The Mystery of the Third Lucretia (23 page)

I ran back to the staircase. I decided go up again, kick in the window to Jacob's room, jump inside, grab an easel, and hit Jacob with it.

My foot was on the first stair when I stopped. I remembered how it had felt looking down from the top and I was totally afraid of being that far away from the ground again. Then I started thinking about Mom and Jacob alone in that room, and my fear of heights didn't matter. I was going to go up again even if my feelings about doing it and my panic about Mom were crushing my chest with fear.

And just when I was, like, being squeezed in the middle between two terrors, I heard a footstep on the street behind me.

It's Jacob, I thought. He heard me, and now he's come to get me.

You can only get just so scared before you stop feeling anything anymore, and this was what did it for me. In that split second I went numb. I thought, if Jacob wants to kill me, he can just go ahead and do it. I turned around calmly, my head up, expecting to find a gun in my face.

But instead of Jacob, there stood Sister Anneke and Sister Katje and a tall woman with dyed blond hair and lots of makeup.

“You're back again, little girl,” Sister Anneke said. “Where is your friend?”

“I don't know!” I said in a whisper. Then suddenly, out of the blue, I was flooded with relief that they were there. I started to get tears in my eyes again.

“Why are you crying?”

“Because my mother and my best friend have been kidnapped,” I said, my voice kind of half sobbing on the words, “and now Mom is upstairs in this building, tied to a chair, and my friend is gone and I don't know where she is, and I'm afraid she might be dead.”

I could tell I sounded hysterical and I wasn't surprised that the three women all looked at me funny.

“You don't believe me,” I said. “Nobody ever believes you when you're just fourteen.”

The woman who was with the nuns stepped closer and put her arms around me. “I know,” she said quietly. Her English was slow, but she pronounced it well. “When I was fourteen, I tried to tell people something. Something important. But no one ever believed me. What is your name?”

“Kari.”

“I believe you, Kari.”

If you're dying to know what happened next, don't worry, I'll get back to that part. But first I want to catch you up on what was happening to Mom and Lucas all this time, beginning when I was still in our hotel room reading the Time magazine article.

They'd just sat down at their table in the restaurant when the waiter came over and said, “Someone would like to speak to both of you outside.”

“Bill?” Mom said, looking at Lucas with her eyebrows raised. Then, to the waiter, “Would you watch our things for a minute?”

“Certainly, madam.”

When they stepped outside, no one was there. A big black Mercedes was pulled up right in front of the restaurant's main entrance, parked with one whole side up on the sidewalk, but they do that a lot in Europe, so Mom and Lucas didn't think anything of it.

The restaurant and hotel were on a quiet street, and just then it was deserted. Mom stepped over to look around the corner for whoever had wanted to talk to them, when suddenly Lucas, who was watching her, felt her wrist grabbed from behind, and her arm jerked around behind her and shoved up high. She yelled, partly because it hurt really bad and partly because she'd just had the meep scared out of her.

Mom spun around to see Lucas with one shoulder shoved up high and her mouth still open with pain. Jacob was standing behind and holding on to her.

“Ms. Sundgren,” he said, “I find you with your daughter.”

Then, with a little jerk on Lucas's arm that turned her sideways enough to look at him, he said, “I studied your face when you and your mother were standing in line to see the Third Lucretia. It took me a moment to place you, then I remembered that we had met before under, shall we say, less than pleasant circumstances. Now I learn from my friend Heri that you and some little friend have been spying on one of my friends. I believe, between the two of you”—he looked at Mom, then at Lucas—“you know far too much about my situation. I should have run over you in London, when I had the chance.”

So it had been him driving the Jaguar after all.

He turned to the Mercedes, opened the driver's door, and shoved Lucas into the front seat toward the passenger side, as if she were a big bag of potatoes. When he turned around he was holding a gun, pointed straight at Mom.

“You try anything, little girl, and I'll shoot your mother now.” Then he pulled Mom over to the door and shoved her in.

“I was hoping my . . . business partner would drive, but alas, I must do it alone. So don't try anything or you'll regret it.” Still holding the gun, he started the car and pulled out into the street.

Mom, wedged between Lucas and Jacob, took Lucas's hand and gave it a squeeze.

“Where are you taking us?” Mom asked.

“To a place where we can be alone and I can make some decisions.”

This gave Mom a little bit of hope. First, he wasn't just going to take them someplace and shoot them right away. Second, there was a good chance he was going to his studio. And third, Jacob thought Lucas was her daughter. He didn't know I existed, and he sure didn't know I'd be looking for them in all the right places. She squeezed Lucas's hand again.

But Mom's good feelings vanished in only a few minutes, because Jacob didn't turn left toward the central part of the city. Instead, they were driving along a road she knew would take them out of town, into the Dutch countryside where Jacob might know of a lonely place where he could kill them.

She was gripping Lucas's hand by now, and wondering what the two of them could do to save themselves, or at least what she could do to save Lucas, when Jacob signaled for a left turn. Almost at the same second she saw a sign saying CENTRUM, with an arrow. They were heading back toward the center of town. Mom took a deep breath.

Why had Jacob driven them the long way around? The answer was clear: it was a route where they'd been farther away from pedestrians and buildings and policemen and places where they might escape. It occurred to Mom then that Jacob had been driving on the inside lane all the way along their route so that Lucas couldn't jump out without landing in the middle of traffic.

Then she had her idea.

 

 

What was going on with Lucas during this whole drive? Well, if you think she wasn't scared, you're wrong. Even Lucas the Lionheart, Nerves-of-Steel Stickney, was terrified.

At first she thought it couldn't be happening. This was the kind of thing that happened on reruns of Charlie's Angels, not to normal, everyday people like Gillian Welles Sundgren and Lucas Stickney. Even Jacob seemed unreal, like one of those evil snakes you see in Disney movies who have the big smiles with all the teeth but you know it's totally phony.

When she got past that stage, she went through a couple minutes when it was like her brain wouldn't let her think about what was happening. Instead, she thought about stupid things. Like, if Jacob was driving a Mercedes now, did that mean he'd rented the Jaguar in London? And who did he think the “little friend” was that Heri had seen her with?

When her mind finally shifted gears and let her focus on what was going on, Lucas got busy trying to come up with a plan. She thought of jumping out of the car, but she was afraid that if she did, Jacob would shoot Mom. Besides, she'd end up right in the middle of traffic.

In one way it was easier for her than it was for Mom because she didn't know her way around Amsterdam, so she never thought they were going anywhere except his studio.

She figured her chance might come when they got out of the car and Jacob was trying to get them upstairs. She remembered how I almost ran right into Jacob while he was unlocking his door, and she thought that, for just a second when he was getting them into the building, he'd have to take his eyes off his prisoners and get his key into the lock.

It was at that moment, she thought, that she and Mom would have their chance.

Her brother, the Brat Child, had been taking karate lessons for years. He was always running around the house going
“Hi-ya!”
and either kicking high into the air or trying to break something with the side of his hand.

Lucas thought the kicking thing would work best. She figured she'd watch Jacob's eyes, and at exactly the right moment,
bam
! the gun would be flying out of his hand and she'd pull Mom around the corner and down the street toward all the tourists and into a bar. Jacob couldn't very well kill them in the middle of a crowd.

By this time they'd gotten into town. They turned a couple of times then Jacob let out a long word starting with the Dutch g sound that she figured was swearing in Dutch.

They'd taken a wrong turn, and now they were driving right past a huge outdoor marketplace. Some of the stalls were still open, and the street they were on was nothing but one big traffic jam full of people and trucks.

Jacob lowered the window and stuck his head out as if to see how far ahead the traffic jam went.

In that moment Mom turned to Lucas and mouthed the words, GET OUT NOW!

Lucas shook her head no.

GO!
Mom mouthed, and as Jacob pulled his head back in, Lucas fumbled with her door, Mom gave her a push, and she shot out into the crowd.

She ran around behind the car, looked at the license number, then dashed into the market area, elbowing her way into the middle of a crowd gathered around one of the stalls.

For a while she listened to hear if there would be a shot. But she figured Jacob wouldn't risk shooting Mom for fear of being caught. At last she edged out of the crowd and saw the Mercedes back up and pull around the corner.

She looked around for a policeman. There wasn't one in sight.

She ran up to a group of people buying french fries at a stall and yelled out, “Does anybody have a mobile phone? It's an emergency!”

The woman who ran the stall stopped what she was doing. “You need to call someone?”

“Yes, the police!” Lucas said.

“You do not need a telephone,” the stall owner responded carefully in a heavy accent. “The police station is just there.”

Lucas turned and saw a bunch of police cars in front of a building. She took off running.

“Thanks a lot,” she yelled over her shoulder.

A minute later she burst through the door into the station.

“I want to report a kidnapping,” she gasped, barely able to talk because she'd been running so hard.

The officer behind the desk just looked at her. He was skinny and had thinning hair, small eyes, and a big jaw. His badge said VANDERWEHR.

“Do you speak English?” she said when he didn't respond.

“Everyone in the Netherlands speaks English,” he said, making it sound like he was saying that the Dutch were better than everybody else.

“Okay, I said I want to report a kidnapping.”

“You do,” he said. “And who are you?”

“My name is Lucas Stickney, and the woman I traveled to Amsterdam with has just been kidnapped by a man named Jacob Hannekroot.”

“Jacob Hannekroot? The man from the Rijksmuseum who has been in all the newspapers?” He gave her one of those smiles grown-ups have when they don't take kids seriously. “A man like that is not a kidnapper.”

“Yes, he
is
a kidnapper!” Lucas answered, getting mad. “I can show you where he took her, and I have the license-plate number of his car. Hurry! He has a gun.”

“A gun,” Vanderwehr said slowly. “We have very few guns in the Netherlands.”

“Well, he has one. He was pointing it at Gillian when he was driving us through town.”

“You were in a car with him? This is not making any sense, Miss . . .”

“Stickney. Lucas Stickney.” She stopped herself from yelling at him and tried to sound reasonable. “I was in the car with him because I was kidnapped along with Gillian. Gillian Welles Sundgren is her name. Jacob . . . I mean, Mr. Hannekroot came while we were in our hotel having dinner. He had us both get in the car, but Gillian told me to get out when we were stuck in traffic by the big market, and he'll probably kill her for letting me go.”

“You have your passport?”

“No! I told you, I was kidnapped.”

“So, Miss Stickney, you come here with no passport and you say the woman you were traveling with told you to get out of the car, leaving her alone with this famous man from the Rijksmuseum you say is a kidnapper. How do you know this Ms. . . . Sundgren and Mr. Hannekroot are not having a romance?”

The guy didn't know what he was up against.

She leaned forward so her face was close to his, crossing her arms on the counter between them. “Officer Vanderwehr,” she began softly. “Have you ever heard of Ibis Petroleum, the company that lost that multibillion-dollar lawsuit last year?”

“Of course. Everyone in the world has heard of that.”

“The attorney who won that lawsuit is Allen Stickney. Perhaps you saw him on television. Allen Stickney is my father. He likes lawsuits, and he's very good at winning them.”

She leaned forward even farther, and her voice was getting louder. “Three minutes ago I came in here and reported a kidnapping. But instead of doing something to save my friend's life, you're wasting time trying to make me feel stupid.

“I SWEAR TO GOD,” she shouted, slamming her hand down on the counter so hard the whole office shook, “if anything happens to Gillian, my father will take you and the Amsterdam police to court, and you will PAY!”