The 39 Clues Unstoppable Book 3 Countdown (19 page)

He stepped over a pile of boulders to enter the pyramid. There was a stone floor, a row of broken stone benches, and at one end a high table that might have once been part of an altar. Cobwebs filled the corners, and a bat flitted over their heads.

“Creepy,” Jonah said.

“Yes, let’s not linger,” Ian said. “Atticus, where do you think the altar was?”

“Here!” Atticus picked his way over the piles of rocks to the high table against the back wall. It was set into a kind of nave, with a niche carved into the wall behind it that might have held candles or sacred icons. The table was decorated with intricately carved Mayan designs that looked familiar to Jake. Some were abstract — mazes, stars, pyramids — but others showed men in strange poses wearing large Mayan headgear.

All the boys aimed their lights at the back wall. “Look for a stone with a different color or texture than the others,” Atticus told them. “Or something that might have been added on later.”

Jake moved the light methodically from stone to stone, but nothing looked unusual to him. Then he trained his beam on the front of the altar table. “Hey — what’s this?” He brushed away some dirt and vines. There was a large, familiar carving. His heart started racing. He’d seen this in Olivia’s book, he was sure. Almost sure . . . He swept away more dirt for a clearer view. The carving showed a man wearing a large headdress with three panels.
Please be what I think this is
, he prayed. All he needed was Atticus’s confirmation.

“Hey, Att — I think this is the Lord of the Mirrors.”

Att hurried over to Jake. He ran his hands over the carving. Jake held his breath. “Well?”

“It is.” Atticus beamed. “The riven crystal must be set somewhere in this table.” Jake let out his breath in a sigh of relief. They were so close. . . .

The others ran over. They all aimed their flashlights at the table, searching for a piece of stone that looked different from the rectangular slabs of limestone. Jake found another glint, right under the Lord of the Mirrors. Set in the center of the thick table was a square stone, slightly darker than the others and smooth to the touch. “Att! I think I found the crystal!”

Atticus knelt down to examine the stone while the others crowded around. “This is it — riven quartz crystal.”

“Finally!” Jake said. “Let’s take what we need and get out of here.”

Ian took a penknife from his pocket. “This blade should do.” He grinned. “We Lucians always keep our blades sharp.” With the practiced skill of a Lucian, Ian shaved off bits of stone into a box Atticus had brought.

“Make sure we get enough — at least an ounce.”

“I’m working on it,” Ian said. “Shaving rock isn’t easy, you know.”

Jake looked up to see bats fluttering through the canopy of trees. “Hurry,” he urged. “We don’t want to hang around here too long. You never know when we might be ambushed.” He stood very still and listened for any sign of intruders. Night birds screeched and monkeys rustled through the treetops, but he heard no footsteps and saw no lights.

“You got enough?” Jonah asked. Ian nodded.

“The coast is clear,” Jake said. “Let’s go.” They’d completed their mission: They had the crystal at last. Jake’s spirits lifted as they marched back toward the hotel. They were one step — one big step — closer to saving Amy.

But then the reality hit him, how many more steps they had to go, and his mood plummeted.
Four days
, he thought.
Four days.

Pony was alone in the hotel, eyes and fingers glued to his laptop, when his cell rang. “Jake, what up?” Pony asked, without a trace of humor in his voice. Amy and Dan had left about twenty minutes earlier to meet the blackmailers, and Pony was tracing the ransom e-mails in search of their source. He hadn’t found it yet, but he didn’t like the direction the trail was headed in.

“We’ve got the crystal and we’re on our way back,” Jake reported.

“Excellent!” Pony said. “Dan and Amy left a little while ago. They’re out of cell range by now, but they’ll be stoked to hear this.”
Now all we need is the book
, he thought,
and we’re almost there.

“We’ve just crossed the Mendez Causeway,” Jake said. “We nearly got busted by the patrol guards, so we’re lying low for a while till they move out of the area.”

“Gotcha. Stay safe.” Pony clicked off and went back to monitoring the blackmailers’ line. He’d volunteered to stay behind and track the chatter because he was afraid of action. He could admit it to himself or to anyone who asked him. Those Pierce guys were no joke.

But Pony took the job he did have very seriously. And now that he was doing it, he felt more like part of the team than ever. Practically a Cahill.
If Dan or Amy asked me to go with them now, I’d go.
And he meant it. But he was more useful here in the hotel. No doubt about that. There’d been no electronic activity all night. Dead quiet. That made him nervous. So he tried to trace the original e-mail, see where it came from.

This should have been easy. If the blackmail message came from poachers or villagers, it would have been. But the true source of the message was strangely elusive. Following a hunch, Pony hacked into April May’s e-mail.

Bingo.

He couldn’t find the actual ransom note, but he did find Amy’s fake e-mail address in April’s contact list.

So April knew about Amy’s fake account, and had had some contact with it.

Her contact list was also riddled with Pierce’s addresses, his various accounts, his wife’s, his kids’. . . .

He opened a file marked “P.” E-mails from Pierce, including his orders to keep tabs on Amy and Dan and inform him of every move they made. Pony rubbed his eyes and shook his head.
Oh, April May, whoever you are
, he thought sadly. He was seized with an impulse to write to her, and then, just as quickly, seized with a bout of shyness.

Forget the shyness, he said to himself. Go for it.

He’d learned a lot in the short time he’d been with the Cahills, and one of the biggest lessons was not to hold back. Go for it now, because you never knew what could happen the next day, or even the next minute. So he composed a quick note:

Dear April May, my computer compadre,

Someday, when all this craziness is over, I hope to meet you in person. Like enemy soldiers meeting on neutral ground after a truce. We can trade notes and secrets, and who knows, we might find out we have more in common than just lightning fingers. . . .

— P

A few minutes later, his message signal dinged.

I’d love that, Pony. Let’s work together to end this war now. Because it is a war.

Take care of yourself. I’m not just saying that. Please watch out. There’s danger everywhere.

I’ll keep an eye on you.

— AM

Pony felt a tingle rise from his toes to the tip of his ponytail. Someday . . . someday.

He caught himself daydreaming and snapped out of it. The Cahills needed him. Amy and Dan needed him — especially Amy. They’d lured him out of his parents’ garage into a world that was more dangerous than he’d ever imagined. But he wasn’t sorry. He’d grown to love them, all of them, even that grouchy twit Ian.

His cell buzzed. Text coming in. From Nellie.

THE BOOK’S NOT THERE. PIERCE’S MEN WAITING. I TRIED AMY AND DAN — NO ANSWER. DON’T LET THEM GO, PONY. STOP THEM!

His first instinct was to panic.
What do I do? What do I do?
Dan and Amy were out of cell range. If he ran, maybe he could stop them before they reached the meeting place.

If he ran? How fast could he possibly run on his rubbery, computer-jock, pizza-and-Electroshock-fueled legs? Jake and the others were still half an hour’s walk from the hotel. They wouldn’t get back in time.

It had to be him.

Just in case, Pony called Amy, then Dan. The calls went straight to voice mail. No service. They were too far out in the jungle. There was only one way to reach them.

Run.

Trilon Laboratories Delaware

“Pssst! Sammy!”

Sammy lifted his head from his microscope. He looked around the room. He didn’t see anyone. He went back to his research. He pressed his eye to the microscope, then pulled it away and wrote some figures in his notebook.

From her vantage point — the air vent over Sammy’s workstation — Nellie took the luxury of one minute to admire his curly hair, how elegant and serious he looked while he worked. His smooth olive skin had gotten a little sallow from being locked up in an underground lab all this time, but he still made Nellie’s heart race.

“Nellie?”

“Up here.” Sure now that the coast was clear, she pushed open the air vent grate and slid into the lab. Sammy went to help ease her down.

“Careful,” he whispered. “There’s an armed guard right outside the door.”

Nellie scanned the room. If the guard turned around to look through the window in the door, he’d see her. She ducked behind Sammy’s workstation. Sammy squatted down to talk to her, but she said, “No — stay up there and pretend to keep working, in case the guard checks. He’ll come in if he doesn’t see you.”

Sammy stood up and started to sort some slides. “I’m so sorry,” he murmured. “I’ve been racking my brain, but I can’t think of anything that will help Amy besides the antidote.”

Nellie grimaced, her chest tightening under the weight of her disappointment. “It’s okay. You just need more time to focus. No one can work while surrounded by these creepy guards and eating terrible food.” She reached for his hand. “Now can you get out of here? I know a vent we can take.”

Sammy glanced at the door. The back of the guard’s head was visible. He wasn’t looking — at the moment. But all he had to do was turn his head forty-five degrees and he’d see everything.

“I should stay,” he said. “I can’t sabotage Pierce’s research unless I’m here.”

“The longer you stay, the more danger you’re in. You’ve done enough, Sammy. More than enough. And I’m going to destroy this place.”

He looked down at her and sighed. She could see on his face that he could hardly stand another minute of captivity. “All right. Let’s go. Quick.” He pulled Nellie to her feet and boosted her up to the vent. She crawled in, then turned around and reached out to pull Sammy up. He put a chair under the vent and started scrambling up when the door burst open. Nellie dragged him into the vent and pulled the grate shut.

Had the guard noticed?

She held her breath. She was desperate to crawl away but afraid it would make too much noise.

Sammy gripped her hand. He’d just barely made it into the vent. One of his feet was pressed against the grate. That’s when she noticed his shoe was untied. And the lace was dangling outside the vent.

She pointed to his foot and pantomimed,
Pull it in!

Too late.

“Hey — what’s that?” the guard asked.

“Come on, Sammy!” Nellie yanked on his arm and started crawling through the vent, but the guard had seen the shoelace. He tore the grate off the vent, jumped up on the chair, and reached inside. He grabbed Sammy’s legs, yelling, “Stop!”

“Nellie! He’s got me!”

Nellie turned and grabbed Sammy’s arms in a tug-of-war with the guard, but the guard was too strong. He yanked Sammy out of the vent and down to the floor. Another guard had heard the shout and ran into the room just as Nellie tried to disappear the other way. He jumped up on the chair, dove into the vent, and grabbed Nellie by the feet. “Let go of me!” She kicked him right in the face.

“Oof!” The guard grunted but didn’t let go. He pulled her down through the vent opening and back into the lab. The room was full of guards now, five of them. They’d already restrained Sammy. Nellie screamed, “Five against two? Try fighting fair, creeps!”