The 39 Clues: Rapid Fire #2: Ignition

by Riley Clifford

  UNLOCK A TOP SECRET FILE

  ABOUT THE CAHILLS’ DEADLIEST ENEMY —

  THE VESPERS!

  The seven Rapid Fire stories each contain a fragment of a code. Collect the fragments in order to assemble a complete ten-digit code.

  Go to www.the39clues.com.

  Click on “My Cards.”

  Enter the ten-digit Rapid Fire code to unlock a digital card and Top Secret Vesper file!

  The code fragment for this story is: S

  Are you ready to save the world?

  Contents

  Title Page

  Code Page

  Ignition

  Copyright

  The Start of the Clue Hunt

  Ian Kabra had charm, wealth, and stunning good looks. But he couldn’t move one stubborn cow out of the middle of the road. He didn’t understand it. The beast just stood there blocking the way with a dumb expression on its face, chewing its disgusting green cud. Ian grew more furious with each chomp mash chomp the cow made. He had places to be and people to judge. There was no room in his schedule for staring down dirty quadrupeds.

  “Livestock isn’t nearly as stubborn in England. It must be the American blood,” his little sister, Natalie, scoffed from the seat beside him. Her black silk funeral dress gave her an air of confidence beyond her eleven years. The dress seemed perfectly designed for her. In fact, it had been designed for her — in Paris.

  “All right, Giles,” Ian called out to the chauffeur as he glanced down at his Rolex watch. “It’s time for drastic measures. Get out, and push the beast over to the side of the road.” The black BMW sedan that the Kabras reserved for their visits to the States sat purring in the narrow road, surrounded by cattle. The midday heat billowed like a mirage off the hood of the car.

  “Me, Master Ian? Push the cow?” Giles groaned and opened the driver’s side door.

  As Ian watched the chauffeur trudge over to the animal, Natalie turned the knob up on her personal A/C vent with a vengeance.

  “Ugh! This humidity is simply horrid,” she whined. After a moment of dramatic fanning, she looked over at Ian and asked, “Do you think Grace left the estate to Amy and Dan? Those sad little orphans were her favorites, after all.”

  “The estate is beside the point. I’m not entirely sure there will even be a will reading. All I know is Mum said we need to keep an eye on Amy and Dan,” Ian replied.

  “What could those two really do with such a large house, anyway?” Natalie wondered. “Not that I care. We already have a mansion. But it seems so odd to just give one away to poor people.” Natalie shrugged, then pushed the DOWN button on the power windows and stuck her head out. “Giles, tell that blasted cow that if it doesn’t get out of the way soon, I‘m going to have it tanned by our man in Tuscany — and I’m not talking about suntanned!” Natalie yelled.

  It wasn’t long before the Kabras were back on the road, and what looked like endless farmland to Ian rushed by in a dizzying blur of sun-soaked blues and greens.

  The car glided to a smooth stop along the gravel drive in front of Grace’s mansion. Ian heard the crunch of the small stones beneath his feet as he stepped out of the car. Catching the low rumble of distant thunder, he looked up to the vast stone gables of Cahill Manor. Rows of enormous windows along the face of the mansion reflected the overcast sky spreading out over the rolling hills and forests of the estate. Weathered spires and gargoyles lining the roof glared down over the drive. The mansion loomed in all its glory from the top of a hill at the center of the grounds. It was an impressive sight, and for a moment, Ian almost forgot he was in a country where it was acceptable to wear blue jeans to the opera and people ate pizza with their hands.

  The heat of the day settled quickly onto Ian’s shoulders, though summer storm clouds were building in the east. A low hum sounded from the manor as a light breeze moved around its vast stone walls. Ian buttoned his double-breasted silk suit and walked over to Natalie.

  The two Kabras strode down to the family graveyard, which was ringed by a small forest. The grounds were covered with guests. At least four hundred people stood in and around the graveyard, waiting for the funeral to begin. Grace had a very large and international family. They were all Cahills, in one way or another, though they didn’t always carry the surname. There were Brazilian, French, and Australian Cahills. There were high-ranking diplomats, Nobel prize–winning scientists, and famous artists in every branch of the family. But Ian never understood how they didn’t all dress in a manner befitting their status. His eyes traveled over to the Starling triplets who, despite being genius inventors, couldn’t seem to think beyond khakis and argyle.

  Sinead, Ned, and Ted Starling were all sixteen, and from what Ian’s mother had told him, formidable opponents.

  “Hello, Natalie. Ian,” Sinead said, grinning as she walked up to them. “I see your jet didn’t crash while crossing the Atlantic.”

  “Was it supposed to?” Ian asked.

  “Not this time,” Sinead responded sweetly. “Though I hope you have your designer life vest ready for the return trip.” The triplets shared an oddly diabolical laugh between themselves, and strode off in their matching khakis and loafers.

  Turning back to the grave site, Ian noticed Alistair Oh, a distant Korean uncle of theirs. Some might call his diamond-tipped walking stick bling. Ian called it tacky.

  Natalie was looking around for someone to talk to. She had already eliminated their immediate choices: an old woman wearing a tiara who was standing near them with a monkey on one shoulder and an iguana on the other, and a toddler sitting on the ground attempting to eat handfuls of grass.

  “Let’s go chat with the minister,” Natalie suggested. “He might actually know something useful.” As Ian and Natalie trudged off, the hearse carrying Grace’s casket made its way down all one hundred yards from the house to the cemetery. Ian watched it glide along the gravel drive, the reflection of the trees skimming over its glossy rooftop.

  Ian felt a sense of finality rise within him, but it was joined with something else. Sadness? Excitement? Could it even be . . . fear? Ian wasn’t sure, which was a new feeling to him, too. With his handsomeness, wealth, and social dominance, Ian had never felt unsure about anything. Ever. His mother had guaranteed that. Over the years, he’d felt the pressure of his duty, his parents’ strong-handed guidance, the weight of his family legacy, but never insecurity.

  “Hey!” Ian suddenly heard someone yell from the procession line. He looked over just in time to see Dan Cahill get flipped upside down by the Holt sisters, Madison and Reagan. The child bodybuilders had grabbed hold of one leg each, and Dan was swinging like a blond-haired bat in store-bought funeral clothes.

  “Look, guys,” eleven-year-old Madison said. “We caught a rat!” Dan was wriggling and throwing punches into the air, trying to get free, but his tie kept flapping in his face. And this is my competition? Ian laughed.

  The rest of the Holt family — Hamilton and their parents, Eisenhower and Mary-Todd — jogged up in formation, wearing matching purple tracksuits. Ian wondered how they could possibly manage to don uniforms every day, looking like the waitstaff of that horrid excuse for a restaurant, McDonald’s. More important, he wondered where Amy was. That mangy bookworm was always with her little brother. It was rather sweet, like the runt of the litter protecting the deranged one.

  Then he saw her. Amy’s face had gone pale, and she appeared to be stammering, as usual. The Holts were laughing at her. Ian’s mum, Isabel Kabra, said weakness should always be laughed at. Well, the Holt family was doing a fine job.

  The girls finally dropped Dan, and Ian turned his attention back to the minister. Natalie must hav
e been employing her interrogation training, since he looked a little frightened of her. Indeed, he looked scared of everyone. He kept wiping his sweaty forehead with a handkerchief and looking anxiously back and forth. Ian knew he should probably call her off. It was unlikely the poor fellow knew anything useful.

  Ian looked back to Amy and Dan. Ian’s mother said they posed the greatest threat, though Ian still couldn’t believe it. The two siblings could barely dress themselves. How could they ever become the most influential people in the world?

  The funeral procession ended, and Reverend Niblocke, probably in an attempt to get away from Natalie, asked everyone to be seated. Ian dragged his sister over to the row behind Amy and Dan, trying to remain close to them.

  “Well, any success?” Ian asked his sister.

  “No,” Natalie replied in a huff. “He has a border collie named Moses, but that’s all I got.”

  Ian snickered.

  “Shut up!” Natalie said. “Loads of help you were. All you could do was stare at that fashion tragedy show, Amy and Dan. Now we have to sit behind them.” She shuddered. “I hope we don’t catch something.”

  As they took their seats, Ian noticed an African American woman in the row behind them, dressed in a black sweaterdress, which was pilly and bookish looking. A floral silk scarf around her neck added some color, but her glasses didn’t even have designer frames. It’s frightening, the kind of riffraff that sneak into these things, Ian thought. But then Amy flicked her reddish-brown hair over her shoulder from the seat in front of him as she blew her nose, and Ian snapped back to reality. It was time to focus. Everything he’d been training for — all the plans the Lucians had spent centuries scheming — it all led up to this.

  He took a deep breath, inhaling the surprisingly fragrant colonial air. It was a beautiful day for world domination.

  Mummy will be so proud!

  Jonah Wizard sat down in the front row and waved to his fans across the grave plot. A group of girls over there was going gaga for him. They all had on Wizard tees from his last concert in Toronto (the bedazzled special-edition ones) and had drawn his tag sign on their cheeks in black eyeliner — funeral appropriate. Jonah smiled his best gangsta smile at the girls. I have the most dedicated fan base ever.

  “Dad.” Jonah turned to his father in the seat beside him. “Make sure those girls get third-anniversary Jonah Wizard mugs, okay?”

  “Mugs.” Broderick Wizard tapped into his BlackBerry. “Got it!”

  Jonah looked back to the crowd, searching for Amy and Dan Cahill. Everyone knew they were Grace’s favorites. She had probably given them inside information. Jonah had to find a way to take care of those little nobodies before they could take advantage of their head start. But where were they?

  “Son,” Jonah’s dad interrupted his thoughts, “did you call the producer of The Really Late Show back? They want to have you on for Gangsta Life.”

  “Book it for me,” Jonah answered distractedly, scanning the crowd.

  There must have been over four hundred people at the funeral. Jonah knew crowds. He was the world’s biggest pop/hip-hop star under age seventeen. He’d been filling sports stadiums, amphitheaters, and mega music halls since he was twelve years old. This many people in one place invigorated him. But why more people at the funeral weren’t noticing him confused Jonah a bit. Didn’t they know his new album, Gangsta Life, had just premiered at number three on the French music charts?

  Then he spotted Amy and Dan. Amy was in a black dress with a little collar that kept flapping up against her cheek in the breeze. But she didn’t seem to care. She just kept staring ahead with a blank look on her face. And Dan was slumped over in his chair, kind of leaning against Amy. Even though they needed a major upgrade in the swagger department, Jonah knew he had to keep an eye on them. He might be the most talented performer of his age, but if his mom was right, he was about to get the chance to become something much bigger. He wasn’t gonna risk it over a couple of kids who couldn’t even rhyme a couplet if the beat hit ’em on the head!

  During the service, Rev. Niblocke kept glancing over at the Kabras, then back down at his watch. Sweat dripped from his forehead. Man, someone should teach him about stage presence. Jonah thought. Grace would have been asleep by now, if she weren’t already dead!

  Jonah had to admit that he didn’t know Grace that well, but he remembered her as a pretty nice lady. She once showed him her vast music archive, full of first-pressing records and ancient sheet music. Original manuscripts from Bach to 2Pac lined the shelves of her music library. Grace had taste. There was no arguing with that.

  Soon after the reverend finished, a five-star general got up to read a speech about Grace’s life. Then a president from some foreign country that Jonah had never heard of began gesturing wildly and speaking in a language Jonah didn’t recognize. With the clouds looming overhead and the light breeze rippling through the trees ringing the graveyard, the funeral was turning into a real showstopper. Jonah had to hand it to Grace. She really knew how to go out with a bang.

  When the speakers had finished, six Nobel Peace Prize winners got out of their seats and walked toward Grace’s casket in tight formation to lower it into the ground. Then men in matching black suits invited the guests to stand by row and toss a shovelful of dirt on the coffin.

  Jonah was called first. He rose, strutted over to the grave, picked up the shovel, and tossed a clump of dirt onto her casket. Before he finished, he made sure to wave heartily to the funeral crowd. Seconds later, he was tackled by girls wearing WE ♥ THE WIZ-IZA-IZA-IZARD! commemorative free-trade T-shirts.

  Professor Astrid Rosenbloom watched in shock as Jonah Wizard, the famed hip-hop star, almost drowned in a sea of teenage-girl admiration. Nothing seemed to be making any sense today. Not the weather, not the funeral service, and certainly not the guests.

  Astrid had been invited to Grace Cahill’s funeral just yesterday by a man claiming to be Grace’s lawyer, William McIntyre. Of course she had agreed to come. Grace Cahill’s death had left Astrid with too many questions.

  Though William’s last-minute phone call was strange enough, Astrid was certainly not prepared for what she found at Grace’s funeral. It wasn’t just the number of people claiming to be relatives — hundreds, if Astrid had to guess — but the great diversity among them startled her. As a Harvard professor, Astrid had come to learn a great deal about differences of opinion and background. She was an expert at handling eccentric scholars, overbearing parents, and high-maintenance benefactors. You name it, she’d dealt with it masterfully. But this. This was a circus.

  The wealth and self-assurance that permeated the crowd was astonishing. Earlier, an elderly Korean gentleman had strode past her carrying a diamond walking stick — that he wasn’t even using! Astrid adjusted her glasses for a better look around. At the end of her row, a blond woman with a twitching eye appeared to be arguing with a squirrel. In Russian. But before Astrid had a moment to take it in, the woman flicked her wrist at the animal, which stopped it dead in its tracks. Did she just poison a squirrel with her fingernails? Astrid shook her head in confusion.

  The only people besides herself who didn’t seem to fit in were the two children sitting a few rows in front of her. Even the woman with a monkey on her shoulder seemed more at home in this crowd. Based on Grace’s description of her beloved grandchildren, Astrid guessed that these two were Amy and Dan Cahill. The boy had dark blond hair and kept swinging his legs back and forth under his chair. Just like Atticus, Astrid thought, thinking of her son, who had turned nine a few weeks ago.

  Amy sat primly in her seat, but looked shattered by Grace’s passing. While everyone around them gossiped and chattered, Amy and Dan just sat quietly, gazing at the earth where Grace now lay. It was as if those two children were the only people who knew what a funeral was for — who knew what it meant to miss someone.

  After the services finished, the mourners had lined up, row by row, to toss a shovelful of dirt onto Grace
’s grave. Astrid sat this part out. She hadn’t known Grace for too long and it seemed inappropriate to help bury her.

  It took nearly an hour for each guest to throw in their shovelful of earth. The sky was almost completely overcast now, and the wind had picked up. But no one had left yet. All the relatives were sticking around for something. There was a feeling of nervousness, of anxiety in the air. Groups of families gathered together and almost sneered at others. For all the knowing looks that were being exchanged, Astrid thought she might as well have been in a Roman court during a plot to overthrow the Caesar. She felt her own body tense with anxiety. William McIntyre walked up to the podium next.

  “Thank you all for coming,” he said gravely. “I am William McIntyre, Madame Cahill’s lawyer and executor.”

  A light murmur began to spread across the crowded graveyard.

  “If you will look inside your programs,” McIntyre continued, “some of you will find a gold invitation card.” The murmuring deepened as hundreds of people shuffled through their programs.

  Some ripped theirs open, and Astrid could see plumes of paper rising above the crowd.

  “Sacré bleu! This is impossible!” a man with a curly mustache exclaimed.

  “There must be some mistake!” another woman whined from the back of the crowd. Curses were yelled all over the graveyard as guests discovered they had not received an invitation. The woman sitting next to Astrid tried to steal a card from a child when her parents weren’t looking.

  “Thief!” the little girl yelled, and a fight broke out. Even those who did receive invitations were greedily lording them over less fortunate relatives.

  Astrid didn’t look inside her program. But someone jostled her from behind and a gold card fell from Astrid’s program down to the grass beneath her chair. She picked it up and turned it over.