The Final Step

by Ridley Pearson

  I gasped. Mother! I dropped the photo. It landed upside down.

  Given all the fresh air of the beach house, I found it strange that I couldn’t catch my breath. I grabbed hold of the back of the chair for balance, afraid I might faint. Inhaled. Counted to ten. Didn’t feel any better, my head still spinning.

  A picture’s worth a thousand words, I told myself. Photos can be faked. And this one felt so wrong. So staged. Photos don’t prove anything. That was Mother and Father. Ralph. It seemed likely Lois had taken the photo. Who else? Had she also left it in my backpack? Why would she do that?

  I wanted to tell myself that it didn’t mean anything. Except it didn’t look fake. It wasn’t a copy. It was stamped with a date that made perfect sense, while not making any sense at all.

  Mother hadn’t sneaked out of the house and abandoned us—as we’d been led to believe.

  Father had taken her someplace—the train, the airport? The date fit. Ralph had driven them. And now, only the person who’d shot the photo might have the answers I needed.

  It made no sense for Lois to do it this way. Why not show me the photo and explain things?

  So, if Lois hadn’t left it in my backpack, then who?

  Why me? Why now?

  Where had my backpack been? Who could have gotten into it?

  I threw up. It could have been the vinegar. Maybe bad fish. Definitely not the tartar sauce.

  My being sick had nothing to do with dinner at all.

  CHAPTER 28

  WITH MONEY IN HIS POCKET, JAMES SET HIS plan into motion. By paying out small amounts of cash to Thorndyke, Eisenower, and two clever girls, Stacey and Leith, he bought loyalty from a team willing to work with him. Both girls were seniors, and were seventeen. Important to James’s plan to install them as spies. Stacey was smart and good with people. Leith had curly blond hair, bright eyes, and bubbled with enthusiasm. She was the best writer in school. James hoped that besides spying she could help him plot his plans.

  Over the week following our trip to the Cape, James and his team spied on the observatory and the old estate where Hildebrandt kept an apartment. They watched from high up in trees where it would be difficult if not impossible for them to be seen.

  A minivan belonging to Sugar Maple Cleaners spent two hours in the driveway on Wednesday afternoon. That Friday, Stacey and Leith applied for part-time jobs with the cleaning agency.

  In the woods, well past the edge of campus, a hundred yards from the crumbling estate home, Thorndyke discovered a rusted-out, abandoned vehicle in a trash pit dug long ago. The pit also held an ancient washing machine and a clothes dryer, a great many paint cans—some with bullet holes—broken bottles, and an old toilet.

  The discovery gave James just what he’d been needing.

  At 10:45 p.m. Saturday, on the hill across from the school, there appeared a small flickering yellow light.

  Stacey reported seeing what looked like flames in the forest to her dorm mistress, Ms. Panchell, who relayed the message to the headmaster as well as to the proctor on duty.

  From a safe spot near the entrance to the observatory, James and Eisenower saw the glow of Thorndyke’s good work. Orange smoke rose from the garbage pit. The fire started small but grew rapidly. It did not, however, jump the rim and spread into the forest—an important part of James’s plan.

  The boys waited for someone inside the house to see the fire. All that mattered was panic. James was counting on it.

  He got what he wanted. Two men dragged a chain of garden hoses toward the fire. Hildebrandt and a driver left by car.

  James found Hildebrandt’s departure curious. There was no danger to him or the house, so the only reason James could think of for the man to leave was his not wanting to have to talk to firemen and police if it came down to that. Maybe that was because of his celebrity. His was a face easily recognized, having been in newspapers for years. Maybe it was something else. No matter what, James found it interesting.

  With all four men accounted for, James and Eisenower unlocked and slipped through the door into the observatory and soon were through the tunnel and into the residence. Under James’s direction, he and Eisenower carefully photographed the study.

  On their way back out, James noticed an open door in the basement, just before the tunnel. He stopped and leaned into the room. “Check it out.”

  Eisenower followed. “It looks like . . . a jail cell.”

  James shot a flurry of photos, his flash going off because of the lack of light.

  “Let’s book it,” Eisenower said encouragingly. “This is freaking me out.”

  “Shh!” James continued taking photos. “This is exactly what we’re looking for.”

  “It is?”

  “You idiot. Planning is the first step toward victory.”

  “You read that on a cereal box?” Eisenower said.

  “State of Play video game. Same thing.”

  The boys shared a nervous laugh.

  James led the way down the long tunnel connecting to the observatory. He opened the door a crack and the two boys entered the cavernous space, the telescope looking like a powerful weapon aimed at the ceiling.

  The sound of a key rattled the door that led outside.

  James froze. He directed Eisenower toward the telescope machinery while James headed to the wall of computers. For such a big space, there were few hiding places. Eisenower ducked beneath the metal-grate stairs leading up to the telescope, pushing himself into the shadow of mechanicals. James pulled out a rolling chair, squeezed himself into the leg area beneath the counter, and drew the chair close. Breathing hard from running down the tunnel, he fought to calm his breath.

  The door opened, admitting the night sounds of the forest along with the slapping of shoes against the concrete floor. James watched a pair of black shoes and cuffed trousers hurry past, the shoelaces flapping like wings. Now the knees and the man’s waist, and finally the man himself.

  He pivoted swiftly in James’s direction, as if sensing or hearing him. James held his breath, his heart beating so strongly in his chest that perhaps it could be heard. If the man’s eyes trained slightly lower he would easily see James coiled beneath the countertop. The man’s head and shoulders disappeared: he was moving toward James.

  If the guy got close enough and moved the chair in he’d squish James, hurting him to where James would be defenseless. That left two choices: hope the guy didn’t see him, or attack first before the guy got the upper hand. James elected to attack, but his muscles refused. Paralyzed with fear, no matter what his intentions, James’s body would not cooperate. He was stuck in place.

  The man walked right up to the chair and stopped. James could have tied the guy’s shoes together. He heard something metal twang. A thud. The man cursed. He hurried toward the door and, as his arm came into view, was seen holding a fire extinguisher. James believed the worst was over until the guy abruptly stopped and ran toward Eisenower. He put on the brakes and reached for a second fire extinguisher, also strapped to the wall for emergencies. The guy’s hand was less than a foot from Eisenower’s unruly hair. With a fire extinguisher in either hand, the guy made for the door. A moment later the door thumped shut.

  “Sweet cheddar cheese!” said Eisenower. “I thought the dude was going to give me a shampoo.”

  “Stay where you are. We give him two minutes and then we’re out of here.”

  They escaped through the forest at an impossibly slow speed that minimized any noise. They maintained a view of the fire and the two men working there for as long as possible.

  Spraying water on the oil fire had only made it worse. The belching of the fire extinguishers confirmed a second effort. This, as the whine of a distant fire truck pierced the air. The siren pushed the men to work faster. When at last the fire was squelched, Hildebrandt’s men headed off into the woods, away from where James and Eisenower were hunkered down.

  Once again, the action surprised James. Why were Hildebrandt and his men so de
termined to keep a low profile? What were they hiding from?

  CHAPTER 29

  “DID YOU SEE IT?” LEXIE SAID, BURSTING INTO my dorm room barefoot, in pajama bottoms and a tube top. I had on a pair of sport shorts and a Sam Smith T-shirt.

  “The fire? No. But I heard!” I said. I didn’t want to sound uninformed. It was school, after all.

  “The fire? No! It was on the news. Just now.”

  I was sleepy and a beat behind everything she was saying. “Lexie, I . . .”

  “Your laptop.” Lexie barged past me, found my laptop on my bed, and handed it to me to unlock the password. I felt like a robot as I did exactly as she asked. I sat down next to her.

  “Here. It’s posted all over the place.”

  AppShot, my favorite social media app, showed a photo of police cars on a cobblestone street lit by mock gas lamps. A reporter’s face filled most of the frame, along with the logo of a Boston TV news program. The cobblestones and the homes themselves told me it had to be Beacon Hill and therefore somewhere near where I lived.

  The message read:

  POLICE RESPOND TO A STRING OF HOME INVASIONS. AT LEAST ONE INJURED.

  “Lexie?”

  “Here,” she said, pointing to the extreme edge of the photo. Had my mind wanted to block it out? Was I unwilling to see what was right there? How had a friend of my brother’s spotted what I missed?

  “That’s our house,” I said, my voice in a kind of painful moan.

  CHAPTER 30

  THE PEOPLE WHO SURPRISE YOU THE MOST often become your best friends. Boarding the school shuttle that would take me into Putnam, where I could board a bus to Boston, I noticed Lexie in the next-to-last row.

  “Lexie?” I said, sitting down beside her.

  “I’m coming with you.” She hesitated. “I’m your guest.”

  “Is James coming?” I asked, believing there had to be a connection.

  “I have no idea what James is up to. I haven’t spoken to him.”

  “But . . . how did you know I was even going?” I asked.

  “I was with you when you tried calling Lois, remember?” Lexie looked out the window, willing the bus to get rolling. “I’m not a moron. Your house was broken into. Your guardian, who’s more like an aunt, who’s your only real family besides James, isn’t answering her phone. . . . If it were me . . . ,” she said.

  I put my hand on her knee. It was warm. “Thank you,” I said.

  “No problem.”

  Once on the bus to Boston, I told her that I’d asked James to come with me and that he’d declined. “He said the photo didn’t prove anything, that police were all over the street. I pointed out our door was open. The policeman’s legs are seen inside our front door. He went all James on me.”

  “He has stuff going on,” Lexie said apologetically.

  “Such as?” When she didn’t answer, I said, “This is Lois we’re talking about.”

  “Understood.”

  “James is all about James,” I said.

  “He’s upset about Mr. Lowry. Your dad. Ralph. Don’t be too hard on him.”

  “It’s Lois. Why hasn’t she called me back? She would have called me back by now.”

  “No one was killed, Moria. All the news reports said the same thing. Break-ins. Robbery.”

  “Assault. There was an assault,” I said. “Given our luck lately . . .”

  “Yeah, I get it. But James—”

  “Is only interested in what interests him,” I said. “Mr. Mystery. Mr. Conspiracy. If he’d stop for one minute and think about someone else . . .”

  “I think he’s worried about you as much as he is about himself,” she said.

  “Me?”

  “The circle that protects you and James is collapsing, Moria. You can see that, right? James sees that. James is terrified. Your family is wealthy. Sharks come after money like that when it’s left to children.”

  “You think someone’s after our money?” It hadn’t occurred to me.

  She didn’t answer. She found the mile markers outside the window more interesting.

  I didn’t dare tell her about the Scowerers and the change in James since his initiation. How he thought he was so cool, how he’d brought a bunch of loser boys into his inner circle so he could play Voldemort. I wanted to blurt it all out. Instead I watched the back of the head of the person in front of me. Black and oily and a skin condition on his neck.

  I searched the seat pocket in front of me. Turned out, buses don’t have vomit bags.

  CHAPTER 31

  LOIS OPENED THE FRONT DOOR AS I WAS TURNING the key. Forgetting my own purpose there, I gasped and dropped my backpack. Despite her attempt to hide it with makeup, the left side of her face was swollen and bruised.

  The victim of the assault mentioned on the news had been Lois.

  I threw myself into her arms, tears gushing. She murmured comforting words, welcomed Lexie, and tried to move to shut the door as I refused to let go.

  Lois warmed some tomato soup and put out a plate of crackers and cheese. Lexie and I ate as we listened to Lois recount the break-in.

  “It happened so quickly,” she began. “I heard something downstairs, here,” she said, pointing to the damaged back door. “I was coming downstairs. I turned at the bottom, and that was it. Someone struck me. They sprayed my eyes. Awful stuff! I’ll remember that for a long time! Get a can for myself! I don’t know how long they were in the house. I must have passed out when he hit me. The doctor said it could be shock. Police, too. Maybe I’ll remember. But I haven’t so far.”

  Lexie and I said how terrible that sounded, how we both were so glad it wasn’t worse. Lexie asked if he took anything.

  “The silver, the family’s good silver. I feel so badly about that, dear,” she said to me. “The police say they were looking for jewelry as well, up in your father’s bedroom. But your mother’s belongings . . . Well, they’re not kept in the house any longer.”

  Those words—“kept in the house”—brought me back to what my French teacher called our “raison d’etre.” The purpose of a person’s existence, or in my case: Father’s treasure.

  The treasure I’d hidden on James’s orders. Once again, my brother proved himself brilliant, though in a somewhat criminal way, I suppose.

  Having Lexie with me made things all the more complicated. I couldn’t show her any of the stash and I couldn’t be rude and tell her to stay in the room while I went and checked if it was still where I’d hidden it. I decided instead to take a long bathroom break in the middle of the night.

  Tiptoeing down the hall toward the upstairs library, I was reminded of all the chases between James and me in our childhood. We’d spent so many hours either playing hide-and-seek or trying to kill each other for stealing something.

  The hair on the back of my neck stood up, stopping me. Call it intuition or a sixth sense, everyone has a panic button of some kind—a flash of heat, a knot in the stomach, a stab of headache, sweaty palms, goose bumps, dry mouth. Mine was the little feathery hairs back there above the bump in my spine. When they stood up like a cat’s, my feet stopped, my heart raced. I went bug-eyed.

  I spun around, expecting to find Lexie following me and already making up an excuse. “I couldn’t sleep, so I was going to get a book.” But no one was there.

  Spun around again.

  Was I imagining a smell lingering? Perfume? Cologne? Some kind of food?

  If the hairs on the back of my neck were a reaction to stage one of self-preservation, if my feet refusing to move was stage two, then my complete system shutdown was probably somewhere around stage six. I didn’t have time or the mental capacity to figure out the stages in between. I went straight from stage two to “shutdown mode.” Brain freeze. Brain fart. System overload. Meltdown.

  A ghost. Right there in front of me.

  I might as well have been punched in the throat. Not being able to breathe was bad enough. But now I had an air bubble the size of a grapefruit where my vo
ice box should have been.

  My knees went spongy. Somehow, all the lights in the house went dark at the same instant. I blacked out.

  CHAPTER 32

  THE DEAD DID NOT EXIST. THERE WERE NO SUCH things as ghosts. I knew all that. I was not soft in the head. I didn’t believe in pixie dust.

  When I awoke, I was eye level to the second-floor hallway’s two-hundred-year-old wide plank flooring. The lights were back on. No Ralph, thank goodness.

  A pair of bare feet with dark purple nails stood before me, looking about as big as two trees.

  “Mo?”

  Lexie’s voice. Lexie’s ankles. For a moment, I could have sworn . . . What a relief. Not a ghost after all.

  “Hum-goohg-le,” I said. (Rough translation.) My voice box, now the size of an average avocado, allowed something to escape.

  “You fainted,” Lexie said.

  “Did I?”

  “Were you sleepwalking?”

  “Was I?” Dreaming? I wondered.

  She kneeled and felt my head. I winced.

  “That’s quite a lump. Should I get Lois?”

  “No! I’m fine.” I sat up. The room spun. Lexie turned upside down. A moment later things went vertical again. I took a deep breath. Felt my head. I’d had worse knots than that.

  “What happened?” Lexie asked.

  “I . . . It was . . .” I reached out. Lexie thought I was reaching for her. She took my arm and helped me to my feet. In fact, I’d been trying to see, trying to explain to myself why I would have imagined Ralph standing there in the hallway. What had triggered such a memory? Was it important I figure out why I had such a vision?

  “Library,” I squeaked out.

  She led me down the hall, now at my side, our arms locked.

  “You scared the wits out of me,” she said.

  “I . . . Do you believe in ghosts?”

  “Me? No! You saw a ghost?”

  “In here,” I said, directing her into the library. I didn’t care if I showed her some of our secrets. I needed help. I needed to know if I was seeing what I thought I was seeing. “Shut the door, please, before turning on the lights.”