Buddy didn’t say anything, just stared sullenly at the floor.
“Plus as an extra added bonus. Yours ain’t the only interesting call I’ve gotten lately. Have you met Anmar? Maybe you know her better by her nickname, the Leopard.”
Buddy’s head snapped up and his face went white as cotton. Malak slowly stood up from her spot in the shotgun seat. She took her time strolling back to where Buddy sat at the table. I couldn’t help but notice how her entire persona had instantly changed. She moved and acted like a leopard. She was the Leopard.
To say Buddy was sweating now was like saying a typhoon is a little wet. Perspiration poured down his face and disappeared inside the collar of his shirt. Malak stood close to his chair, staring down at him, invading his personal space, scrutinizing him the way you might examine a wad of gum on the bottom of your shoe. Her reflexes were amazingly fast as she drew her pistol and placed the muzzle right against Buddy’s forehead.
Buddy made a little mewling noise.
“Anmar!” Boone said. But there was something in his voice. I could tell it was all rehearsed. They must have talked it over and planned what to do if they caught up with Buddy.
“Did you think you could betray me?” she said, her voice a whisper. It made her even scarier. I knew she was faking it and I was still terrified.
“I . . . wha . . . ah, Boone. Boone, make her go away,” Buddy stammered.
“Nah,” Boone said. He sat down at the other end of the table and leaned back in the chair, put his legs up, and crossed them at the ankles. “This is too much fun.”
“This was not part of our deal,” Buddy whined.
“Shut up. Stop whining,” Malak hissed. “You sent me to Grant Park in Chicago. You were going to kill me and pin the attacks on me. That makes you my enemy, Mr. Buddy T. Do you know what happens to the Leopard’s enemies?”
All of us were spellbound, watching what was going on with rapt attention. Ziv sat in the driver’s seat, acting as if he was bored. But I was certain he was watching everything that moved outside. He’d probably seen this act from Anmar a thousand times.
“Boone . . . you promised . . .” Buddy whimpered.
Boone responded by reaching into his back pocket and pulling out a tattered paperback copy of Moonraker, a James Bond novel by Ian Fleming. He flipped it opened and started reading.
“So Boone and I have made a deal,” Malak said. “For now we are allies. You will help Boone with what he needs. You help him catch Number One. Or else you will answer to the Leopard. You will go to each bank until you find whatever it is Number One is looking for. If you don’t cooperate, if you try to deceive us in any way, then Boone has agreed that you will be left to me,” she said.
“Boone! This wasn’t the deal.”
Boone looked up from his book. “You expectin’ a better offer, Buddy? Think maybe the president will walk on the coach here. Offer you a pardon?”
Buddy was silent a moment.
“Tell us who Number One is.” Malak prodded him with the gun.
Buddy got a little spine at that point.
“No. No way. Kill me if you want, but until you have him locked up or me on an island somewhere with fifty armed guards, I am not saying another word about Number One. Not until I know he’s off the board,” Buddy said.
“You will speak or you will die,” Malak said.
“No. I’m serious, Boone. You have no idea who you’re dealing with. No matter what you do to me, he’ll do worse. We made a deal. So either shoot me, or let’s find what he’s looking for.”
The coach was silent for a moment.
“All right, Buddy. We’ll do it your way. Anmar,” Boone said. But she did not move. She held her gun firmly against Buddy’s forehead.
“Anmar,” Boone said, a warning tone in his voice.
Malak relaxed and returned the gun to its holster.
“Where do we start looking, Buddy? Where did they take you?”
“I don’t know. When they grabbed me, I’m pretty sure they took me to a warehouse. But I don’t know which one. We own a bunch of them. They blindfolded me when they took me back out. So it could be anywhere.”
“Eben, put some cuffs on our friend Buddy here and let’s put him in the bedroom with Croc,” Boone said.
“What? No way, you’re not putting me anywhere with that dog!” Buddy said.
But by then Eben had jerked Buddy to his feet and slipped flex-cuffs over his wrists, pulling them extra tight. He grabbed Buddy by the collar and pushed him toward the bedroom door. Croc followed along and slipped into the bedroom as Eben shoved Buddy inside and shut the door.
Boone stood up, his one arm across his chest and the other hand on his chin. He was silent a moment. He called X-Ray.
“X, cross-reference any industrial or commercial real estate locations with the list of aliases you found on the bank accounts. See if you get any hits,” he said. We all waited a few minutes, not saying anything. Bringing Buddy onto the coach had made everyone tense. At least it made me tense.
“Got it,” Boone finally said. “Send me the addresses. And while you’re at it—I’ve got extra phones here for Q and Angela—get them set up and cloned to their old ones in case their parents call.” Boone opened a drawer on the coach and handed Angela and me new iPhones.
“Okay,” he said. “We’ll split up. Pat, Angela, and Q will come with me. X and Vanessa will follow in the intellimobile. The rest of you will go with Buddy to the banks. We need to find this thing that Number One wants. While you all do that, we’ll look for the warehouse where they held Buddy. Probably won’t find anything even if we do locate it but it’s our only lead to Number One. I’ve got Everett and a couple of guys meeting Felix and Uly nearby to take the prisoners off our hands. When they get back, we roll.” Everett was another one of Boone’s guys. We hadn’t seen him since Washington, D.C.
We waited a few minutes. Then Felix and Uly came back in the Range Rover. Eben retrieved Buddy from the bedroom. Eben, Malak, and Buddy got into the Range Rover and drove off. Ziv left the coach and followed the Range Rover in a cab. He refused to give up his role as the Monkey who watched the Leopard’s tail.
We were headed for the Dogpatch.
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 15
11:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. PST
Going to the Dogs
The first two locations we tried got us nothing. We drove to the next location in the Dogpatch and rolled to a stop in front of a run-down, junky-looking place. Cities tend to recycle their neighborhoods. In school we had learned about the history of the different sections of San Francisco such as the Marina District, the Presidio, and the Dogpatch. It was an old part of town that was full of abandoned warehouses and overgrown vacant lots. Parts of the Dogpatch were being rebuilt, some of the old buildings renovated and turned into apartments and condos. But there were still plenty of quiet, deserted, and out-of-the-way places.
Nobody knows for sure how it got the name Dogpatch. I remember learning that there used to be a kind of weed named “dog” something or other that grew there. Another legend said the name came from the packs of wild dogs that used to roam the area because it was close to the meatpacking district. Wild dogs. Packs of them. The way our luck had gone, that probably was how Dogpatch got its name. There were undoubtedly packs of wild dogs out there waiting for us right now. Then I thought that maybe Boone would know how the place got its name. He’d probably been to San Francisco since before there was a Dogpatch. Or even before there was a San Francisco. I hate how my mind races when I’m nervous.
As we climbed out of the coach, I looked around in every direction. The last thing I wanted was a bunch of wild dogs sneaking up on me.
“What are you doing?” Angela asked. Only she used that exasperated tone that older sisters sometimes get with younger brothers.
“Looking and listening for wild dogs,” I said.
Angela sighed. “I’m not even going to ask.”
X-Ray and Vanessa left the intellim
obile and we all gathered in front of the building. It looked like it had been deserted for a very long time.
“Do you think Buddy is leading us on a wild goose chase? Is he taking us to a bunch of places to buy time for something? Maybe he and Number One have something planned?” Angela asked.
Boone shook his head. “I don’t think so. Luckily for us, your mother sent Buddy’s fear level off the charts. If he told another lie because he’s trying to buy time or thinks he has some kind of escape plan or something . . . well, imagine what’s running through ol’ Buddy’s mind right now. If I were to call your mom and say ‘Buddy wasn’t being truthful’? He might just die on the spot. Buddy is caught between a rock and a rock. He’s afraid of this Number One, but he’s also deathly afraid of the Leopard.”
Boone turned to X-Ray. “I doubt there’s any electronic surveillance around, but are you picking up anything?” It was the same question he’d asked X-Ray at the first two stops.
X-Ray was holding a tablet in his hand and he pressed the touchscreen a few times. “Nothing I wouldn’t expect. Some cellular activity. But . . . I just enabled a scrambling protocol. If there are any cameras or audio devices nearby they just lost their signals. No one will know we’re here.”
The building had a big overhead garage door in the front. Next to it was an entry door. The entry door was locked, but X-Ray inserted a little device that looked like a souped-up, battery-operated screwdriver into the lock and the door popped open. Boone cautiously opened it. Inside there was a counter, with another door behind it.
“Croc,” Boone said. Boone opened the door and Croc waddled through it. Inside he paused, sniffing the air, the floor, and worked his nose up and down the counter. He barked and Boone went in and opened the next door. Croc darted through it.
Croc had done the same thing at the first two buildings we searched. At the first one, I had wondered what he was doing. I was nervous and jerky, and for some reason, Boone sending Croc into the building before anyone else didn’t exactly make me feel calm.
“What is he doing?” I’d whispered to Angela.
“Clearing the building and looking for booby traps would be my guess,” she answered in a tone that implied I’d just asked the most obvious question in human history.
She was watching the door and didn’t see me turn white. Booby traps! I hadn’t even considered that. Explosives! Guns! Knives held to my throat! Packs of wild dogs! Pigeon poop on my hands! And now I had to worry about booby traps? Maybe boarding school wouldn’t be so bad after all.
Croc returned a few seconds later and woofed at Boone from the door.
“Let’s go,” he said.
We all entered the warehouse. It was a bigger building than it looked from the outside. At first there was nothing interesting or suspicious inside. A few wooden pallets and some broken crates were scattered about. But off in a far corner to the left sat a chair in front of some lights mounted on metal stands. They were the same kind of lights Mom and Roger used when they were on stage. I guessed we’d found the spot where Number One interrogated Buddy. In the movies and on TV you always see some poor sap getting a bright light shined in his eyes while the bad guy asks him questions from behind it.
Boone had us split up so we could cover more ground. I just didn’t see anything that remotely resembled a clue. It was like all the other places we’d searched since this whole thing started.
Croc was over by the lights. He was sniffing a spot on the warehouse floor. And he was interested in something. He pawed at the ground, but I couldn’t see anything from where I stood. Croc looked up at me and barked. Then he dug at the ground again.
I never know when it will happen or why it does. Maybe this time it was something in Croc’s behavior that triggered it. Because right then, I was hit full on with the itch. It’s a feeling I get that something is wrong, or a major event is about to happen. Sometimes it’s a good thing, like it warns me of trouble. It just hits me. My skin tingles, my nerves get all jangly, and the slightest noise can make me jump. It can be a bad thing, as in something dangerous, or it can be bad in the sense that I’m about to learn something I don’t want to know. It’s like a built-in warning system.
Crossing the warehouse floor toward Croc, I felt like I was walking through wet cement. My heart pumped so hard my blood made a roaring sound in my ears. Croc stared at me with his two different-colored eyes as I approached. It was disconcerting, as if he was trying really, really hard to tell me important information. When I finally reached him, he bent his head down and pushed something toward me with his muzzle.
It was a feather.
I picked it up off the floor. As soon as I touched it, the itch went through me like I’d been struck by lightning. The feather was brown and white and extremely rare. I knew this because I recognized it.
It belonged to my dad, the one, the only Speed Paulsen.
“Guys!” I yelled. “I got something.”
Everyone hustled over to me and I handed the feather to Boone.
“What is it, Q?”
“It’s a feather from the huia bird. They’re from—were from—New Zealand. They’re extinct now. I know this because Speed bought it at an auction. He loves feathers. Wears them in his clothing and costumes when he’s on stage. Has them woven into his hair. He had it in one of his braids when he showed up in Virginia,” I said.
Boone stared at the feather really hard. He wore a strange and curious expression on his face. Like he was trying to figure something out, or put several pieces of a puzzle together all at once.
“But your dad was going to the Florida Keys,” Angela said. “How could he be here and how could he be Number One?”
“Because he’s never been anything but a fake. A complete and total lying, deceiving fake,” I said. “And think about it. He is . . . was . . . is a musician. He probably knows Buddy. I never knew my grandparents on my dad’s side. They died when he was young, according to my mom. He was raised an orphan. Just like Buddy and a lot of the other members of the cell we’ve encountered. It fits,” I said.
“It can’t be,” Angela said. “There has to be some other explanation.”
“X-Ray,” Boone said. He paused, staring at the feather like it was somehow the key to everything. “You remember that tracker I pulled from the coach back in Kitty Hawk? Does it still have a signal?”
X-Ray ran his fingertips over his tablet. “No. The battery is dead. But I can pull up the last known location,” he said. A few more seconds passed as he tapped areas on the screen, muttering as he worked. “Its signal gets recorded . . . I can follow the movement and see the last—” X-Ray looked up at Boone. “It says it was in the Keys, Boone.”
“But where in the Keys? Specifically. Find out the address and what’s there.”
X-Ray slid his fingers back and forth. “Oh my,” he said.
“What?” Boone asked.
“The address shows that the signal is coming from a Pakn-Mail shipping store on Key West. And according to the log it was there since the day after you put it in his boot—until the unit quit transmitting about eighteen hours ago.”
X-Ray frowned and looked at his tablet again. He gave it a slight shake, like he couldn’t believe what it was telling him. It was the first time I’d ever seen him remotely question any piece of technology.
“He knew,” Boone said. “Somehow he knew I put that tracker in his boot heel. He sent his boots to Key West because that’s where he told us he was going.”
“This can’t be right, Boone,” Vanessa said. “Speed? Speed Paulsen? That drug-addled moron is the leader of the ghost cell? I’m not buying it.”
Boone was still staring at the feather. I’d never seen a look like this on his face. He was completely focused. On a feather.
“But, how, I mean . . .” Angela stammered. “I . . . Speed has a reputation as being . . .”
“An idiot?” I finished her sentence for her. “Because he’s also a compulsive liar.”
??
?I just don’t see how . . .” X-Ray was as stunned as anyone else. He shook his tablet again, like maybe it was an Etch A Sketch and he could remake the whole last few minutes and somehow Speed wouldn’t be Number One.
“It’s him,” Boone said. “It explains everything. Why he showed up in the middle of a hurricane in Virginia. Why Q was taken to Miss Ruby’s ranch in San Antonio so he’d be out of the blast zone. He must have suspected Malak after Kitty Hawk so he took her off the board in Texas and sent her to Chicago. He’s known Buddy for years. He’s got money. He’s traveled all over the world as a musician. It makes sense now.”
“Not to me,” Vanessa said, waving her hand in the air as if that settled it.
“I’m with Vanessa,” X-Ray said. “No offense, Q, but I don’t see how Speed is sm—able to carry this off. Not from what I know of him.”
“But he did show up right in the middle of our . . .” Boone’s words tailed off and he put his hand on his chin. It looked like he’d gained a few more gray hairs in the last couple of minutes.
My anger just kind of leaked out of me and I tried not to show anything, but I couldn’t help it. My shoulders slumped, and I felt like I had no energy for any of this anymore. Croc sauntered over to me and pushed against my legs with his body. I reached down to pet him.
“Q? You okay?” Angela asked, quietly.
“No. No, Angela, I’m not okay at all. My dad lied to me again. He’s been lying to me my whole life!” I kicked at the floor and stormed off away from the group. They stood there quietly, giving me space.
Finally, Angela walked over to me, followed by Croc.
“I’m sorry, Q. I really am. Is there anything I can do?”
Boone followed Angela and Croc, leaving X-Ray and Vanessa fidgeting by the light stands. “Q, there’s something I need to tell you.” He put one hand on my shoulder and handed me the feather. I wanted to wad it up and burn it.