Something buzzed next to him, a faint green glow on his nightstand. What was that? He leaned toward the glow then froze.
It was the phone.
The dead man's phone.
It was working, and something was lighting up the screen. He swallowed hard and picked it up. Maybe he was still dreaming. He didn't know if he really wanted to look at it. He leaned back against the headboard of his bed, blinking at the light from the screen in the darkness.
“Buyer coming - Dooley mansion. Midnight 8-10.” He let out a long breath. It was just the same message as before. But then he saw the edge of an image at the bottom of the screen. There was more.
He scrolled down to see a picture of him and Caitlin standing at the eagle habitat talking to the marshal. Another picture followed of them driving off in his mom's minivan.
Then came the words, “Keep quiet or you're next!”
6
Sam read the message again: Keep quiet or you’re next.
His heart felt like it might beat out of his chest. This couldn't be happening! He leapt out of his bed and raced across the hall to Derek's room. “Wake up!” he whispered harshly, giving Derek a rough shake.
Derek groaned, slowly opening his eyes. “What?” He looked up at Sam. “What's the matter?”
“You have to see this!” Sam waved the phone in front of Derek's face.
“Sam, it's the middle of the night...” He rolled over in his bed. “Come back in the morning.”
Sam shook Derek's shoulders again, pulling the covers off. “No, you have to wake up. I got another message!”
Derek propped himself up on his elbow and glared at Sam. “What message?”
Sam held up the phone.
Derek's eyebrows raised in the glow. “It works?”
Sam nodded.
The news seemed to perk Derek up. He took the phone and read the screen. “It just says the same thing as before...” He scrolled down. “Oh, man...”
“We have to tell Mom and Dad. Now.”
Derek shook his head. “Wait a minute. Let's think about this. If this message is from the bad guys that were chasing the marshal...and he's dead...then they must know you have his phone. They must have seen us with it. Now they're sending you a message, and they have your picture. Maybe they really could come after us. If they know our car, they might know where we live.”
Sam hadn't thought about that. He’d assumed telling Mom and Dad would help things, but maybe Derek was right, maybe it would be even more dangerous. Just like those movies where someone is kidnapped and the kidnappers say that if you tell the police the person is dead. He sat down on the floor next to Derek's bed and tried to think. This was very, very bad.
“Maybe we can leave an anonymous tip with the FBI,” he said, finally.
Derek dropped his legs over the side of his bed and yawned. “What are you going to tell them? That we saw the marshal, he crashed into you, and then you stole his phone?”
“I didn't steal it. I found it.”
“Tell that to the FBI,” said Derek. “Maybe you're already on the suspect list.”
Sam scratched his head. It was hard to think when he was so tired. “Maybe they could trace the call to see who sent the message.”
Derek lay down in his bed. “Maybe we could be dead. Let's go back to sleep and think about it in the morning.”
Sam didn't want to go back to bed. He didn't want to get any more messages, and he certainly didn't want to think about the bad guys knowing where he lived.
“Derek...”
“Good night, Sam.” Derek put the pillow over his head.
There was nothing else to do but walk back to his room. Sam put the phone in the drawer of his nightstand then lay in his bed, staring at the ceiling for what seemed like forever.
When the sunlight streamed through the window the next morning, Sam felt like he hadn't slept a wink. He reached into his nightstand drawer and picked up the phone. The screen was blank. It was dead. Maybe it had all been just a dream.
He rolled out of bed, got dressed, and walked down to the kitchen. As he ate his cereal, he tried to think about the situation from every direction he could imagine, but he was stumped. He didn't want to tell Mom and Dad if that would put them all in danger. The message said to stay quiet, and maybe that was the best thing to do. But if doing nothing meant something bad was going to happen, how could that be the best thing?
Derek walked in, got his own bowl of cereal, and sat down next to Sam. “Morning.”
Sam glared at him. “Is that all you can say?” He usually felt cranky in the morning, but after lying awake half the night, he felt worse than usual.
“No,” mumbled Derek between big bites of cereal, “I have a lot more to say.”
Sam waited, but his brother just munched on his cereal. “Well?”
“Well, what?”
“What more do you have to say?”
Derek grinned. “I have a plan.”
Sam raised his eyebrows. “You do?”
“Yep, but you're not going to like it.”
Sam frowned. That wasn't very unusual. He didn't like most of Derek's plans. They normally got them into trouble, or were scary, or dangerous, or all three at once. He took a deep breath. “What's your plan?”
Derek placed his bowl in the sink, then turned his chair around and leaned over the back. “We need to go to Swannanoa.”
Sam jumped up from the table. “What? Are you crazy? After the message we got last night? That's the last thing we need to do.” He shook his head. “It's way too dangerous.”
Derek raised his hand up. “The message said keep quiet, and we're going to. We're not going to tell anyone. But it didn't say don't do anything.”
Sam scowled at Derek's crazy plan. “We don't even know if this has anything to do with Swannanoa. The message just said the Dooley mansion. It could be Maymont, remember?”
“I thought about that too,” said Derek. “But it can't be Maymont. The eagles were stolen from there. The bad guys wouldn't bring the eagles back to the place they just stole them from. That doesn't make any sense.”
“You don’t make any sense,” muttered Sam.
“They're going to have to sell them somewhere,” Derek continued, ignoring Sam’s insult. “What better place than a deserted old mansion in the mountains.”
Sam thought about what he said. “You're right.”
“I am?”
Sam nodded. “Yep, you're absolutely right. So let's tell the police, and they can go to Swannanoa and take care of the whole thing. It’ll be great. I'll watch it all on the news right here from the couch.”
Derek shook his head. “What fun would that be, Sam?”
Sam's eyes felt like they were bulging out of his head. “Fun? What fun would it be if—” Before he could finish, the phone rang.
Derek looked at the caller ID and handed it to Sam. “Your girlfriend again. Seriously, why don't you just get it over with and tell her you like her.”
Sam frowned and yelled into the phone without thinking. “Hello?”
“Sam?”
“Yeah, what is it?”
“Are you all right?” said Caitlin.
“Oh, sure, I'm just great. What can I do for you?” He really wasn't in the mood to talk.
“I've been thinking about the eagles and the ‘keep quiet’ message.”
There was only one way she could know about that—Derek must have called her and told her. Sam sighed into the phone and shot another dirty look at his brother. “You have, huh? Well that seems to be very popular this morning.”
“Yes. And I have a plan.”
Sam rolled his eyes. “I've had just about enough plans for one morning, Caitlin.”
“No, listen,” continued Caitlin. “We have to go to Swannanoa.”
Sam closed his eyes. This was out of control.
7
A few days later, Sam was pressing his cheek against the window in the back seat of Mr. Murphy's SUV an
d watching the river cut its way alongside the twisty mountain road. He felt sick from all the twists and turns, not to mention the reason they were driving up into the mountains.
Caitlin had convinced her dad to drive them past Charlottesville to Afton Mountain for the day. She'd told him there would be some great photo ops on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Since Mr. Murphy was a professional photographer, it was an offer he couldn't turn down. He probably never suspected that the actual reason Caitlin wanted to go was so they could get to Swannanoa on August tenth because of a text message from possible killers, or at the very least professional eagle thieves. No way would Mr. Murphy have said yes to that. Sam was pretty sure nobody would have said yes to that. He wasn't sure that eagle thief could really be a profession, but he didn't want to poke around to find out. Anyone low enough to steal bald eagles was not the kind of person Sam wanted to be anywhere near.
He'd tried to protest going on the trip, but it hadn't worked. Derek actually tried to convince Sam that going to Swannanoa was the safest way to figure things out. That seemed crazy, but yet, here he was, sitting in the car driving to Afton Mountain. Derek had said not to worry about it and to live a little. That's exactly what Sam wanted to do—live a little. Going up the mountain toward the killers seemed to be the opposite of that.
“Have you two ever hiked on the Appalachian Trail?” Mr. Murphy asked from the front seat. He wouldn’t be so cheerful if he knew the whole point of this trip was to track down killers.
“I don't think so,” said Sam flatly.
Caitlin turned around from the front passenger seat. “It's cool. Daddy and I hiked it last year a little bit. Did you know it goes all the way from Georgia to Maine?”
“That's a long hike,” said Derek, sitting next to Sam in the back seat.
Caitlin giggled. “We didn't do the whole thing, just a few miles. We're lucky that it runs through Virginia at all.”
Sam remembered hearing a little bit about the trail from his dad. He'd hiked some of the northern parts as a teenager growing up in New York State.
“It's over two thousand miles long,” added Mr. Murphy.
Derek whistled. “How much are we going to see today?”
Caitlin held up a map. “Well, I think if we start right here...” she placed her finger on a spot and winked at the boys in the back, “…this would be a good route. Is that okay, Daddy?”
Mr. Murphy nodded. “Sounds good to me. I don't think I've photographed that part of the mountain before.” He glanced back in the rearview mirror. “Are you boys up to it?”
“Absolutely,” replied Derek. He gave Caitlin a high-five over the headrest of her seat.
“Sure,” muttered Sam. He'd resigned himself to the fact they were going, but he was still nervous about it. The place that Caitlin had picked on the map was just a mile from Swannanoa. She and Derek had planned it all out. “Can’t wait.”
Having Mr. Murphy along on their trip to Swannanoa made Sam feel better, but only a little. After all, if a federal marshal couldn't handle things, Mr. Murphy wouldn't do much better with his camera. Not unless it was one of those James Bond spy cameras that was secretly a scope for a gun. He glanced up at Mr. Murphy in the driver's seat and decided that wasn't very likely. He was a nice guy, but didn't seem the double-oh-seven type.
The drive into the mountains took a little over an hour, and the views out the window showed that they were constantly going up into higher elevation. Some parts next to the road seemed to go straight down. There were guardrails on most of the curves, but some sections of the road had nothing. Sam gulped, thinking about what would happen if a deer ran out in front of the car and they had to swerve. It would be like one last ride at the amusement park with a very bad ending. He sat back and closed his eyes. He was feeling sick to his stomach again. They’d gotten a late start, and it was going to be mid-afternoon before they had lunch on the trail.
Mr. Murphy pulled off into a small parking lot. “What are we doing?” asked Derek. “Is this the trail?”
“It's an overlook,” said Caitlin. “A place for travelers to stop and take in the view.”
“I'm going to set up my tripod and take some pictures,” explained Mr. Murphy. “You guys can look around, but don't get too close to the edge.”
Derek hopped out of the car and whistled. “Whoa, check it out!”
They all stepped up to the low, wooden railing at the back of the parking lot. Sam stared out over the edge. He could see for miles down into the valley. The landscape was scattered with fields and farms, wooded sections, buildings, and roads. It reminded him of a model railroad that he'd seen in a museum. Everything looked miniature, like he was looking down from an airplane. It was incredible.
He turned and looked at the roadside marker sign. “What's Rockfish Gap?” he asked.
“It's here,” said Caitlin.
Sam frowned at her. “I know it's here. But what is it?”
Mr. Murphy overheard them and laughed. “It's a wind gap, Sam.”
“Wind gap?”
“I've heard of those,” added Caitlin.
Of course she has, thought Sam.
“It's a gap in the mountain range that was formed by water cutting through, right Daddy?”
Derek looked around. “I don't see any water.”
“There's not any water these days,” said Mr. Murphy, “but over the centuries there was. Today it's a break in the range, and people have used it as a place to cut through the mountains. Wind gaps are usually where they've built roads, railways, that sort of thing.”
Sam looked at the tall mountains on both sides of the valley. Where they were standing didn't seem like something that could be formed by water. Then again, the Grand Canyon didn't seem like it could be formed by water either, but according to his science teacher, it was. Nature was crazy.
No, he was crazy. Why was he standing here thinking about nature when there could be danger up ahead? But there was nothing he could do about it right now, was there? Better to push that aside for a few minutes and listen to Mr. Murphy. He was going on about the Blue Ridge Mountains that lay spread out in front of them.
“If you look at them in the right light, the mountains and the trees do have a slight blue tint to them, don't you think?”
Sam stared out at the mountains. They didn't look overly blue to him right then, but he assumed Mr. Murphy knew what he was talking about. Caitlin must get her smarts from somewhere.
While Mr. Murphy set up his camera, Derek called Sam and Caitlin over to the side of the overlook. “I think Swannanoa is up there.” He pointed across the road and further up the mountain.
Sam peered up into the trees, holding his hand over his eyes to block the sunshine. “How far?”
Caitlin studied the map. “It looks like the Appalachian trail runs just below us here on the valley side. This road is the Blue Ridge Parkway. The mansion isn't more than a mile north.” She pointed up the hill across the road.
“And what exactly do you think is going to happen when we get there?” Sam asked, doing a poor job of holding back his skepticism. “Are they going to throw us a welcome party, hand over the eagles, and send us home?”
Derek shot him an angry glance. “Lighten up, Sam. Geez. You're such a buzz kill. I've been thinking about this. Maybe the killers won’t be there yet. Maybe they just stashed the animals there. It’s not anywhere close to midnight yet.”
Sam closed his eyes. “Oh, that makes me feel much better.”
“We'll park the car, hike along the Appalachian Trail for a while, have lunch, then head up to Swannanoa.”
“And you think Mr. Murphy will just let us walk right up to an old abandoned building?”
Caitlin raised her palm. “I'll handle that. My dad can't resist a good scene for a photograph. If I tell him there's a secret abandoned mansion for him to shoot at sunset, he'll come with us. Trust me.”
Sam wasn't so sure. “But what about the eagles? How are we supposed to save them once we get
there?”
“We'll just scout it out,” said Derek. “If we find them, we'll call the police, and then we'll be heroes. Just like when I found the lost coins in the cave. Remember how we had our pictures in the paper?”
Sam groaned. Derek had found valuable coins in an old abandoned mine cave in the woods, but he'd also been trapped and almost died.
“Quiet! Here comes my dad,” whispered Caitlin.
“Okay, who's ready to pick up some sandwiches and head out on the trail?” asked Mr. Murphy, folding his camera stand.
“Let's do it!” exclaimed Caitlin and Derek.
Sam's stomach growled at the mention of food.
Mr. Murphy looked at him curiously. “Sam, you okay?”
“Yeah, just still a little car sick.” Those twists and turns on the road had left him feeling a bit off, and while a snack did sound good, it wasn't the main reason he felt queasy. He glanced back up the mountain, picturing Swannanoa behind the thick tree line. He wondered if the eagles really were up there, and if they were, what else might be there with them.
Just down the road was a group of buildings that seemed to be part convenience store, part gas station, and part tourist center. Several other structures around the corner were run down and closed off, and a motel sat up on the hill above the roadway.
“Let's get some food for lunch on the trail,” said Mr. Murphy, turning into the parking lot. “You guys go ahead and I'll fill up the car with gas.”
After a bathroom break and a few minutes of shopping, Sam followed Caitlin out of the store. He held a bag with two bottles of water in one hand, and a bag of chips and a sandwich in the other. Derek strutted out behind them wearing a pair of goofy reflective sunglasses.
“Where did you get those?” asked Sam.
“I bought them,” said Derek, peeking over the top of the shiny lenses. “I'm undercover…” he glanced back and forth, then lowered his voice to a whisper, “for our secret mission.”
Midnight at the Mansion (The Virginia Mysteries Book 5) Page 4
