Edison's Gold (15 page)

“Well, mine taught me how to trip-wire our home security system.” Tom watched as the tunnel's traffic light changed from green to red. “Not that there's ever anything at my house worth stealing.”

“So how much time do we have?” Colby could feel her insides twisting from nerves, but she was determined to be brave.

“As long as we need. I've blocked the timer, so the light won't turn green. But we should still try and get out of here as soon as possible.”

“Ya think so, genius?” said Noodle as the three of them stepped inside the tunnel's all-encompassing blackness.
Even their flashlights provided only weak patches of illumination in the dark.

Whoosh!
Tom and Noodle turned at the sound of Colby's inhaler, followed by the sound of her sneakers squeaking against the rusted railroad tracks as she followed them in.

“What happened to Colby the daredevil from the other day?” asked Noodle.

“Hey, two days ago, you wouldn't have even been able to get me on the Metro-North.”

T
heir flashlights darted like dragonflies, sweeping and lighting different sections of a damp, crumbling wall, momentarily illuminating graffiti and leaky pipes that crisscrossed paths along the ceiling.

“It smells like feet and mushrooms in here,” said Noodle.

“No, it smells like vinegar and cat farts,” corrected Colby.

“No. Actually it smells like old tin—”

“Guys, enough!” Tom barked. “We need to concentrate right now.”

“Sor-
ry
, grumpy old man,” said Noodle as Colby suppressed a chuckle.

Together, they walked along in silence; the echoing
drip-drop of water splashing onto the tracks provided a haunting background noise.

Tom hadn't meant to snap, but finding Edison's treasure—or lost invention or whatever it was—had consumed him to the point where it was impossible to joke around.

“Hey, guys.” Noodle's hushed voice broke the silence. “What are you gonna tell everyone at school when they ask what you did over spring break?”

“Probably easier to lie and just say I watched DVDs with Nana.”

Tom smiled ruefully. “I don't think this is what Phelps had in mind when he told me to reflect on my future.”

Their laughter bounced along the concrete walls, the sound reverberating into spooky, ghoulish noises. Maybe he hadn't completely lost his sense of humor after all.

“Woo-hoot!”
Noodle spun around. “Listen to that. We sound like a gallery of ghosts trying to—
ooomph
!” The flashlight flew from his hand and clattered to the tracks as Noodle went down with a thud.

“Noodle! Are you hurt?” Colby spun on her sneaker to find him lying flat, wincing in pain as he struggled for breath.

“Uh, I think I broke my coccyx,” he moaned. “What is a coccyx, anyway?”

Tom dropped to his knees, beaming his light onto Noodle's back at the point where he clutched at it with both hands.

Next to Noodle's shoe, something white peeked up at a right angle from beneath the gravel.

“You're a genius.” Tom began to scoop away some of the rocks from around the white stone. “I think you tripped on something good.”

“Hey, don't worry about me dying over here. As long as I tripped on something good.”

Ignoring him, Tom pulled a shovel from the duffel bag and started to dig furiously through the rocks. In a few quick turns, he had exposed the rest of another white mile marker, with MI 9 chipped into the stone.

“Just like the other two,” said Colby softly.

Tom wiped his brow. “Grab a shovel and get digging.”

Noodle hopped up, his coccyx miraculously repaired, and soon he and Tom were winging clumps of dirt and rock over their shoulders.

After several fruitless minutes had passed, however,
Noodle's spirits and strength began to flag.

“We got nothing but a big ole pile of gritty rubble on one side, and a big ole hole on the other,” said Noodle, passing his shovel to Colby. “Thanks for the exercise in futility, T.E. the First.”

“Could we have messed up the Morse code or something?” Colby began to dig alongside Tom. “Maybe I got the cipher equation wrong.”

“Seems unlikely,” said Noodle. “Since you're the first kid ever to have a hundred and four average in Mr. Farrell's math class.”

“Guess I have to agree with your logic on that one.”

Tom's shovel flew faster, his digging growing desperate.

No, no, no
, he thought with every mound of overturned earth. No, they hadn't got the code wrong. The clue had to be here somewhere. They'd come too far—

“Uh-oh!” Noodle's exclamation broke Tom's thoughts. “This might put a damper on our plans!” They followed his finger toward the growing circle of light that was slowly moving its way down the tunnel toward them.

“Yikes,” breathed Colby. “I thought you said no trains could come in when the light's red.”

But Tom had no time to think about what had gone wrong because at that same moment his shovel clanked against a hard object.

“Wait—I got something!”

W
hat you got is thirty seconds!” Noodle shouted. “That train sees us, but it doesn't look like it's stopping anytime soon.”

The train's whistle sounded through the darkness, its brakes shrieking as a warning light flashed several times at the kids.

Tom dropped to a crouch. “It's some kind of container.” His hands pawed at the dirt. The battered and rusty tin box peeking out was roughly the size of a toaster oven, and it wasn't coming loose very easily.

“Tom! We're not waiting for you!”
yelled Colby. “If we don't start running, we'll be flattened!”

Noodle was pulling at Tom's jacket. “We'll come back for it.”

“It's almost loose! I'm so close.” He yanked with every ounce of strength, losing balance and falling backward as it finally dislodged.

Tucking the metal box under his arm like a fullback, he took off after the others down the center of the railroad tracks. The shrill whistle and howling brakes continued ringing through Tom's ears, but he kept his eyes focused on the tunnel's opening, now only fifty feet away.

“Aaagh!” Tom felt his leg buckle as he fell to the ground, and the metal box flew from his hands. Although he couldn't see anything, he could feel his shoelace stuck on one of the track's wooden cross ties. He heard Colby's voice in the distance as he freed himself.

“Tom, hurry!”

Behind him, the train roared like a diesel-fueled beast. With no time to recover the box, and no alternate escape, he flattened himself on the tracks and offered up a quick prayer.

The train bore down, gears grinding, its tons of steel inches from his head. The sound was a deafening explosion. Nerves raw, heart pounding like a jackhammer, Tom squeezed his eyes shut as the interminable train whined and rattled above his body for what felt like an eternity.

And then, silence. The noise had stopped.

Tom peeked up to see one of the car's lower axles above his head. With shaking hands, he crawled toward the edge of the tracks.

“Please tell me you're all right!”

His ears were still numb and ringing, so it took him a second to make out Colby's voice, and then the faint outline of her face as she appeared in front of him, crouched alongside one of the train's still wheels.

“Thank God you're still three-dimensional,” she said when she saw him.

Noodle and Colby each held out a hand and pulled Tom out from under the train and onto his feet.

Too shocked to speak, he leaned against his friends as they all flattened their bodies sideways to give themselves enough room to exit the tunnel.

Once out, their eyes quickly adjusted to the weak moonlight. Where the one entrance to the tunnel had been all industrial buildings, the other end offered a landscape that was thick with overgrown trees and weeds.

The front of the train was a couple hundred yards away, which made it impossible to see in the night.

“I bet there's a conductor on his way toward us right now,” said Noodle. “With loads of questions.”

“Wait, we almost forgot the box,” Tom croaked, and was about to turn around and head back into the tunnel when—

“You kids lost or something?” The words, spoken in a heavy Brooklyn accent, fell like an anvil on the moment.

They froze. A heavyset shadow stepped out of the trees and directly in between the kids and an escape route. “Thought you lost me in Brooklyn, didn't you?”

And as his face came into the moonlight, they could see exactly who this man was.

“Pet store guy,” whispered Noodle.
“Go!”

They ran, fresh energy surging through Tom's veins. But he'd made it only a few yards before he heard a commotion and looked back to see the worst: the pet store guy had Colby by the leg.

“I didn't do anything!” she hollered.

Tom and Noodle dove into a heavy cluster of bushes and slid in the dirt.

“What do we do?” Noodle's eyes were sheer panic.

Tom's mind was awhirl. “Let me go back for her. But the metal box is still in the tunnel—”

“Yeah! Under a freaking train!”

“You have to go grab it and hide it someplace safe.”

“No way I'm leaving you two! The conductor'll probably be here any second.”

“Noodle, whoever that guy is, he doesn't want Colb. He wants the clue!”

“But we should all stick together—”

“That box might be exactly what we need to trade for Colby! As long as you don't get seen by anybody.”

There was no point arguing. Tom was already on his feet, running back toward the fat man, who was now grappling Colby tight against his waist.

“I'll stay with her, Noodle!” Tom called over his shoulder. “Promise!”

L
et's go. Keep it moving, you two.”

The fat man in the cheap suit shoved Tom and Colby up a long flight of stairs. He was huffing loudly behind them. With each exhale, Tom almost gagged from the instant coffee-and-nicotine stench.

The two of them had spent the last hour and a half in a window-blacked van, only to arrive at some enormous Manhattan brownstone that on the inside resembled a hunting lodge from another century. Mounted elk and bear heads peered down from the corridor walls, and several of the rooms they'd passed through were hung with old oil paintings of grim, ringleted ladies and equally somber ruffle-collared gentlemen.

The fat man had herded them through a few of these
more public rooms, then up a back staircase and down a narrow hallway, which finally led to a planked oak door that was on its own private landing and seemed to be secured off from the rest of the house.

The fat man gave three loud knocks on the door.

“Send them in, Nicky,” came an icy voice from the other side.

The fat man turned the knob and prodded Tom and Colby into an immaculate state-of-the-art office, which looked like the bridge of a spaceship. Multiple wall-mounted monitors scrolled international stock tickers and news programs, and every piece of pristine furniture was designed in chrome and leather.