Flashpoint

  The Cahills exchanged agonized glances. The images whirling around their minds were ghastly and appalling. Flashes of detonation; walls of flame roaring down crowded streets, incinerating everything in their path.

  Not only was Pierce deranged enough to conceive of such an abominable plan, he was absolutely dead set on seeing it through.

  Hamilton snatched a towel from the bar and flung it at Pierce, wrapping it around his head. As Cara’s father struggled to free himself, Ian snatched the tablet from his hands.

  Pierce just laughed. “You think you can stop me with that? Once the detonation sequence begins, only the abort code can stop it. My software can’t be hacked. It was designed by April May herself!”

  “I’m April May, Dad!” Cara exploded. “When I wrote that software, I had no idea you were going to use it to —” She began to sob.

  He looked at his daughter, eyes widening in shock and disbelief. Then his features hardened into a mask of pure hatred.

  Ian held up the tablet for the others to see. The countdown timer read 5:17.

  The intense cold was beyond anything Jake could have imagined — like thousands of bee stings applied simultaneously to the entire surface area of his body. It made his muscles cramp and his heart race, accelerating the crippling fatigue that took hold in his gut and radiated outward.

  He kicked through the waves, pushing the empty spray tank that carried Amy’s unconscious body. His chest was so contracted with tension and effort that it hurt to wheeze in the tiniest breath. His legs were on fire, but not the kind that offered any warmth. He could no longer feel his hands.

  “Hang in there, Amy,” he panted. “You’re going to make it.”

  She was still unconscious. The encouragement wasn’t for her. It was a reminder for himself — why he had to wrestle the sea and the agony of his own body. She stood no chance at all if he couldn’t get her to shore.

  Floundering, he tried to estimate his progress. Pierce Landing still seemed impossibly distant. He couldn’t tell how far he’d come, since his starting point had no marker. The wreckage of the crop duster had long since sunk out of sight.

  “I don’t think we’re getting anywhere,” he rasped aloud.

  Amy had no opinion. Waves licked at a dangling strand of her long hair.

  It took a moment for the importance of this to sink in. Her hair hadn’t reached the water before.

  The tank sat low in the swells. Tiny bubbles cascaded to the surface.

  It’s letting the ocean in.

  The thought that followed was even more alarming: It’s going to sink!

  He began to swim with renewed vigor, kicking through the pain. He was no longer just battling the sea and the distance. He was battling time as well. Pretty soon, the tank would lose buoyancy and head for the bottom. He had to get Amy to safety before that happened.

  The pain no longer mattered. He felt it, but it was irrelevant. He lost sight of the antidote, the clambake, Pierce, the Cahills, Atticus — even himself and Amy. The scope of his thinking narrowed to two words: Keep moving.

  He could see the hulking form of Pierce’s mansion and, beyond it, the lighting arc of the clambake stage. He seemed to be approaching the island’s opposite shore. It was closer now, but not close enough — not nearly. The seven-hundred-gallon container grew heavier as it filled, listing dangerously to one side.

  He watched in horror as the tank tipped over and sank out of sight with a gurgle and an eruption of bubbles. Amy bobbed in the ocean a moment and then disappeared beneath the surface. It was all Jake could do to gather her into his arms and pull her up again.

  There was no question of a Red Cross carry. He was completely out of gas. The choice before him was cruel and starkly simple: He might be able to make it. But not with Amy.

  It should have been an easy decision: Saving two lives was impossible; preserving one was preferable to none. Yet he could not bring himself to let go.

  The Rosenblooms were long on brains. Dad, a renowned scientist; Atticus, a straight-up genius; Jake, no slouch himself. So why was he unable to accept this basic math — that one was greater than zero?

  Maybe it was this: He would never be ready to give up on Amy. It was a stupid, pointless, self-destructive way to feel, but it was all he could offer her now.

  He floated there, exhausted, his mind losing focus, growing numb. And he was so cold. . . .

  Blackness replaced what had once been vision. Frigid ocean closed over his head. He was sinking, but he was too tired to care. A distant cry reached him, but he paid no attention, certain that it was not real.

  Surely you hear things right before you die. . . .

  Suddenly, he was breaching the surface, genuinely shocked to taste another breath. How had it happened? Certainly not by his own power —

  Someone was beside him. It was Amy — kicking and paddling, dragging him up! And that meant . . .

  “You’re alive!” he blurted in amazement.

  Incapable of an answer, she lifted one arm out of the water and pointed toward Pierce Landing.

  Side by side, the two began to stroke for shore.

  Chapter 31

  Cara’s nimble fingers danced over the tablet, her expression becoming increasingly tense. The countdown timer had passed four minutes. “It’s no use,” she breathed. “There’s no way in without the abort code. I created the security myself.”

  Pierce offered a bitter chuckle. “That’s my girl. You may be a filthy turncoat, but at least you do quality work.”

  “Come on, Dad,” Cara wheedled. “Give me the password. We’re talking about nukes here!”

  “Great leaders have to be willing to make great sacrifices,” her father said righteously.

  “Fine,” Dan snapped. “If he won’t tell us, we’ll have to guess it. If I was a bloodthirsty, stuck-up, pompous nut job, what would I choose for a password?”

  Pierce flamed red. “How dare you —”

  “His name!” Ian interrupted. “Try his name!”

  Cara was already typing: RUTHERFORD.

  Invalid Code.

  She tried other variations: JAMES . . . PIERCE . . . JRPIERCE . . . PIERCEJR . . .

  Invalid Code.

  PATRIOTIST . . . PIERCER . . . PRESIDENT . . .

  Invalid Code.

  “Not even close.” Pierce seemed to find this highly amusing. “In fact, you’re getting colder.”

  “What about the serum?” Dan urged as the timer ticked below three minutes. “That’s what made his plan possible!”

  SERUM . . . PROTEINSHAKE . . .

  Invalid Code.

  “Try his company!” Hamilton suggested.

  FOUNDERS . . . TRILON . . .

  Invalid Code.

  There was the sound of running feet in the house, and a distant voice called, “Dan!”

  “Amy — in here! The sauna room in the back hall!”

  A moment later, Amy and Jake sloshed in through the door, sopping wet, bedraggled, and utterly spent.

  Dan gawked at his sister, alive and — a blaze of relief streaked through him — could it be that she wasn’t quite so juiced? “Are you — ?”

  “I took the antidote,” she explained briskly. “But we owe the Penobscots one crop duster. Roslyn didn’t make it.” Her eyes fell on Pierce, still perched on the edge of the Jacuzzi. “What’s going on here?”

  The group began babbling at the same instant. Amy tuned everyone out except her brother. The two were so much on the same wavelength that she understood him instantly, half by language and half by personal radar. “It’s serious, Amy!” he exclaimed. “Thousands of people are going to die!”

  “So glad you’ll be here to taste defeat alongside your Cahill relatives,” Pierce sneered.

  Cara was still typing possible passwords at light speed.

 
“Relatives, yo!” Jonah croaked. “Try your family!”

  GALT . . . CARA . . .

  Invalid Code.

  “Two minutes,” Ian quavered, eyes widening.

  DEBIANN . . .

  Invalid Code.

  Pierce laughed out loud. “As if I’d use your insipid mother for anything important. She was never my first choice.”

  Dan stiffened like a bloodhound picking up a scent. “Amy — he was in love with Mom!”

  For the first time, Pierce stopped smiling.

  Amy crouched beside Cara. “Try Hope.”

  Invalid Code.

  “Hope Cahill!” Amy urged as Cara pounded the touchscreen. “Or our father’s last name — Hope Trent!”

  Invalid Code.

  “One minute!” shrilled Ian.

  “We’re out of time!” Jonah almost wailed. “What else, yo? Think!”

  But Amy could tell from the stricken look on Pierce’s face that they were close. “Dan — what was Mom’s middle name?”

  He was practically hysterical. “I don’t remember! Maybe I never knew! Try Grace!”

  HOPEGRACE.

  Invalid Code.

  “Thirty seconds!” Ian squeaked.

  They tried family names: HOPEANNE . . . HOPEMARY . . . HOPEELIZABETH . . .

  Invalid Code.

  Dan was losing it. “For God’s sake, Amy, we recovered a lost antidote from a five-hundred-year-old book, but we can’t come up with our own mother’s middle name?”

  “Ten seconds!”

  Light dawned on Amy. “The book!” She snatched the computer away from Cara and typed: HOPEOLIVIA.

  There was no response from the tablet, and for a horrible instant, Amy wondered if the screen might have frozen. Then a ping sounded and a message appeared:

  DETONATION ABORTED

  SYSTEM RESET

  The countdown clock was halted at 0:02.

  J. Rutherford Pierce, the man who had very nearly been president, laid his head in his hands and wept like a heartbroken child.

  Chapter 32

  In the attic of Bhaile Anois in the Irish village of Meenalappa, Amy and Dan stood beside their Great-uncle Fiske. Four months had passed since the clambake that had been designed to change the world and had actually changed nothing at all. Across the ocean, the United States was in the midst of a presidential campaign without J. Rutherford Pierce. The Patriotist Party had disbanded. Its one-time candidate had become a joke on late-night talk shows and a sandwich at a famous Boston deli. The Pierce: bologna and Limburger on a Kaiser roll, hold the mayo and your nose.

  It was amazing how quickly a global titan had morphed into a global laughingstock. But to Amy and Dan, there would never be anything funny about the media tycoon who had harnessed the power of the serum and had very nearly achieved world domination. Cahill sources inside the military had recovered the six “small” suitcase nukes from cities around the world. According to Sammy, who personally disarmed them, each bomb would have leveled a city block, contaminating a wide area with dangerous radiation. Every time Amy shut her eyes, she saw the countdown clock on Pierce’s tablet: 0:02. It had been that close.

  Amy was completely back to her old self. So was everybody the serum had touched.

  For her part, Amy was thrilled to be ordinary again. She did not miss her superstrength and acuity — and certainly not the tremors and hallucinations that had come with the package. Best of all, zero side effects had been exhibited by anybody, including the clambake attendees who had breathed in the aerosolized spray. The antidote had lived up to the promise hidden in the cryptic poem in Olivia’s book. It had taken Leonardo da Vinci and the collective knowledge of seven lost civilizations to invent it. But five centuries later, the stuff had come through with flying colors.

  There was no official ceremony for what the Cahills had journeyed to Ireland to do. But it felt right to return Olivia’s book to the family’s ancestral home.

  “Should we say something?” Dan asked in a hushed tone. “I mean, Olivia figured out a way to stop a madman who wasn’t even born until five hundred years after she was already gone. If that doesn’t count as clutch, I don’t know what does.”

  “We don’t have to,” Fiske assured him. “You’ve just said it all.” He wrapped the ancient book in its cloth and sealed it back in the metal box.

  Amy replaced it inside the false drawer in the wooden filing cabinet. She hesitated a moment before closing it. “What if someone needs it again?”

  “They won’t,” said Fiske firmly. “There’s no more serum, and the recipe went up with the Delaware complex. Nellie and Sammy were remarkably thorough in that regard.”

  Dan was uneasy. Thanks to his photographic memory, he could never forget the formula for Gideon’s terrible creation. As long as Dan lived, so would the possibility that the serum might return. On the other hand, he would never forget the components of the antidote, either. That was some comfort.

  They left Bhaile Anois and stopped for lunch at a small teahouse in the village. Fiske took a delicate sip of his Darjeeling and sat back in his chair. “It’s a shame Nellie was unable to accompany us to Ireland.”

  “Sammy is studying for a huge test, and she wants to be around to support him,” Amy supplied. “Their relationship is getting pretty serious.”

  Dan made a face. “Really barfalicious is what it’s getting.”

  “Be that as it may,” Fiske said, grinning, “try to act surprised when our Nellie turns up wearing an engagement ring one of these days. Still, it is a shame she couldn’t be here to share this wondrous place. It looks no different than it did in Olivia’s time — unspoiled by modernity and commercialism.”

  He frowned as two workmen unfurled a large, glitzy poster and began pasting it to the side of a stone building in Meenalappa’s central square.

  “Until today,” Dan put in with a grin.

  “And look what it’s for.” Amy stifled a giggle.

  The poster was a larger-than-life picture of Jonah Wizard, his microphone hand bearing the three huge, jeweled rings that had once knocked out a Pierce goon.

  “Dear Lord,” murmured Fiske.

  Dan provided the explanation. “Yeah, Jonah was burning through his money too fast, so he decided to start touring again. Guess who his new manager is? Hamilton!”

  “Hamilton Holt?” Fiske asked in disbelief.

  “Don’t sell Hamilton short,” Amy advised. “He’s a pretty smart guy. He doubles as Jonah’s bodyguard and financial adviser. They’ve already bought into Debi Ann Pierce’s new toy company. Supposedly, those teddy bears she makes are flying off the shelves.”

  Fiske nodded. “I hear she donates her share of the profits to charity.”

  “Yeah, she doesn’t need the money,” Dan agreed. “She hired a Cahill lawyer for the divorce. The guy must have been a Lucian. He took Pierce to the cleaners.”

  Fiske enjoyed another sip of tea and shook his head. “This is why your generation is in charge of things now. I certainly can’t keep up with all that. Grace chose wisely when she chose you.”

  The sibling radar buzzed yet again, and Amy and Dan shared a speaking look. This was the subject they were reluctant to bring up with their great-uncle, but both realized that he deserved to know.

  Amy spoke for them. “Uncle Fiske, the truth is — we’re out.”

  The old man’s eyes widened. “Out?”

  “It was my idea at first,” Dan admitted. “I couldn’t stand what all the Cahill stuff was turning me into, and I decided that when the Pierce thing was over, I’d quit. But then Amy” — his voice caught in his throat — “I mean, we’ve been in danger before, but this time it was bad. I really didn’t think she’d make it.”

  In that moment, he resembled the eleven-year-old kid he’d been when the Clue hunt had first swept them up. Amy took
his arm.

  “Anyway,” Dan went on, a little more steadily, “nearly losing Amy taught me that I could never leave without her. We quit together or not at all.”

  “Three years ago, we didn’t even know what it meant to be a Cahill,” Amy added. “And ever since then, we’ve been on a crazy treadmill with the future of humanity resting on our shoulders. We need a break. We’ve earned a break.”

  “Understandable,” their great-uncle told them. “What will you do?”

  “We’d like to travel,” Amy replied evenly.

  Fiske was astounded. “Travel? You’ve already circled the globe a dozen times!”

  Dan shook his head. “This time we want to see the world without having to save it.”

  “Plus, we’re hiding out a little,” Amy admitted. “Pierce wrecked our reputation. Everybody thinks we’re jet-setting spoiled brats.”

  Fiske’s eyes twinkled. “And I suppose this has nothing to do with the fact that young Jake Rosenbloom has taken a year off his studies.”

  Amy blushed deep purple. “Well, we might try to — meet up — occasionally —”

  His smile faded. “Only one thing concerns me. What about the family? Who will look after Cahill affairs while you two are off on this ‘break’?”

  Amy and Dan exchanged a knowing glance.

  “We’ve already thought of that,” said Amy Cahill. “We’ve left the family in just the right hands.”

  A silver feline head peered off the back of an elegant Victorian chair in the old-fashioned parlor. The Cahill home in Attleboro, Massachusetts, was known as Grace’s house, but there was no question that the true master of this domain was Saladin, the Egyptian Mau.

  The long days spent in Aunt Beatrice’s condo were finally over, and he was home where he belonged. His claws gripping the plush fabric, he raised himself just a little and set his sights on the tall dark teenager in the center of the room.

  A second later, the cat was airborne, sailing past Ian Kabra’s head, leaving a scratch that stretched from ear to chin.