Otter sighed. “Fine. Fine.”
Twinkles grinned. “Whew. Anyway—do you have a checklist? I might have one, somewhere. I don’t really know who it’s by. Not my style, you know?”
“Yep, my junior agents are getting it out of the car now,” Otter said warmly.
Twinkles answered as we followed him up the steps. “I’m surprised they didn’t send Katie and Joseph to get all this, actually, after they worked so hard to steal it.”
There.
It was dropped in so easily, so simply, just another bit of conversation. Twinkles didn’t even look back as he climbed the staircase into the attic, which glowed the same mechanical, fluorescent color as the crawl space under the house.
But there it was.
My parents were art thieves, just like Otter had said. But . . .
“Did they steal the Runanko books?” I called up to him. It was stupid—a personal question, unrelated to the mission. Otter dropped his charming cover long enough to glare at me for a split second, but I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything right now, except for the answer.
“Of course!” Twinkles said, his voice faraway as he began clanging around above me. “That was our deal—I’d case the place, and they’d rob it. The three of us were never really a team though. It was always them and me, you know? I guess I shouldn’t be surprised they got married. Can’t help but admire . . .”
He kept talking, but I wasn’t listening. My parents stole the books. They stole art. Otter was right. I was wrong.
How did Otter know more about my parents than I did?
It felt like something was crushing me, but it wasn’t shame or anger or anything like that. I felt so . . . stupid.
I just felt stupid.
Twinkles was still talking quickly, but he cut himself off when Otter reached out to touch one of the paintings. “Watch out, Steve! I’ll need to disable the power up here. If you try to take them off the walls, the door down there seals us in. Theft prevention, you know. SRS had to come free me three times my first few years here.”
Down the street, tires squealed. Once, twice—they were getting closer, the shrill sound louder and louder. “Who’s that?” Twinkles said. Otter tensed and then hurried up the steps into the attic. I followed, while Kennedy and Walter went to look out one of the second-floor windows.
I tried not to gape at the art—beautiful, fancy art, the sort you see in textbooks, lined the walls—and instead rushed to join Twinkles and Otter at the round attic window. The two of them were blocking my view.
“Did you forget to turn the alarms off?” Twinkles said, frowning.
“Must have,” Otter answered, and despite all his skill, all his training, his voice had dropped and gone flat. He stepped aside so I could see why.
Running up the drive was a team of SRS agents.
Which was pretty bad.
But worse? One of them was Walter’s mom.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Otter punched Twinkles in the head.
I’m not usually a big fan of resorting to punching someone in the head, because 1) I throw a lousy punch and 2) I wouldn’t want to be punched in the head, so I try not to do it to other people. But I knew without asking that this was the best choice—not only because it kept Twinkles from helping SRS capture us, but because it meant that Twinkles had a solid alibi when SRS asked why he didn’t stop us faster.
Twinkles fell down in a clown-colored heap.
“Get out!” Otter bellowed down to Kennedy and Walter just as Twinkles hit the ground.
“Back is still clear! Walter, come on!” Kennedy shouted. The front door burst open in a clattering of wood and metal. Feet raced around downstairs as the SRS agents—five of them, I’d counted—poured inside. Otter and I crept the rest of the way downstairs, using SRS’s noise to cover the sound of our own feet. Kennedy and Walter were in what had to be Twinkles’s bedroom; Kennedy’s eyes were wide and alert, while Walter looked pale.
“Side window,” I whispered. Downstairs, SRS agents were shouting to one another—they ran out the back to the crawl space. So that’s who the alarms called, I thought, hating myself for not considering this. For not believing SRS—or my parents—could be involved. For being so . . .
“Go,” Otter hissed. Kennedy sprang down the upstairs hall where there was a small window that overlooked the driveway. Otter grabbed Walter and lugged him that way, while I yanked one of Ben’s inventions—the CariBENer—off my belt. Kennedy slid the window open as quietly as possible, while I rigged the CariBENer to . . .
“There’s nothing to brace it with,” I whispered. “One of us has to hold it.”
It couldn’t be Kennedy, of course, and Walter looked too disoriented to be useful. I handed the end of the CariBENer to Kennedy and pulled the other end over my shoulder, then sat with my back to the windowpane to brace myself. Kennedy was trembling a little, but only just. She ducked out the window, checked to make sure she could get down without the SRS agents seeing, and then dropped. I winced as the cord from the CariBENer dug into my shoulder. Then I heard the slight clip of my sister’s feet hitting the ground, and the pressure on the CariBENer released. The cord zipped back to the window.
“Let me go next—both you and Walter can brace me,” Otter said, clipping the CariBENer onto his uniform belt. I nodded—this was almost certainly going to be a getaway chase kind of situation, and Otter was the best driver between us. I wanted him behind the wheel to get my sister and the Runanko books out of here. I wrestled Walter over to me, and between the two of us, Otter made it safely to the ground.
“My mom is downstairs,” Walter said faintly as the line zipped back up. I grimaced. I couldn’t support Walter’s weight, and even though he could likely support mine, I couldn’t just leave him here like this—they’d capture him for sure, and I was certain his mother’s presence wouldn’t make the whole captured-and-hauled-away experience any more comfortable for him.
“Come on,” I said, grabbing ahold of his arm. I heard the car rev, and Otter squealed out of the driveway, making way more noise than was necessary—getting the SRS agents’ attention. I saw a couple run around the side of the house, weapons drawn—we had a few moments before the remaining agents raced upstairs to check on the art in the attic. I heard a motorcycle or two zip away, agents giving chase, and then more shouting.
The front door. We might be able to make it to the front door, and if we could just get a few houses down, we could hide for at least a little while and then maybe steal a car to get away. Focus, Hale. I hurried to the stairs, then down them. Walter was slow, moving at half speed behind me, and he kept stalling at the windows, hoping to get another look at his mom—but giving the SRS agents outside time to spot us as well. We were almost to the front door when the back opened.
I shoved Walter into the hall closet and shut the door behind us. It wasn’t really the time to be judgmental, but oh my god, the collection of coats in the closet smelled like a giant animal form of Twinkles—a yak, maybe, or a highland cow. I tried to breathe through my mouth as I waited for the sound of the agents moving upstairs.
“Kitchen is clear! Living room clear!” Walter’s mom shouted. Did she know it was us who’d set off the alarm, or just that it’d been set off? I glanced at Walter and saw his chin wobbling, saw that he was wondering the same thing.
“They’re gone. They’ve got the books that were downstairs. Command, can you send us a resource list of the art that’s supposed to be upstairs so we can account for it?” asked another agent, one with a Spanish accent. I heard Mrs. Quaddlebaum sigh, then more feet on the stairs, someone calling Twinkles’s name.
I leaned my head out the closet door and then jerked it back in. Just like SRS protocol dictated, they’d left an agent on the ground floor. It was a man; I suspected it was the one with the Spanish accent. He was pacing around, insulting Twinkles’s place under his breath.
“Is she upstairs alone? Maybe I can go talk to her,” Walter asked. “
Please, Hale. I haven’t seen her. She won’t turn me in.”
“She will, and you know it. She’s an SRS agent,” I said.
“She’s my mom!” Walter said, this time a bit too loud. I grimaced as the Spanish man’s pacing stopped. He’d heard us. Walter didn’t seem to realize he’d caused this, and he kept talking. “Hale, you go. I’ll figure something out—”
I clamped a hand down over his mouth, but it was too late. Footsteps were coming toward us. I reached for my belt—but I hadn’t packed much onto it, since this was supposed to be a simple break-in, not a showdown with SRS. I reached up and pulled down a coat, something covered in fur that felt like it was about fifty years old. I tugged it on, pulling it up so that my head was covered by it, and then crouched down.
The man grabbed the edge of the door and slowly opened it an inch.
I barked.
And to think, I thought the least dignified thing I’d do this year was get thrown into a pile of garbage bags.
But I barked crazily, growled, and lunged for the door.
The Spanish guy cursed loudly and leaped back, slamming the door shut. “There’s a dog down here!” he shouted. “There’s a big brown dog! It almost got me!”
“Did it get you?” Mrs. Quaddlebaum’s voice shot down.
“No!”
“Then stop yelling so we can focus!” she snapped.
The Spanish guy grumbled and said under his breath, “You don’t know. It’s a really big dog.”
That bought us a moment, at least. I shrugged the coat off and then continued to paw and scratch at the door to keep the Spanish guy away. I wondered where Kennedy and Otter were, if they’d managed to throw the motorcycles off their trail. They couldn’t get Kennedy; she was the only family I had now . . .
Focus, Hale. I closed my eyes and, slowly, a plan clicked into place.
Mission: Escape without getting captured/killed/shot at by SRS
Step 1: Electrical malfunction
I pulled the BEN of All Trades off my belt, flicked out the knife, and began quietly cutting into the drywall inside the closet. If I was remembering the house right, I was cutting toward the kitchen—into the wall that the fridge and oven were on. I broke out a piece of drywall, barked again to keep the Spanish guy worried, and looked at my handiwork. Yes—it was the kitchen wall; the pipes and outlets inside the drywall proved it. I shone my flashlight down the wall until I found the outlet the oven used. The oven and dryer were the only things in the house that used enough amps to trip the whole house’s breaker.
“Walter. Walter,” I hissed. He turned to me. “Grab one of the wire hangers. Fold it up on itself so it’s just one big twist of wire. About the size of a pencil.” Walter, still a little shaky-looking, obeyed as I pried the top off the oven’s outlet and rustled around to expose its terminals.
If the house was wired well, this would trip only the oven’s circuit.
But given that this was an old house and, from the looks of it, not very well maintained, I didn’t think it was wired well. Walter handed me the bent-up coat hanger; I barked again at the door just to be careful.
Then, I counted to myself. One. Two. Three.
I released the coat hanger so that it fell flat across the oven’s terminals. Sparks sprayed into the wall and back at us, a hiss, a pop, and—
“Hey!” a handful of voices from the attic floated down to us, more muffled than they were before.
“Stop gawking—secure the artwork!” Mrs. Quaddlebaum roared. “Simio! Check the entry points! The emergency door just sealed us in!”
Yes, yes, Mrs. Quaddlebaum was doing everything exactly as SRS had trained her to. She knew the sudden power surge might be intentional, and she knew to send someone to find an intruder before abandoning the artwork she’d come to protect.
I heard Simio run away from us to check the front door, then the back door. “Entry points are clear, Agent Quaddlebaum!”
Despite this, Mrs. Quaddlebaum cursed loudly—Walter looked a little alarmed. “We must have tripped the security on the paintings up here!” she shouted. “Call headquarters and find out the workaround.”
“On it!” Simio shouted, and began to hurriedly speak in a lower voice—into his comm, if I had to guess.
“What are we doing?” Walter whispered. I shushed him—I was listening. We only had one shot at this, since I almost certainly couldn’t outrun Simio. Any minute now, though . . .
Outside, I heard the squeal of air brakes, as one of Geneva’s city buses rolled into the bus stop.
“Now,” I snapped, and pushed open the closet door. I didn’t even look for Simio—instead I charged toward the front door and flung it open hard enough that it nearly bounced back and hit me in the face. Simio was shouting now—he knew something was wrong—but Walter was behind me and the bus was ahead, a hundred feet, seventy-five feet, fifty feet . . .
The driver started to shut the doors—
“Tenez le bus!” I shouted. Hold the bus! The driver looked up—she saw us. We were going to make it. SRS couldn’t chase two kids down onto a public bus without causing a scene! I looked over my shoulder . . .
Walter.
He was frozen a dozen or so feet behind me, staring at the attic window. There was Mrs. Quaddlebaum, shouting words we couldn’t hear, her eyes locked on her son, her fists pounding the window. Was she angry or sad? I couldn’t tell from here. Walter lifted a hand in a sort of wave, and suddenly his body seemed very small and breakable.
“Walter!” I roared. Walter jumped, turned back to me, and then jogged—jogged, not ran—to the bus. We jumped on just as Simio reached the top of Twinkles’s yard.
“Should I wait for him too?” the driver asked.
“No, no—we’re fine. He’s just mad we’re late for karate,” I said, grinning brightly. The bus driver nodded and pulled away, leaving Walter and me to stumble to the back to sit down. I began calculating where and when we’d change buses and how we’d evade SRS until we could make it back to the farmhouse. Walter, however, just looked dazed. I was boiling, my heart pounding, head cloudy with anger.
He could have gotten us caught.
He could have gotten us killed.
“Hale?” Walter said quietly after a moment. I took a breath, prepared what I’d say after he apologized, and prepared in my head to forgive him. Walter continued once I was looking at him. “Do you think my mom was glad to see me, even if it was like this?”
I stared. Walter looked away.
And we rode on in silence.
CHAPTER TWENTY
When we got back to the farmhouse, Clatterbuck and the twins swarmed us. Their faces made that phrase “worried sick” seem like more than just a saying. Even Annabelle was riled up. She met us in the front yard with the others, leaping on each of us—and knocking us to the ground—in turn.
“All right, all right,” Otter said, pushing Annabelle’s paws off his shoulders. “We’ll explain everything. Let’s just get inside.” Kennedy was already halfway through telling the whole story, and by the time we sat down, she’d made it up to the part about the crawl space. I hadn’t said a word. Neither had Walter.
Here’s the thing: I didn’t necessarily blame Walter, my friend, for freezing when his mom called his name.
But I did sort of blame Walter, my partner, for freezing when his mom called his name. I blamed him for being so unable to function when he realized his mom was near that we ended up trapped in that closet to begin with.
Walter was trained better than that. SRS trained him better than that. Those sorts of mistakes were the things that cost people their lives.
How was I supposed to trust Walter in the field now? I was able to make up for his mistakes, sure, but would Kennedy have been able to? Would Otter, would the twins or Clatterbuck?
“How did you know the tune code, anyway?” Kennedy asked Otter, her face glowing with excitement.
Otter shrugged, unimpressed with himself. “I just whistled Pachelbel’s Canon. I
t sounds like everything.” Clatterbuck’s eyes widened with delight, and then he punched at Otter’s shoulder like a proud brother. Otter scowled. Clatterbuck punched his shoulder again. Clatterbuck and Annabelle really had a lot in common, I decided.
“Anyway, so, Hale—tell us what happened after we got out,” Kennedy said.
“I tripped the circuit to the house using the oven. Then we jumped onto a bus,” I said absently.
“The oven? Wow, Hale. That was really bright,” Clatterbuck said warmly, though he still looked a little panicked.
“Really bright, and it didn’t have to happen,” Otter said shortly. He drummed his fingers on the table. “We should never have gone in there like that. We needed time to plan, to really put a mission together—”
“It was supposed to be simple—” I interrupted.
“That’s how agents fail, and you know it,” Otter answered.
I didn’t have a response. Because he was right.
I really, really hate it when Otter is right. First about my parents, now about the mission . . . I shook my head. Think of the mission, Hale. I crushed all my feelings back into my chest—I could deal with those another day. “Fine. Fine—the bank, then. Let’s plan it out. Really plan it, like we should’ve planned this one.”
“We can’t rob a bank now! Not only is SRS in Geneva, we’ve already been spotted!” Otter said, like I’d lost my mind entirely.
“We can’t just leave, though,” Kennedy said. “What about the books? Hastings? Annabelle?” She grabbed Annabelle’s head and hauled it into her lap. “We can’t just leave her with Hastings!”
“She’s not our dog, Kennedy,” I reminded her.
“She doesn’t even like Hastings. All she did there was lie on the floor. At least she has fun with us,” Kennedy said. Annabelle snaked her head over the tabletop and licked up a few crumbs in response.
“Here’s the plan,” Otter said, folding his arms. “We give the dog back—don’t make that face, Kennedy; we have to—we resell the books, and we use the money to fund The League and stop SRS.”