The 39 Clues Unstoppable Book 3 Countdown (12 page)

“What’s up, kiddos?” Nellie asked. “I’ve got some news. Pony confirms that Debi Ann Pierce is Deborah Starling.”

“Why didn’t we know that before?” Amy asked, working hard to keep her voice calm and measured.

“Pierce had any connection to the names ‘Starling’ or ‘Cahill’ wiped from his Internet history,” Nellie explained.

“I thought that was impossible,” Atticus said.

“It’s not easy,” Nellie said. “Pony says April May did it.”

“If she’s still working for Pierce, it would explain the ambush,” Amy said.

“What ambush?” Nellie cried in alarm.

“They swarmed us when we went to find the riven crystal,” Amy explained.

“And Dan almost got killed,” Atticus added before Amy could shush him.

“What?” Nellie shrieked. “Dan, are you okay? Put your face close to the camera so I can see you clearly.”

Dan pushed his face at the camera on Amy’s laptop. “I’m fine, Nellie. Don’t worry. Amy saved my butt.”

“Don’t worry? You were almost killed! What happened?”

Amy struggled with the warring impulses inside her. The slightest threat to her kiddos and Nellie went into battle mode. She’d done so much to protect them, made so many sacrifices. Amy felt protective of
her
now, wanting to spare her this blow. But Nellie deserved to know the truth. She needed to know.

“Calm down, Nellie,” Amy said, keeping her voice steady. Nellie had started pacing in front of the computer screen, unable to stand the suspense. “Pierce’s men ambushed us in the jungle, and they tried to cut a zip line while Dan was on it —”

“Dangling over a river —” Dan put in.

“— but I rescued him, and we all got away safely. That’s the good news.”

Nellie’s eyes narrowed. “What’s the bad news?”

Dan glanced at Amy, and she knew he was trying to postpone the inevitable, too. “I lost Olivia’s book,” he confessed, stalling for time. “It fell out of my pocket while we were fighting the soldiers, and we can’t find it.”

“Okay.” Nellie nodded. “Okay. Okay. That’s bad. That’s very bad, but as long as my two kiddos are safe . . .”

“It’s not that simple,” Amy said. “Dan was — he was about to die. He was dangling over a river. He would have fallen and smashed against the rocks, if — if —”

Nellie stopped pacing. “If what?”

Dan looked at Amy. She shook her head. She couldn’t do it.

“Spit it out, kids,” Nellie said.

“Amy took the serum.” Dan’s shoulders hunched as he spoke. Amy could see the coil of anger and pain inside him tighten. “The original, undiluted serum. A full dose. That’s how she had the strength to save me.”

Nellie blinked. “What are you talking about? How could Amy take the — ?”

“I had a vial of it,” Amy said. “Sammy made it for me.”

As the news sank in, Nellie’s features contorted in pain. Amy knew she was watching her friend’s heart break.

Nellie pressed her palms against her eyes, then dropped her head on the table in front of her. Finally, she lifted her head and wiped her eyes. “I am not going to let you die.” Her voice had grown fierce. “You won’t die. All we need is the antidote. Did you get the crystal?”

Atticus frowned. “Still working on it.”

“Wait.” Amy hovered by Atticus’s shoulder and looked at the glyph. From a slight distance she saw it differently — more clearly. “I know what those vertical rectangles remind me of. A mirror.”

Atticus tilted his head, studying the symbol. “A mirror?”

“You know, that three-way kind they have in store dressing rooms, or on a vanity table?”

The three boys were giving her blank looks, but on the computer screen Nellie perked up. “I know what you mean. The kind with three panels, so you can see yourself in front and from both sides at the same time.”

“Right!” Amy said. “Does that help you, Atticus?”

“A mirror . . .” Atticus picked up his laptop and started searching for something. “That sounds familiar.” A few minutes later he jotted something on the paper. For the first time all day, Atticus smiled.

“Amy, I think you cracked it.”

Washington, DC

“What this country needs is more democracy.” Pierce was standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial with his daughter, Cara, by his side, surrounded by a select group of US senators. He wasn’t supposed to be giving a speech, but the press was there, so why not?

“And what does a democracy need to grow? Strong leadership.” Pierce patted the giant stone pedestal underneath the statue of Abraham Lincoln as senators nodded and clapped around him. “This country hasn’t had a real leader in years. What we need is a true patriot — someone who understands that America comes first, and every other country should bow down to our power!”

Cara was amazed at the enthusiastic applause. How did her father get away with this stuff?

“Excuse me, Mr. Pierce.” One reporter waved a pen to get his attention. “Is that how you define democracy? It sounds more like a dictatorship to me.”

“You, madam, are not a patriot!” Pierce said with a dangerous smile. “Get that reporter’s name,” he muttered to one of his bodyguards. “I’ll see that she’s fired.”

Whoa
, Cara thought.

Cara was used to her father’s ruthless tactics — that’s why he had a real shot of winning the election. But she’d never really stopped to think what would happen
after
he was sworn in. Who would be president? The nonstop charm machine the public saw? Or the J. Rutherford Pierce that only Cara, Galt, and their mother knew, a man who cared about power more than anything, more than his own family.

They finished their tour of the great monuments of Washington with a state dinner at the Capitol. While waiters served them roast beef and potatoes, Cara steered the conversation in a direction she knew her father would like: foreign policy. He had just been touring the capitals of Europe, making sure to act as boorishly American as possible wherever he went, and he had lots of funny stories to tell of uptight prime ministers looking like fools around a laid-back American.

Laid-back. Cara wanted to laugh. It was the last phrase she’d use to describe her father. But he’d become a genius at being whoever people wanted him to be. The perfect candidate.

“So I said to the chancellor, I said, ‘Well, Helmut, the problem with your country is you spend too darn much money on silly things like art. If you spent the money you give to the arts on your military, you wouldn’t need to come crying to Uncle Sam every time some nut in a banana republic sneezes.’ ”

The senators at the table laughed appreciatively, but one aide looked a little troubled. “It might be okay to joke around with our allies in Europe,” he said. “But what about someone like the president of Iran? How would you handle diplomacy with him?”

“Son, what you’ve got to understand is these leaders are people just like you and me. They can boast and bluster all they want, but if you show them you’re not impressed and treat them like a good ol’ boy, or
girl
,” Pierce added with a wink, “then you’ve got them eating out of your hand like a gerbil.”

What is with the wink?
Cara was annoyed. Then, as the table broke up laughing, she felt something bony knock against her shin, and the senator sitting next to Pierce cried, “Ow! Pierce, did you just kick me?”

It was quick, but Cara caught it — something she’d never seen on her father’s face before. A flash of panic. It was gone so fast she thought she might have imagined it. But she hadn’t imagined that her father had kicked both her and the senator under the table, and he couldn’t have meant to.

Pierce laughed again, coolly this time. “I’m sorry about that, Senator. You must forgive me. It’s just that the president of Iran makes me so darn mad I could kick someone — and you just happened to get in the way!”

More laughter. The offended senator seemed to accept Pierce’s jokey explanation. But Cara knew it was a cover-up. Her father’s leg had jerked against his will. For a split second, in front of all those politicians, he had lost control over himself.

Her father. Losing control.

She’d once thought that was impossible. But maybe it wasn’t.

She didn’t know for sure what had caused that spasm, but she had a theory — and it scared her. Her father had been drinking those special power shakes for longer than she had, and he took a bigger dose of whatever that stuff was he put in them. But what
was
that stuff? She knew it enhanced her physical and mental powers — but what else did it do?

What was it doing to
her
?

She found herself staring at her fingers, touching her knee, checking to see if her legs were doing any involuntary shaking. So far she was okay. But she felt the other changes, the good changes — the speed, the wit, the easy charm — and thought,
Those things don’t come free.

Someday she’d have to pay a price.

“It’s time these so-called ‘heads of state’ learned what
real
leadership is.
American
leadership,” Pierce continued.

Cara shuddered as another question iced down her spine.
What price would the world have to pay?

Tikal, Guatemala

Amy marveled at Atticus. The boy knew his stuff, and he wasted no time. That afternoon he led them to a group of structures just south of the Mundo Perdido, or the Lost World, the oldest part of Tikal. “This is called the
Mural de los Jugadores
,” he explained, showing them an excavated mural from about 370
B.C.
“
The Ball Players Mural
. It depicts an epic ball game between two sets of characters in Mayan mythology: the Hero Twins and the Lords of the Underworld.”

The western sector of the mural showed three men in ceremonial dress facing some brick-like patterns that Atticus thought represented a ball court. The figures on the eastern sector of the mural were damaged, so that only their feet were visible.

“This is one of the Hero Twins.” He pointed to a man in the mural wearing a headband and ornaments made of bones. “The Lords of the Underworld were painted on the damaged side of the mural, so we can’t see them. But one of them was called the Lord of the Mirrors.”

“Mirrors,” Amy said. “Like in Olivia’s book.”

“I suspect that glyph was once part of this mural — on the damaged side,” Atticus said. “And in terms of decoding the map that leads to the riven crystal, it fits with the
pok-a-tok
theme.”

“But what does it mean?” Dan asked.

“I think it’s code for
opposite
,” Atticus said.

“Like a mirror image,” Amy said.

“Right. If I redraw the map as it would look in a mirror, it would send us to the opposite side of the park,” Atticus said.

“To another unexcavated temple —” Jake added.

“— where the crystal should be,” Dan finished.

“Let’s go find it.” Amy barked the words like an order.

“I think Atticus should redraw the map first, so we don’t get lost,” Jake said.

“We won’t get lost. I can see it all in my head — the whole park.” Amy’s mind was supercharged, thinking a thousand miles a second. She passed through the entrance to a house in the Mundo Perdido, shaped like a serpent’s maw, muttering to herself, thinking out loud, twirling in place to let the others catch up.