‘Mum!’ Kensy called as she and Max arrived home with the dogs. They’d taken the fastest route, entering the basement flat on John Islip Street with the secret lift that tracked horizontally underground until it reached the garages at number thirteen Ponsonby Terrace.
But there was no reply.
Kensy bounded upstairs to her parents’ bedroom, only to find it empty. The bed was made, her mother’s pyjamas tucked under the pillow, but Anna was nowhere to be found.
She rushed into the ensuite bathroom, then checked every other room on the floor.
They’d only spoken to the woman ten minutes ago.
‘Mum! Where are you?’ Kensy yelled as she opened wardrobes and cupboards. She had a horrible sick feeling in the pit of her stomach.
Max searched the ground floor before heading downstairs to the kitchen, and then to the basement after that.
There was no sign of their mother anywhere.
The boy ran back upstairs to the sitting room and shouted his sister’s name.
‘She’s not here!’ Kensy shouted. Her face was as pale as white paper when she met her brother on the landing.
Max’s stomach was in knots.
‘She’s not downstairs either,’ he said, trying to remain calm, though it was getting harder given how quickly the members of their family were disappearing. It had been bad enough when their mother and father had gone missing for months, right before the twins learned of their connection to Pharos, then Sidney had been kidnapped when they were in Singapore, but this . . . this was too much.
How had Anna been taken? Max berated himself for going out. If he and Kensy had stayed home, maybe they could have saved her.
‘What do we do now?’ Kensy whispered. A fat tear wobbled in the corner of her eye. She brushed it away.
Max had no idea. ‘Without any demands from the kidnappers, we don’t have a lot to go on. We can check the cameras, but who knows if that will help – it hasn’t so far.’
Kensy looked at her brother, her green eyes shining. ‘What if that’s the whole point? What if this isn’t about ransoms or pay offs? What if this is just about getting rid of the Spencers?’ she said.
Max had thought of that too but he wasn’t going down that rabbit hole – not yet. ‘Let’s think about what we do know. Lawrence MacGregor is definitely involved – he’s been seen with Tippie and Magoo. That’s our best lead yet. I think we have to follow them up first and hope that you’re wrong, Kens.’
The doorbell rang, startling the twins.
‘Don’t answer it,’ Kensy said.
But Max had a feeling it was most likely Curtis on his way to collect them for school – though it was still quite early. He checked the video screen that showed the front door. Surely the kidnappers couldn’t easily replicate the stature of a teenage boy.
Max ushered Curtis inside, quickly closing and locking the door behind him.
‘You two look like you’ve seen a ghost,’ Curtis said.
This time, Kensy couldn’t stop the tears. They ran down her face as her brother explained what had happened to their grandmother and that their mother was now missing too.
‘What if your mum just went out for something?’ Curtis asked.
Max had already thought of that. ‘It’s possible, but not likely. And we can’t get her on the phone.’
‘I think we should tell my parents,’ Curtis said. ‘Dad is Pharos and Mum’s really good at keeping secrets. Although they’ve just left for the airport.’
Kensy dried her eyes and shook her head.
‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘Granny was adamant that we keep this in-house. We need to phone Fitz, and tell Sidney and Peter. They can help. I know your parents are fantastic, Curtis, but we don’t want to put them in danger too.’
Curtis nodded. ‘What about school? Should we go?’
Max bit his lip, deep in thought. ‘Let’s get hold of the others, then we can decide.’
‘You know if I don’t turn up, Mrs Potts will phone my mum. They won’t be boarding for a while,’ Curtis said. Despite the gravity of the situation, he still didn’t like the idea of wagging.
‘Let’s just make some calls. Then we can check the cameras to see if we can find out what happened to Mum, and go through that footage from Derek’s shop, as well as analyse the photos I took,’ Max babbled.
The children headed for the basement bunker, where Max set about running the diagnostics and Curtis checked out the cameras, but there was nothing to show what had happened. Kensy phoned Fitz.
She breathed a sigh of relief when he answered on the fifth ring. Fitz told her not to worry and that he’d be back as soon as possible. He’d contact Sidney and Peter himself.
Kensy hung up.
Meanwhile Max hadn’t got any hits on the facial-recognition software, or the licence plates either. Apparently the men who had kidnapped their grandmother didn’t exist, and neither did their truck.
‘I just don’t know who to trust any more,’ Max said. ‘I don’t care what Fitz said, I think we should call Sidney and Peter – they could be close by and we need them to know what’s happened.’
One of the television screens in the corner of the room was tuned into the morning news, though the sound was muted. Curtis looked up just in time to see a blurry photograph of a man being bundled into a van.
He jumped up and grabbed the remote.
‘What’s the matter?’ Kensy asked, then realised what he was looking at as he hit the volume button.
‘Two men are believed to have been abducted last night outside a motor repair shop in Dagenham. Grainy CCTV footage shows the incident, however at this stage the victims have not been identified. Police are appealing to witnesses and any members of the public who are missing family members or friends.’
‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’ Kensy said. ‘Pretty obvious who those guys are.’ She could feel her heart rate rising again.
‘We don’t know for sure that it’s Peter and Sidney,’ Curtis replied, trying to sound upbeat.
Max opened the computer tracking system and honed in on the signal from the men’s watches and other gadgets. Their last known place was at the exact location the journalist had just described as the site of the abduction. Then nothing.
‘I’m afraid we do,’ the boy said.
‘So what, now we only have Fitz and Mim left?’ Kensy said. The whole situation was out of control. She and Max had got lucky spotting Lawrence’s van this morning. Otherwise who knew where they’d be.
‘People are going to notice that everyone’s gone. It’s Monday morning. Granny would usually have been at her desk by now, and we know Peter is a workaholic. The last thing we need is for someone to report them missing – especially with that story on the news,’ Max said.
Kensy and Curtis nodded. ‘We should send a memo to the staff – something about your grandmother still being in Australia and Peter being on assignment,’ Curtis said.
‘Except that Mum and Granny met with Magoo and Tippie over the weekend, so they know they’re back,’ Kensy said. ‘And they know Mrs Vanden Boom is missing as well.’
Max took a deep breath. ‘Then we bring the two of them into the inner circle.’
Kensy and Curtis looked at the boy as if he was mad.
‘What? They’re on the suspect list!’ Kensy blurted. ‘If Lawrence MacGregor is an associate of Tippie’s, then maybe she’s the brains behind it all.’
‘Kensy’s right,’ Curtis said. ‘Why would we tell them what’s going on?’
Max stood up and paced to the other side of the room, where he switched on the screen that contained the information the family had gathered the previous day.
‘Think about it. If Tippie and Magoo are really up to something, then at some point they’ll show their hands,’ Max said. ‘You know that saying about keeping your friends close and your enemies closer? We can maintain the story about Granny still being away and Peter taking an overseas assignment for everyone else. Dad and Fitz are always travelling for work, and Mum . . . we could say that she’s got the flu after the trip.’
‘I think we should phone Uncle Rupert,’ Kensy said.
‘Do you really want to put an early end to his honeymoon?’ Max asked. Cordelia had insisted that Rupert, Tinsley and the children take their planned holiday to the Whitsundays after the wedding.
‘I think the future of our family is a little more important than him and Tinsley and our new cousins getting a tan,’ Kensy argued.
Max could see her point, but even with the use of a private jet it would be more than a day before Rupert could get to London. They needed to act now.
Kensy dialled her uncle’s phone.
It rang out. She left a message for him to call her urgently.
Max glanced up at the bank of screens and realised there was someone standing at the front door, hand outstretched to ring the bell.
‘Is that Derek?’ he asked.
Kensy and Curtis looked up.
‘I hope he hasn’t come to collect his dumplings,’ Kensy said.
Max pressed the button for the intercom system.
‘Hi, Derek, everything okay?’ the boy asked.
‘I know you was lookin’ at that truck earlier, so I wanted to tell you about the bloke who came into the shop to buy the smokes,’ Derek began, ‘I think ’e left somefin’ behind.’
‘I’ll be right up,’ Max said. He looked at the others. ‘Stay here.’
‘Are you kidding?’ Kensy said eyeballing her brother. ‘What if it’s a trap and that’s not really Derek? Those latex masks can be pretty spot on.’
She had a point, though up to now the kidnappers hadn’t used anything so sophisticated for their disguises.
The three children hurried out of the room and within a minute were standing in the front hall. They calmed themselves down before Max opened the door.
If it wasn’t Derek, then it was a very good likeness, but Kensy wanted to be sure.
‘Derek, how do you spell genius?’ she asked.
He hesitated for a second, then grinned. ‘You’re tryin’ to trick me, aren’t you? Well, I know this one. It’s j-e-n-i-u-s – like me tattoo.’
Kensy smiled. ‘It sure is.’ She couldn’t imagine an impostor making the same mistake.
‘Why’d you want to know that?’ he asked.
Kensy shrugged. ‘Just thinking about a spelling quiz today, that’s all.’
‘Who’s looking after the shop?’ Max asked.
‘I closed it – won’t be long. I thought this might be important,’ he said.
Max looked at Derek and Derek looked at Max. For a few seconds there was an uncomfortable silence between them.
‘Oh – you want that thing I found,’ Derek said, chuckling. ‘Honestly, I’d forget me own ’ead some days if it weren’t screwed on.’
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a tiny beetle.
Max held it up to the light. ‘It’s a scarab.’
‘I don’t know what that is, but I thought that – seein’ you were interested in that fellow – I’d give it to you,’ Derek said. He peered around Max, looking inside the townhouse. ‘Geez your ’ouse is fancy.’
Max nodded. ‘We’d invite you in but we have to get to school. Next time.’
Derek grinned again, this time showing all his teeth. ‘That’d be nice. I don’t ’ave a lot of friends round ’ere since Mam and the old girls went down. They all abandoned me – like I was gonna get ’em in trouble or somefin’.’
Kensy and Curtis looked at one another. It was hard not to feel sorry for Derek.
He turned and gave a wave and Kensy closed the door.
‘What is that thing?’ she asked.
Max held it up. It was smaller than a one pound coin and looked like it was carved from some sort of wood, or maybe stone.
‘I saw something about scarabs and Pharos when we were last at Alexandria and your grandmother gave me access to the secret archive in the library,’ said Curtis. ‘I didn’t read the details. I’d planned to go back and look at it again later – then I got side-tracked.’
‘Let’s take it downstairs,’ Kensy suggested, but Max looked at his watch and realised they didn’t have a lot of time.
‘We need to call Tippie and Magoo and ask them to meet us before school so we can tell them what’s going on,’ the boy said. ‘The scarab will have to wait.’ He put it into his pocket and pulled out his phone.
Five minutes later, he had the MacGregors sorted – though he’d had to make two calls as they were already on their way to work separately – Magoo on his bike and Tippie in the car. They would meet in their grandmother’s office at Pharos HQ in fifteen minutes – just enough time for the twins and Curtis to get there first.