Ruby Redfort Take Your Last Breath (29 page)

He reached over from his reclined position to switch off the tape, but instead clicked play on the second cassette. Two static sounds played one on top of the other, making an eerie sort of noise. “Oops,” he said. “Even worse.” He reached for the off switch, but fell backward into the beanbag, his hand landing on the portable player to his left and triggering the play button on that machine.

Now all three static sounds were hissing at once, but it wasn’t static Ruby and Clancy could hear anymore — it was jumbled words.

They looked at each other, utterly speechless.

RUBY REWOUND EACH CASSETTE TO THE VERY BEGINNING,
then she held her fingers over the two play buttons on the double cassette player. Clancy held his finger over the play button of the portable player. When Ruby gave the nod, they both pushed all three buttons at once, and then Ruby and Clancy sat there in amazement, listening to the clear voice that the three simultaneously playing static tapes had magically turned into.

The three static messages weren’t three different messages, they were just one. Played together, the sounds layered on top of one another to form words.

All of a sudden Ruby sat bolt upright, realizing something else too. The lullaby that for so many years had sent her to her dreams had now woken her up. The words — not just empty sounds but a message.

Without explanation she raced downstairs and flung open the door to the living room.

“Ruby!” her mother hissed. “I’ve just gotten him to sleep!”

Ruby tried to whisper, but her heart was pounding. “I just have to know, where did that lullaby come from? Did
you
make it up?”

Sabina looked surprised. “Oh no — it was handed down from my mother.”

“And where did she get it from?” said Ruby.

“From
her
mother,” replied Sabina. “It dates right back to your great-great-great-grandmother Martha Lily Fairbank.
She’s
the one who made it up. I just changed the word
rubies
to Ruby!”

Ruby stood there in the doorway, stunned by this revelation. All these years the location of the Fairbank rubies was singing in their ears, just waiting for someone to really listen.

In other words, when the asteroid comes, the currents fall still, and it’s possible to get to the cave.

A reference to the Sea Whisperer, which according to the criminal mastermind’s static code message, lived in the tidal pool below where the rubies were hidden.

In other words, the cave should be just below the bird shape on the rock of the smaller Sibling Island.

Ruby was breathing hard, and her mother was looking at her anxiously.

“Honey, you OK?”

Ruby nodded, turned, and closed the door. She stumbled back upstairs. Clancy by now was on his feet and his arms were flapping uncontrollably. “What is it?” he asked. “What’s going on?”

“I gotta talk to Spectrum.”

Ruby radioed through to the only agent she could think might actually still be at HQ.

“Froghorn,” she said, trying to catch her breath. “Listen, this is real important.”

“Look, little girl, the grown-ups are busy right now. Try calling back tomorrow.”

“Yeah, well, they wouldn’t be busy if it wasn’t for me.”

“Rather full of ourselves, aren’t we?”

“Look, Froghorn, I’m trying very hard here not to call you a potato head, so could you help me out with that by not behaving like a potato head? I need to get some important information to Hitch, and unfortunately, I gotta talk to you to do this.”

“They’re out of range,” came the reply. “You should know that. All radio transmission is dead. Besides,” he said unhelpfully, “they are a little bit too busy catching pirates to chat to schoolgirls. I —”

Ruby clicked off before she felt compelled to go over there and sock him on the nose.

She walked to her closet and pulled out a huge carryall bag that was already stuffed full of something bulky. She opened it, checked inside, and zipped it back up.

“What are you doing?” asked Clancy.

“What does it look like?” said Ruby. She was pulling on her hooded sweatshirt and scanning the room for her boots. “I’m going out.”

“But it’s eleven thirty at night,” said Clancy.

“Eleven twenty-eight, I think you’ll find,” said Ruby, checking that the rescue watch was secured around her wrist — it still kept coming loose.

“Darn this strap,” she cursed. She grabbed the limpet lights and rummaged around for the sea-sting antidote, finally finding it in her desk drawer. She threaded it though an elastic hairband and pulled it onto her right wrist. She didn’t have time to fiddle with clipping it to a zipper right now — she was in way too big a hurry.

“Now, where’s that breathing buckle?” she said, looking around.

“This it?” said Clancy, picking the silver buckle — still attached to a belt — from a heap of discarded clothes.

“Yeah, that’s it.”

“OK,” said Clancy. “Just where are you thinking of going at eleven twenty-eight at night?”

“Don’t you mean where are
we
going?” said Ruby, slinging the carryall over her shoulder. It was heavy.

“
I’m
not going
any
where,” said Clancy.

Ruby shrugged. “So I’ll go on my own.”

“Are you crazy? You can’t go on your own, wherever you’re going.”

“So come with me,” she called as she climbed out of the window.

“Oh, brother!” grumbled Clancy as he scrambled to his feet. “Sometimes I really hate you, Rube — you know that?”

CLANCY AND RUBY WERE WALKING
down the harbor road: it was dark, and though a few of the bars were still open for business, on the whole it was pretty quiet.

“What’s in the bag?” asked Clancy.

“You’ll see.”

“So apart from trouble, what exactly are you looking for?”

“Rubies,” replied Ruby.

“What, you’re gonna rob Keller’s jewelry store?” said Clancy in a rather sarcastic tone.

“Ha-ha, funny,” said Ruby flatly. “I might bust a gut laughing.”

Clancy stopped walking. “Don’t tell me you’re going alone on this. Man, are you totally out of your mind? You don’t even know if the rubies actually exist, and if they do, then they’re most likely in the hands of a psychopath.”

“So?” replied Ruby.

“So you just get a kick out of doing stupid things?” said Clancy.

“As a matter of fact, I think I would be pretty stupid not to.”

“Really? How’d ya figure that?” Clancy was standing with his hands on his hips; he looked somehow comical when he was all indignant, like an angry teapot.

“Look, Clance, what you gotta see is that there’s a pretty villainous guy, in fact at least two of them, who seem to think there’s something to this legend. Now, what you gotta ask yourself is why?”

“’Cause they know something we don’t know? Is that what you’re trying to suggest?” said Clancy. “Have you not considered that these guys are as crazyfied as all those other folk who believe in the Twinford treasure?”

“I have considered that, Clancy. Yes, I have,” replied Ruby calmly. “But even if these ‘bad’ fellows are mistaken about the gems and gold, even if there is no treasure to find, it doesn’t change the fact that these bad guys will be there in the caves looking for it and, correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe
we
are looking for bad guys.”

“
You
are looking for bad guys,” corrected Clancy.

“OK,
I
am looking for bad guys, and if I locate the treasure caves, I’ll find them.”

Clancy frowned. “Have you considered just how bad these bad guys might be?”

“I have; as a matter of fact, I have a feeling I know one of them quite well.”

Clancy shivered. “You’re not thinking of a certain someone are you? Italian shoes, beady eyes, slow, agonizing deaths?” His voice sounded thin.

Ruby nodded.

Neither of them wanted to actually say his name, but they were both thinking of him. Count von Viscount: a man so deadly that once caught in his clutches, few ever escaped. In fact, only two: Bradley Baker and Ruby Redfort. And Ruby hoped that she’d never lay eyes on him again.

“Why are you so sure?” said Clancy.

“A couple of things,” replied Ruby. “First, all that drama of the pirates and the old-fashioned-looking pirate ship — like from some old B movie. It’s the Count’s style: theatrical, cinematic.”

“OK,” said Clancy, “but that doesn’t make it him.”

“No,” agreed Ruby, “but that last message, the static one, it was like an order the way it said,
I don’t need to
count
on your loyalty, just remember you cannot tell a lie.
I think it’s a message
to
the Count, not
from
him, warning him to be careful. Don’t double-cross me because I can make you drink the truth serum so you cannot tell a lie.”

It made perfect sense, and as a result, Clancy wasn’t feeling so good. Just a few weeks ago the Count had almost succeeded in burying Ruby alive under several tons of sand. When that didn’t work out for him, he’d given permission for one of his cohorts to cut her throat. And Clancy wasn’t forgetting his own narrow escape from extinction by the hand (or rather diamond revolver) of Nine Lives Capaldi, the Count’s most deadly assassin. Though at least now she was all out of lives.

“So will you come with me?” asked Ruby.

“Uh-uh, no way.” Clancy was sure on this point. “You’re not getting me in a little sailboat hunting for a crazy murderer, and that’s final.”

“But it isn’t a sailboat,” assured Ruby.

“It isn’t?” said Clancy.

“No,” said Ruby. “It’s what they call a dinghy.”

“What!” spluttered Clancy. “You have to be kidding! No way. Not now, not ever.”

“Oh, come on, Clance. Live a little,” said Ruby in her best Ruby Redfort persuader voice.

“Yeah, well, that’s what I want to do, and that’s why I absolutely am not coming. You’re not using me as fish food.”

They walked out to the farthest part of the harbor, past a man who was settling in for a night sleeping rough on a wooden bench. He was busily securing his bag of possessions underneath the seat and took no interest in the kids who should be all tucked up in bed by now.

The two of them walked and argued. Ruby the persuader, Clancy the resister.

After fifteen minutes and forty-seven seconds Ruby had broken him down, and Clancy found himself stepping into the little yellow dinghy that was sandwiched between fishing boats.

“Don’t expect me to get out of this boat until it’s time to step back onto dry land,” was all that he asked.

“Sure.” Ruby was checking the scuba equipment stored in the dinghy. “I reckon I can promise that ’cause I
think
my dad mended the holes,” she said casually.

“What!” said Clancy, desperately attempting to scramble back out.