The 39 Clues: Cahills vs. Vespers Book 5: Trust No One (4 page)

Amy turned and started running back the way they had come.

A voice called out, “Amy!”

It wasn’t the boys, they were still with her, but Amy knew that her instincts had been right: It was someone who knew they’d be here, on their way to Yale. . . .

Dodging between the cars as fast as she could, Amy felt bewilderment mixed with fear.
This is crazy! Vesper One
needs
us for this mission — why would he send people to stop us?

“Amy! Amy Cahill!”

A small part of her brain tried to free itself from the panic and think rationally.
I know that voice — who —

“AMY! STOP! STOP, IT’S ME, SINEAD!”

Amy hugged Sinead, tears of relief in her eyes. “I was never so glad to see anyone in my whole life,” Amy said.

They walked back to the SUV. Sinead signaled the rest of the motorcade, and they departed.

“Who are they?” Amy asked.

“Private security firm,” Sinead said. “Mostly ex-SWAT or Navy SEALs. And our Lucian friends got in touch with the mayor, who helped out with the traffic.”

Amy smiled in gratitude. “But why didn’t you call and tell me you were coming?”

“It’s Yale, right?” Sinead said briskly. “Come on, we better get going.” She threw her arm around Amy’s shoulders. “It’s great to be together again!”

“Ditto,” Amy said, and the thought that Sinead hadn’t answered the question faded from her mind.

It had almost been like a game.

A chess match that she had played perfectly, each move with patience and purpose. Sinead felt a tremendous amount of satisfaction thinking about the months that had gone by without Amy suspecting a thing.

Now it was time for the end game, just three moves left. First, get the serum formula. Second, present it with a flourish to Vesper One, whose gratitude would surely be boundless. And third, the most important, reunite with Ned and Ted to give them the serum.

The Starlings had given up all claim to the serum when the Clue hunt ended. But back then, the doctors still seemed to have plenty of strategies available in their attempts to cure Ted’s blindness and Ned’s headaches.

It had been more than two years now. Nothing had worked, and they were out of options. Sinead was desperate. The serum had to be the answer; it would succeed where the doctors had failed.

As for her friendship with Amy . . . Sinead felt a twinge, a vibration of regret that she tamped instantly.

My family. My brothers. That’s what matters.

Sinead’s hand slid to her pocket. She fingered the barrel of her new gun with both pride and tenderness.

Are you the best ickle gun in the world? Yes you are, oh, yes you are. . . .

A SwissMiniGun. The world’s smallest handgun, just two inches long. Sinead had briefly considered the eighteen-karat-gold, diamond-studded version — which cost more than forty thousand dollars — but opted in the end for the more practical stainless-steel model.

Removed from the holster, the gun could actually be hidden in the palm of her hand, and it sounded pretty much like a cap gun when it was fired. The bullets were not much bigger than pinheads — dollhouse bullets that looked like they couldn’t hurt a flea.

Sinead found this vaguely comforting, because the honest truth was that she didn’t want to hurt Amy.
Only if I have to . . .

The bullets were real enough, though, and exited the barrel at three hundred miles per hour. At point-blank range, they could penetrate human flesh and do plenty of damage to a vital organ or a major artery.

Normally, getting that close to an adversary would be a tricky task. But not in this case.

After all, she and Amy were best friends.

“It’s not looking good,” Sinead said.

She wasn’t talking about the road, which was blissfully empty for now, all the traffic ahead of them cleared by her stunt on the bridge.

She was talking about the hostages.

“We enhanced the last video feed so we could get a good look at everyone. Alistair is the worst off. I hate to say this, but he looks really awful. His eyes — I don’t know quite how to put it. It’s like he’s given up already.”

Amy turned to meet Dan’s gaze and saw her own worry reflected in his expression. Alistair Oh was not the oldest hostage — Fiske Cahill was a few years older — but Fiske was in many ways like his sister Grace, Amy and Dan’s grandmother. Both seemed to have a thin core of steel running through them.

Alistair, on the other hand, had shuttled back and forth between sympathy and nefariousness, alternately helping and hurting the Cahills. Although he had finally ended up on their side for good, his ambivalence was perhaps a symptom of a deeper weakness. The kidnapping and captivity seemed to be sapping not only his physical strength, but his will to live as well.

Amy swallowed and forced out the next words. “Anything more about — about Phoenix?”

Sinead shook her head. Silence all around.

Phoenix, only twelve years old . . . It wasn’t like Amy could have done anything to prevent his death. But that knowledge didn’t help. Wretched. And
like
retching, that was how it made her feel.

For a while Amy heard nothing but the muted sounds of traffic through what she guessed was the bulletproof glass of the car’s windows.

“Amy.”

Sinead had her eyes on the road, and Amy could tell that whatever was coming, it was serious.

“No one wants to talk about this, but we have to,” Sinead said. She glanced back at Dan.

Without asking, Amy knew what Sinead meant.

The serum.

The main reason that the Vespers were targeting the Cahills was a formula Gideon Cahill had invented in the sixteenth century. If all of its ingredients were precisely and painstakingly measured and mixed, the result would be a serum that gave its imbibers abilities and talents that made them superior to most of the human race.

The thirty-nine components of the serum had been discovered, and Dan had memorized the exact formula before it was destroyed.

“The one thing that could defeat them once and for all,” Sinead said. “I’m not saying we should use it, but I
am
saying that we need to think about it.”

“I’ve been —” Dan started to speak, but cut himself off.

Amy looked at him sharply. “You’ve been what?”

Dan shifted in his seat. “I’ve been — I mean, I have been thinking about it,” he said. “I can’t help it, it’s stuck there in my brain.”

“Exactly my point,” Sinead said. “Dan has the formula in his head. No one else knows it. On the one hand, that makes it safe from the Vespers. But on the other hand, it means none of us can get at it, either.”

“And why would we need to?” Amy demanded. “We’re not going to use it. Not ever. It’s way too much power for any one person.”

“I know,” Sinead said, “but supposing — worst-case scenario here — supposing the Vespers get hold of Dan somehow. And they torture him, and he gives up the formula —”

“You think — Are you crazy?!” Dan spluttered indignantly. “They could pull out every one of my fingernails — I’d never give it up!”

“Okay, okay,” Sinead said. “I said, worst-case scenario.”

“Besides,” Atticus piped up, “I know you’d never give it up willingly, but what if they gave you truth serum or something?”

“Yeah, that’s what I meant.” Sinead flashed a grateful glance in the mirror at Atticus. “And then — then something terrible happens to Dan, and now
they’re
the only ones who have it.”

“So what are you saying?” Amy said. She couldn’t keep the testiness out of her voice. She hated the serum and everything it stood for. Not for the first time, she wished there was a way to go into Dan’s brain and vacuum out the cells that held the formula.

“We need to store it somewhere,” Sinead said. “Somewhere really secure. Where we could get to it but no one else could.”

“Fort Knox, maybe?” A lame response. Amy knew that sarcasm was not one of her strong points.

“Amy, please. Listen to what I’m saying.”

Sinead’s voice was steady.
She’s being patient with me even though I’m hassling her,
Amy thought, and felt a wave of warmth: It was so good to be with a girlfriend again after all the hours with just the boys.

“I was thinking of a password-protected file,” Sinead went on. “Maybe on a secure cell phone.”

“And who would have access to the password?”

“Your call,” Sinead said immediately. “I mean, it would be good if more than one person had it, in case of — of Vesper interference. But it would be up to you, whoever you think you could trust.”

Amy stared out the window for a long time. The miles rolled by in silence.

She glanced behind her once and saw that both Jake and Atticus were dozing off, Atticus with his head lolling forward, Jake leaning against the window with his mouth partly open. He looked cute in that awkward pose, maybe even cuter because of it.

But Dan was awake and staring out the window, too. Amy could tell from his solemn expression that his brain felt like hers did: crowded with too many thoughts, too few of them pleasant.

Who can I trust one hundred percent, besides Dan?

Fiske and Nellie.
Currently unavailable,
she thought grimly.

With a stab of pain in her gut, she thought of Erasmus.
He would have been perfect for this.

Amy could see water to her right now, an inlet of the Long Island Sound, and soon after that, they took the exit for Yale.

As they drove onto the campus, Sinead broke the silence. “One other thing,” she said. “It’s too much pressure for one person.” She jerked her chin toward the backseat. “He shouldn’t be carrying that burden alone. As it is now, any decision about the serum, ultimately he has to make it all by himself. This way, other people would be sharing the load.”

“It’s not a problem,” Dan said quickly. “I can handle it.”

“No one’s saying you can’t,” Amy said. “I mean, it’s obvious — you’ve been handling it all this time. But Sinead’s right. Things are different now that the Vespers are active.”

“Active” — now there’s a euphemism for you.

Who was left?

Sinead, of course.
Amy felt relief coursing through her.
Weird that I didn’t think of her right away. She’d take a bullet for me. What would I do without her?