Shatterproof (3 page)

Did she recognize you?
Erasmus asked.

The response came immediately.
Nope. And I’m standing five feet away.

What about Hamilton?

He’s standing right next to me. He’s hard to miss. She hasn’t even looked at him.

Another text flashed across the screen.
Wait! She’s on the move.

Just five days before, William McIntyre, an important Cahill
adviser
and one of Erasmus’s few friends, had been murdered in Rome. Luna was either in on the murder, or knew who did it. And Erasmus was determined to squeeze every bit of information out of her.

Follow her. Like I taught you.

Erasmus pulled a pair of binoculars out of his leather jacket and watched. Sure enough, it was Luna Amato. His jaw clenched as he zoomed in. The Vesper spy appeared harmless — she looked like a retired schoolteacher on a tour. But that’s what made her so deadly. What allowed her to bring down people like William.

Erasmus lowered the binoculars and narrowed his eyes. All that was about to change.

He wasn’t going to let the Vespers get away with murder again.

Alistair Oh would have given anything for a bite of one of his steak burritos and a sip of something refreshing. Instead he was holding a cold baked potato and a paper cup with four ounces of murky water. The Vespers had shut off the hostages’ water and reduced their food ration in retaliation for the recent escape attempt. Once a day, a sack with seven baked potatoes and a single quart of water was dropped down the shaft of the broken dumbwaiter.

“The Irish survived on a mostly potato diet for hundreds of years,” Fiske Cahill pointed out, staring grimly at the spud in his hand.

“That’s correct,” Alistair agreed. “I did a great deal of research while working on my Frozen Peanut Butter–Potato Tot Burrito.”

“How’d that sell?” Ted Starling asked. He was sitting near the damaged dumbwaiter, hoping to hear a snippet of conversation from their captors above.

“Not well, I’m afraid,” Alistair said. “But I did learn that the average Irish citizen consumed five to eight pounds of potatoes a day, and they were healthy.”

“We’re getting about a pound a day for seven of us,” Natalie Kabra pointed out. She prodded the shriveled spud on her plate, then stared in dismay at her hands. “Oh, my God! My hands look like monkey paws. I’d give anything for cream and an emery board.”

“Your hands look fine,” Ted said.

“No offense, Theodore,” Natalie said. “But you’re blind.”

Alistair cut in before the kids could start squabbling. “A bigger concern is drinkable water,” Alistair said. “We’re getting dehydrated. We’ll die of thirst long before we die of hunger.”

“Let’s try to think of the positive,” Fiske said.

“Good idea,” Natalie shot back. “Why don’t you start, Fiske?”

“Well . . .” Fiske trailed off.

“Can it, Natalie,” Nellie said. “If they get us fighting among ourselves we won’t have the energy to fight them.”

“In order to fight them, we have to get to them,” Reagan said, out of breath from the crunches. She started doing one-handed push-ups with her good hand, but only managed six before losing her strength.

Phoenix waved Alistair over to where he and Nellie were sitting. “Is everything okay?” Alistair asked quietly.

Phoenix leaned over and whispered into his ear. “I think Reagan is going to die.”

As Jake drove the SUV through the dark, icy streets, Atticus’s fingers flew across the laptop keyboard to try to identify the decoy diamond they’d been given.

“I’ve got it!” he shouted. “The diamond’s called the Golden Jubilee. It’s on loan from the king of Thailand, at the Pergamon Museum.”

“Where is that?” Dan said, shifting in his seat.

“We’re three blocks away,” Jake said, pointing at the navigation screen.

They parked the SUV a block away from the Pergamon. They were on the scene, but they still didn’t have the slightest idea how they were going to steal the diamond.

“It’s one of the most heavily guarded museums in Berlin,” Atticus said. He had the Pergamon website up on his laptop. “It’s subdivided into the antiquity collection, the Middle East museum, and the museum of Islamic art. Chancellor Angela Merkel was there last week for the unveiling of the Golden Jubilee exhibit. The museum is visited by over a million people every year, making it the most popular —”

“We don’t need an audio tour!” Dan snapped. “We need to just get in there and swap the diamonds.”

Atticus flinched, but Dan didn’t care. He reached for the door handle. “We only have two hours left!”

“Hold on,” Amy said.

Dan gave her an exasperated sigh. “What?”

“We can’t just waltz in there and expect to walk out with one of the most valuable treasures on earth,” she said, panic creeping into her voice. “We need to figure out a plan.”

“Fine. But make it quick.” Dan looked pointedly at his watch.

“We’ll each go in at ten-minute intervals,” Amy said. “Interpol has probably sent our photographs to every museum in Europe. It’ll be safer if we don’t enter together.” She pulled a red wig out of her pack.

“I’m not wearing that!” Dan said. When they flew to Samarkand, the Cahills in the Attleboro comm center had made him dress as a redheaded girl named Shirley Cliphorn.

“
I’m
going to wear it,” Amy said, pulling it over her head and shooting her brother an irritated look.

“I’ll wear a baseball cap,” Dan said.

“Dan, you’ll go in first and find out where the Golden Jubilee is. Atticus will go in next and try to figure out what kind of electronic surveillance and alarm security they have in the museum. I’ll come in third with the fake diamond. We’ll stay in touch on our Bluetooths and get together once we have the lay of the place.”

“What about me?” Jake asked.

To Dan’s disgust, his sister blushed before she answered. “Stay in the car, keep it running, and pick us up if we somehow pull this off.”

“So I’m the driver,” Jake said flatly.

Dan stared at his watch. “Minute’s up. I’m outta here. See you inside.”

He opened the door and stepped out into the cold evening, happy to be
doing
something rather than
talking
about doing something. It was still snowing big, sticky white flakes and there was at least two feet of accumulation on the sidewalk. He wouldn’t be surprised to find the Pergamon had closed for the day while Amy jabbered their time away, as if Alistair or Phoenix wasn’t about to be murdered.

If it’s closed, how do we get the diamond?

He reached the huge entry square to the museum and his shoulders instantly relaxed. People were still walking through the front doors into the building. A bus pulled up to the curb behind him, and a group of students close to his age filed out. None of them were wearing baseball caps, so Dan took his off and joined them as they hurried across the square. A couple of the kids said something to him in German, which he didn’t understand. He smiled and nodded, hoping they weren’t asking him if he was the notorious art thief Dan Cahill, aka Fred Wimple, aka Shirley Cliphorn. Apparently they were just being friendly, because they smiled back and lined up behind their teachers.

Dan inserted himself into the group and walked inside with them. Every security checkpoint had Berliners shaking snow off their coats, hats, and umbrellas as they shuffled through. He tapped his Bluetooth.

“It’s packed,” he whispered.

“What’s security like?” Amy asked.

“Tough.” Dan put his pack on the conveyor belt. “X-ray machines and metal detectors. On the bright side, they don’t seem to be paying much attention to what people look like. They didn’t give me a second glance. Is Atticus on his way?”

“He just got out of the car.”

“See you later.”

“Dan?” Amy hated it when Dan hung up on her.

Jake turned and looked at her from the front seat. “Well?”

“Dan’s inside,” she said, keeping her frustration with her little brother to herself.

“Get into the front seat with me,” he ordered.

Amy frowned at him. “Why?”

“Because it looks suspicious that you’re in the backseat and I’m in the front seat,” Jake said impatiently.

Amy got out of the back, not because he wanted her to, but because he was probably right . . . again. She didn’t know what to think about Jake. Seventy-five percent of the time he was a jerk. The other twenty-five percent of the time he was asleep.

She got into the front seat and closed the door. She could feel the heat from his body and smelled something spicy mingling with the leather of the seats — it was annoyingly pleasant.

“What’s the problem?” he asked. “What’s bothering you?”

“Aside from being wanted by Interpol, trying to save seven hostages, and steal a priceless diamond?”

Jake smiled at her. “Yeah, aside from that.”

Amy gave him a searching look, and then decided to answer honestly. “Dan,” she said. “I’m worried about him. It’s not right that a thirteen-year-old knows as much as he does about stealing things.”

“You’re right,” Jake said. “He should have been at least sixteen like you before he became part of an international crime ring.” He paused. “But I hear you. Atticus already knows more than I will in my entire life. It’s scary. On the one hand he’s a little kid, on the other hand he’s a supercomputer with two legs. And then there’s this whole Guardian thing.”

On her deathbed, Atticus’s mother, Astrid, Jake’s stepmother, had told Atticus that she was a Guardian and that she was passing the responsibility on to him. But what that meant and how to do it was anyone’s guess.

“What do you know about them?” Jake asked.

“Guardians?”

Jake nodded.

“Not much,” Amy answered, not quite meeting his eyes.

This was more
truthish
than true. What she wasn’t telling Jake was that she suspected one of the things the Guardians were protecting was a Cahill family relic, a gold ring currently hidden in plain sight on her wrist around the face of her Swiss watch. Only a handful of people knew about the ring’s existence. The Vespers wanted it — badly enough that they’d nearly killed Amy trying to get it.

Time to change the subject
. She looked at her watch. “Atticus should be inside the Pergamon by now.”

“I’m going into the museum with you.”

“No.”

“I’m Atticus’s
brother
. He’s my responsibility.”

“The best way you can keep him safe is to stay here and keep the car running.” Jake opened his mouth to reply, but Amy jumped out of the SUV before he could argue further.

That’s one way to handle him
, she thought with a grin. Then she realized she was smiling. Again.