Countdown (14 page)

“Listen.” She took his wrists in her two hands and shook them, trying to reach him. They'd been out of touch with each other, in a way, for weeks. She had to get through to him now. “I've taken on a lot of our responsibility myself. I know you think it's because I don't trust you to handle it. But that isn't true, Dan. I've been trying to spare you from pressure, and from danger. But I know you're smart, and strong, and capable. You can make the big decisions. You can lead the family.”

As he allowed himself to hear what she was asking of him, his jittery face hardened. He looked older almost instantly, and calmer, and sadder. “I have faith in you,” Amy said

Dan watched her. His hands were shaking. There was a heaviness around his eyes and mouth that no thirteen-year-old should have. It broke her heart. He pulled his wrists out of her grip and put his hands on top of hers. They were steady now. “You can count on me.”

Trilon Laboratories
Delaware

When five o'clock finally came, Nellie hung out, “working late” until everyone was gone and it was time for her real work to begin.

Nellie wished she could be in Guatemala with Amy, but she had a job to do here. Amy needed an antidote to the serum more than ever. What did Pierce do to offset the side effects of the serum? Maybe that information could ease Amy's symptoms and buy her some time. Nellie was going to find Sammy and put him to work on it — now.

Nellie's time at Trilon hadn't been a complete waste. For one thing, she'd seen the biochemists in her lab using nanotechnology to study the interactions of different compounds at the molecular level. They had a laser that could carve tiny marks on a piece of metal or glass — say, a slide they might use under a microscope. Nellie had watched them use that laser without really knowing what it was for. But she had a use for it now.

It took a few tries to get the hang of it, but she managed to carve a message onto a glass slide. The message was invisible to the naked eye but perfectly legible under a microscope. She wrapped the glass in paper to protect it from scratches and slipped it into her pocket.

She sneaked upstairs, dodging security cameras, and walked down a dark corridor until she came to the vending machine. She used her stolen ID to open the machine and sneak into the secret basement. She opened the door from the stairwell and peered into the hall.

Sammy was being led into a room — from what Nellie could see, it looked like another lab, even more high-tech than his last one — by an armed guard. The guard shoved Sammy into the room and locked the door. Then he stood outside the door, automatic weapon at the ready, guarding it.

Oh, Sammy. What had he done to earn a round-the-clock armed guard? How was Nellie ever going to get past that guy? She let the fire door shut and looked around for an alternative way in. She stood in the stairwell, empty except for a fire extinguisher hanging on the wall. And just above the fire extinguisher . . . a grate. A grate that probably led to an air vent, which you'd need if you didn't want to suffocate way down here in an underground subbasement.

The bottom of the vent was out of Nellie's reach, but if she stood on the nearest step, her fingers could just touch the screen. Maybe if she stood on the fire extinguisher . . . She took down the metal canister, set it on the bottom step, and stood on it. The canister held her weight but rolled precariously under her toes. She pulled her trusty penknife out of her pocket and unscrewed the screen from the air vent.

Wait . . . She thought she heard a noise in the hallway on the other side of the fire door. She froze. Was someone coming?

Another noise. She quickly jumped down, replaced the fire extinguisher, and dashed up a flight of stairs. She'd just reached the second landing when she heard the subbasement door bang open. She froze again, praying that whoever was there — most likely the armed guard — wouldn't come up the stairs or notice the loose screws in the air vent.

After a few tense seconds, the door banged shut. She peeked over the railing down into the stairwell. No sign of the guard.

She tiptoed back down the stairs. All clear. She set the fire extinguisher back on the stair, stepped on it, and continued working on the screws.

She loosened the bottom two screws and dropped them into the pocket of her white lab coat. She slipped her fingers under the grate and gripped the edge of the vent. If she could just haul herself up somehow . . . But it was too high.

Then she noticed the bracket in the wall that was meant to hold the fire extinguisher. She clung to the vent with her fingers and hopped up, stepping on the bracket with her right foot to boost herself into the vent.

As she made the leap, the fire extinguisher rolled out from under her foot and fell off the step with a clatter. She scrambled up into the vent. The grate closed after her just as the door burst open. Nellie crawled back into the vent, away from the grate, just far enough to see the armed guard look around, pick up the fallen fire extinguisher, and run up the stairs to look for intruders. Another guard came out when the first one returned to the bottom landing.

“Find anything?” the second guard asked.

“No.” The first guard put the fire extinguisher back on the bracket, which had been loosened slightly by Nellie's foot. “Guess it was just the fire extinguisher falling.”

“That bracket needs to be tightened,” the other guard said.

They stood quietly for a moment, guns at the ready, listening for any sound. Nellie held her breath.

“All clear,” the first guard said. They opened the door and went back to patrolling the lab. Nellie let out her breath.
Good of those guards to care so much about fire safety.
She started crawling through the vent, searching for Sammy. Every few yards, she came to a grate. The first one looked out on the short hallway. The second onto a room that looked like an office. The third opened onto a lab. There was a bank of computers, a machine Nellie didn't recognize that flashed a white light every five seconds, a large freezer, and a lab table covered with vials, flasks, beakers, and high-powered microscopes.

From her vantage point near the ceiling, she looked down at a slim young man in a white lab coat, his face pressed to the eyepiece of a microscope, still hard at work at nine o'clock in the evening. She'd know that mop of curly black hair anywhere. Sammy.

She was about to whisper
Pssst! Sammy!
when she noticed a movement in the corner of the room. A guard sat in a chair by the freezer, while another blocked the door. Both were armed with automatic rifles.

Sammy lifted his head and wrote something in a notebook.

The fan clicked on and cool air began to flow through the vent. Nellie shivered. She was chilled and felt like she was going to sneeze.

Oh, no. NO.

She was not going to be captured because her nose tickled. That was not happening.

The inside of her nostrils tingled. She clamped her mouth shut and pinched her nose. She closed her eyes and prayed.
No, no, I will not sneeze, I will not —

Uh-oh. It was coming. She felt the pressure from inside her lungs, the rush of air. That tickle wanted out, and she couldn't stop it. She released her nose and slowly, slowly, silently pulled in a little air.
Calm
, she told herself.
Calm. Stay calm, nose.

She waited. The sneeze passed.

Forty-five minutes later, and still the guards watched, and still Sammy worked. He was so brave, she thought. She could have gotten him out of there, but he wouldn't leave. He stayed to help the cause.

Nellie's heart swelled for him. But her legs were cramped from sitting perfectly still in the air vent. She sent a silent ESP message to the guards:
Let the poor guy go to bed. He's got to sleep sometime.

At last the lab door opened. The guards escorted Sammy out. They turned off the light and left.

After ten minutes, she thought it might be safe to slip down into the lab and leave him her message.

The lab was dark except for a blue security light. Nellie knocked out a slat of the grate, then reached through the hole to unscrew the screen. She climbed down into the lab, took the slide out of her pocket, and left it under Sammy's microscope.

SAMMY, AMY TOOK SERUM, FULL DOSE. ANYTHING TO DELAY THE SYMPTOMS? — N.

Then she crawled back up into the vent, using a chair to reach it. The grate shut behind her but was still loose at the bottom, so she could come and go as needed. Or maybe, when the time came — if the guards ever left him alone — Sammy would find a moment to use the vent and escape.

Don't give up, Sammy
, she thought.
Amy needs you. We all need you.

Tikal, Guatemala

“Oh, my gosh. Look at this.”

Dan watched Amy double-check to make sure she'd read the e-mail right. She'd logged onto the fake account she'd set up for practical things, like making reservations at their hotel in Tikal, just to be sure she wasn't missing any messages.

“Someone found Olivia's book,” Amy told the others. “At least, he says he has. And he wants five thousand dollars to give it back.”

“Who is it?” Dan leaned over her shoulder to read the message:

“It's not signed,” Amy said. “And I don't recognize the e-mail address, but it's Guatemalan.”

“It's got to be a trap,” Jake said.

“Agreed,” Dan said. “But it doesn't matter. Trap or not, we need that book.”

The grim reason why they needed the book hung like a shroud over the room.

Dan pulled up a satellite map of the park and pinpointed the location for the drop. “Look at that.” He pointed to a cluster of tents in the jungle, a large truck, and, not far away, an area cleared of trees. “Looks like an illegal logging camp to me. Or poachers.”

Amy shook her head. “Poachers wouldn't know what the book was if they found it. Someone is using them as a cover.”

“Either way,” Dan said. “We've got to find the riven crystal, and we need to get Olivia's book back. Tonight.”

“The four of us can't handle all that alone,” Jake said. “And besides, who knows how many men have been paid to kill us this time.”

“Let's bring the other guys down for backup,” Dan suggested.

“No,” Amy said firmly. “Why put more lives at stake than we need to?”

“Because
our
lives are at stake now,” Dan insisted. “Especially yours. Amy, we need help here.” He paused, suddenly feeling unsure. Amy had asked him to take charge. Now that he was doing it, was she going to stand in his way? What would he do if she did?

They stood face-to-face, each waiting for the other to back down. “Amy, it's my decision.” He paused, swallowed, and worked up his courage. “And it's final.”

She backed off almost too easily. “I'm sorry, Dan. I'm not used to this.” He felt so sad for her now that he almost relented. The little brother in him wanted to cry out,
I take it back, Amy! I was kidding. You're in charge again, really . . . .
And he would have given anything to let her take over, if it would undo the serum, undo her death sentence, and let her live.

She smiled at him, a proud-sister smile that simultaneously annoyed and touched him. “All right. Call Ian.”

At the mention of the name
Ian
, Jake flinched. She started to say something to explain, to help him understand, but he cut her off. “We need all the help we can get,” he said. “I get it.”

Dan hoped Amy was glad that Jake had returned to his usual gruff self and stopped fussing over her. As if things were normal. At least they were being civil to each other. It was hard to get anything accomplished when they were at each other's throats —
literally.
He dialed Attleboro on their secure line. Ian picked up. “Ian, this is Dan. We've got a lot of news to update you on.”

“Dan?” Ian sounded slightly confused. “Where's Amy?”

“She's here,” Dan said. “But we've had some trouble, and I'm in charge now.” He glanced at Amy as he spoke. She was looking down at her lap, hands twitching slightly. Then she lifted her head and nodded at him as if to say,
That's right.

Ian put Jonah and Hamilton on speaker for the update. Dan filled them in on the book and the black­mailers.

“The book is safe!” Ian cried. “Thank goodness. I'll gather the crew and we'll fly down immediately. Do you need anything from home?”

“Yeah,” Dan said. “Bring five thousand dollars in cash. We don't think this is really about money, but that's what the blackmailers asked for.”

“Will do.”

“Bring Pony, too,” Dan said. “We'll need everybody we can get.”

“Right. Of course, you realize that after eight hours stuck on a plane with Hamilton, Jonah, and Pony, I will be a stark raving lunatic.”

“You're already a stark raving lunatic,” Dan teased. “Just get your butts down here.”

“On our way.”

“Wait.” Dan looked at Amy again and blinked back the tears that sprang to his eyes. “There's one more thing you should know.” There was silence over the line as Ian waited for the news, as if he sensed it was something serious. “Amy took the serum,” Dan said quietly. “A full dose, undiluted. She's doing better today, but she's having some severe side effects, so —”

There was a long pause. “That's why you're in charge now,” Ian said.

“Yeah.”

“Oh, no,” Ian whispered. “Amy. I —” Dan heard the strain in his voice as he trailed off. Ian might be lightning quick with insults and retorts, but expressing shock and sorrow didn't come so easily to him. “How long does she have?”

Dan hated to say it out loud, especially in front of Amy. But there was no way around it, and they didn't have time for anything but the truth. “About four days.”

“We'll see you tonight.”

A pall fell over the hotel room. Amy's leg shook restlessly. Dan felt as if someone had tied weights to his wrists and ankles, as if the smallest movement took a superhuman effort. He was responsible now for everything that happened from that moment on. It weighed on him. He could feel the responsibility pressing on his shoulders and spine like a backpack full of rocks. A lot of this was his fault. Amy had taken the serum to save him after all.

“Amy? You okay?” Dan asked.

She looked at him, her eyes hollow. “Don't worry about me. Let's just get this done.”

They had until dark to make a plan. “We'll split into two groups,” Dan said. “One group will go find the crystal, and the other will get the book.”

“No,” Amy protested. “The book pickup is a trap. It's dangerous. I'll go alone.”

“Great plan, Amy,” Jake countered. “You go alone, Pierce gets you
and
the book.”

“Pierce doesn't know I've taken the serum,” Amy said. “His men won't be expecting a girl with superstrength. I'll take them by surprise.”

“You're not strong enough to take on his army alone,” Dan said. “Jake is right. I'm going with you.”

“And so am I,” Jake said.

“No,” Dan insisted. “Amy and I will handle it alone.” Jake began to rise in protest, but Dan cut him off. “Period.”

Jake shook his head ruefully. “You're more like your sister than you realize, Dan.”

Was that true? Dan didn't know.
Remains to be seen
, he thought. “By tomorrow morning, we'll have both the crystal and the book — and we'll be that much closer to the antidote.”

“That's right,” Atticus said. “Nothing can stop us now, Amy.”

Amy tried to smile. Dan hoped Att was right. But they'd been this close to victory so many times before, and it always seemed to slip away again, just beyond their reach.

Not this time
, he vowed.
This time everything will go our way.

For once, it has to.