Kensy & Max: Freefall

by Jacqueline Harvey

  Max felt a wave of relief and Kensy did too.

  ‘Well, at least you know your grandmother –’ Curtis began, but Max cut him off.

  ‘Got to ride the carousel,’ Max said, pressing a finger to his lips.

  Curtis frowned and wondered why they weren’t telling Song. But it wasn’t up to him to say anything.

  ‘Did something happen?’ Song asked, glancing around.

  ‘No,’ Kensy snapped. ‘We were worried about Granny, that’s all.’

  ‘Your grandmother is fine. Perhaps we should find a taxi,’ the man suggested.

  The children all agreed. They needed to be alone so they could talk more about what had just happened . . . and the twins couldn’t shake the feeling that Song’s recent weird behaviour was somehow involved.

  Cordelia Spencer sat in the back of the town car stopped in traffic. There had been no time to tell the children. She’d searched for Song, but the man had strangely disappeared and she couldn’t get him on the phone either, so had left a message. She tried Max then Kensy too, but neither of them had picked up. Honestly she was getting far too old for all this. Perhaps she would hand over the reins sooner than she’d originally intended.

  ‘Excuse me,’ the woman said as she pressed the intercom button. ‘It would be much faster to take the FDR at this time of day.’

  ‘Certainly, ma’am,’ a voice replied. There was something vaguely familiar about it. Cordelia pondered for a moment then froze. She grabbed her handbag and waited for the car to pull up at the next intersection then reached for the door handle. It was locked.

  ‘We’re not there yet, Dame Spencer,’ the voice came through the speaker. ‘But soon. Very soon.’

  Her mind was racing. This was not how she had intended for things to play out at all.

  The children piled in across the back seat of the taxi, still rattled from their encounter with the mysterious stranger.

  ‘Where are we off to now?’ Song asked cheerily.

  Without any hesitation, the three rear passengers replied. ‘Home.’

  Song’d hoped they might say that. He was tired and had a lot of things on his mind. And now he had to conjure something for dinner too. ‘What about we take The Bowery up to Park Avenue and at least then you can get a feel for downtown?’

  But the children didn’t answer. They were all lost in their own thoughts. Max stared out the window at the passing parade of people, Curtis’s eyes raised to the skyscrapers and Kensy looking straight ahead, flicking a piece of salami that was caught in her back teeth with her tongue and thinking she’d have to get some floss as soon as they got home.

  The driver nodded. ‘Yeah sure,’ he said in a thick Jersey accent. ‘First street in New York, you know, The Bowery. Worst street in the city for years too – Skid Row. Every day there were robberies and murders and you name it. If it was bad, it happened down here.’

  ‘Yes, thank you for your commentary, but perhaps the children would rather just look out the window,’ Song said.

  ‘No, I like to hear the stories,’ Kensy said, coming out of her daydream. She was thinking they were a good distraction from the gut-churning realisation that even here in New York someone was trying to kill them.

  ‘Used to be where all the homeless people lived. Lots of ’em still do. Not a place I recommend you take the kids at night-time – or any time for that matter,’ the man continued.

  ‘Is this New York’s Chinatown?’ Max asked, having noticed a run of restaurants bearing Chinese characters on their signage and lanterns hanging outside.

  ‘One of them,’ the driver replied. ‘New York has nine Chinatown neighbourhoods, but this is the oldest. Food here is amazing. Mrs Lim, she owns that restaurant over there, makes the best dumplings in the world.’

  ‘Oh no, I think you’ll find that Song has that honour,’ Curtis said. ‘His soup dumplings are like nothing you’ve ever tasted.’

  ‘If you ask me, I don’t think so,’ the man said.

  Song turned and looked at him. ‘Well, nobody actually asked you.’

  A terse silence descended over the car for the rest of the journey.

  When they reached the corner of East 63rd Street, Song asked the man to pull over. He paid while the others got out.

  ‘Why didn’t you get him to take us all the way?’ Kensy grumbled, realising that during their earlier drama she had pulled a muscle in her leg and it was now a bit sore.

  ‘Because he would have had to go around the block – 63rd is one way remember,’ Max said. He’d been distracting himself with the challenge of saying the cross streets in his head before they arrived at each one – though it wasn’t especially tricky given the city’s grid pattern and logical nomenclature.

  The twins walked ahead of Song and Curtis.

  ‘So who was that guy?’ Kensy asked.

  Max pulled out the licence. ‘His name is Nick Thomas.’ The man in the picture matched their guy – with a mop of dark curls and a droopy left eyelid. ‘He’s thirty-nine years old and he lives in Apartment 7C, 1629 Lexington Avenue, East Harlem.’

  ‘What does he want with us?’ Kensy asked her brother.

  Max shrugged. ‘It’s weird, don’t you think? If he’d hoped to hurt us, it’s not exactly difficult to get a gun here.’

  ‘Maybe he just wanted to scare us,’ Kensy said. ‘I’m pretty sure that was Dash Chalmers in the park – and if it wasn’t, then he has a twin.’

  Max bit his lip. ‘Anything’s possible. Remember Granny said this was a great place to hide in plain sight and maybe he’s found out that Tinsley is here. And what was with Song missing in action yet again? I think you’re right that we need to set him up and test his loyalty – otherwise we’ll be forever wondering and I hate that.’

  ‘Great holiday,’ Kensy said. ‘I almost wish we’d stayed in England – except that someone there was trying to kill us too. I’m beginning to think we’ll never be able to stop looking over our shoulders.’

  Max nodded. ‘There must be access somewhere in the house to the Pharos mainframe, seeing as though we’re locked out via our laptops for the summer. We need to run the photos and the licence through the database and see if anything more comes up about Nick Thomas,’ Max said, quickly diving left as a lady walking a Great Dane ploughed straight between them.

  ‘Song will know,’ Kensy said.

  The boy looked over at her. ‘No. I think I’d like to do some investigations without Song’s help.’

  Kensy frowned. ‘If you say so. Though it does make me sad to think we can’t trust anyone at the moment, not even him.’

  Tessa was almost home. It felt as if she’d walked half the city to no avail and now her toes were throbbing, jammed into a pair of sneakers that were at least a half size too small. She was about to head inside the building when she looked up.

  ‘Are you kidding me?’ she gasped. Walking towards her were the kids she’d seen on the television that morning and the older guy too. She dropped her eyes as they strode past and then she waited until they were half a block away, turned and followed, doing her best to blend into the streetscape. She walked beside a man with a wiry dog, patting it every now and then as if it were her own and then when he left, she latched onto a family and pretended she belonged to them as well. It wasn’t hard to be invisible in this city of eight million people.

  They stopped outside a townhouse – the prettiest one in the street – the one she’d walked past a thousand times and wondered who was lucky enough to live there. The man opened the wrought-iron gate and the four of them trotted down the path and inside the front door, where no doubt there were baked goods in the kitchen and fancy-smelling potions for all the bubble baths they could take. It was the sort of home people killed for.

  The girl couldn’t believe her luck. She was here and now all Tessa had to do was wait.

  ‘You do know that I’ll be missed,’ Cordelia said to her captor. ‘You can’t just kidnap the head of one of the world’s largest media compani
es and expect to get away with it.’

  ‘Really? I think you’re wrong about that,’ he replied. ‘And besides, you’re going to let someone know that you’ve had to rush away on urgent business. That gives us at least a day or so to sort out this predicament I find myself in.’

  Cordelia was sitting on a narrow single bed, staring through a glass window into a hallway where the man was pacing up and down. She had no idea where she was, although it reminded her of a hospital or a sanatorium with the thick metal door and long viewing pane. Cordelia had fallen into a deep sleep in the back of the car seconds after a fine mist penetrated the rear compartment of the vehicle. She’d woken up here, her head thick as if it were stuffed with giant wads of cotton wool.

  He’d taken a while to come, but when he did he was unmistakable. The gorgeous little boy who’d become a very handsome and charming man. Except that somewhere along the way a monster had grown within. ‘I’m here on holiday with the children. They’ll ask questions,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, they’re nosy little creatures, your grandchildren – the ones no one knew about because Anna and Edward and what’s that cousin’s name, Fitz, were all dead. I have to say that pleased me no end – really took the pressure off when it came to Hector and Marisol. Such an odd coincidence that they were Anna’s parents – I didn’t realise until it was in the paper after the deed was done.’

  ‘What happened to you?’ Cordelia said as the man peered at her.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean, Aunt Cordy,’ he said. ‘I’m fine. I just need your help to make everything right again. You see, I think you know where my wife is and I’d rather like to find her and my children and go back to Sydney. Mum and Dad will start to worry if we stay on permanent sabbatical and I know the last thing you’d want is for them to come to any harm. You and Mum have always been so close. Isn’t she the sister you never had? I had a sister, but she died. It was all rather sad actually. She didn’t need to – if only she’d been able to keep her big mouth shut.’

  Cordelia felt her stomach twist. Surely he wouldn’t hurt his own parents, but then again, he’d just confessed to having a hand in Abigail’s death. The man was capable of anything.

  ‘What do you want from me, Dash?’ Cordelia asked.

  ‘My life back. The way it was. I know you can do it. There’s been no big fanfare about the Clements returning from the dead. I fancy you’ve kept that a secret for some reason – probably a bit much after Anna and Edward’s miraculous homecoming. And just so you know I have every law enforcement agency on my payroll; if you plan to blow things open, I’ll blow things up. It’s simple really. You give me my family, and I’ll let you return to yours. If you don’t, well, you know what can happen,’ the man said.

  Cordelia swallowed hard. She certainly did.

  ‘All right, Dash. I’ll do whatever you want, but you must remember that Tinsley knows everything. I can’t imagine that she will want to reconcile,’ Cordelia said.

  ‘Perhaps not – at least to begin with, but poverty has never suited my wife, and she won’t want to live without her children. You see, they’re my greatest weapon and you’re going to bring them to me. Now, shall we make a plan?’

  His smile sent a shiver down Cordelia’s spine.

  The children congregated around the kitchen island while Song poured each of them a glass of iced water.

  ‘I can’t believe this house doesn’t have a dedicated workout space,’ Kensy said as she gulped her drink. She was fishing for information – surely in a Pharos safe house there had to be more than the regular rooms they’d seen so far. Kensy was hopeful that one secret room might lead to another and so on. It was a long shot, but maybe somewhere there was a computer that they could use to access the mainframe. Max had already snuck into their grandmother’s study when they arrived home to see if he could get into her computer, but it was locked up tight and he didn’t dare risk playing around with it.

  ‘Who said there wasn’t?’ Song replied and promptly turned and walked into the butler’s pantry.

  Curtis clenched his fists in excitement. He loved all the secret passageways and entrances that had become part of his life in the past few days. Although he wondered if he would ever be able to walk past a wall of wood panelling without trying to find a concealed door.

  The butler’s pantry was a large room with a wide porcelain sink, rows of drawers and shelves and a huge industrial-sized refrigerator at the end. There was a commercial dishwasher as well as a bank of ovens in addition to the ones in the actual kitchen.

  Kensy looked around, wondering whether they were all about to fall through a hole in the floor, but it was Max who guessed first.

  ‘It’s the fridge, isn’t it?’ he said as Song walked to the end of the room and opened the double doors. The shelves were stocked with food resembling the interior of any normal family appliance, but clearly this was no regular machine. Song pressed a button inside of it and the interior separated down the centre revealing a cavernous white space.

  He turned to the children. ‘Are you coming?’

  ‘This is different,’ Kensy said as the three of them followed Song inside the empty box, which closed up tight and rocketed downwards for what seemed much further than the underground car park.

  ‘Fridge lifts – this is awesome!’ Curtis exclaimed. He couldn’t stop smiling.

  When the door opened the children spilled into a fully fitted gym complete with raised boxing ring and resistance machines. There was a wall of mirrors and yoga mats as well as medicine balls and skipping ropes. Everything that a commercial operation would have available.

  Kensy looked around and wondered what else they might find.

  ‘There is a change room through that door,’ Song said, pointing past the boxing ring.

  ‘So why all the secrecy for a gym?’ Kensy asked.

  ‘Perhaps there is a little more than that down here,’ the man replied.

  ‘Like what?’ Max said.

  ‘When your grandmother wants you to know, you will,’ Song said. ‘Now if you don’t mind, I have things to do. There is gym wear in your sizes in the lockers. When you’d like to return, just press the red button on the outside of the door.’

  ‘Thanks, Song. Are you sure you don’t want to stay down here and get beaten up?’ Kensy asked, a droll expression in her voice.

  The man shook his head. ‘Not today.’ His phone began to vibrate in his top pocket. They could all hear it even though he chose to ignore the call.

  ‘I think your heart’s ringing, Song,’ Max said. Curtis and Kensy giggled.

  ‘I will check it upstairs,’ the butler replied, then promptly stepped inside the elevator and disappeared.

  ‘Mr Mysterious,’ Kensy mumbled and rolled her eyes.

  ‘I gathered you didn’t want me saying anything earlier in the park because something’s off with Song at the moment,’ Curtis said.

  The twins nodded. ‘He’s never there when we need him and he’s always so distracted when he is about,’ Kensy said. ‘For now, we do some investigations on our own and trust pretty much no one.’

  Max glanced around. ‘Okay, so I’m guessing that there could be a Pharos control room here somewhere,’ Max said. ‘I want to run that licence and the photographs Curtis took through the mainframe.’

  ‘What about your laptops?’ Curtis asked. ‘Aren’t you able to access Pharos from them?’

  Kensy shook her head. ‘Everyone at school is offline for the summer. Granny said that it’s the only way we can get a proper break, but that’s turned out to be a bit of a joke, don’t you think?’

  ‘Let’s check inside the change room,’ Max said.

  The trio walked through the door and into a fancy bathroom suite. There was an adjacent sitting-room area, boasting a mirrored vanity unit loaded with all manner of toiletries – a hair dryer, straightener, brushes and combs.

  ‘This is better than Mum and Dad’s golf club,’ Curtis said.

  ‘Look in the sho
wer stalls and the toilets,’ Max suggested, heading to the end of the room.

  ‘It might be like school,’ Kensy said.

  Curtis gave her a curious look.

  ‘We get to the underground classrooms via the back of one of the toilet stalls,’ the girl said.

  ‘Really?’ Curtis gasped. He wished that the holidays would be over soon and he could start his proper lessons. ‘The school must be amazing.’

  ‘Erm, no not really,’ Kensy said. ‘The facilities are all pretty old and ordinary. It’s nothing like Wentworth Grammar – until you go downstairs anyway.’

  The children searched high and low. Kensy flushed the toilets several times each, but there was nothing.

  ‘Maybe it is just a gym,’ Max said as they retreated back to the lounge area.

  Kensy stood in front of a full-length mirror next to the vanity.

  ‘You getting vain in your old age, Kens?’ Max teased, but his sister wasn’t studying her reflection.

  She shook her head. ‘Nope. I’ll never enjoy looking at myself as much as you do. But there’s something a little off about this glass. It’s got a weird sheen.’

  Kensy placed her hand in the middle of the surface. Immediately it swirled in front of her eyes.

  ‘Whoa! Okay what’s this?’ She stepped back and pulled her hand away. Perhaps it was a hologram, but the odd thing was that it felt solid.

  ‘If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was a portal to another world, but we’re spies not characters in a science fiction movie,’ Max said.

  He stepped forward and touched the glass too, but this time he left his hand there for longer. The surface swirled and dematerialised, leaving an opening.

  ‘Come on,’ he urged the others to follow him lest the hole cover itself back up.

  On the other side was a room that resembled the command centre at NASA. There was a long desk in the centre and rows of screens on the walls with seating for at least ten people.

  ‘What’s all this then?’ Kensy said out loud.