Katherine crosses her arms and stares me down. “I must say I’m surprised. Stephen was right about you all along.” She circles around me, eyeing me with disdain, and I feel like that dirty kindergartner all over again. “You are like him. I told him you’d be a problem, but he was convinced you’d look out for yourself in the end.”
The words sting like venom. I’m not like Kane. We had similar childhoods, but I am not like him.
“I need to make some calls,” she says. “We have an important meeting in the morning, you know. I trust that you heard what Stephen said. Attempting to escape through a window or door guarantees your return to jail. This time, without our help.”
I nod.
“I would stay and babysit you, but there’s some kind of rodent infestation in this part of the house.” She points to the fireplace. “I think something’s got a nest in there. I heard a strange squeaking earlier.”
Squeaking from the fireplace? I try to keep a poker face.
“You might be used to living in that kind of squalor with your background,” she says, “but it makes me ill just thinking about it.”
After Katherine takes her briefcase and heads upstairs, I rush to the fireplace. I push on the interior wall and it moves slightly.
When I hear her talking on the phone, I shove the sidewall hard, shift the fireplace over, and clamber through. Just as quickly, I close it and latch the bottom hinges. I’m out of breath, wheezing from exhilaration and fear.
I have ten hours to find that TPD.
I descend the rungs and run all the way to the secret room beneath the statue.
The light flashes on and Mr. Singer’s poem appears like a ghost on the wall. When I step forward, my foot hits something that rolls away, rattling. I jump back. The can of spray paint I tossed down the stairs a few nights ago comes to a stop inches from the pile of papers we stashed here.
I pick up the can, and it reminds me of the heart graffiti in the tunnel. I can still picture Laney tearing up over that. I get it now—it was her parent’s initials in that heart. Her dad, who was murdered, and her mom, who she’ll never know now. My chest tightens when I think of Laney hurting and alone.
I guess Kollin was right. I do love Delaney Shanahan. If only I could have told her that when I said goodbye. If
I don’t find that TPD, her last memory of me will be how I abandoned her.
With a shaky hand, I lift the can and spray-paint a heart on the wall. Inside it, I write:
TM
LOVES
DS
A voice emerges from the stairwell. “Like hell we’re done.”
My hand flies to my chest and I drop the can. My breath hitches until I see who’s standing at the stairs.
“Laney, what are you doing here? … And did you just swear?”
“I came looking for you, Michaels.” Laney leans against the doorframe. “I knew you’d never bail on the Sevens. Or me. You’re a lot of things, but you never let your friends down. I also know how stubborn you are. You’d never let Kane get away with this.”
“How’d you know I’d be here?”
She steps down off the last step. “I didn’t. I knew you left with Kane, so I came to spy on him to make sure you were okay.”
“So you’re the one who unlatched the fireplace door?”
Her head tilts. “No. I just got here. Was it open? Is that how you escaped?”
I nod.
She straightens up. “Oh man, Kane’s gonna lose it when he sees you’re gone.” She rubs her neck. “I’m scared, Talan. We’re almost out of time. What if we don’t find that TPD?”
“I’ll find it. You need to get home. Your parents already hate me. They don’t need any more headaches.”
She moves closer. “They don’t hate you. They didn’t buy the whole Talan is a villain act either. But they couldn’t figure out why you had the skull in your vent and what you were doing putting spray paint in Jake and Marcus’ bags. I just wish we could tell them.”
“You need to get back.”
“Forget it. We’re a team. I told them I’d explain everything tomorrow night. I figure we’ll have our answer either way by then.”
“And they let you go?”
“Well … not exactly.” She gnaws her thumbnail. “I left them a note.”
“You what?”
“I reminded them how they told me I had to trust them when I asked them about my mom. Now they have to trust me. I wrote that I’d be away overnight and warned them that if they called the police or told anyone I was gone, they’d be putting me in danger.”
“So basically, if we make it through this, your father’s gonna kill me anyhow?”
She laughs, and I swear I feel a thousand times better than I have all week. She steps toward Mr. Singer’s poem taped to the wall. “Emily explained how you figured out that this is our last clue.”
“Yeah, but I still haven’t been able to solve it. I’ve read it a thousand times. Something’s not right about it, but I can’t figure out what.”
Laney turns completely around and says, “Well, it was genius, Tal.” She pauses, then jumps up and kisses me.
“Wow,” I say. “A ‘good job’ would have been enough.”
“No it wouldn’t.” She cranes her neck to the side and points to the wall behind me. “Nice heart.”
I’m mute. I don’t want say something that’ll wreck the smile on her lips.
She stares straight into my eyes. “It’s mutual.”
“But that night … why didn’t you say anything when I confessed how I felt?”
She glides her hands to my shoulders. “I was scared. You know what Mom said. If she caught us, you’d get sent away. After you finally opened up and told me how afraid you were of that, how could I risk hurting you? I didn’t know what to do. I took a vow of sacrifice—how could I risk making you homeless just because I liked you? I thought you understood that. I thought that was why you said you’d wait.”
“So you do like me?”
“You figured out all those complicated clues and missed something so obvious? I guess that makes me Sherlock after all.”
She blushes and gets all quiet. I know she wants me to kiss her but I’m suddenly tweaking with nerves. I’ve done this a hundred times, but they all just seem like practice for this one girl.
While I’m overthinking it, she grabs my collar and pulls me down for a kiss. Our noses bump. We turn our heads the same way and they bump again.
She rubs my cheek with her thumb. “Nothing’s easy for us, is it?”
“No, but you know what they taught us,” I whisper. “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”
She laughs, and we slide right into this amazing kiss. My arms bundle her close and she tightens her hug around my neck. I’m caught up in all of it, until Laney eventually pulls back so we can catch our breath.
“Wow,” she says.
I lean my forehead against hers. “I guarantee I won’t forget that kiss.”
She hugs me and whispers in my ear, “Maybe we better focus on the clue.”
I nod, but I’m not ready to let go. I rest my chin on her shoulder.
She says softly, “Talan? What happens to us if we don’t find that TPD? What’s going to happen to you?”
I stare over her shoulder at the poem that’s been stuck in my brain lately like an annoying song I can’t shake. Laney plants a kiss on my neck. The poem goes fuzzy in my brain.
I refocus, but Laney kisses me again, just below my ear.
“Well, call me Sherlock,” I say.
“What?” she mumbles, kissing me a third time.
“Call me Sherlock,” I say slower.
It figures that when I finally hook up with Delaney Shanahan, I have to stop in the middle of it. I muster enough strength to nudge her back and look her in the eyes. “I figured it out, Delaney. I know what’s different in the poem.”
My smile is too much to contain; it courses through me. I nod to the clue behin
d her. “It’s the question.”
She drops her arms and spins around. Her gaze hopscotches over the paper:
“ A prudent question is one half of wisdom.”
Dwell on this for your last test,
When you’re on your own, and all alone,
Beginning your final quest.
Knowledge is gained through fact compilation;
But wisdom is born in its simplification.
Columns and half clues to find and combine.
Words that are letters read between the lines.
Use all you’ve learned, and you’ll solve the last clue.
Your founder was wise
In deed,
Are you?
She shrugs. “You mean ‘A prudent question is one half of wisdom?’”
“No. The question.”
“What question?”
I walk around her and point to the last two lines. “The question at the end. We’ve seen it in so many of the clues, we sort of ignore it now. The part where Singer wrote Your founder was wise in deed, are you? Look how he spelled it. It’s in deed. Two words. Not indeed, like all the other times. That’s our clue. Singer was saying there’s wisdom in the Deed of Trust.”
Laney stares at the poem. “Huh … Your founder was wise in deed, are you?” There’s a gleam in her eyes. “Wait a minute.”
Her back stiffens and her eyes rise to the top of the poem. “Talan, that’s the prudent question Mr. Singer was talking about all along! That’s why he repeated it so many times. Your founder was wise in deed, are you? is the question that’s ‘one half of wisdom.’ The Deed of Trust is a half clue. Which can only mean that—”
“We apply the clues we’ve learned to the deed to find the TPD.”
Laney points to the poem on the wall. “Singer even told us which clues to use,” she says. “Columns and half clues, words that are messages, and reading between the lines.”
I drop to my knees and rummage through the papers on the floor, pulling out the deed we stole from Boyle’s house the night of the justice test. “I told LeBeau we’d need this.”
The mention of his name extinguishes the grin from Laney’s face.
“They’re bringing him out of his coma in the morning.” Her eyes glisten. “I don’t know if you heard that. By tomorrow afternoon, we’ll know if he’s going to be okay.”
Guilt burns like poison in my gut. “Maybe you should be home tomorrow morning, waiting for word with your parents.”
“No.” Her head swings slow from side to side. “This is where Kollin would want me to be.”
“We need to find that TPD then. It’d the best get-well present we could give him.” I stand and flatten the deed against the wall next to Mr. Singer’s poem. “Let’s apply those clues to the deed and see what we get.”
She stands next to me and reviews the poem. “Columns and half-clues taught us to read the first letter going down for a message. Words that are letters read between the lines must mean we take every other letter going down, and then read them like words, like we did with the map key.”
Running her finger down the first page of the deed, Laney reads every other letter out loud. “D T P D S N D M T 2 M.”
I repeat it slower and sound out the obvious words: “The TPD is in the empty two M … Two M … Two M?”
“The empty tomb!” Laney screams, “The TPD is in the empty tomb!” She’s jumping up and down like she just found the thing.
It almost kills me to say, “We’re in the empty tomb, Lane. We all searched this whole place when we were looking for the tunnel entrance. Boyle said he searched too. I think someone would have found it by now if it was here. We’re right back where we started.”
Just the same, we go up the stairs and probe every inch of the interior of the casket all over again. After that, we inspect every section of the walls and stairs and examine every corner of the secret room beneath it. It’s been hours, and we’ve got nothing but the growing fear that time is running out.
Every second that passes reminds me that by this time tomorrow, I’ll be homeless again. Or jailed. Or worse, if Kane finds me.
Laney falls back against the wall and slides down to the floor, landing on the pile of velvet cloaks.
I huddle next to her and wrap an arm around her slumped shoulders. “Maybe if it we sit quiet for a while and think,” I say. But really, I just want to hold her as much as I can before I have to leave Singer forever.
I shudder at the thought, and Laney pulls up a loose cloak and wraps it around my shoulders. It takes me back to that time when we were little—the night I ran away in the storm, when she wrapped her coat around me.
After so many stressful days and sleepless nights, I’m crashing physically and mentally. My head falls back to the wall and my eyes flutter closed. I space out for a moment, and my mind returns to that stormy night in the cemetery.
My voice is trapped in my throat. My feet won’t move. A burst of lightning close behind me sends me flying forward into the swampy soil. The air is still crackling when I push myself up on shaky arms and see the most terrifying sight of all. An enormous winged statue towers above me, pointing at a grave. Is she saying it’s for me?
My eyes flash open and I hop up so fast, I knock Laney over. “We aren’t going to find the TPD here!” I’m doing a touchdown dance while Laney stares up at me with worried, drowsy eyes. I fall to my knees in front of her and cup her face in my hands. “We aren’t going to find it here because this isn’t the empty tomb. This is the empty statue.”
She squints her eyes like I need therapy.
“Oh, my little Watson,” I tell her. “Don’t you get it? The TPD is in the empty tomb. The original grave where Mary was buried, before her body was moved here.” I say it slow so it sinks in fast: “William Singer hid the TPD in Mary’s original grave!”
Now Laney’s doing her own version of a touchdown celebration. I grab her by the hand and pull her to the stairs. “Let’s go. Now!”
“Wait,” she says. “We have to be careful. Kane probably has people looking everywhere for you. Maybe I should go by myself.”
“No way. We’re a team.”
She tosses me a cape. “Then put this on. It’ll give us some cover. Maybe it’ll bring a little luck too.”
“Oh yeah, ’cause it worked so well for the last group of Sevens.”
“Shut up, Michaels. Just do it. We’ve got to hurry.”
She slides into her cape, pulling the hood over her head. I copy her and we tiptoe up the stairs. Everything’s pitch black and silent beyond the peephole. We sneak out of the statue and crack open the mausoleum door.
“It’s clear,” she whispers.
We creep through the trees toward the winged angel statue that marks Mary Singer’s original grave, scanning the cemetery for Security. We’re alone. For now.
The angel stands atop a square pedestal with one arm outstretched and the other pressed against her heart. Laney reaches the monument and frisks the stone like airport security.
“No, Laney.” I’m on some kind of roll, because I know this one too. “The poem said ‘if you use all you’ve learned, you can solve this last clue.’ Think about it. We found the secret door in the mausoleum by following where the angel’s hands were pointing. If we ‘use what we learned,’ then we do the same thing here. Follow the angel’s fingers to where she’s pointing.”
“You are so freaking smart.” Her words pump me like a pre-game pep talk.
Laney kneels in front of the statue and follows an imaginary line from the statue’s pointer finger to a section of the base below it. Digging her nails into the dirt, she feels along the side of the marble.
Her eyes widen inside her velvet hood, and I know she’s found something. She stretches and wiggles and grunts until finally … click.
The interior section of the pedestal drops down instantly.
I reach my hand inside and it’s packed with cold, heavy, rectangular bars. I can’t tell what they
are in the dark. I lift one out and hand it to Laney. “What is this? There’s a ton of them in here.”
She studies it under the light of the quarter moon. “I think it’s … oh my God, it’s gold!” She hands it back to me quick, like she’s afraid to touch it.
I roll it around in my hands while it sinks in. There must be millions of dollars of gold here. More money than I could ever spend. With just a few of these, I’d be set next year. I’d be set forever. I bet Laney would even let me take one or two.
But I don’t ask. Because it’s not important anymore.
“I just realized something,” I tell her. “You know the legend about how Mr. Singer would come to the cemetery every night and visit Mary’s grave?”
She nods.
I store the bar back inside. “He was probably bringing these, little by little, to hide. The cemetery was probably off limits back then, too. No one would have known.”
I reach my hand deeper and knock over a large, square object. I shimmy it out and show Laney. “It’s a security box.”
“You open it,” she says, cuddling up to my side. “I’m too nervous.”
I tug the lid up and there it is—the TPD. Or, as the document is titled, Addendum to the Singer School Deed of Trust: Assignment of Trust Protectors. I unfold it in all its confusing glory. I was never a fan of reading, but it reads like legal hieroglyphics.
Laney’s eyes jump from the document to me. Her grin peeks out from beneath her hood. “We did it,” she whispers.
“We haven’t done anything unless we can present this at the board meeting at 8:00 a.m.”
A light flashes in the distance. “Talan, there’s a car coming!” Laney whispers.
She faceplants on her stomach, and I drop down next to her. We lay low in our cloaks as Security slowly drives down Rucker Road. After they pass, Laney pokes at the button to close the pedestal door. We stand just as headlights reappear, forcing us to dash for the mausoleum. I’m squeezing the security box so tight that it’s digging into my ribs, even through the cloak.
We rush inside the mausoleum and jab the button on the side of the granite casket. The door takes forever to open. We slide in and shut it just as voices appear.
Looking out the slit, I see two security guards enter and search the room with flashlights. “I could have sworn I saw someone run in here.”
Secret of the Sevens Page 26