyone was in white, including the frail old man lying on a mechanized bed while a muscled orderly rubbed one of his withered legs. I tried not to stare at the pool of wrinkled skin gathered around his knees.

  “I was going to come out, you know. It’s just that your visit caught me by surprise,” the old man said. “I needed a little extra time getting pretty.”

  “Which one are you? Hans or Johann de Groot?” Digby said.

  “Ah. So you think you know things about my family . . .” de Groot said. “Well, that isn’t impossible to find out. Even with all the money we spend on staying invisible. You’ll have to work harder to dazzle me.” He tapped his chest. “I am Johann.”

  “Johann fought in the Pacific and injured his leg taking a bridge outside Manila.” Digby pointed at de Groot’s legs. “You don’t even have a scar.”

  It surprised me that Digby had known that and hadn’t told me. But when I saw the slightly sad look he always got when he was concentrating, I understood. Digby was here to fight this duel one-on-one.

  “You asked in order to see if I would lie. Now you know I’m a liar. So,” de Groot said. “Was that it? Or is there more to this parlor trick?”

  “As the younger brother, Hans, you only inherited the family fortune when Johann died in a freak climbing accident. He was the smart, good-looking one. You were the runt. Small but cunning . . . who wants that, right? But under you, your family went from run-of-the-mill old-money rich to being so rich the New York Times wrote a profile which you then got disappeared—how did you do that, by the way?” Digby said. “And from the way you loved saying, ‘I am Johann’”—Digby tapped his chest just like de Groot did—“I wouldn’t be shocked if you pushed him off that mountain yourself.”

  De Groot winced and closed his eyes. “My own mother said exactly that at my brother’s funeral. I remember how painful it was to hear.” His orderlies dressed him in a housecoat and lowered him into his motorized wheelchair.

  Meanwhile, Digby took a tour of de Groot’s room, reading labels on the vast collection of prescription bottles and medical equipment littered all around.

  “My lawyer said you visited his office yesterday,” de Groot said.

  “Did he also tell you he burned down a warehouse while we were in it?” Digby said.

  De Groot smiled. “He often withholds details he thinks I’d find upsetting. But I’m very glad you are all right. You and your girl Friday are by far the most interesting characters I have come across in this backwater Erewhon. You accomplished more last year than law enforcement here has in an age.” De Groot powered up his wheelchair and headed to the door. “I assume you’re hungry.” And then he motored away.

  We walked through the network of glassed-in walkways to the rhythmic hiss of the oxygen tank strapped to de Groot’s chair. It was a long way and if he intended to show us how vast his wealth was, it worked.

  After a while, I started to smell the food he’d promised. De Groot led us into a glassed-in conservatory where staff was organizing trays of food on a large buffet table. They finished up and by the time the three of us had arranged ourselves around the table, we were alone.

  “I knew your mother, Philip, in ways you do not. Hers is a great mind that ran circles around everyone else’s. When I met her, she was working on something she knew would change . . . well, everything. And because she realized how important it all was, she and her team gave up the paths scientific ambition normally takes and worked solely on that problem. No professorships, no publishing, no fawning from bitterly envious fellow scientists. It takes a rare moral courage to do that,” he said. “Which is why when they threatened to cut off her funding, I offered to fully fund her myself. No strings attached. But b
efore anything could be decided, your sister was . . . well, misfortune struck.”

  “You’re talking about her nanorobotics lab,” Digby said.

  “Yes . . .” De Groot said. “What has she told you? How much do you know?”

  “Why don’t you tell me what you know first,” Digby said.

  “Oh, I see. So in other words, you know nothing.” De Groot visibly unclenched and laughed. “That was an inferior bluff. You must do better if you want to play liar’s poker for real stakes.”

  “Why did you want her research?” Digby said. “For what? What else could you possibly need at this point?”

  “You mean, because I am old, what more could I need with worldly things? You’re right. I personally don’t need anything,” de Groot said. “But I am just one link in a long chain. Your American individualism might have problems grasping that.”

  “My American individualism?” Digby said. “You’re American.”

  “Oh, we are quite a bit older than America. Our ancestors were here long before there was an America, and there will be de Groots here long after,” de Groot said.

  “Long after what?” Digby looked delighted. “You must have the inside track. Have you already started negotiations with our future alien overlords?”

  De Groot laughed again. It was pretty obvious he’d already started checking out of the conversation.

  “I don’t get you. You’re doing this for future de Groots?” Digby said. “To leave them more money?”

  “Better than money,” de Groot said.

  “What?” Digby said. “More power?”

  “Better than power,” de Groot said. “You are not ready to have this conversation.”

  Digby stared at him hard and then he pushed away from the table. De Groot laughed harder when Digby took a big drink of water and helped me put my jacket back on.

  “Come now, we both know you aren’t leaving,” de Groot said. “What did I tell you about bluffing?”