The Boston Breakout (10 page)

All except Nish, who hung back.

Travis continued down the line of Owls until he reached Nish, who reluctantly fisted Travis’s glove. Travis could almost see steam coming out of Nish’s ears.

“It was
my
pass,” Nish hissed. “
My
Hail Mary that won the game!”

Travis accepted the tap of the glove from his friend, but said nothing.

What could he possibly say?

T
ravis barely heard the tap on the door. He thought he was dreaming. Then it came again, a light tap, scarcely there, but a tap all the same.

He sat up in his bed. It was dark. Nish was breathing hard in the bed opposite, out like a light. The others were all still asleep.

The tap again.

He went to the door and pulled it open quietly, thinking there was likely no one there.

But there was. It was Sarah. And behind her was Sam.

Sam was in tears.

The three Screech Owls sat on the steps in the stairwell at the end of the corridor. It was unlikely anyone would come upon them there. Sam had stopped crying, but she was shaking. Strange, thought Travis: it was much warmer in the stairwell than it was in the air-conditioned rooms and corridors. Sarah had her arm around Sam and was rubbing her shoulder in an effort to comfort her.

Sam slowly got herself together, then began talking.

“Frances put me on her mobile contact list,” she said. “The one she said was for her ‘inner circle’ only – the people she trusted. Ever since she had that trouble with the police over the fur, she’s been convinced they were tracking her calls and e-mails.
So this was a special thing she was using that meant messages stayed private. They went direct and not through any server.”

“I know about that,” Travis said. “It’s called pinning – my dad sometimes uses it when he’s about to close a business deal.”

“Anyway,” said Sam. “She set up my phone so I could get those messages once I got home. I was going to start up a group there. But when I went to bed tonight, I started getting all these strange texts from her phone. I’m not sure they were meant for me, and I’m not sure what they mean.”

Sam held out her phone so Travis could scroll through the text messages.

Travis read them out loud, then read them all again to himself. He had no idea what they meant.

“Free the Penguins!”

“Meet 9 a.m. sharp, you know where.”

“Arrangements complete – it’s a go, people!”

“Alarm set.”

“St. Francis and St. Michael will guide us!”

“Census Day = Judgment Day.”

“The last one scares me,” said Sam. “Census Day equals Judgment Day.”

“What’s it mean?” asked Travis.

Sam took a deep breath. It was almost as if she didn’t want to say what she thought. But she knew she had to. Her voice broke as she tried to explain.

“Well,” she said. “Remember when we visited the aquarium, and Fahd asked how many creatures they had?”

“Yeah, sure,” said Travis. “The guide said six hundred.”

“Well, they said they didn’t know for sure, but each year, they do a census, a count – and this week, they said, was when they’d be doing it.”

“But what about Judgment Day?” Sarah asked. “And what’s all that talk about saints?”

Sam swallowed. “Remember what Data told us about that St. Francis of Assisi? How he devoted his life to saving animals?”

“A bit,” said Travis. “But who’s St. Michael?”

“I googled that,” said Sam. “Michael is the saint who’s supposed to weigh the souls on Judgment Day and decide who was good and who was evil.
St. Francis was devoted to him and asked his followers to pray to St. Michael so they’d be ready for Judgment Day.”

“Sounds weird,” Travis said.

“Not to lots of people,” said Sarah. “My grandmother has a calendar with all the saints’ days marked.”

“But
this
is weird,” said Travis. “Put it all together. We know about her ‘Free the Penguins’ demand. But her texts talk about Judgment Day, say everything has been arranged, and even mention an alarm. They are planning something, aren’t they?”

Sarah turned to Sam. “Are they?”

Sam’s lip quivered. She had tears in her eyes again. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t! I like Frances a lot and believe in her cause – but this scares me.”

“Me, too,” said Travis.

“What do we do?” asked Sarah.

“What
can
we do?” Travis answered. “There’s nothing here but talk. No one would listen to us. I say we go to the aquarium early and see if this is really the day they do the census.”

“Maybe we can slip out right after breakfast,” said Sarah. “We don’t play until the afternoon.”

“Okay. Just the three of us,” said Travis. “If we see her and her group, and if we find out today’s the day they do the census, we’d better tell someone.”

“But tell them what?” said Sarah.

“Exactly,” said Travis. “Which is why we’d better check things out before we make fools of ourselves. These texts are probably just gibberish.”

“Or maybe not,” said Sam. She started shaking again.

I
mmediately after breakfast, Travis, Sarah, and Sam slipped away. It wasn’t difficult. Nish was telling a bunch of the other Owls that he and Data had a new invention: a hockey bag on wheels that you ran by remote control. Sarah didn’t even waste time rolling her eyes as she hurried to the revolving doors on the side of the hotel closest to the New England Aquarium.

It was already 9:00 a.m., and the ticket line was lengthy. It was still the height of tourist season
in Boston. A juggler was performing on the boardwalk, surrounded by a large group of tourists who frequently applauded, but nowhere else could the three Owls see any sort of gathering.

They quickly rounded the back of the aquarium. Nothing there, either. Frances Assisi’s text had said nothing about a specific place, just that they should meet at 9:00 a.m. sharp – that “arrangements” had been made.

They lined up for tickets. The line moved slowly, and Travis was glad of the distraction of the juggler. The juggler was extremely talented, but Travis could think of nothing but those cryptic messages received by Sam. What did they all mean? What was Judgment Day?

“We’re next,” Sarah said. She sounded out of breath, though for fifteen minutes they’d been almost standing still as the tourists – many of them in large groups – picked up their tickets.

“We’re also late!” said Sam, who’d been growing ever more nervous.

“But for
what
?” Travis reminded them.

“Maybe nothing,” said Sam. “I hope nothing.”

So did Travis. From the moment he had met her, he hadn’t liked this Frances woman. He didn’t like the way she spoke to them, as if she was talking to people who weren’t very bright and needed everything carefully explained. He didn’t like the way she seemed to manipulate Sam, who had simply shown a love for the little penguins and now wouldn’t eat meat of any sort and preached to the other Owls about animal cruelty. And he particularly didn’t like the way Frances smiled with just her mouth while her eyes looked cold and cruel and calculating.

“Let’s move it!” Sarah said, as she handed the tickets to her teammates. She turned and ran from the ticket booth to the aquarium’s front doors, skirting ahead of a few slow-moving tour groups.

The three Owls were quickly inside.

It seemed a normal day at the aquarium in every way. The souvenir shop was already packed with people buying stuffed penguins and other mementos. There was a large crowd watching the feeding of the penguins, and one of the guides was giving a talk on the eating habits of the fascinating birds.

“The census would be done in the tank,” Sarah said, tugging on Travis’s sleeve. She moved quickly toward the ramps that took viewers on a circular path up and down the glass sides of the vast water tank.

Travis could see creatures swimming long before he got close. He saw a school of herring flash by like a thousand tiny mirrors in perfect time with each other. He could see other flashes of light as camera-carrying tourists chased after Myrtle the turtle, who passed window after window completely unaware of the gawking, excited tourists.

“We’ll go to the top and then work our way back down,” said Sarah. Travis and Sam nodded in agreement.

Half-running, dodging at times to get through the thick crowds, they were near the top of the gigantic tank when they rounded a corner and hit a wall of tourists listening intently to the New England Aquarium guide, Jocelyn, who had given the Owls their tour.

They had no choice but to stop. It would be too rude to push through. Sam bit her fingernails.

“So each year, we do a full count,” Jocelyn was
saying. The guide had clearly been answering a question like the one Fahd had asked about the number of creatures in the tank.

“In fact,” she continued. “This is day one of the annual census. Soon you will see divers entering the tank, and they will be conducting the count. It’s very difficult work – can you imagine trying to count that school of herring accurately? – but it has to be done. They begin by category. Turtles are easy, and the divers get a totally accurate account of the larger fish, which they can tag. When it comes to the little guys, though, and the schools of fish, we do the count through photography and make certain calculations. We think we are pretty accurate.”

“When do they start?” a young boy asked.

The guide turned to the window and looked down as well as she could through the curved glass into the lower depths of the tank.

“They’ve started,” she said. “If you look down, you’ll see quite a few divers are now in the tank.”

The tourists pressed hard to the closest windows. The three Owls raced off to the side to find their own window.

Travis pressed so close to the glass his forehead left a mark.

“I see them!” said Sam.

“So do I!” said Sarah.

Travis watched, fascinated, as the divers, clad in wet suits and wearing fins and goggles and air tanks, slowly moved about the bottom of a reef-like structure that filled much of the tank, often picking up rocks in search of hidden creatures. They carried small counters, and a couple of the divers held what looked like computer tablets. Travis hoped they were waterproof.

The divers worked methodically, mostly staying at the bottom of the tank as they conducted their annual count.

But four divers were rising up from the bottom. Up and up they rose, carefully keeping it slow, their air bubbles racing ahead. Travis knew that ocean divers had to be careful not to come too quickly to the surface. Otherwise they could get the decompression sickness divers called the bends.

Travis watched them rise, the divers passing right by his window. He could see their equipment,
including the gauges on their tanks that measured the amount of air time remaining.

Then he saw something that made his heart stop.

The diver passing closest by him, a woman, judging by the long hair flowing in the water, had her head turned slightly. She could not see him.