No one had to ask who he meant.
Jake and Atticus took the room next to Amy and Dan’s. Dan lay down on the bed and closed his eyes. But he made himself stay awake until he heard Amy’s breathing grow slow and even in sleep. Then he got up and wrote a note:
Amy — couldn’t sleep, hanging out with Atticus. — D.
Dan tiptoed out of the room. He knocked quietly on the next door. “It’s me,” he called softly.
Jake opened the door.
“Amy’s asleep,” Dan said. “I think we should leave her alone for a while — she really needs to rest.”
“No argument from me,” Jake said.
“Okay — I’m going to get some sleep, too,” Dan said.
He went back to the other room. He set Amy’s phone to VIBRATE, then grabbed his backpack. On the way out of the hotel, he stopped at the front desk and asked them to hold all calls.
He hated the thought of leaving Amy alone in the room. But Jake was nearby, and Dan knew he might not have another chance to get away. He’d done what he could to make sure no one would miss him for at least a few hours.
At curbside, Dan sent a text message. Then he hailed a cab.
“Columbia University,” he said.
“You sure about this?”
Jonah stared at his reflection in a bathroom mirror at Gatwick Airport, outside London. Hamilton had picked out some new clothes for him: a plain gray T-shirt, dull khaki trousers, and a blue nylon zip-up windbreaker.
“I’m sure,” Ham said firmly. “No bling allowed.”
“Oh, man,” Jonah groaned. “Can’t I at least wear something black?”
He was thinking of Erasmus. Erasmus always wore black.
He was trying not to think of Phoenix, but his cousin’s face hovered at the edge of every thought.
Hamilton sighed. “We’ve been over this. We’ve got work to do, and we can’t have you drawing crowds everywhere we go. Think of it as — as going undercover.”
Undercover. That sounded like something Erasmus would do.
As a worldwide hip-hop star, Jonah had long thought of himself as a pretty cool dude. Now he knew the truth.
Erasmus was beyond cool. Way beyond.
Erasmus wasn’t about wearing bling, or how many fans he had, or how much money. That stuff was all outside stuff. Erasmus’s kind of cool came from inside.
Jonah hadn’t quite figured it out yet, but he was sensing that it had something to do with not caring quite so much about what other people thought.
It was whack: Not caring about being cool was what had made Erasmus so cool.
“Okay,” Jonah said. He put on the final item of the disguise, a blue denim baseball cap devoid of logos.
Ham shook his head. “Other way, dude.”
Jonah did his best to suppress a scowl of disgust — at both his reflection and Ham — as he turned the cap around so the bill was at the front.
After the flight from London to Palermo, the boys hired a car to take them to a hotel in Syracuse. They arrived in the evening, too late to begin any investigating. The next morning, checking out the hotel’s concierge desk, Hamilton found a brochure for a tour with a company that rented Segway personal scooters.
The boys had exchanged several texts with Atticus on the subject of Archimedes and had also researched on their own. There were two places in the city of Syracuse worth investigating: the downtown area called Ortigia and the archaeological district north of there.
“Look,” Ham said, showing Jonah the brochure. “The tour starts at the Piazza Archimede and ends at the Tomb of Archimedes. Can’t do better than that. You ever ridden one of those Segway things?”
“Yep,” Jonah said. “On tour, a couple of years ago. It was way cool because we had a ramp built and did all this fog and lighting stuff — the audience could only see my head and shoulders, and it looked like I was floating down onto the stage.” His face fell. “I remember Phoenix saying how awesome it was. . . .”
Hamilton looked at Jonah for a moment. Then he frowned and said, “You think I’ll catch on quick enough to keep up with you?”
Jonah blinked a couple of times and squared his shoulders. Then he slapped Hamilton on the back. “It’s easy, man — like, five minutes’ practice and you’ll be good to go.”
On hearing Jonah’s praise, Hamilton lit up like the human equivalent of a 180-pound Christmas bulb. Jonah was proud of himself. That’s what Erasmus might have done. Quit stewing and get on with things. And don’t forget that it hasn’t been all cupcakes for Ham, either.
In the wake of losing both Erasmus and Phoenix, Hamilton had been a rock for Jonah. Sticking more closely than the most dedicated bodyguard, Ham had taken care of everything from travel and hotel arrangements to making sure they ate healthy meals. He even scheduled regular workouts, alternating swims in the hotel pool with weight sessions.
“Exercise releases endorphins,” Ham said every time he rousted Jonah out of bed and into workout gear. “And endorphins make you feel good.”
The only trouble with the Holt method of recuperation was that it made you feel worse before you felt better. Jonah’s muscles hadn’t worked this hard in years. And he knew it would take more than a swim or two to get over the losses. But at the moment, none of the Cahills had much time to mourn.
The Vespers’ latest deadline felt like bad breath right in their faces.
Piazza Archimede was a traffic roundabout. Cars and trucks circled the piazza at crazed speeds, and it appeared that in Sicilian vehicles, neither the brakes nor the accelerator would work unless the driver was leaning constantly on the horn.
Take away the cars and it could have been another century in the piazza, with its dignified old buildings around a fountain featuring an impressive sculpture. But the statue had nothing to do with Archimedes.
“It’s a nymph who got away from some god who was chasing her by turning into a spring,” Hamilton said, reading from a brochure.
“A spring? So she could what, boing away?” Jonah asked. It didn’t seem like a great way to escape.
“Not that kind of spring,” Hamilton said. “The water kind. And the actual spring is here in Syracuse, too.”
“Well, okay, she escapes, but then she has to be a spring for the rest of her life?” Jonah shrugged. “Some of that Greek-myth stuff is lame.”
The Segway-rental shop was just off the piazza. As Jonah had predicted, the scooters were easy to get the hang of and the two boys were soon off on an audio tour of Syracuse.
The tour they had chosen lasted three hours. Afraid of missing out on something important, the boys rolled their way through the entire audio file. They learned quite a bit about the city of Syracuse, but relatively little about Archimedes.
At least the Segways were fun. After the first hour or so, Hamilton almost felt like the Segway was part of his body. You made it go by leaning forward and stopped it by leaning back. If you pushed a button on the handlebars and leaned left or right, the scooter would turn the way you wanted it to. It wouldn’t do jumps or wheelies or anything cool like that, but for getting around the narrow streets and alleys of Ortigia, it was way better than walking.
Tourists were not allowed inside the Tomb of Archimedes. This was not as big a disappointment as it could have been. “They’re not even sure it’s his tomb!” Jonah complained.
Archimedes’ tomb was indeed somewhere in Syracuse — the Greek philosopher Cicero had found it back in 75 B.C. and written about it — but no one knew where it was now.
“Too bad we didn’t know that before we started,” Hamilton said. None of the Internet sites he’d researched had been very forthcoming about the Tomb of Archimedes not really being the tomb of Archimedes.
They decided on one more stop: the archaeological museum. It was a huge, very modern structure laid out along the lines of a giant hexagon. Tooling along on their Segways, Jonah and Hamilton followed the signs to the entrance.
Jonah pulled up in a parking area set aside f
or scooters. One other Segway was parked there, but most of the vehicles were Vespas, the sleek scooters beloved by city-dwelling Italians.
“Jonah, watch this!” Hamilton called from across the parking lot.
He leaned forward and got his Segway up to its top speed of twelve miles per hour. Steady . . . steady . . . lean a little . . . NOW!
Hamilton pushed the turn button and leaned hard to his right. In previous attempts, the result had been a neat three-sixty, the forward momentum used up by the spin so the scooter came to a perfect stop. This time, he waited a little too long to go into the turn.
“HAM!” Jonah yelled and jumped out of the way.
Hamilton was inches away from a crash when he leaped off the Segway and sent it barrelling into the row of Vespas. They toppled over like awkward dominoes.
Both boys picked themselves up off the ground. One knee of Jonah’s new pants was torn, but he was otherwise undamaged. Hamilton had impressive cases of pavement burn on his right hand and his left elbow.
“You okay?” they said at the same time.
“My bad,” Hamilton said as he retrieved his Segway from the pile. Then they began resurrecting the toppled Vespas, eight of them. The scooters were surprisingly heavy.
As they pulled the last of the Vespas upright, Hamilton — or maybe it was Jonah — let go too soon. The scooter fell sideways, knocked into the Vespa next to it, and one by one, the rest of the scooters tipped over again.
“You’re kidding,” Hamilton said in disbelief.
Jonah groaned. Together they hauled the offending Vespa upright. Then they moved on down the line.
When they reached the last scooter, Hamilton was taking no chances. “Careful with this one,” he said. “We don’t want the same thing all over. One, two —”
“LADRO!”
A man was running toward them from the museum, waving his arms wildly and pointing at them.
“LADRO!” he yelled again.
Startled, both boys turned toward their accuser and let go of the Vespa —
Which toppled over, and all eight Vespas went down again.
Jet lag and general tension added up to a terrible night’s sleep for the Cahills and the Rosenblooms. At six in the morning, a message from Vesper One came through. Dan read it aloud:
“‘I just adore jewelry. That lovely ring of yours — I simply must have it. In fact, it’s the final piece I need to complete my collection. Put the ring and whatever you got from dear Dr. Siffright into a book bag. And come to think of it, I’m hungry. I’d like a nice juicy bacon cheeseburger. Put that in the bag, too. Central Park, Strawberry Fields forever! But in your case, at 8:35 A.M. for a rendezvous with Goldilocks. And of course, don’t try to follow her. You know the consequences.’”
The ring.
The Madrigal ring.
It had been protected by Madrigals for centuries, passed along secretly, guarded and protected and valued over life itself. Neither Dan nor Amy knew why it was so important, but the fact that Grace had entrusted it to them was all the explanation they needed.
The ring was embedded in Amy’s watch, forming the circle around the dial. The watch had been custom-made by a Madrigal/Ekat jeweler, waterproof, shatterproof, fireproof, every other -proof available.
Why did the Vespers want it? What did Vesper One mean by saying it was the “final piece”?
Palms sweaty and throat dry, Dan went into the bathroom for a drink of water. The phone beeped and another transmission came through.
It was a video file showing an extreme close-up of Nellie’s face. She looked terrible, her hair limp and greasy, dark crescents under her eyes.
“Hey, kiddos,” she said in a whisper.
The entire history of their relationship in two words: Nellie had called them “kiddos” from the first day she met them. Whatever happened, Amy and Dan would always be her kiddos.
Dan had to clear his throat against a lump formed by equal parts love and dread.
The camera pulled away slowly.
He gasped.
There was a gun pointed at Nellie’s left temple. The finger on the trigger twitched.
Then the feed cut off.
At around 7:15, Jake called room service and ordered a bacon cheeseburger. There was a brief scare when he was told it was too early in the morning. A considerable tip to be shared between the manager and the kitchen staff resulted in the production of the burger.
When it came up to the room, the smell of it almost made Dan sick.
And I used to love bacon cheeseburgers, he thought.
“What’s with the cheeseburger?” Jake asked. “From what you’ve said about Isabel, I’d have thought she’d ask for champagne and caviar.”
“I guess we’ll find out soon enough,” Atticus said.
Dan hadn’t shown the video to anyone else. What’s the point, he thought, we can’t do anything about it, and this way nobody else needs to feel as bad as I do right now.
He glanced over at Amy for the thousandth time. She was sitting in a corner chair, her head down. Since their arrival in New York, she had remained in sleepwalk mode — there, but not quite all there. Dan had tried everything to break through the invisible wall that seemed to be surrounding her. He felt his guts twisting slowly and helplessly whenever he looked at her.
Dan tried calling Hamilton and Jonah yet again. Every time, the connection went straight to voice mail. He was desperate for them to uncover something that might give them an idea of what the Vespers’ plan was — something the Cahills could use against them.
8:00 A.M.
His heart thudding, Dan began to prepare for the drop. They had already bought a book bag at the hotel gift shop. Atticus held it open while Dan put in the folio and the cheeseburger, wrapped in a napkin. Now for the hard part, he thought.
He crossed the room to the corner.
“Amy,” he said, “I need your watch.”
Amy jerked her head up like a wild animal on alert. She clamped her right hand over the watch, her eyes wide with alarm.
“No,” she croaked hoarsely. “Grace trusted me.”
Dan clenched his fist in a tiny gesture of triumph. If she knows that much, she’s still with me. . . .
“We have to,” he said gently. “Nellie. And Fiske, and the others.”
Amy lowered her head and peeked at the watch under her hand, then shook her head violently.
“I can’t,” she whispered. “Grace . . .”
Dan looked into her eyes. “Amy,” he said, “Grace would have understood.” He reached for her wrist.
“NO!”
Amy drew up her knees and backed herself farther into the chair, turning sideways and shielding the watch with her body. For a moment Dan wondered if she was going to bare her teeth at him.
Dan found himself trembling. He took a deep breath. No more Mr. Nice Guy.
“Amy,” he said, his voice firm and loud enough that out of the corner of his eye he saw both Jake and Atticus stiffen. “I need your watch. I promise I’ll get it back for you if I can. But you have to give it to me.”
One more breath.
“Give it to me NOW.”
He was almost yelling at her, and the pain in her eyes was killing him.
It worked. She went limp and held her left arm out weakly toward him. He knelt in front of her, unstrapped the watch, then circled her bare wrist with one hand and gave it a gentle squeeze.
She lowered her other hand to his shoulder, and for a few moments, they both held on tight.
Dan stood with one hand on the doorknob, the book bag over his other arm. It had been decided that he would make the drop on his own. Jake would stay at the hotel, keeping Atticus out of harm’s way.
Dan . . . going to meet the Vespers by himself . . .
From somewhere deep inside Amy, words struggled to the surface and broke through. “I’m going with you.”
Part of her was surprised to hear her own voice. It was almost as if she were outside her body, o
bserving herself. Scared Amy and Safe Amy, she thought. Safe Amy doesn’t want any part of this. She’s just watching Scared Amy, who can’t let Dan go alone.
“It’s okay,” Dan said at once. “We’ve done this before — it’s only a drop. I’ll be back before you know it.”
“I wasn’t asking,” Amy said.
All three boys stared at her. She glanced down at her wrist and remembered, with a shock like a jolt to her heart, that her watch was no longer there.
She walked past Jake and Atticus, past Dan, and out the door.
Strawberry Fields was on the west side of Central Park. It was a memorial to the great musician John Lennon, who was once a member of the Beatles and then a celebrated solo artist. The memorial was a circular mosaic embedded in the pavement, with the word Imagine — the title of one of Lennon’s most famous songs — in the center. “Imagine” was a song about world peace, and the memorial was both a designated quiet zone in the park and a peace garden.
Amy and Dan stood side by side near the mosaic, nervous and watchful. The park wasn’t crowded, but there were still plenty of people walking the paths.
Amy could feel Dan looking at her every few seconds while at the same time trying to hide his anxiety.
He’s worried about me, thought Scared Amy.
Don’t think about anything. Just get this over with, responded Safe Amy.
“Goldilocks,” Dan muttered. “I guess that means it will be somebody blond.”
Of course, as soon as he said that, it seemed like most of the people they saw were blond. But blond or not, everyone walked past them without a glance.
They had arrived a few minutes early. Amy knew from past drops that the Vesper pickup was nearly always right on time. But 8:35 came and went with no one approaching them.
8:36.
8:37.
8:38.
If I have to wait one more minute, I’m going to go crazy, Amy thought. Or maybe I already am. . . . Automatically she began picking at the blister on her neck again.
Just then, a big dog came up to Dan and sniffed him politely.
“Hey there,” Dan said and dropped to one knee to pet the dog.
The 39 Clues: Cahills vs. Vespers Book 5: Trust No One Page 12
