Curious Minds (16 page)

Emerson's iPad was beeping inside his rucksack. He pulled it out, tapped in his security code, and the floor plans for Mysterioso Manor appeared on the screen.

“The flashing red dots indicate where the security has been breeched,” Emerson said.

“There are a lot of them,” Riley said. “There are flashing dots all over the place.”

“Yes,” Emerson said. “We have visitors.”

E
merson crossed to a full-length mirror set into the wall and pressed the palm of his hand against the glass. A clicking sound came from behind the mirror, which opened like Aladdin's cave.

“A fingerprint scanner?” Riley asked.

Myra shook her head. “You boys and your toys.”

“It gets even better,” Emerson said. “It's also a two-way mirror. When the salesman pitched it, I couldn't resist.”

Everyone squeezed into the narrow space behind the mirror, and Emerson pulled the massive door shut. No one spoke, and in the absolute silence Riley's heartbeat rocked her body. She told herself she was safe behind the silvered sheet of glass, but she didn't believe it. Not for a moment. She saw the door to the tower room open and instinctively stepped back, bumping into Emerson.

Rollo entered the room accompanied by five men in assault gear, rifles held at their hips. He glanced briefly at the mirror, the high tower windows, the conical ceiling, and then his attention swung to the safe.

“The safe is open and empty,” Rollo said, more to himself than to the men. “He's been here and moved on to another room.” He turned to one of the men. “Stay here. You have a good view of the grounds should he try to leave the house.”

Emerson tapped Riley on the shoulder and maneuvered her flat to the wall while he quietly lifted a trapdoor. Light was dim to nonexistent, but Riley could see the hint of a stairwell winding away from the opening. Emerson curled Riley's hand around his penlight and eased her forward.

“Take it slow. You're going to lead us out of here,” he whispered, his lips skimming her ear.

Riley felt a shiver rip through her, the result of an unsettling mixture of absolute terror from their situation and pleasure from Emerson's touch. She cautiously lowered herself through the trapdoor and began creeping down the narrow stairs, fighting the panic of claustrophobia. The stairs had been set between the outer wall of the tower and the inner wall of the stairwell they'd originally climbed. Myra was directly behind Riley, and Emerson was behind Myra. Emerson had the rucksack over his shoulder and the duffel bag clutched to his chest, and Riley could hear the rucksack occasionally scrape the wall.

The stairs ended at a small narrow landing.

“Now what?” Riley whispered.

“It's a door,” Emerson said. “There's a touch latch high on the right side.”

Riley ran her hand up the door, found the touch latch, and the door opened into a long, windowless passage.

“This will take us to the garage,” Emerson said.

“How did they know we were in the house?” Riley asked.

“I imagine they tracked me through my iPad,” Emerson said. “I've turned it off and I'll destroy it when I get the chance.”

They quickly traveled the length of the passage and came to another door with another high touch latch. Emerson opened the door and they walked into a large utility closet. He cracked the door of the closet, looked out, and jerked his head back in.

“There's an armed guard standing three cars down,” Emerson said to Riley. “I can disable him but I need you to distract him.”

Riley went wide-eyed. “How am I supposed to distract him? What if I startle him and he shoots me?”

“You're female,” Emerson said. “Females distract males all the time. Just go out there and use your feminine wiles.”

“I don't have any wiles,” Riley said. “Harvard Law didn't offer that course. I don't know how to distract men.”

“Nonsense,” Emerson said. “You distract me all the time.”

“Good heavens,” Myra said. “We're never gonna get out of here. Get out of my way. I'll distract him.”

Myra let herself out and marched up to the guard.

“Hey,” Myra said. “What are you doing here in Mr. Knight's garage?”

“Halt,” the guard said, shouldering his rifle. “Who goes there?”

“Honey, you've been watching too much television,” Myra said. “No one talks like that. I'm the Knights' housekeeper and I'm looking for their armadillo. The whole family is batty. They got a pet armadillo. Can you imagine?”

“I haven't seen it,” the guard said. “You need to go back to the house.”

“You remind me of my son. He has curly hair just like you. At least I think so. I don't see all that good with the cataracts. And I got a big speck of something in my one eye.” Myra circled around the guard and pulled her eyelid up. “Do you see anything in there?”

“No, ma'am,” the guard said, turning toward Myra, keeping her in his sights. “You need to go to the house.”

“Well, it's killing me,” Myra said. “There's something sticking in my eye!
Owww! OWWW! WOWWW!
”

In an instant Emerson was out of the closet and at the guard's back. Emerson put his hand to the guard's neck and the guard collapsed like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

Riley followed after Emerson. “Omigod,” she said. “You killed him.”

“Not nearly,” Emerson said. “There are ninety-six
thodu varmam
points in the human body. Some points can actually reduce the number of days in a person's life. Some points just rearrange the
sara
and
kalai ottam.
The ancient Siddhars used
urakka kaalam
for anesthetic purposes to induce sleep when performing surgery. That's what I did. He'll be fine in an hour or so.”

Emerson crossed to a '72 Jarama 400 GT Lamborghini. A four-seat beauty, all sky blue and sleek Italian perfection. “I believe this will do,” he said to Riley. “You drive.”

“You expect me to drive out of here?”

“Yes.”

“The place is crawling with armed men.”

“Most likely,” Emerson said. “So you should drive very fast.”

Riley pushed a stray strand of hair off her face. “Great. Give me the keys.”

“The keys,” Emerson said. “That's unfortunate.”

“Why?”

“I don't have any. They're kept in a key closet in the kitchen.”

“So hot-wire it,” Myra said.

Emerson and Riley went blank-faced.

“Lordy,” Myra said. “They don't teach you kids any skills these days.”

She stepped over to the tool bench on the back wall, selected a small screwdriver, and used it to remove the panel covering the car's steering column. She disconnected the red wires from the ignition cylinder and used the screwdriver's tip to strip the ends from the wires, then twisted them together and dashboard lights came on.

“That's stage one,” she said. “Here comes the tricky part. The starter.” She isolated the brown wire from the tangle of cables, disconnected it, and carefully stripped the insulation off with the screwdriver.

“Get ready to rev the engine,” Myra said. She took the brown wire, touched it to the exposed red wires, and it sparked. Riley hit the gas and the engine turned over.

Everyone jumped in, and Riley took off through the open garage door. A fleet of black SUVs clogged the driveway and blocked the exit.

“Go right,” Emerson said.

Riley glanced over at him. “There's no road there.”

“Is that a problem?”

Riley wrenched the wheel to the right, and the Lamborghini bumped over the lawn toward the conservatory. Riley checked the rearview mirror and saw the assault team running for their SUVs.

“Where am I going?” she asked.

“That way,” Emerson said, pointing to the zebra enclosure.

“How do I get around the fence?”

“You don't.”

Riley narrowed her eyes, leaned on the horn to warn the zebras, and raced toward the chain-link fence. “Have air bags been installed in this car?”

BANG!
The Lamborghini plowed into the fence, knocked a section to the ground, and rolled over it.

“No,” Emerson said. “No air bags.”

Riley sped through the pasture with the Lamborghini bucking and caroming over the rough ground.

“Are the SUVs gaining on us?” Riley asked.

“Not so much,” Myra said. “They're having a tussle with the zebras, being that the zebras are through the hole in the fence and stampeding all over the place. So far one SUV has hit a tree and a second one's flipped over.”

“What about the zebras?”

“The zebras are having a good time,” Myra said.

Riley had a white-knuckle grip on the wheel. “We're coming to the end of the open pasture.”

“The fence extends into the woods,” Emerson said. “If you look carefully you'll see a narrow break in the trees where a path leads to an old stone-and-iron gate.”

Riley slowed to a crawl and turned onto the path. She stopped at the gate, and Emerson jumped out and opened it. Riley drove to the other side and into an affluent suburban neighborhood. Emerson closed the gate, pitched his laptop into a small pond that backed up to the gate, and got back into the car.

“That gate looked a lot less substantial than the chain-link we demolished. Couldn't we have just knocked it off its hinges?” she asked Emerson.

“Yes, but that gate's almost a hundred years old,” Emerson said. “I wouldn't want to destroy it. And it keeps the zebras out of the neighborhood swimming pools.”

R
iley drove to Fourteenth Street and parked a block away from the Columbia Heights metro stop.

“Now what?” she asked Emerson.

“Now we take the yellow line train to Virginia,” Emerson said.

“I don't mean to talk out of school,” Myra said, “but shouldn't we be going to the police?”

Emerson shook his head. “We're dealing with corruption at the very highest level and we have no idea how it trickles down. At the very least we would be detained and remanded to involved authorities.”

Myra raised an eyebrow. “Do I want to know what the heck is going on?”

“It's the NSA,” Riley told her.

“It's not the NSA,” Emerson said. “If it was the NSA they would have caught us leaving the estate. They would have had helicopters and a fleet of cars all through the neighborhood to track us down no matter what we did. As it was, the operation at Mysterioso was limited to a small number of men.”

“That's comforting,” Myra said, rolling her eyes.

“It
is,
” Emerson said. “It means that the U.S. government isn't behind this. Just an incredibly powerful cabal
within
the U.S. government.”

“This is about the blog, isn't it?” Myra asked.

They had reached the train platform and Emerson pulled up. “You read the blog?”

“Of course,” Myra said. “It's just about like having a son and a nephew on television. You're almost famous.”

“Astonishing,” Emerson said. “I rather like that.”

“And I can always tell when you're the one writing the blog,” Myra said. “You use more words than Vernon, and sometimes I have to look them up.”

“I have a superior vocabulary,” Emerson said. “In fact, it's superior in four different languages.”

Riley cut her eyes to him. “You only speak four languages?”

“At a superior level,” Emerson said.

The yellow line train glided into the station, and Emerson, Riley, and Myra stepped on board and found a near-empty car. A half hour later the train crossed the Potomac into Alexandria.

“This is our stop,” Emerson said, rising as the doors opened at Huntington Station.

Everyone shuffled off the train, and Larry met them on the platform. “I had a feeling you'd be on this one,” he said. “I'm parked in the lot.”

“So Emmie's got you mixed up in this too,” Myra said.

“Just like old times,” Larry said. “Not too many dull moments when you work for the Knights.”

“What sort of car do we have?” Emerson asked Larry.

“It's a nice big sedan. A Cadillac. I borrowed it from my cousin. It'll be good for the trip.”