The 39 Clues: Cahills vs. Vespers Book 2: A King's Ransom (6 page)

The driver checked out Dan and Amy in the rearview mirror. It was the second time he’d done it in less than a minute.

Dan’s fingers drummed nervously on the leather upholstery. He took out his cell phone and wrote a text to Amy.

DRIVER CHECKING US OUT. WHY?

Amy responded in seconds.

NOTICED IT TOO. WE SHOULD BAIL.

Casually, Dan pretended to adjust his backpack. Meanwhile, he looked over his shoulder. A sedan slipped in and out of traffic behind them. It speeded up to avoid a tram.

A tail? Or just an aggressive driver?

They were driving along the Reuss River now. Lucerne looked like a mashup of Zurich and Geneva and Zermatt to Dan — picturesque and impossibly clean, the streets full of law-abiding citizens. Wide, curving streets, buildings painted in pale colors. Everything looked fresh and pretty. It made him nervous. What he needed was a narrow, dirty alley to hide in.

Amy began to cough. She bent over.

“Amy? Are you okay?”

“I think I’m going to be sick,” she said.

“Driver!” Dan called. “Pull over!”

The driver pulled over. Amy tumbled out, followed by Dan. She bent over, but her eyes swept the roadway.

“The dark blue car …”

“I know.”

Amy wheeled and ran, Dan close behind her. He heard honking horns, and he looked behind them. The dark blue car squealed to a stop at the curb.

“They’re coming!” he told Amy.

They turned down a side street, then another. Dan could see that Amy was struggling. His sister could barely walk in high heels, let alone run.

The road curved, and suddenly they were at the river again. It was a crisp fall day, and people were strolling along the walkway. Dan and Amy weaved through the crowd, trying to put distance between themselves and whoever had been in the dark blue car.

“Dan,” Amy called, “I twisted my ankle!”

She limped behind him. Dan saw something ahead, a crowd of tourists listening to a guide in front of a wooden covered bridge that spanned the river.

“Just a few feet more,” he said. “Hurry.”

They melted into the crowd.

“One of the most famous landmarks in Lucerne, the Chapel Bridge, or Kapellbrücke, is the oldest wooden bridge in Europe… .”

Dan nudged Amy. They skirted the tourists and began to walk across the bridge.
Clomp, clomp
… their footsteps echoed underneath the wooden roof.

“Are you okay?” he whispered to Amy.

“I can make it. I just need to sit down soon.”

“Okay. When we cross the river, we’ll stop.”

Clomp, clomp
… their footsteps mingled with the sound of the tourists entering the bridge behind them.

One pair of footsteps was walking faster than the others.

Dan stiffened. He pressed Amy’s arm, and they moved a bit faster.

Clompclomp. Clompclomp.

And the footsteps behind them moved faster.

Clompclompclomp.

Faster yet. And the footsteps behind them echoed their hurry.

“Dan …” Amy was close to sobbing.

He pressed her forward.

Clompclompclompclomp.

The footsteps were running now. The person was immediately behind them.

Dan suddenly broke off from Amy, turned, and barreled into the figure following them, straight into a stomach. He heard the surprised
oof
and he kept going, slamming the person into the wooden railing of the bridge, lifting him at the same time in a move that would get a halfback thrown out of the Super Bowl.

He just had enough time to see William McIntyre’s surprised expression as their family lawyer flipped backward over the railing and into the Reuss River.

Mr. McIntyre sat in the back of the dark blue sedan, wrapped in blankets. His teeth were still chattering. Dan refilled Mr. McIntyre’s mug with more hot chocolate from a thermos.

“I’m getting too old for this,” he said.

“I’m really sorry,” Dan said. “I just thought …”

“You could have called out,” Amy said.

“I didn’t want to use your names,” Mr. McIntyre said. “And I couldn’t remember which alias you were using. They know you’re in Lucerne. I needed to get you out of the city as soon as possible.”

“So where are we going?” Amy held out her cup and Dan poured her more hot chocolate.

“Basel. Third largest city in Switzerland. You can hide there for a bit. There’s a place I know where you’ll be safe. Get a good night’s sleep. You look like you could use it.” He looked at both of them. “This is different from the thirty-nine clues. You’re not on your own. You have a solid team behind you. So reach out.” He smiled. “Just don’t reach out and push me into a freezing river next time.”

“I’ll try to remember that.” Dan grinned.

Outside the windows, the soft rain made the air look like silver mesh. The wet streets gleamed. Amy snuggled under the soft wool throw. Mr. McIntyre always made her feel safe, with his kind gaze and gentle, deep voice. Only he would think to pack a thermos and blankets in case of trouble.

She was so glad he hadn’t been kidnapped, too. If they lost all three of them — Fiske, Nellie, and Mr. McIntyre … it was unimaginable. Amy pushed the thought away. She was here, and warm, and cozy, and she breathed in the comfort Mr. McIntyre always brought her.

Amy sighed. “I don’t know if I can sleep until I figure this out.”

“Attleboro has already begun to research,” McIntyre reassured them. “And I brought a treat.” He reached down to the floor of the car and plopped a black nylon bag on the seat. He removed what looked like a large stainless-steel watch. He flipped up the face of it and they saw a digital map with a green dot on it. “This is a wrist GPS device. And it has an audio component if you need it — so that it can talk you through a route. Comes with an earpiece, too.”

“Awesome,” Dan declared, reaching for it.

“It’s already configured to our
Gideon
satellite. You can load your info onto it using this flash drive,” McIntyre said. “After you load it, destroy the drive.”

Amy felt the next few days open like a dark hole she was about to fall into. She shook off the feeling and concentrated on the object in Mr. McIntyre’s palm.

“This is all so cool, Mr. McIntyre,” Dan said. “I feel like a superspy.”

McIntyre hesitated, and for a moment the tall, gray-haired man looked almost boyish. “After all this time … don’t you think you could call me William?”

Amy and Dan exchanged glances. As fond as they were of him, they couldn’t imagine calling their lawyer by his first name.

He saw the hesitation on their faces. “Will?”

Amy cleared her throat. Dan fiddled with the new GPS.

“How about ‘Mac’?”

“Mac,” Dan said, trying out the name.

Mr. McIntyre looked wistful. “I always wanted to be a Mac.”

“It’s perfect, Mr. McIntyre.” Amy said. “I mean … Mac.”

“I just have to say one more thing.” Mr. McIntyre loaded the devices into Amy’s backpack. Then he looked at each of them in turn.

“I am very proud of you two. Grace would be, too.”

Amy’s eyes misted. She leaned forward and hugged Mr. McIntyre. That didn’t feel awkward at all.

Attleboro, Massachusetts

Evan sat in front of the computer in the command center attic, his head resting in his hand. It was midnight. The house was quiet. Even Saladin was asleep on a stack of papers.

Sinead slipped through the doorway and came to sit in the chair next to him. “You should get some sleep.”

“I want to be here when she wakes up.”

“Don’t your parents wonder where you are?”

“They think I’m in a sleepover study group. As long as I say the words
Harvard
and
extracurricular
, they’re on board.”

Sinead snorted. “Look, they didn’t get to Basel until midnight. When she contacts us, I’ll wake you up. There’s a six-hour difference — it’s only six
A.M.
there.”

Evan shook his head. “I’ll crash on the floor if I need to. She’s going to want all this information as soon as she wakes up. And there’s stuff I can do while I wait.”

“There’s always stuff we can do,” Sinead said. “But if we work ourselves to exhaustion, we can make mistakes. And that doesn’t help anyone.”

He knew she was right. Around him the blue screens of the computers glowed. The monitors from locations around the world were temporarily dark. Tacked to the walls were printouts from their research. Sinead had put up six bulletin boards, one for each Vesper in the Council of Six.

They had run out of space on the wall, so Evan had strung a wire from one end of the room to the other. They’d begun to clothespin random pieces of information from Cahill texts around the world.

One after the other, the pages fluttered like flags in the slight breeze from the heating ducts. Impossible to tell which should be investigated, and in what order.

Evan rubbed his forehead. “That note that Amy and Dan found from their grandmother.
VSP 79 – Pliny described first test
. How could all this circle back to some volcanic eruption back in Italy in
A.D.
79?”

“We don’t know. But we’ll find out.”

Her tone was confident. It reminded him of Amy’s. Evan had been plunged into the Cahill world like a deepwater pool, and he was still trying to stay afloat. He still couldn’t quite get over the fact that his girlfriend, whom he thought of as shy and reserved, actually had the skills of an international spymaster.

And Sinead — he had met her plenty of times. She was Amy’s best friend, but he had found her distant and chilly. He’d often felt that he kept failing to pass a test she hadn’t explained to him. But now that they were working together, he realized that she just had a hard time letting people in. And no wonder — Amy had told him that Sinead’s two brothers had been severely injured in a freak explosion in Philadelphia more than two years ago. Now he knew that the explosion was certainly Cahill-related, but he couldn’t find the courage to ask Sinead about it. Her brother Ted was one of the hostages. No doubt that was what gave her such incredible drive.

Sinead came over and put her hands on his arms. She gave him a shove. “C’mon. Go sack out. I’m going to run a few programs. I promise to get you if Amy checks in.”

He stumbled to his feet. He felt like his eyes were full of sand. “Okay. I’ll catch a few hours.”

Sinead’s green eyes were steady on his. “I never knew how much you cared about her until now.”

He nodded. “Me, neither. I’ll do anything for her.”

Sinead nodded. “Me, too,” she said softly.