The Eureka Key

  Martina rolled her eyes and chuckled—but it sounded more like a sob.

  If I wake up, Sam thought.

  He reached for the key.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Sam closed his eyes as his trembling fingers made contact with the key. He prepared to feel the jolt of electricity course through his body, prepared for the pain . . .

  But the key was cool to the touch.

  Sam let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding and pulled the key toward him. The wire broke with a soft snap.

  And just like that, the Eureka Key was in Sam’s hand.

  “Way to go, Sam.” Theo looked more relieved and happy than Sam had ever seen him.

  Martina smiled. “I was right,” she said, shaking her head. “I can’t believe it.”

  “I can,” Sam replied. “I never doubted you.” Then he paused. “Much.” Martina chuckled.

  More important, metal was scraping on stone. Sam turned to see if the door across the room was opening—but it wasn’t. It was still firmly shut. Wait—that wasn’t fair. He’d picked the right key, hadn’t he? Weren’t they getting out of here now?

  Maybe they were. A slice of the wall to Sam’s left slid open. He moved toward it eagerly. Another door?

  No. Sam groaned. Not a door. A hole. He peered through the new opening, which led right into another mine shaft, a vertical tunnel running up and down through solid rock, with a ladder heading up one side.

  “It must be the real way out,” Martina said, peering over Sam’s shoulder. “That other door—it was probably a decoy.” She glanced quickly at Sam and then away. But Sam didn’t have much time to feel embarrassed about how close he’d been to going through the wrong door, because Flintlock’s voice rose from behind them.

  “Move away from there, both of you. And Mr. Solomon, I’ll take that key, thank you very much.”

  Sam and Martina moved away from the hole. “Okay,” Sam told Flintlock. “Here.” He took a few steps toward Flintlock, holding the key in his outstretched hand. If Flintlock’s attention was on the key, Sam might be able to grab the gun. It could give them all a chance to escape—if he could just pull it off.

  But Flintlock seemed to guess what Sam had in mind. “That’s close enough,” he said, his voice sharp. “Drop the key right there. You can slide it over here with your foot.”

  Sam hesitated. As soon as their foe had the key, that was it. Curtains. Flintlock had already shown he’d sacrifice his own goons. What would a bunch of random kids mean to him?

  “I said, drop the key right there.” Flintlock raised the gun slightly.

  “Drop the key? That key?” Martina stepped between Sam and Flintlock, right in front of the gun. What was she doing? “Don’t you know it’s a valuable historical artifact? Speaking of history, did you know that Franklin became famous for his writings in electricity? He really knew how to pull strings to get his papers in the right hands.”

  Why is she talking so strangely? thought Sam. What does she have in mind? Then Sam saw Martina glance up at the remaining keys above them and make a subtle tugging motion with her hand. She waggled her eyebrows meaningfully. After a moment, Sam got it. Very clever, he thought, and nodded back at Martina in understanding.

  “Really? I—I didn’t know that,” Theo stammered from across the room. He’d figured out that Martina was up to something, Sam realized, and was trying to help stall Flintlock.

  Sam caught Theo’s eye and jerked his head very slightly toward the new exit in the wall of the room. Theo began to edge toward Martina. “Interesting,” he went on. “Uh, tell us some more, Marty.”

  “Do not tell us anything more.” Flintlock frowned and moved aside, trying to get a clear shot at Sam. Meanwhile, Sam shuffled sideways and Martina moved to block Flintlock’s sight, and his aim, once again. “Enough, girl. Do you think this is a game? Should I show you how serious I am?”

  She froze. Even her words dried up.

  But by now Sam was where he needed to be. He reached up to the wire that had held the Eureka Key, took hold of it, and yanked.

  “Run!” he shouted, jumping backward as Theo seized Martina’s arm and pulled her aside, out of harm’s way, while the diamond frame above them fell and its keys rained down from the ceiling. Lucky for them that Martina’s hunch was right—the keys were all interconnected by the wires—and a strong tug on one wire sent them all crashing down, like little electrically charged bombs.

  Flintlock lifted both arms to shield himself as the keys scattered around him. Sam turned and ran with the others toward the hole in the wall. The gun went off, cracking in Sam’s eardrums, but he didn’t look back. He knew it hadn’t hit him or either of his friends, and that was all that mattered. Martina was already through, and Theo followed.

  Sam lunged forward, grabbed the metal rungs of the ladder, and started climbing. Below Sam, the mine shaft stretched far down into darkness; above him, Theo’s feet were moving. Faster, Theo, faster . . .

  “Virtues!” Martina shouted from above.

  “What?” Sam yelled back, and then looked at the metal rung right in front of his nose. A dim light filtered down from somewhere above, enough to let Sam see that the rung had a word engraved on its surface—Temperance. The rung above that said Patience.

  “It’s Franklin’s thirteen virtues again!” Martina said. “And some of them—”

  As he climbed, Sam’s right foot landed on the Patience rung, and he heard a horrible crack. Suddenly nothing was holding his foot anymore; all his weight hung from his sweaty hands.

  “—are wrong!” Martina continued from above. “Like Patience! Don’t step on that one!”

  Thanks, Marty . . . Sam’s feet scrabbled at the ladder. He found another rung to stand on and his heart started beating again.

  Until he heard a voice from below him. “Back down here, boy.” Flintlock, about twenty feet below Sam, was leaning into the mine shaft with his gun raised.

  “Don’t stop!” Sam called up to Theo and Martina. “He won’t shoot me!”

  “Oh, I will! Happily!” Flintlock’s teeth were bared in something that was definitely not a smile.

  “Really?” Sam dug the Eureka Key out of his pocket and held it out to one side, dangling it over the abyss. “You shoot me—and I drop this. Are you sure you can get it back?”

  Flintlock paused. “I might shoot one of your friends instead,” the man countered. “That would make you come down.”

  “You could, but you might hit me by mistake. Are you sure you want to risk it?” Sam asked.

  Sam was trembling with tension, though the hand holding the key out didn’t waver. Above him, Martina and Theo were frozen, clinging to the ladder. Sam watched the calculation on Flintlock’s face, waiting to see what the man would do.

  Flintlock growled in frustration and shoved his gun back in its holster. Clumsily, he scrambled onto the mine shaft ladder.

  “Climb, climb!” Sam shouted up to Theo and Martina. He shoved the Eureka Key back into his pocket, and the three kept going upward.

  “Mr. Flintlock!” Sam heard a crash from below and another shout. “We got the door down!”

  “It’s about time,” Flintlock snarled. “Get up here!”

  Sam’s palms were starting to sting from the rough metal rungs, and the muscles in his arms were throbbing. He tried to push aside the feelings, tried to concentrate on the words he could see carved into the ladder.

  “Sam, Theo, don’t step on—” Martina’s voice drifted down.

  “Don’t say it!” Sam yelled. She’d warn Flintlock and his goons as well as himself and Theo. He had a good memory; he’d just hoped Theo did too. Chastity. Safe to step on. Modesty? He didn’t think so.

  “I can see where the light’s coming from!” Theo called. “A way out!”

  Sam could see it too, a bright circle overhead. Frugality? He put his foot on that, and it held his weight. Moderation? He wasn’t so sure about that. Maybe better to skip it.

  A crac
k came from below him. One of the four men below must have stepped on Modesty, or maybe Moderation. There was a sharp, panicked yell that started loud and got softer and softer . . . until it stopped.

  Sam should have been glad. One less person to chase them. One less bad guy to grab the Eureka Key. But he wasn’t glad; he was sick, thinking of the sudden drop, and the even more sudden stop.

  “Stupid!” he heard Flintlock shout below him. “Follow my lead; step only on the rungs I step on. Hurry!”

  They climbed and climbed, past some virtues that Sam recognized—there came Temperance again, and he already knew to skip Modesty—along with some new ones. He passed Justice and Sincerity, Order and Tranquility—hah, when was the last time Sam had felt tranquil? Then came Courage. Seriously, that one broke under Sam’s foot? What did Ben Franklin have against courage?

  “Almost there!” Martina called down.

  Sam looked up. The circle of light was getting bigger and brighter, and he could see Martina’s body outlined against it.

  “Theo, get up here with me! I need some help!” she gasped.

  Martina inched to one side, giving Theo enough room to climb up on the same rung with her. Sam, still climbing and panting and blinking salty sweat out of his eyes, could see a metal seal, inlaid with a circle of thick glass to let in the light, right above their heads.

  Theo put his shoulder against the metal circle and heaved, and the thing swung open. The sunlight that spilled through was hot and bright and dry, and Sam had to squint as he kept climbing, trying to reach his friends in time.

  “Sam! Hurry!” Martina shouted.

  What did she think he was doing? Strolling? Sam didn’t waste breath answering. As his foot came down on Cleanliness—who would put Cleanliness in a list of virtues and leave off Courage?—Theo’s hand reached down, closed on Sam’s arm, and yanked.

  Sam popped out through the hole like a cork out of a bottle, knocking Theo over. The two of them tumbled onto hot, packed dirt. A steep cliff of tawny rock rose over their heads. Martina slammed the metal trapdoor shut behind them.

  “Rocks!” she panted. “We need something heavy! Quick!” She was kneeling on the circle of glass and metal, which had been set into a flat patch of dusty rock. The part of Death Valley where they found themselves was scattered with weathered rocks, some the size of a doll’s house, others bigger than cars. Theo and Sam scrambled to their feet, and Theo grabbed hold of a rock about the size of a Saint Bernard, putting all his weight behind it. Sam, squinting in the blazing light, did his best to help. Martina ran up and put her shoulder into it as well, and they shoved it onto the circle. When it was done, Sam flopped onto the ground to gasp for breath.

  “You still have the key?” Theo asked, leaning on the boulder as he, too, dragged in long, deep breaths.

  “Right here.” Sam patted the pocket of his jeans. He could still feel the adrenaline pumping through his veins, but he couldn’t help grinning up at the blazing blue sky. “We did it. Guys, we did it! We solved every puzzle old Ben Franklin threw at us!”

  “Yes. Yes, we did.” Martina sat down beside Sam, both of them shaking.

  And we didn’t do it to play some dumb prank or to show off, Sam thought. We did it for a good cause. Helping out a friend. Fighting injustice.

  Sam heard his own words to his mom in his mind. Something important.

  Theo straightened up, looking over the boulder to something along the edge of the cliff. “What’s that?”

  “What’s what?” Sam sat up. “Oh. That.” A white van was parked at the base of the cliff, about fifty yards away. “That’s . . . kind of weird.” He looked around for a road or a parking lot or, even better, a ranger station, or any sign of human life at all. He didn’t see a thing . . . except that van. “How’d that get here?”

  “I drove it, naturally,” said a smooth voice behind them.

  Sam jerked to his feet as if the Eureka Key had given him an electric shock this time. A man in an immaculate white suit stepped out from behind a boulder. He pulled off a pair of sunglasses, showing a smooth face that looked young, despite the white hair that was combed back from his forehead. Light-blue eyes, narrowed a little against the glare of the sun, studied the three children with a cool curiosity, as if they were scientific specimens he was planning to dissect. The man’s pale skin, coupled with his white suit, made him look like some kind of angel in the middle of the desert. Could he be there to rescue them from all this?

  Sam heard Theo suck in a sharp breath. “Arnold,” he said softly. And for the first time since Sam had met him, Theo looked afraid.

  Sam’s heart plummeted. Not an angel after all.

  But the man didn’t seem interested in Theo at all; his attention was on Sam.

  “I believe, young man,” he said, “that you have something that belongs to me.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The van shook and bounced as it rattled its way across the desert. Sam, sitting on the floor in the back, braced himself, trying to keep from toppling over onto Theo, on one side of him, or Martina, on the other.

  The windows had been painted over, so the only light came from the cracks around the doors. It was hot too. At least the dark windows kept out the blazing sun, but Sam longed for the air-conditioning that there must be up front. Surely that guy named Arnold was driving along in comfort while the three kids sweated and sweltered in the back.

  Arnold had forced Sam, Theo, and Martina to let Flintlock and his two remaining men out of the mine shaft. Nobody had been concerned about the man who’d been electrocuted, and when Martina had tried to tell Arnold that the poor guy was still down there, he’d turned a look of such cold indifference on her that she’d stuttered into silence.

  Then Arnold had ordered the three kids into the van and shut the door on them. There was no handle or release on this side of the door; Theo had checked immediately. No way out.

  Sam sat lost in gloomy thought as the van lurched over the uneven ground. He’d thought they had made it, he really had. After all the puzzles and the fear and the craziness and the fact that he—Sam Solomon, the kid with the Rubik’s Cube—had suddenly become sort of responsible for saving the country and maybe the world, he’d been feeling good. Like maybe all those teachers and principals and parents talking about his potential had been right after all.

  And then this guy Arnold, who was frankly scarier than Flintlock (and Sam hadn’t thought that was possible) had shown up. And everything they’d done had been taken away from them. Just like that.

  The look that flashed across Theo’s face when Arnold had stepped from behind that rock was what really spooked Sam. Theo hadn’t acted scared all day long. Not when his shoulder had been out of joint. Not when the ceiling had been coming down on his head. But Arnold—that guy scared Theo.

  “What time is it?” Sam asked.

  “Why does it matter?” Martina sounded just as gloomy as Sam felt.

  “I don’t know. I’m just hungry.” Sam thought back to the banana and cinnamon roll he’d snagged from the breakfast buffet at the hotel, so many hours ago. Back when life was normal. Back when he hadn’t known about the Founders or Ben Franklin’s key. “Wish we still had our backpacks.” Arnold and Flintlock had confiscated the packs when they’d ordered the three kids into the back of the van. “I think I left a Snickers bar in there somewhere.”

  Nobody answered.

  “So, Theo.” Sam figured it was up to him to talk, since nobody else seemed interested. “Who is that guy? Arnold? You seemed to know him.”

  “I know him.” Theo stared straight ahead, apparently lost in thought—and not pleasant thought either.

  “Come on, man. Talk to us.” Sam nudged him with an elbow. “We’ve got to figure out what to do next.”

  Theo shook his head and rubbed both hands over his face. “What to do next. Right.”

  Sam waited. After a minute of silence he said, “Well?”

  Theo sighed and lifted his face out of his hands. “
His name’s Gideon Arnold. He’s the one who killed Evangeline’s father. And”—Sam could have sworn he heard Theo’s voice crack—“maybe some other people too.”

  Sam felt the blood drain from his face.

  “His last name is Arnold, not his first name?” Martina asked.

  “Yes,” Theo answered, sounding miserable.

  “He wouldn’t happen to be related to a certain famous person from the Revolution too, would he?”

  “Yeah. He is.”

  Sam looked back and forth between Theo and Martina, not quite understanding what she was getting at. “Related? To whom?”

  Theo stared at him. “Benedict Arnold.”

  “Whoa, really?” Sam frowned. “I know he was kind of a bad guy, but—”

  “Kind of?” Theo seemed to come back to life, his voice growing louder with anger. “There wasn’t any ‘kind of’ about it. Benedict Arnold started out as an officer in George Washington’s army—”

  “Some people even called him a hero,” Martina chimed in. “I mean, he really did have a brilliant mind for strategy, but—”

  “He wasn’t any kind of hero,” Theo said, cutting her off. Sam was shocked. This was by far the most emotion he’d seen from Theo since they met. “Arnold didn’t get the promotion he thought he deserved, so he got in touch with the British. He was going to hand West Point—and George Washington himself—over to them, if they paid him enough. He planned to sell out the people who trusted him the most.”

  “Wow,” Sam said. “That’s pretty harsh, just because he didn’t get a shiny medal or whatever.”

  Theo nodded. “But when his British contact was captured, Arnold ran and left him to be hanged. So in the end, he was a traitor to both sides of the Revolution.”

  “Great.” Sam pulled up his T-shirt to wipe the sweat from his face. “And we’ve got a member of the charming Arnold family driving this van? Wonderful.”

  “If Gideon is a descendant of Benedict Arnold,” Martina said thoughtfully, “and Evangeline is a descendant of Benjamin Franklin—who are you a descendant of, Theo?”