Nat’s plan is killer bees. Stay away! They’re deadly to Cahills!
Alek pushed forward and struck the door with the gun. The reinforced glass shook but didn’t break—there wasn’t even a scratch. “Stand back, I’m going to shoot.”
A bee settled on Amy’s arm. She screamed and shook it off. But as she stared behind her, she saw they were covering the flowers and other plants. The air buzzed, thick with the insects.
The lights in the observation balcony flickered, then brightened.
It wasn’t empty anymore.
Nathaniel stood right up against the glass, smiling broadly. Three of his guards stood respectfully behind him.
Nathaniel tapped a microphone pinned to his collar.
Hidden speakers within the Hive crackled.
“I wouldn’t waste your bullets,” said Nathaniel. “The glass is quite invulnerable to mere gunfire.”
Alek snarled and raised his submachine gun.
Bullets burst across the glass window of the observation deck. The sound was deafening as he fired a few bursts into it. Bullets ricocheted off, splintering a tree and splashing into the feeding ponds.
Nathaniel stood there, unmoved and safe. “Told you.”
Alek tossed the gun away. “No harm in trying.”
Sweat ran from Amy’s brow and down her back. It had to be hitting a hundred.
Another bee landed on her, this time on her neck. She felt its legs creep across her bare skin. “Dan … ”
“Don’t move, sis.” Dan carefully flicked it off.
Nathaniel leaned onto the glass, watching eagerly. “All it takes is a single sting.”
Attleboro, Massachusetts
“Stand back,” said Cara. She lay down and bunched her knees up to her chin.
Then she snapped straight, putting both feet through the window.
Ian helped her up, and they leaned out for a better look.
“Something’s going on in the greenhouse,” he said. “Nathaniel’s making his move.”
“With the killer bees,” said Cara. She’d just read Amy’s text.
Cara tested the iron gutter running along this part of the roof. It creaked and she felt a few brackets give a little. “Whoa.”
“What are you trying to do?”
Cara scanned the roof. “To get to that drainpipe and shinny down. Get them out of the greenhouse.”
“Two things. First, that greenhouse is unbreakable. You’d need to drop a couple of tons on it to smash it. Two, the roof needs some maintenance. That drainpipe will come straight out of the wall if you put any weight on it.”
“Maintenance?” Cara asked. “Like what?”
Ian got defensive. “The last inhabitants, namely Amy and Dan Cahill, blew the maintenance budget on upgrading the computer system and on a satellite. I was planning to get the roof redone, but the contractor I wanted was still finishing an earlier job.”
“I can’t believe you couldn’t pull some strings to jump the line on that.”
“It was Buckingham Palace, Cara,” said Ian.
“So what you’re saying is, the roof’s ready to collapse?”
“No, of course not. Just bits of it are … somewhat loose.”
Cara’s gaze fell on the chimney about twenty-five feet away. She had an idea. “What about that one?”
“As wobbly as jelly.”
They were fifty feet up. The chimney itself was maybe ten feet high. The greenhouse was long, the front faced the pond, but the nearest side of it wasn’t more than, say … fifteen feet from the mansion?
Cara stepped onto the gutter. “Please hold … ”
Ian stretched out to grab her but she was just beyond his reach. “Cara! Come back here!”
She shuffled along, fingers hooked on the roof tiles. “You want me, you’d better come out and get me.”
“This is not some game, Cara!”
Her hands were sweating, and Cara fought to stop herself from trembling, from thinking about what would happen if the gutter gave way. A couple of pigeons watched, perched safely on top of the chimney pots.
She heard screams from within the greenhouse.
Don’t get distracted. Keep your mind on the job.
Foot by foot she shuffled along the roof. The chimney had seemed so much closer when she’d viewed it from the window. That, and the roof had seemed less steep and the distance to the ground much shorter. There were a few decorative shrubs lined up below, but they wouldn’t do much to cushion her fall.
Then, far longer than she wanted, she reached the chimney. She scrabbled up and lay down on the sloping roof, eyes closed, trying to gather her breath. Now, that was something she never wanted to do again.
“Make room for me,” said Ian.
Cara opened her eyes.
Ian was fumbling his way behind her.
“What are you doing?” she cried.
“You said—”
Cara reached out and grabbed Ian by the collar and hauled him up beside her. He collapsed down next to her.
“This is cozy,” he said. “In fact, I just might stay here until it’s all over and someone calls for a helicopter to collect me because I am not going back the way I came.”
“You are an idiot, Ian Kabra.”
Ian laughed, and tears ran down his face. He wiped them eventually. “Sorry about that. Upper lip is now stiff.”
Cara gripped his hand. “We’ll do this together.”
“Don’t we always?” Ian flushed red. “Sorry, that slipped out. What about the bees? If we break the greenhouse, we’ll save the people but free the bees, too.”
“And where are they going to go? To those six beehives at the edge of the lawn. Let them. One gallon of bug spray and they’ll be history.”
Ian smiled. “You really are always one step ahead, aren’t you?”
Cara grinned as she lay next to him. “Feet against the chimney. We need to get rocking, so push, then release. Then again, but harder each time. On three?”
He tightened his hold. “On three.”
“What have you done to deserve all this?” continued Nathaniel’s projection. “Nothing. You’ve relied on the success of your betters and yes, I mean those children you so despise, and think you deserve what they earned through nothing more than your names.”
Vikram stared at the image, appalled. People were running for the doors, fighting and trampling one another to get out, but the doors wouldn’t open. Someone tried to smash a pane with a table but only ended up with splinters in his hands.
Vikram picked up a fallen chair and sat down. He collected an abandoned sorbet and watched Nathaniel.
Nathaniel’s face had to be fifteen feet high, and his voice boomed from speakers in all corners of the greenhouse. There was no escaping him. Which was what he must have planned all along, thought Vikram.
And what was it with all these bees? He swatted one away.
“We’ve used one another,” said the projection. “To destroy the Cahills. To break each component part so it crumbled under its own weight, and your treachery. Oh, a traitor recognizes his own. What surprises me is that Grace didn’t have you eliminated, but then, perhaps, she was not as ruthless as we all thought. In the end, she was a sentimental old woman, wanting to hold her family together, not realizing what a nest of vipers had grown up around her heart.”
He’s talking about me.
Vikram sat, mesmerized. Could he deny any of this? Ian had become head of the Cahills and that had enraged him more than any of the boy’s failures.
“Ow!” A woman stumbled back into a flower bed. “A bee stung me!” She stared at her arm, at the red swelling. “It really hurts … ” Then, like a puppet whose strings have been snipped, she collapsed into the geraniums. Yellow bile bubbled from her mouth as she jerked.
Nathaniel clapped. He was watching this through cameras. “Ah, so very good! Her fate is yours.”
People screamed. They clawed at the door and beat their fists, frantically, helples
sly, at the unbreakable glass.
Vikram collected a champagne bottle. It was a sin to leave a bottle half finished. “Tell me more, Nathaniel.”
“I did not put in all this effort, these last years of my life, merely to hand the Cahill organization to one of you. I’m sure you were all counting the days till death claimed me. I can imagine how you’d cry at the funeral, then devour one another like wolves, all in the hope to become the next leader. None of you deserve it. As I have destroyed the rest of the Cahills, I now destroy you. The last, corrupt branch of a withered, decaying old tree.”
Vikram raised the bottle. “Couldn’t have said it better myself.” A bee settled on his hand. He stared at it. “Hello, Mr. Bumblebee. Have you come to kill me?”
He wondered what the honey would taste like, made from the dead.
Vikram gazed up at Nathaniel’s image. “I suggest a toast … ”
Hmm. What was that noise? It sounded like hailstones on the roof.
Nathaniel’s smile became a gruesome, skull-like grin. “My work here is done. As a wise man once said, you can never trust a trait—”
Then the world around them shattered into glass, stone, and flowers.
The Hive, Alaska
“Don’t move,” Alek warned, as more of the bees settled onto Amy, Dan, and the Russian, too. “If you don’t agitate them, they won’t sting you.”
Amy fought the panic rising in her chest. Her breath was coming in rapid, panicky gasps.
Bees crawled over her. They crept over her arms, along her neck, her head; one even searched along the edge of her ear. There was another, prodding her lips.
Dan stood there, body stiff, as the bees covered him like a coat. He had his eyes closed and there was one on his eyelid. His hands were clenched into tense fists and he couldn’t believe how controlled he was.
Amy itched everywhere; it was agony not to move.
With one eye, she peered at the deck above her.
Perfectly sealed from the Hive, Nathaniel stood there, watching, waiting for the moment they’d move, twitch, give in, and then be stung.
A bee found a gap in her collar and was trying to creep down her back.
Alek was as covered as they were.
It was getting hard to breathe; the heat was rising and rising. Amy was suffocating.
Heat. That was it. The heat was waking the bees up. “Wait. There is a way to kill the bees. Or force them back to sleep. We need to drop the temperature.”
“We could let the snow in.” Dan gestured, slowly, with his thumb. “There’s a control to the windows. Can you see the outer wall?”
“Yes.” She could see it and the snowy, wind-driven landscape beyond. There was a snowstorm blowing, not that she could feel it, trapped in this buzzing sauna. Amy turned her head ever so slowly. “There’s a winch.”
“The manual override,” confirmed Alek. “It’ll open up the windows and let the snow in. The bees will fall asleep and die.”
“It’s no good. You move and you’ll get stung. You’ll be dead in a minute.”
“A minute you’d better use wisely.” He smiled at her. “Good-bye, young Cahill.”
“No!”
Alek swept the bees off his face and ran. The swarm around him reacted angrily. He slapped his bare hand but Amy saw the bright scarlet stings.
“Stop him!” roared Nathaniel.
The guards hesitated. No one wanted to enter the death trap.
Nathaniel glared at them. “I gave you an order!” He hit a control button and the door to the observation deck slid open. He thrust his cane at it. “Go and stop him!”
The window vents cracked open and icy wind blew in. Bees crowded above them, circling in a panic at the sudden cold.
“STOP HIM!” yelled Nathaniel, his voice booming through the speakers around them.
Alek cried out. Bee stings covered his bare face and hands, creating hideous swelling. He sank to the floor as the bees fled from the cold.
But the guards had other ideas. They dropped their weapons and fled.
Dan shook himself as the bees flew off him. Snow was drifting in as the windows widened. He brushed insects off Amy. “You clear?”
“There’s one down the back of my shirt!”
“Where?” He turned her around. “Wait! I see something moving!”
“Then squash it!”
“What if it stings you?”
“Squash it, Dan!”
Dan slammed his palm against the middle of her back.
Amy stood, too terrified to move. Too terrified to breathe. Then she did. There was a yucky, sticky patch on her back, but no sting.
She ran to Alek.
He was still alive, but his breath pumped raggedly. His face was swollen, and yellow bile dripped from his mouth. His eyelids had puffed up so he was staring just through the slits. He was speaking, but she could barely hear him.
Alek took her hand. His grasp was weak and the skin feverishly hot.
“Alek … ”
There was nothing she could do but listen to his last words. Amy leaned closer.
Alek licked his lips. “Natalia … ”
It was his last word, spoken with his last breath.
The bees fled from the cold. The temperature in the Hive had plummeted within seconds and they sought warmth. They swarmed, searching to escape the chill. Already whole sections of the floor were covered in bees, either asleep or dead.
But there was one place here that remained protected against the chill.
The observation deck.
They crawled through the vents and small openings. The steel grilles were thick with bees as they gathered in dense crowds, seeking warmth.
Dan beat his fists against the door. “It’s locked from the inside! Open the door, Nathaniel! Open the door!”
Amy stared. Bees covered everything. They were on the walls, the consoles, over the furniture and Nathaniel.
The deck was soundproof, and Amy was thankful. She could see him screaming, flailing wildly at the bees, trying to beat them off with his walking stick. It was hopeless.
“Open up!” Dan yelled.
Nathaniel’s face was hideously transformed with furious red swellings. His hands had doubled in size and his eyes were thick with yellowish poison. Bile frothed at his mouth as he stumbled blindly, tripping over a chair. He fell, and the bees covered him. Amy stared as he tried to get up, but then he sank slowly, and moved no more.
Her grandfather and her enemy, Nathaniel Hartford, was dead.
Attleboro, Massachusetts
A week later
What were you thinking, Grace?
Amy gazed up at the portrait of Grace Cahill.
Oil paint lay thick upon the canvas, less of a painting, more like a carving.
Grace’s mouth was a firm, straight line and her eyes had been piled with blue and flicked with icy white. She was gazing somewhere. The sunlight caught half her face, the rest was hidden in the shadows.
The artist had known this was a woman with many secrets.
Amy adjusted it on the wall. The new frame was dark mahogany, and had been the only reason the portrait had survived the fire that had destroyed the Cahill mansion a few years back. It had been sent off to be fitted with a new frame. It must have been one of the last things Grace had done before her death. In the chaos that had followed, it had simply been forgotten.
Now it was back.
Amy felt as if she were meeting Grace all over again.
What had she been thinking during those long, still hours in her study? Amy could make a guess. The Cahills. Always the Cahills. This branch or that. Who would take over for her, how long she could last at the helm. Who her friends were, and which of her enemies she needed to destroy.
Once, Amy had wanted to grow up to be just like her grandmother.
Now, not so much.
She’d admired her fierce love, her determination and pride in what she was, and what she’d achieved.
But it had al
l come at a cost. The loss of those she loved, of cutting off from those who loved her, of being so terribly alone.
The artist had known that too when he’d painted those eyes. They were not eyes that wept.
What would you do now?
Dan entered the study. He stood there, a doughnut in his hand. “They’re waiting.”
“I know. I’m almost ready.”
“You don’t look it.”
Amy winced. There was no hiding anything from him. “Is it that obvious?”
Dan walked over to look at the portrait. “The bad guys are beaten, our friends are here, and we’re home. So what’s wrong?”
“So much has changed, so much has happened, but I can’t help feeling we’re back where we started.”
“Like Grace planned it this way?”
Dan was right. That’s what was bugging Amy so much.
Grace had been such a big presence in their lives, one they’d needed, and yet—
“She can’t let go, can she?” Amy said. “It’s like she’s still sitting at that desk, ordering everything around us.”
“You need to take that painting down, then, and put it up in the attic. Better yet, give it to Ian.”
Amy wasn’t too sure she’d wish a watchful Grace on anyone. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’ve been head of the family before.” Amy stood at the window and gazed down at the lawn and the party that had spilled out from the library, where the meeting was meant to be held in, oh, exactly three minutes. “This should be easy.”
“Except you know it isn’t, right? That even after everything, running the Cahills may”—Dan hadn’t moved from the portrait—“turn you into her.”
“It cost her everything, didn’t it?” said Amy. “Was that what she was thinking, in that portrait? Is it worth all this?”
“You can only answer for yourself, Amy.” Dan waved his arm, the one with the watch on it. “Time’s up, big sis.”
* * *
There’d never been a Cahill gathering like it. Then again, the Cahills had never been so diminished.
There were a lot of people missing, a lot of important people.
Vikram—no surprise there. Amy reckoned they wouldn’t see or hear much out of him for maybe the rest of their lives. If one thing had spoiled Ian’s utter, ridiculous happiness, it was the lack of response from his father. The man was never going to change, but Ian was. He was looking forward, not back. He didn’t need his family’s approval anymore to be happy. He had Cara.
Mission Atomic Page 15
