Shatterproof (18 page)

“We better go,” Dan said. “Thank you,
Mr. Tajamul.”

Mr. Tajamul gave them another bow, returned to his easel, and once more began to paint.

Dan and Atticus did not get very far. Standing outside the stall was the white-robed, red-turbaned man Dan had seen outside the butcher shop. Except he wasn’t a local. Casper Wyoming was holding the Mouse trapped in one hand and a shiny curved dagger in the other.

“Casper!” Atticus screamed.

“Let him go!” Dan said, his mouth going as dry the desert.

“There’s a wonderful knife maker here,” Casper said, increasing the blade’s pressure on the Mouse’s neck, causing the boy to squirm. “His blades are razor-sharp. Deadly. Cheyenne was so impressed she decided to get one as well. She’s waiting at the bottom of the stairs with her own knife. A twin to this, so to speak.”

“The Mouse has nothing to do with this,” Dan said.

Casper responded by increasing the blade’s pressure until it bit into the boy’s neck. “Squeak, squeak,” Casper said. The Mouse’s eyes were wide with fear.

“What do you want?” Dan asked. His heart was booming in his ears. The afternoon sun beat down on the silver of the knife, flashing into his eyes until the bright white light was all he could see.

“I only caught bits and pieces of your conversation with the old man. Tell me what you learned or I’ll cut this little rodent into pieces.”

Dan desperately looked up and down the aisle for help, but the vendors were all in their stalls. No one was paying attention.

“Why do you care?” he demanded. “If we find what Vesper One’s looking for, we’re going to turn it over to you anyway.”

“My sister and I would prefer to find it ourselves.” Casper smiled. “We want to
cut
you out of the deal.” He glanced at the terrified boy. “And whoever else gets in our way. Vesper One doesn’t trust you. He thinks you might be holding back.”

Dan had no choice. He was about to tell Casper about the Koldewey mark when an idea came to him. He reached into his pocket.

“Hold it!” Casper growled.

“It’s my cell phone,” Dan said. “Do you want the information or not?”

“What’s it have to do with your phone?”

“I recorded what he told us so I could download it for Amy,” Dan said, trying to find enough spit to speak. “I wasn’t able to send it because there isn’t any signal. Ready?”

Casper nodded.

Dan hoped this worked. If it didn’t, he would be responsible for another death, this time of a little kid. He turned the volume up as high as it would go and hit the icon. His ringtone blared across the second floor, down the stairs to the first, and out the window to the street. The Grand Marché went wild. Every vendor jumped out of their stall, brandishing their cell phones. A stampede of people rushed up the stairs, crushing Casper in the desperate race to catch Dan’s fake signal. The Mouse pulled out of Casper’s grasp and darted away through the limbs and arms of the shouting mass.

“This way!” The Mouse pointed to the stairs leading to the roof.

Dan poked his head into Mr. Tajamul’s stall. He was still at his easel, painting, seemingly oblivious to the riot outside.

Mr. Tajamul looked at him. “Bars?”

“No!” Dan shouted. “There’s a maniac out here who’s going to torture you for information when he gets back on his feet.”

Mr. Tajamul threw his brush down and ran out of the stall.

Dan was right behind him. Casper was up on his hands and knees now, with a bloody nose as red as the turban on his head. He looked like an enraged lion ready to pounce.

Dan fought his way up the stairs against the flow. When he finally reached the roof he found Atticus standing at the edge. Alone.

“Where’s the Mouse?”

Atticus pointed. The Mouse was standing on the roof of the building next to the Grand Marché, frantically motioning them to join him. Between the buildings was a ten-foot gap and a two-story drop.

“I can’t jump that!” Atticus said, turning terrified eyes toward Dan.

Dan wasn’t sure if he could, either. He looked behind and saw to his horror that Casper had regained his feet and was limping toward them. Cheyenne, dressed exactly like her brother, was not limping. She was sprinting toward them at a dead run with her twin dagger glinting in the setting sun’s light.

Dan grabbed Atticus, pulled him fifteen feet back from the edge, and shouted, “Run!”

Atticus looked behind him, saw Cheyenne, and took off as if he were on fire. He cleared the gap with feet to spare. Dan had a second to marvel at what pure fear could do before it was his turn to jump. He barely made it. At the very last moment Cheyenne’s dagger split his shirt down the back.

Dan got shakily to his feet, worried that his adrenaline-saturated heart was going to pound out of his chest.

“She’s going to jump!” Atticus shouted.

Cheyenne had backed away from the edge and was making her run. Just as she reached the edge of the Grand Marché, her foot got tangled in her robe. She dropped into the gap like a skydiver with a collapsed chute.

Dan, Atticus, and the Mouse peered over the edge. They were only slightly disappointed. Cheyenne was alive, but she had landed in an enormous mound of camel dung. She was clutching her arm and grimacing in pain.

“See you later,” Dan jeered.

The words were only just out of his mouth when Casper’s dagger came whistling past Dan’s ear. It missed him by inches and stuck in a wooden beam with a loud
twang
.

Casper looked at him and smiled. “Better run, little boys. You only have a few more hours.”

“Luna doesn’t seem too paranoid about being followed,” Jonah said.

She was a half a block ahead of them, walking at a leisurely pace as if she were taking a stroll through a well-lit mall.

“I hear you,” Hamilton said. “She hasn’t even looked back to see if anyone is behind her.”

“It’s probably because she’s packin’ heat.” Jonah looked at his giant cousin. “That means carrying a gun.”

“I know what packing heat is!” Hamilton said. “Like you know anything about guns.”

“Dude! Didn’t you see me in my number-one-grossing box-office hit,
Gangsta Kronikles
?”

“No,” Hamilton lied.

“Well, you’re probably the only dude on the planet who hasn’t seen it. I was the bomb in that movie and it was no act. Some things you just can’t fake. If the bad guys I wasted in the movie had been real we wouldn’t have an overpopulation problem on Planet E.”

“Whatever.”

Luna led them past the massive stone walls of Mahim Fort, then turned left toward the bay and entered what smelled and looked like a fishing village. They lost sight of her among the dilapidated shacks. Unlike on the street, there were a lot of people hanging around outside their homes, making it difficult for Hamilton and Jonah to remain inconspicuous.

“Where’d she go?” Jonah asked.

“Jonah Wizard!” a girl yelled from behind them.

Jonah took off at a sprint without even bothering to turn and look back. He and Hamilton dashed through the maze of shacks, ending up on a muddy bank near the bay where a group of fishermen was standing around a fire, laughing uproariously. The uproar turned to menace when the men saw the out-of-breath boys appear out of nowhere. One of the fishermen was dressed like Luna Amato.

“It was a ruse!” Hamilton said.

The men started moving toward them. Their laughter had been replaced by a terrifying silence. Behind them an army of young fans started pouring out of the fishing village, brandishing camera phones and shouting, “Jonah! Jonah! Jonah!”

Jonah looked around frantically, his eyes zeroing in on the only possible escape. “Boat!” The rap star had a lot of experience getting away from rushing crowds.

They sprinted into the water and jumped into the first boat they reached.

“I’ll pull up the anchor,” Jonah shouted. “You start the motor.”

“There is no motor!” Hamilton yelled.

“Hoist the sail!”

The wind caught the sail just as the fake Luna Amato reached the gunwale and started to pull himself up. Hamilton grabbed an oar and knocked him back into the water.

Jonah took the rudder and swung the bow around as Hamilton peeled two more people off the side and they splashed down into the water. The boat started to move out into Mahim Bay, leaving the fans and the angry fishermen shouting from the shallows.

Hamilton pulled his cell phone out and turned it on. “That was a trap! We have to warn Erasmus.” He listened, then shook his head. “Voice mail.”

“We have to get back there!” Jonah swung the boat south. “Could you recognize the warehouse from here?”

Hamilton shook his head. “Not in the dark. But Erasmus said Mahim Fort was a couple miles from the warehouse. All we have to do is figure out where two miles is and ground this thing.” He narrowed his eyes at Jonah. “Where’d you learn to sail?”

“Video game.”

Hamilton rolled his eyes. “Let me take the rudder.”

“Word.”

They switched places. “One more question,” Hamilton said.

“Give it to me.”

“What does
word
mean?”

“Literal translation?”

“Yeah.”

“It means, ‘Okay, I agree, hey.’ ”

“All three of those things?”

“Word.”

Casper Wyoming limped into the alley. He found his sister picking camel dung off her green-streaked robe with her good hand.

“I think my arm is broken,” she said. “What’s the matter with you?”

“I twisted my ankle.”

“That’s not what I meant and you know it! Vesper One told us to leave the Cahills alone.”

“He told us to keep an eye on them and not to impede them in any way. I grabbed the rodent boy, not the Cahill brats. It looked to me like you were trying to impede them with that dagger.”

“I wasn’t trying to
impede
them,” Cheyenne said. “I was trying to
impale
them.”

They glared at each other for a moment, then Casper started chuckling.

“You better hope Vesper One doesn’t get wind of what happened,” Cheyenne said, her eyes narrowing.

“He won’t.” Casper glanced over his shoulder. “This place has one thing going for it.” He smiled. “It’s great for making people disappear.”

“There!”

Amy pointed at the three boys jogging down the street.

Atticus and Dan piled into the backseat. The Mouse squeezed in next to Amy in the front.

Bart reached around Amy and ruffled his son’s hair. “What kind of trouble have you been in?”

The Mouse only grinned.

“Where have you been?” Amy demanded. “We were worried sick.”

“Fighting off the evil twins,” Dan said.

“The Wyomings!” Amy paled. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah, but Tweedledumb and Tweedledemented are a little worse for wear. Cheyenne did a header into a pile of camel poop.”

“We never should have let them go off on their own,” Jake said, staring daggers at Amy.

Amy glared right back. “If you hadn’t —”

“If we hadn’t gone off on our own,” Dan interrupted, “we wouldn’t have figured out where the ‘Apology’ is.”

“You know where it is?” Amy asked, turning to her brother with a gasp of astonishment.

“The de Virga compass rose hasn’t let us down yet.” He told her about the Roman ruins. “You and Jake can continue with the manuscripts. Atticus and I will head out to the ruins and see where it leads us.”