Chupacabra (15 page)

Marty and Dylan were on their knees with their flashlight apps.

“It’s Astroturf. The same stuff they put on indoor football fields,” Dylan said. “You wouldn’t notice it among the real plants and grass.”

“I see the crack where the sides flip open.” Marty shined his light along the seam. “We need something to pry it open with, and a rope to climb down the shaft.”

“Dang it,” Dylan said, snapping his fingers. “I can’t believe I forgot to bring my rope and crowbar.”

“Ha,” Marty said. “Some burglar you’d make.” He tried to wedge his fingers into the seam, but it was too tight.

Dylan stood up. “I’ll look around for a branch, or a stick, or a crowbar.”

“Watch out for hot wires. They really hur — Wait!” Marty put both palms flat on the fake grass. “It’s vibrating.” He put his ear to the turf. “Something’s definitely moving.” The ground started to open. “Hide!”

Dylan dove behind a tree. Marty rolled under a bush and lay on his stomach, facing the rising elevator. He wished he’d picked a better place to hide.

Too late now.

The elevator door slid open. Butch McCall stepped out, chains dangling from his meaty hands. He was in a hurry. He jumped the fence, swiped his key card through the hidden slot in the rail, and started down the path without a glance in Marty’s direction.

Marty scrambled forward on his hands and knees and thrust his arm between the doors just before they closed. The doors sprung back open. By the time he got to his feet, Dylan was at his side.

“Nice move,” he said.

Marty grinned with pride.

They stepped inside and the doors closed. There were three buttons.

“What floor?” Dylan asked.

Marty thought about it for a second. He had no idea what level Luther was on. “Top to bottom, I guess.”

Dylan hit the button for Level One.

 • • • 

Noah Blackwood stepped out of the elevator on Level Four. He had no idea how long it would take for the chupacabra to flush out Luther, or for them to find Marty, but he was preparing for a long night. Unlike Butch, he was not going to underestimate the two boys, or Travis Wolfe. They had bested him before, but he was not going to let them do it again. Whatever happened tonight, he was leaving the country in the morning with the hatchlings and Grace.

His first stop had been to check on Paul Ivy up on Level Three. The big Peeping Tom was sitting in front of his bank of monitors, half of which were out, drinking a soda. He was
startled when Noah walked in, and slopped some soda onto his keyboard.

“I take it you didn’t see me coming,” Noah said.

Paul shook his head. “All the corridor cameras are out on every level. There are only a few cameras left.”

To accent his point, a camera in the keeper kitchen blinked off.

“At least we know he’s still up there,” Noah said. “Keep monitoring the situation and let me know if the cameras stop going out.” He put his hand on Paul’s shoulder. His T-shirt was clammy with sweat. “And don’t worry. We’ll get your cameras back online soon. We were due for an upgrade anyway. I’ll get together with you tomorrow to discuss what we need to do.”

Noah walked back out into the corridor with no intention of meeting with Paul about the cameras, although a meeting would certainly take place. He pulled out a sanitary wipe and cleaned his hands, then climbed back into the cart and stopped outside of Lab 400. He hadn’t been inside for several days, but had been in constant contact with the lone occupant. He swiped his key card through the lock and the door opened. If anyone else were to walk into room 400, they would see what he was looking at: yet another empty laboratory with counters, sinks, cabinets, and capped gas lines for Bunsen burners. But there was a secret room beyond the laboratory. He crossed to a closet on the far wall, opened the door, and swiped his card in a hidden slot beneath one of the shelves in back. A hidden door slid open, revealing an enormous room. Noah stepped in. The door slid closed behind him.

The room was similar to his quarters on the third floor of
the mansion. There was a bedroom, a study, an open bathroom, and a video studio scattered with props. There was no black cube. Mr. Zwilling was not a collector. He preferred his animals alive. He was sitting at a snakewood desk identical to the one in Noah Blackwood’s study.

“Are you current?” Noah asked.

“I believe so,” Mr. Zwilling said. “Luther is crawling around in our ductwork, Marty is above, Yvonne is readying CH-9 for a little adventure, Butch is doing Butch things, Paul is mourning his vision loss, and you are taking the hatchlings and Grace to Paris in the morning.”

Noah smiled and gave him a nod. A perfect summary, which didn’t surprise Noah in the least. Zwilling was the only person in the world that he trusted without reservation.

“What do you want me to do?” Zwilling asked.

“I want you to go out to dinner and enjoy yourself. Perhaps go to Canlis in Queen Anne.”

“I love that restaurant,” Mr. Zwilling said.

“Invite some of our friends,” Noah said.

Zwilling looked at his watch. “Short notice.”

“They’ll go,” Noah said confidently. He reached into his pocket and handed him an envelope. “After you finish, take your guests to the ballet. I have two boxes reserved. When the ballet is over, go to the Olympic Hotel for drinks. When you’re finished, check into our suite and spend the night.”

Zwilling nodded and put the tickets in his pocket.

“Come back tomorrow morning for rounds,” Noah continued. “Then head over to Northwest Zoo and Aquarium to see the giant squid.”

“That ought to be interesting.”

Noah nodded in agreement. “Here’s a list of things I need you to do at the mansion before you leave. I’ll give you a lift to the elevator.”

Zwilling ran a comb through his white hair and slipped into his jacket.

 • • • 

The elevator carrying Marty and Dylan came to a stop on Level One.

“You think they’ll be waiting for us?” Dylan asked.

“Probably,” Marty said. “You step out first.”

“Very funny.”

The elevator door slid open. No one was waiting for them. Marty stepped out, followed by Dylan, and looked up at the ceiling. “Cameras,” he said.

“We’re busted if anyone is watching,” Dylan said.

“Let’s see what happens.” Marty waved and made a face at the closest camera.

“Are you insane?”

“Might as well find out if anyone’s paying attention.” Marty pointed down the corridor. “Too many cameras to avoid.”

While he waited to be Tasered, tackled, and cuffed by a gang of NFL-sized security guards, he took in his surroundings. The underground warren appeared to be gigantic. There were numbered doors on both sides of the corridor for as far as he could see, which was only about a hundred feet in either direction because the corridor was curved.

“Quiet as a tomb,” Dylan said.

“Bad choice of words,” Marty said.

Dylan shrugged. “There are a lot of doors. Any idea which one Luther’s behind?”

Marty shook his head. “How far do you think we dropped?”

Dylan shrugged. “Twenty, thirty feet. It’s hard to tell in a closed elevator.”

“Then I made a mistake. We’re not deep enough.” Marty punched the elevator button. Nothing happened. “And we’re stuck here unless we can find a staircase or a key card. Luther is somewhere below Southeast Asia. Maybe beneath the orangutan exhibit.” He pulled out the Gizmo and launched the dragonspy. “We’ll have it scout ahead. My hands are going to be busy flying it and looking at the vid. You’ll need to shake door handles and see if any of them open.”

“What if there are people behind the door?”

“Close it quickly and run.”

“That’s your plan?”

“Unless you have a better one.”

Dylan shook his head and tugged on the nearest door. It didn’t open and he looked relieved. He went to the next door. It didn’t open, either.

“This might not be such a bad plan after all,” he said, pulling on the third door.

It opened.

Marty parked the dragonspy on the ceiling to keep an eye on things in the corridor. Then he walked into the room.

Grace was on her third trip around the cube, trying to keep her desperation and panic at bay. She had looked everywhere and could not find a way down aside from the elevator. She had swiped the key cards several more times and had even tried to pry open the doors, to no avail.

There has to be a secret way into this hideous harvest … some way to get the dead animals into the cube.

She was examining the smoky glass inch by inch, trying to find a way in, which would hopefully lead to a way out, when she heard the elevator come to life. The car would have to drop before it came back up, which gave her maybe a minute before he arrived. She hoped she had put everything back in place exactly as it had been so he didn’t know someone had been looking around his lair. She hoped Noah didn’t get suspicious about having to wait for the elevator and start looking around for her.

Because Noah’s lair was so open, there were few places to hide. Grace decided to use Blackwood’s tent because it would give her a partial view of both his office and his bedroom. She did one last quick loop around the cube, then crawled into the
weathered nylon television prop. She zipped herself into the musty sleeping bag just as the elevator door slid open, and peeked through the mesh opening. If Noah was disturbed, or suspicious, about the elevator, he wasn’t showing it. In fact, he was whistling, which shocked her more than if he had stepped out of the elevator with a gun drawn, ready to shoot an intruder. Nobody whistled unless they were happy, and the only reason she could think of that would make him this happy was if he’d already let the chupacabra out and it had done its job. She was sick with worry.

He walked over to his desk and sat down in front of the computer. Grace held her breath. If the last email to Marty was still uploading, it was all over for her.

Noah continued to whistle as his manicured fingers danced across the keyboard. Grace let out her breath. The email must have finished uploading. He typed for at least five more minutes, whistling as he worked, as if he didn’t have a care in the world. She was definitely seeing a different side to Noah Blackwood. Perhaps the third floor was the only place he let down his guard to be himself. He stood up and stretched, apparently finished with the computer, and walked right by her without a glance at the tent or anything else. She watched as he pulled his shirttail out of his pants and started to unbutton it. The whistle turned into a hum as he rounded the corner to his bedroom, where she couldn’t see him. The shower came on. The humming stopped and he started to sing. Badly.

“Baby … baby … baby … ooh … Baby … baby … baby no …”

Grace would have burst into laughter if she didn’t think that Noah would rush out of the shower and murder her. She considered sneaking into his bedroom and stealing his key card from his bedside table, or wherever he had tossed it.

It’s probably sitting next to his rhino horn lamp!

“Baby … baby … baby … ooh …”

She was about to risk it when she remembered the promise she had made to herself about not making any more mistakes. There were no walls in Noah’s bathroom. She couldn’t possibly get the card without him seeing her.

“Baby … baby … baby … no …”

Her only hope of getting off the third floor was to wait and see what Noah was up to.

Why is he taking a shower?

“Baby … baby … baby … ooh …”

Doesn’t he know any of the other words?

The shower stopped, but not the song — or the only two lines he knew from the song.

Maybe he’s getting ready to go to bed.

That would mean he had already taken care of Luther and Marty, or he was going to leave it to Butch and Yvonne to do his dirty work. There was a chance that she might be able to lift the card while he slept. She’d had some experience as a pickpocket in the Congo under much worse circumstances than these. If Blackwood was a sound sleeper — and Grace thought he would be because he didn’t appear to have a conscience to keep him awake — she’d have a good chance of getting her hands on the card. But it wasn’t to be. Noah came back around the corner, scrubbed and wearing a fresh khaki safari suit. He was running a comb through his mane of white hair. He was
whistling again. He walked right past her, once more without a glance, through the office, around the corner, and out of sight.

Grace heard the elevator door swish open and close. She stayed where she was, looking at her watch, waiting a full five minutes before crawling out of the tent just in case it was a trick. It wasn’t. Noah was gone. She almost wished he had stayed. Her only way off the third floor might have just gone down the elevator. Shaking off her disappointment, she walked over to the computer and checked the sent emails. The last one she had sent to Marty had gone through. She dragged it into the trash, then emptied it to destroy the evidence. There were two other emails. One was to Noah’s pilots, telling them to ready the jet for a flight to Paris and to pick them up at sunrise in the helicopter. The second email was to an alphabet of television stations. The large attachment was still uploading, and she had no intention of trashing it.

It would be Noah Blackwood who would be shaken to his very core after the episode aired, but there was no time for Grace to gloat or celebrate. She still had to find a way off the third floor and find Luther or Marty.

If it isn’t too late.

She hurried into Noah’s bedroom. If it weren’t for the wet shower floor, she wouldn’t have known he had been there. She opened his wardrobe. A set of clothes was missing. A pair of brown shoes was gone, replaced by a pair of slightly scuffed black shoes. This wasn’t surprising. Noah had changed clothes after his shower.

But something’s missing.

She turned around and smiled. She had just found a way off the third floor. She started tearing the pillows, sheets, and blankets off Noah Blackwood’s king-sized bed.

 • • • 

Marty and Dylan were standing in the middle of a massive room filled with industrial washers, dryers, dry-cleaning equipment, and commercial presses.

“It’s a laundry,” Dylan said.

“No kidding,” Marty said, looking up at the ceiling, which had several large square chutes sticking out of it. On the floor below the chutes were laundry carts the size of Volkswagen Beetles. The carts were marked by area:
Keepers
,
Maintenance
,
Science
,
Concession
, etc. A series of conveyor belts filled one wall and were marked like the carts so the laundry workers could send the cleaning back to where it belonged.

“Luther probably needs a good cleaning,” Dylan said. “But I doubt they dumped him in here.”

Marty smiled. “You know what this is?”

“Uh … yeah. It’s where Ark laundry is done.”

Marty pointed up at the chutes. “It’s also our passage to every level beneath the Ark.” He walked over to the cart marked
Dr. Noah Blackwood
. “And above the Ark.”

“We’ll need a tall ladder,” Dylan said. The chutes were at least a dozen feet from the floor. “Must be a honeycomb of conveyor belts in the structure’s guts to get the stuff to this one room.”

“Exactly. We’ll finish searching this level, then come back here and do a little belly-crawling through the guts.”

 • • • 

Luther was still doing some belly-crawling of his own, and he was getting pretty sick of it. His cell phone was at 8 percent, which meant he’d have light, as pitiful as it was, for about five more minutes. Not that there was anything to see in the maze of dust-choking ductwork. He thought he might be on the level above the lab where he escaped, but he couldn’t be certain. He might be a level below for all he knew. He’d passed several vents that opened into dark rooms, but the vents were secured from the room-side and he had been unable to get them open because of the awkward angle he was in. What he needed was a vent where he could use his feet to kick it open. So far he hadn’t come across one. He was using his nose more than he was using his eyes or touch. He wasn’t sure if Marty had seen
Butch snatch him, and even if he had, he was certain the dragonspy hadn’t followed him below. Marty didn’t know where he was.

But he’s going to try to find me. He’s not leaving the Ark until he does, because that’s what I would do if he’d been snatched.

He felt that his best chance of finding Marty, or having Marty find him, was to bump into him. They had come to the Ark to find Grace and the hatchlings. If Marty found Grace, their next stop would be the hatchlings. Luther had made a few wrong turns in the vents and lost the sharp scent of the stinky dinos. He slithered backward until his nostrils had reacquired the stench.

 • • • 

Marty and Dylan were headed out of the laundry when they were stopped in their tracks by a loud mechanical squeak.

“It’s just incoming laundry,” Dylan said.

“Which means someone is in the Ark tossing their soiled underpants,” Marty said, moving back into the middle of the room. “Let’s find out who it is.”

They cocked their heads back, staring up at the chutes as the hidden conveyors churned. Something large dropped from the chute over Blackwood’s cart. They hurried over to see what it was.

“It’s a blanket,” Dylan said.

“Watch out!” Marty shouted.

Dylan wasn’t quick enough. A pillow hit him in the head. He jerked backward.

Marty laughed.

“Yeah, real funny,” Dylan said. “It could have been heavy.”

Four more pillows plopped down in quick succession, followed by a thick comforter, another blanket, a silk top sheet, a silk bottom sheet, and a mattress pad. Marty leaned over the edge of the cart for a closer look. He dug out one of the pillows and saw the case was monogrammed with the initials
N.B
.

“Watch out!” Dylan shouted.

Marty turned his head to look at Dylan. “Ha. Like I’m falling for tha —” Something heavy slammed into his back and flipped him into the cart. He struggled to untangle himself from the blankets, and pillows, and …

“What are you doing here?” Grace shouted, then threw her arms around him and gave him a hug.