Pitch looked down off the roof. The others were huddled in the bushes, crowded around Griffin, who had his phone to his ear. Was it working? she wondered. Could they hear anything?
What was going on?
* * *
S. Wendell Palomino was in a towering rage. “Tomorrow morning?” he barked into his phone in disbelief. “I can’t wait till tomorrow morning! I’ve got a flight to California tonight!”
“Sorry, Mr. Palomino,” came the voice on the other end of the line, “but that’s not going to happen.”
“It has to happen!” Swindle stormed. “What kind of garage are you running?”
“This isn’t like the big-city outfits you’re probably used to. I’m a small operation. It’s just me and my truck, and we cover a lot of territory. As you’ve probably noticed, wet weather means a lot of mud around here. When people start getting stuck, it’s first come, first served.”
“And you just leave people stranded,” Palomino seethed.
“Well, that’s another story entirely. Are you telling me you’re stranded?”
“Not only am I stranded, I’m exposed to animal attack!” Okay, that was an exaggeration, but Luthor was going to be none too happy when the tranquilizer wore off. “And I’ve got no way to get my poor injured friend the medical attention he needs.”
“Sounds serious,” the mechanic agreed.
“Exactly! So how soon can you be here?”
“I can’t make it till tomorrow, but if things are as bad as you say, you’d better call the police.”
“I wouldn’t need the police if I had a car!” Swindle insisted.
“Like I said, I’ll be there tomorrow. You don’t have to wait around. Stick with your buddy. Just leave the cars unlocked and the keys on the seat. I’ll call you as soon as I know what’s what.”
“Oh, fine,” Palomino groaned. “We’ll wait for you.”
“Are you sure that’s wise for your friend?”
“Positive,” Swindle replied with a sigh. “In fact, I think he’s getting better. Come as soon as you can.” He hung up the phone and slumped in his chair. Nothing was ever easy where those lousy kids were involved.
Hiller thumped over on his crutch. “Maybe we should be calling the police. If our cars have been vandalized, that’s a crime.”
Palomino shook his head. “The last thing we need is some cop snooping around.”
Hiller’s eyes narrowed. “You said the dog is legally yours.”
“Of course. But the mutt’s been tranquilized, which is going to seem fishy to some small-town flatfoot. If he gets a sniff that there are kids involved — runaways, no less — that’s a can of worms I don’t want to open.” Swindle surveyed the kitchen irritably. “Is there anything to eat in this dump?”
The hired man limped for the door. “I’ve got a turkey sandwich out in the truck. Tell you what: I’ll split it with you if you promise me we’re the good guys.”
Palomino grimaced. “Do I look like a crook to you?”
* * *
Griffin’s face suddenly went white, and he waved the phone up at Pitch on the roof, gesturing wildly. She shot him a questioning shrug, but by then, he and the other team members had ducked out of sight in the bushes.
The sound she heard next made her stiffen in fear: the opening and closing of the cottage’s front door.
Hiller stepped out of the house and started for the pickup truck.
If he looks over his shoulder, he’ll be staring straight at me!
Her nerveless fingers lost their grip on the vine, and Melissa’s phone was falling. Fumbling madly, she caught the line, stopping the unit three inches from shattering against the base of the fireplace. Heart pounding, she dove for the apex of the A-frame roof. If she could make it over the top before Swindle’s man turned around . . .
As she somersaulted over the peak, a horrible realization came to her: She had misjudged the slope. Down the other side she skidded, tumbling out of control.
Mustering all her strength and climbing skill, Pitch wedged the heel of her sneaker against a kitchen vent. Her momentum spun her upside down, sliding toward the edge. At the last second, she reached above her head, locked a pincer grip on the eaves, and squeezed. Her motion shuddered to a stop. She hung there, her hair cascading off the roof. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Griffin and the team crouched in the foliage, staring up at her in horror. Another second or two and she would have gone over the side.
Oblivious to the drama unfolding above him, Hiller got a small paper bag out of the pickup and went back inside the house. The crisis had ended as quickly as it had begun.
Gingerly, Pitch got herself turned around and made her way back to the chimney. Winding the vine around her arm like the spool of a fishing rod, she reeled the phone out of the flue. Then she shinnied down the drainpipe and rejoined her friends.
Even Ferret Face regarded her in awe.
“Are you okay?” Ben hissed. “Man, I figured we’d be scraping you out of the weeds with a spatula!”
“First rule of climbing,” Pitch told him bravely. “If it didn’t happen, there’s no point in stressing over it.”
“The important thing is we got the information we needed,” The Man With The Plan reminded everybody. “Swindle and the other jerk are stuck until morning. Which means we’ve got some time to make our move on Luthor.”
“We haven’t got that much time,” Ben put in. “Pitch and I have been AWOL from camp since this morning. If we don’t get back soon, the counselors are going to start to panic.”
“We can’t worry about any of that,” Savannah insisted. “The only thing that matters is saving Luthor.”
“That’s another problem,” Pitch pointed out. “The dog weighs a ton. We can lift him — but not with two people chasing us. Been there, done that.”
Melissa had a suggestion. “Maybe we can wait till they go to sleep.”
Griffin nodded. “The question is how do we get in the house?”
“The roof won’t work,” Pitch supplied. “No way into the attic, no skylight.”
“An unlocked window?” asked Logan.
Griffin shook his head. “We can’t depend on it. Besides, the house is so small, we could be climbing straight into Swindle’s lap.”
Stealthily, Griffin approached the little cabin, the others trailing behind him. Crouched in the cover of the bushes, they circled the outside. Griffin stopped in front of a pair of flat, wooden cellar doors, separate from the house.
Pitch indicated the heavy padlock that barred the entryway. “How are you going to get through that?”
Griffin knelt on the damp ground to investigate. The lock was metal, but the doors themselves were ancient wood, softened by decades of northeastern weather. He began to work with his thumbs, trying to create some separation between the iron hasp and the rotted panel. “Quick — see if you can find something to jam under here.”
Melissa handed over a sharp wedge-shaped rock. “Try this.”
Griffin inserted the pointed edge beneath the cleat and pressed down, levering the hasp away from the door. With light popping sounds, the softened wood gave way, and the cleat came off in his hand, still attached to the lock. Slowly, he opened the doors, trying to minimize the squeaking of the ancient rusted hinges. The gust of air that came up to greet them was musty and coolly damp. They squinted into the gloom of a root cellar, with stone walls and a dirt floor.
“Yuck,” said Logan. “There could be mice down there.”
“And don’t you dare disturb any of them,” Savannah told him. “They’re animals, just like the rest of us.”
Ben looked down his own collar. “Hear that, Ferret Face? No hunting.”
“Keep him safe inside your shirt,” Griffin ordered. “The last thing we need is you falling asleep in hostile territory.”
Melissa called up the flashlight app on her phone and handed it to Griffin. He led the way down the six steps into the cavelike cellar. The cobwebs were so
thick that progress was like passing through lace curtains. Savannah gagged.
“What’s the matter?” Pitch whispered. “Aren’t spiders animals just like the rest of us?”
The space was empty save for a few potato sacks and a broken bushel basket. The toe of Melissa’s sneaker nudged an ancient potato, only to have it crumble to dust.
“When’s the last time anybody came down here?” hissed Ben in revulsion.
“They forgot about this place when they started remembering the Alamo,” Pitch replied in a low voice.
Griffin held out his arms beside him. The group halted and fell silent. They had reached another staircase, this one leading to a small door. Light was visible around the edges. It was the entrance to the house. Muffled conversation wafted through the door — Swindle and his man.
The enemy was no more than a few yards away.
“What now?” Savannah barely whispered.
“We chill,” Griffin informed them.
“Here?” quavered Logan, plucking a shred of cobweb from the end of his nose. “The Screen Actors Guild would never approve these conditions!”
“Ferret Face doesn’t like the dark,” Ben warned.
“Don’t be stupid,” Savannah said sharply. “Ferrets are most active at murky times like dawn or dusk. They’re crepuscular.”
“Yeah, but I’m not!” Ben complained.
“We have to be able to tell when Swindle and the other guy go to sleep,” Griffin explained. “As soon as it gets quiet on the other side of the door, that’s when we make our move.”
“Let’s switch our phones to airplane mode to save battery life,” Melissa advised. “Once the sun goes down, they’ll be the only light we’ve got.”
Mr. Bing was rewiring a SmartPickTM that had short circuited.
He tightened the connections, replaced the cover, and pressed the button. With a whirring sound, the titanium fruit-picking pole telescoped across the kitchen, poking his wife in the small of the back.
Mrs. Bing let out a yelp, juggling and nearly dropping a heavy casserole dish. She turned on her husband. “Why don’t you take that thing to your workshop before you put it through a wall?”
“It’s so empty around here with Griffin away at camp,” the inventor complained. “Who would have thought one kid could fill up a whole house?”
“Well, he is The Man With The Plan,” she reminded him.
He grinned. “Not at Ebony Lake, he isn’t. That’s the best thing about sending him to the back of beyond — none of his scheming. Not unless he’s organizing a woodchuck insurrection.”
“I know what you mean,” Mrs. Bing agreed a little guiltily. “I guess I never admitted to myself how nerve-racking it is to be Griffin’s mother.”
Ri-i-i-ing!
Mr. Bing set down his invention and answered the phone. “Hello . . . speaking . . .”
The receiver slipped from his hand and hit the floor with a clatter. He stooped to fumble it back to his lips. “Are you absolutely sure?”
“What is it?” his wife asked anxiously.
Mr. Bing held up a finger. “Right — we’ll be there as soon as we can.” He hung up and dialed Griffin’s cell. The call went straight to voicemail.
“What’s going on?” Mrs. Bing demanded.
Her husband’s face was gray. “Griffin’s disappeared.”
“What do you mean, ‘disappeared’?”
“He and one other camper never came to the mess hall for dinner. No one’s seen them for at least a few hours.”
They were in the car, heading north, inside of three minutes.
Waiting in line to pay the toll at the Throgs Neck Bridge, Mrs. Bing frowned as a familiar SUV roared past in the E-ZPass lane. “Wasn’t that Rick Drysdale’s car?”
“With Griffin missing, I hardly think that’s our number one priority right now.”
“Griffin’s missing along with one other camper,” she persisted. “Isn’t Savannah at Ebony Lake, too?”
When the phone rang inside the SUV, Mr. Drysdale had no time for a conversation. “Sorry, can’t talk now. We’re heading up to Ebony Lake. Savannah’s gone missing.”
“So has Griffin,” Mrs. Bing told him. “How much do you want to bet that, wherever they are, they’re together?”
A quarter mile farther on, the Bings’ van pulled alongside the stopped SUV on the shoulder. Mrs. Bing and Mr. Drysdale rolled down their windows.
“What do you think the kids have gotten themselves into this time?” Mrs. Drysdale called anxiously.
Mrs. Bing didn’t answer. She was staring at a sedan that had just sped past them on the highway. “Wasn’t that Pete and Estelle Slovak?”
It took a moment for the significance of that statement to sink in.
“How could Ben be with Savannah and Griffin?” Mr. Drysdale asked. “He went to a different camp entirely.”
Griffin’s mother was already dialing her phone. “There’s one way to find out.” And when Mrs. Slovak’s voice came on the line, she asked, “Estelle — is everything all right with Ben?”
Ben’s mother sounded distraught. “Endless Pines just called. Nobody’s seen Benjamin since — ” Sudden silence on the line. “How could you know something’s wrong?”
“Griffin and Savannah Drysdale have vanished from Ebony Lake.”
Mrs. Slovak was amazed. “And you think they’re with my Benjamin? These camps are scattered across the north woods, with no transportation at all! That’s impossible.”
“One thing I’ve learned from Griffin is that nothing is impossible,” Mrs. Bing said in a determined tone.
“I’m going to call the Benson girl’s family,” Mrs. Slovak decided. “She was at camp with Benjamin. Maybe they’ve heard something from her.”
When Mrs. Slovak finally reached Pitch’s father, she made an alarming discovery: Pitch’s parents were at a rest area on the New York State Thruway about ten miles ahead. While stopped to ask directions to Camp Endless Pines, they had spotted the Kellermans’ car at the gas pump. And in the Kellermans’ backseat were none other than Mr. and Mrs. Dukakis.
“Are you saying that Antonia, Logan, and Melissa all disappeared from their camps today?” Ben’s mother cried.
Mr. Benson was stunned. “How did you know?”
Mrs. Slovak was hyperventilating as she gasped out the details of the missing Griffin, Savannah, and Ben.
Six campers AWOL. Six Cedarville friends. Six members of Griffin’s team.
This was no coincidence. There was only one thing it could possibly be.
A plan.
The two parent parades sped north on the Thruway, connected via cell phone conference call. At a fuel stop, all five vehicles met up, and the two groups merged into one. The procession from Cedarville exited the highway a little farther on, heading west on a two-lane rural route. A half mile from the interchange, the streetlights ended, and they navigated without GPS in the darkness. To the residents of the farms they passed, they must have seemed like a funeral cortege, a tight formation of cars on otherwise deserted roads.
As they approached the vicinity of the three camps, the parents faced a dilemma: Unlike their children, they were planless. Should they split up, with the Bings and Drysdales proceeding to Ebony Lake, the Dukakises and Kellermans to Ta-da!, and the Slovaks and Bensons to Endless Pines? That made sense, except that everyone was convinced that the six missing friends were together. Perhaps they should remain en masse and visit the camps one at a time, maintaining a united front.
“Why go to the camps at all?” Mrs. Slovak challenged. “Those are the only places we know for sure that our children aren’t.”
Mr. Bing had a suggestion. “Let’s stop at a diner and talk this out over coffee. We’ve all been on the road for three hours. We’re not thinking straight.”
“Good idea,” approved Mr. Kellerman, three cars back. “Is there any place open around here?”
Towns were few and far between in these woods. The biggest businesses we
re the summer camps, and they provided their own food service. Mile after mile of wooded nothingness unspooled before the parent parade.
Just as Mr. Bing was about to despair, a neon sign flickered up on the left.
“Foot gargle?” his wife repeated, bewildered.
But as they drew closer, they could see that the glowing letters had burned out over the years. Illuminated by headlights, the message was:
The place turned out to be a grimy gas station that sold drinks, snacks, and cheap souvenirs from a row of dilapidated vending machines. The twelve parents sat down over watery coffee to weigh their options.
Mrs. Slovak was becoming visibly more agitated every minute. “Why aren’t they answering their phones?”
“Maybe they don’t have them,” Mrs. Bing suggested. “The rule at Ebony Lake is to leave all devices powered off in the cabins. Besides messages home, they’re supposed to be just for emergencies.”
“This isn’t an emergency?” Mrs. Slovak demanded.
“The reception is probably spotty out in the sticks,” suggested Mr. Kellerman.
“Or their batteries are dead,” added Mrs. Dukakis. “Melissa is always running dozens of applications. What for is beyond me, but I do know that power drain is a problem.”
“Let’s focus on the big picture,” Mr. Bing advised. “Out in the wilderness, separated by not just miles but entire forests, our kids have managed to get themselves in some kind of trouble.”
“Trouble!” Ben’s mother spat. “Why don’t you call it by its real name? It’s your son who’s The Man With The Plan!”
“But what kind of plan could they possibly have around here?” wondered Mrs. Benson.
And then an all-too-familiar name was spoken in the tiny shop: Palomino.
Two men leaned on the counter. One, in greasy coveralls, was chewing on a cinnamon bun and talking with his mouth full. “Guy called himself Palomino. Real obnoxious. Must be from downstate.”
Mr. Drysdale stood up. “Excuse me, are you talking about S. Wendell Palomino?”