“What do I get for my assistance?” Hastings asked. I
couldn’t believe how badly I wanted to slap this guy. Or trip him. Or straight-up punch him.
Maybe all three.
Otter’s teeth were gritted, his eyes narrowed. “We can’t offer you anything else. Thirty percent of the cash is close to nine million dollars. That’s nine million dollars that, until we showed up, you didn’t have—plus the books we got back for you.”
Hastings looked at us for a minute, I think trying to decide if Otter was likely to grab him by the shirt collar again. “Make it thirty-one percent, I’ll create the account for you, and I’ll give you the dog as a bonus.”
“You mean, the dog you’re desperate to get rid of? The dog that just ate your bathroom wall?” I said, lifting my eyebrows. “She’s not even a purebred, you said it yourself. You’re just unloading her on us.”
“Right, she’s not a purebred—that’s why she’s not worth anything to me. But you guys like her. So make it thirty-one percent, and you can have her and my help.”
I’ll be honest: I expected Otter to scoff. Maybe even to laugh. I didn’t expect him to nod, and say, “Fine. Thirty-one percent, and we take the dog now. Ben, go get the man’s books from the trunk.”
Ben skirted off to retrieve the books while Clatterbuck and I tried not to look too shocked. As Ben and Hastings transferred the books into the case downstairs, I turned to Otter.
“We’re keeping the dog?” I asked doubtfully.
“For only one percent of the cash. What a bargain,” Otter said flatly.
I frowned. “What’s your plan?”
“Do I need a plan? Can’t I just want a dog?” Otter said.
“You would never just want a dog,” Clatterbuck said. “Do you have a fever? Can I check?” He reached forward to put his hand on Otter’s head, but Otter slapped it away.
“I’m the director. I said we’re keeping the dog,” he said.
I wasn’t convinced Otter wasn’t hiding something from me, but I didn’t have time to push it—Ben and Hastings reappeared. Hastings said, “All right, so I’ll create the account under your name—Steve, right? You’ll transfer the money. I’ll get your cash. You’ll get the gold. And we’ll all be gone before SRS even knows what’s happening, right?”
“Exactly. You have the account numbers for the digital money, and the safe deposit box numbers?” Otter asked.
Hastings nodded and handed over a piece of paper with what looked like hamburger grease stains on it. Otter studied it for a moment and then folded it up and slipped it into his pocket. “Well, then. Tuesday. Ten o’clock in the morning, down at the loading dock.”
Hastings’s mouth twisted up into a weaselly smile. “Perfect.”
*
This was a two-day operation—the longest and most complex thing I’d ever had a part in orchestrating.
Sunday evening, we sat around the kitchen table going over the timetable. Making sure we had everything we needed—the horse trailer. The tour tickets. The boarding passes. The iguana (which wasn’t here yet, because we’d have to get that at the last minute). Annabelle circled around us like a furry shark, searching for crumbs we’d dropped at dinner (to be fair, we were so happy to have her back that we all “secretly” fed her under the table).
“All right, day one should be clear enough. A simple smash-and-grab, using Ben’s invention and some old-fashioned stakeout time,” Otter said. “Day two is where the timing is important. Let’s break it down. Beatrix?”
“Uncle Stan and I get to our ride at eight forty-five in the morning,” she said.
My turn. “Kennedy, Walter, and I enter the safe deposit room at nine o’clock.”
“At nine fifty I hack into the network using the account Hastings created,” Beatrix said.
“Nine fifty-five we finish getting the gold loaded and out of the safe deposit room,” I said.
“Ten o’clock I make sure everything’s been loaded and ready,” Walter said.
“At the same time, Hastings moves the cash into the lot at ten o’clock,” Otter said. “Supposedly.”
“And at ten fifteen I pack everything up and meet you guys to get out of Geneva,” I finished.
“Does it bother anyone else that with this plan, there’s a good chance Hastings is going to get away with thirty million dollars in cash?” Walter said, frowning.
“The point isn’t for us to have the money—it’s for SRS not to have it,” I reminded him, though I actually felt the same way. But hey, Hastings was better than SRS, right?
Which wasn’t saying much. But still.
Everyone filtered off to bed—except Walter. He lingered at the table, sort of fidgety, before pulling a thin envelope out from the back elastic of his pajama pants.
“You finished it?” I asked.
“Yeah. But, Hale, I know . . . You don’t have to do this,” Walter said.
“I know. But it’ll be fine, Walter. And if it’s not safe, I’ll just give it back to you, okay?”
“Okay. Thanks, Hale.”
“Of course. You’d do it for me, right? Anyway, I’ve got to go make the call,” I said.
“Good luck,” Walter said, and grinned as he walked off toward our room. “If this works out, maybe we can recruit her.”
I laughed and sat down with the farmhouse’s old corded phone and dialed a number Beatrix had hunted down for me. It rang three times, and then a bright female voice answered.
I said, “Is this Aria? Aria Stoneman? Hi, this is—well. My name’s Hale, but last time we met, I told you my name was George Kessel. You said I should call you if I was going on a second adventure?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Day One
Mission: Steal the gold
Step 1: Stakeout
Here’s what I realized: Being a product of SRS wasn’t always a bad thing. It meant that I—and Kennedy, Walter, and Otter—had a pretty good idea of what SRS would do and how they’d do it. SRS was by the books, after all, not an organization known for unique thinking.
Which is why I was staked out with Clatterbuck at a twenty-four-hour pancake restaurant across the street from the bank, wearing a weird blond wig that was supposed to make me look like a random German kid but actually made me look like a random weirdo. I seriously did not have the right skin color for ice-blond hair.
“What if they don’t show up?” Clatterbuck asked me under his breath. His fake mustache quivered when he spoke.
“They will—and you don’t have to whisper. We’re inside. Whispering will only draw attention,” I said, then waved to ask the waitress to come refill my juice. I was working hard to make sure she didn’t question why a twelve-year-old was in a restaurant at three in the morning—not because I worried she’d throw me out, but because I didn’t want her to remember me later. It was safer for her this way, if she didn’t realize I was here on a stakeout.
“Is that them?” Clatterbuck asked hurriedly. I used the reflection of a nearby water pitcher to look behind me at the bank. A small truck—they called them LKWs here, and they were basically semitrucks with big flat faces—was pulling up to the bank’s service entrance.
“That’s them. Everyone, can you hear me? ” I asked over the comm. One by one everyone else checked in. “I see them now. They’re in an unmarked truck with a blue cab, cleaning company logo on the side. And, Walter? Your mom is definitely with them. I can’t see her face, but I recognize her by her walk.”
“Great—wait, my mom totally doesn’t have a walk!” Walter said.
“She sort of does,” Kennedy’s voice chimed in on his end. They started to argue, so I tuned them out and focused on the truck and its occupants. The SRS agents spoke with the guard in front of the bank’s gates. He scanned a list and then seemed to cross their names off; a moment later he was waving them through. They were there to move their gold. They knew to do it because, as we expected, Hastings had tipped them off about us. In some ways, I hated that Hast
ings had been so reliably untrustworthy—I wanted him to surprise me and be a decent person. But if he were, our plan wouldn’t have even gotten off the ground.
“L’addition, s’il vous plait,” I said to the waitress. Check please.
Step 2: Route analysis
Clatterbuck and I sped away from the bank in a black pickup truck that belonged to the owners of the poney farm. It smelled like horses and was dusty with hay bits, but it was perfect for the mission.
“All right, guys, I’ve nearly got it—the cameras are slow,” Beatrix said over the comm. She was hacking into Geneva’s network of traffic cameras, mapping where the truck came from so she could sort out where it would go once they’d loaded up their gold. “It looks like they came from the west, so I’m guessing they’ll need to return that way too.”
“We’ll start working on bodies of water and roads—go get the others,” Otter said.
Clatterbuck and I rode in relative silence, save his occasionally whistling, until about ten minutes later. He eased the truck to the side of the road, where Kennedy, Ben, and Walter were waiting alongside an empty horse trailer. Clatterbuck backed the truck up while Walter waved to direct him. By the time Clatterbuck and I got out, Walter was already hooking the trailer up to the truck hitch.
“Finally! Geneva is cold at night,” Kennedy said, jumping for the truck’s open door to get in. She and Walter were both in their black SRS uniforms, which didn’t offer much by way of warmth.
“I’m not at all cold,” Walter called from the hitch.
Ben scoffed. “Walter ran two miles while we waited.”
“One and a half!” Walter corrected, trying to sound offended but mostly looking pleased. He and Clatterbuck climbed back into the truck, and Walter went on. “I have a lot of physical work to do this evening. I can’t do it if I’m a Popsicle.”
Walter had a point. Plus, if the guy needed to run around to keep from dropping my sister, then I didn’t care if he ran ten miles. I turned in the passenger seat to remind Kennedy to stretch out, but she was already in the middle of a split on the truck floorboards. She gave me a don’t worry look and then pushed her nose down toward her knee so she was in a position that I was pretty sure I could only hit if all my joints were broken.
“Ben, you all set?” I asked.
“Yes. Yes, I’m good,” Ben said. He sounded a little frantic, but I wasn’t surprised—this was his first time in the field. He opened a red backpack and removed a few gadgets, handing each one to Kennedy. “All right, this is the BENgo—do we need to go over it again?”
“Nope, I’m all set. And the fire is smaller now?” Kennedy asked.
“Yep—good thinking on that. Hale, did you know your sister has a knack for explosives?” Ben said. I grinned at her.
Kennedy beamed. “And I didn’t even get to take that class at SRS!”
“And then, Walter, you’ve got—yes. You’ve got rope, you’ve got the pulley, you’re all set,” Ben said, nodding at the metal pulley in Walter’s hands. He smiled at it. “Gotta respect the classics, right?”
Beatrix’s voice crackled in over our comms. “Guys? The truck is leaving now. They’re taking a weird route, but I think you’ll be able to meet up with them on Rue Sous-Terre.”
“It’s a straightaway?” I asked.
“Of course—sort of like a miniature highway in between villages,” Beatrix said, sounding a little offended. I turned over my shoulder to look at Kennedy and Walter, who were gazing at the floor, seemingly rehearsing something in their heads.
Otter’s voice broke in. “If I’m right, they should be going over the Rhône River twice—first pass is in thirty minutes, and that’s definitely the better choice, if we can get this done by then.”
“Copy that,” I said. “There they are!”
Ahead of us—way ahead of us—was the truck. Bright-blue flat front, white back with the cleaning company logo. No one would have ever suspected they were moving thirty million dollars of gold. It was clever of SRS to use a truck like this instead of an armored one—armored trucks get robbed frequently, since they so obviously have something valuable inside. Who robs a cleaning company truck? Someone desperate for shiny windows?
Step 3: Line up with SRS’s vehicle
“Easy, easy,” Clatterbuck said to himself, setting the truck—and the horse trailer—at a nice clip so that we were gaining on the blue truck but not so quickly that they’d be alarmed.
“It’s time?” Walter asked me. I nodded; Clatterbuck hit a button to open the sunroof. Before I could even cringe, my sister was climbing out of it, Walter at her heels. They hoisted themselves from the car to the sunroof and then jumped into the back of the truck bed. I didn’t really want to watch as Kennedy climbed up the side of the horse trailer, wind whipping at the hair that’d come loose from her ponytail, but I did anyhow, holding my breath the entire time.
“They up?” Clatterbuck asked, his voice calm, his eyes on the road.
“Walter is climbing—yes. They’re up. Lying flat now,” I said. “Beatrix, you there? We’ll need to go dark soon.”
“Got it,” Beatrix said, though she sounded nervous. “You know it’s not 9-1-1 here, right? If she falls? It’s 1-1-2.”
“Thanks,” I said through gritted teeth. The truck was coming up into view. Ben and I ducked down onto the floorboards—well, Ben did. I didn’t fit so neatly, but I managed to get down below the windows. “Easy, easy, easy, easy,” Clatterbuck chanted. Any change in speed, and they could both topple off the trailer . . .
Step 4: Terrifying and impressive cheerleading tricks
Walter and Kennedy moved so quickly that I almost missed it. She planted her feet in his hands, they bounced one, two, three—and the next thing I knew, my sister was soaring through the space between the trucks, landing neatly on the top of SRS’s. Walter then backed up as far as he dared on the trailer; Kennedy braced her knees and held out a hand. Walter ran, leaped—
“They’re on, Clatterbuck, back off a little!” I said, cheering a little too loudly. Walter had almost overbalanced on the truck, but Kennedy’s arm caught him.
Clatterbuck slowed so that we were just behind the truck, close enough to keep an eye on our agents but far enough back to look like just another driver on a road at night. A few cars zipped along past us, short and neon things, and I was grateful—if there was any attention on us, those likely stole it away.
Step 5: Create a door
SRS undoubtedly had an alarm on the truck’s back doors—so we weren’t going to use them. Instead Clatterbuck, Ben, and I watched as Kennedy knelt and used the BENgo to stamp a circle of dots around her feet, each only a finger-width apart from the others. She and Walter turned their heads away, and suddenly there was a small spark, a little bit of a flame, as the BENgo acids ate through the roof of the truck. Walter kicked the weakened metal circle in and dropped down into the back, out of our sight. Kennedy perched over the hole, watching, her hair eventually coming totally free of its ponytail. Walter was clearing the space, double-checking that there weren’t any agents riding with the cargo—
Kennedy gave us a thumbs-up and then dropped down after Walter. I exhaled.
“Are they in? Are they in?” Beatrix asked, and it sounded like she’d been holding her breath.
“We’re in—that wind is serious,” Walter said. “All right, Hale, we’re at the container with the gold on it. It’s not an electronic combination lock, though; it’s biometric.”
“What? Biometric?” Otter snapped into the conversation.
“Yep. It’s got a mic—voice recognition, I think,” Walter said, sounding grim. “Can we still cut into it and disarm it?”
“Let me think,” I said.
Otter said, “Not much time to think, Jordan, the river’s approaching fast—”
“I know, I know . . . ,” I said. The trouble with biometric locks was that there wasn’t a key. There was just a voice or fingerprint or eye scan, and while you could fake all thos
e things with enough time, it wasn’t nearly as simple as picking an old-fashioned tumbler lock or working out the four-digit code of an electronic one.
“Walter? Do you do a good impression of your mother?” I asked.
“Uh, I guess? But you do a better one—”
“Yeah, but you’re more likely to have her vocal cord structure. I just pick up her sound when I—never mind. Try your voice on the lock.”
“All right,” Walter said, but he sounded doubtful.
I heard a few beeps, then a machine said, “Authentication required. Please state your name.”
“Teresa Quaddlebaum,” Walter said, invoking a little of his mom’s trademark glower into the tone.
“Access denied.”
Everyone groaned in harmony over the comm.
I said, “You need to get higher, I think.”
“I can’t get higher!”
“Wait, wait,” Beatrix said, typing frantically. “Walter, say your mom’s name again to me.” Walter did. “Okay, hang on . . . Okay, got it. Hold your comm up to the microphone and try it again.”
Walter sighed, but I rustled his comm off. The machine repeated: “Authentication required. Please state your name.”
Through the comm, Beatrix played a file—Walter’s voice, digitally raised. “Teresa Quaddlebaum.”
We waited.
We waited.
And . . .
“Access granted,” the voice said, followed by a resounding click.
“You’re a genius, Beatrix,” I said, shaking my head.
“Oh, I know,” she answered. “So now—Kennedy, you should have the pulleys ready?”
“All set,” my sister answered.
Kennedy, at this point, was hooking the metal pulley to the top of the truck. She and Walter then got to work, loading gold bars into her owl book bag and hoisting them to the roof, one at a time. Kennedy popped back up onto the roof to offload the bars and stack them neatly, but it was going slower than expected, especially given their weight—she could lift them on her own, but she’d mostly resorted to just sliding them into place. There were fifty-seven bars total—