Chapter Fifteen

Blackgaard slammed his hands on the metal desk in his warehouse office. “What do you mean Whittaker’s disappeared?! Pinky, you bungled it!”

Connie’s eyes widened. “Whit’s gone?”

“Be still, Miss Kendall!”

Pinky held up a hand. “Id wadn’t my fauld!” he said nasally. “He didappeared!”

“Take off that ridiculous clown nose!”

Pinky removed the nose, which honked when he squeezed it, and rubbed the sides of his nostrils. “I followed your orders to da letter. I vent up to him with da balloons and said to meet me behind da clock vhen it struck six. But he never showed! From da way da cops were running around, dey didn’t know vhere he vent, either.”

Blackgaard sank into his desk chair. “Curious.” His gaze fell on Connie. “Well, Miss Kendall, it looks as if our Mr. Whittaker doesn’t care for you as much as we thought.”

Connie swallowed hard. “I—I don’t believe it!”

“Perhaps he received a better offer for the contents of the computer.”

She shook her head. “Not Whit. He doesn’t think that way—like you.”

Blackgaard smirked. “How naïve you are. Everyone thinks like I do, just not as intelligently.”

“You’re wrong.”

“Yes,” he growled, “for your sake, let’s hope I am.” He bolted up out of the chair, and Connie jumped. “Pinky, start packing. We have to get out of here. Time to come up with a new plan.”

Pinky opened the door and scooted away, big shoes flap-flap-flapping. Blackgaard yelled after him, “And take off that ridiculous clown costume!”

“Oooo . . .”

Whit opened his eyes and immediately regretted it. A dull, throbbing pain was wedged in the back of his head and ran to just behind his eyes. He took a breath and, with an effort, sat up—and regretted that even more. He slowly touched the back of his head, where he felt a goose-egg-sized bump. “Oh . . . my head feels like someone shoved a bowling ball in my ear.” He tried to look around, and a dull light pierced his brain. “Aaah . . . where am I?” A silhouette blocked the light. “Who . . . ?” His brow furrowed, and then his eyes widened as the silhouette came into focus. “No, it can’t be!”

“Hiya, Mr. Whittaker!” The former silhouette smiled smarmily.

“Richard Maxwell!”

“The one and only.”

Whit shook his head slightly and again regretted it. “I must be dreaming. You’re in the detention center.”

Maxwell shrugged. “Sorry to disappoint you. I’ve been let off for good behavior. Don’t you just love our penal system?”

Whit winced. “Ow . . . What happened?”

“First, you fell.” Maxwell pointed up. “That is, I dropped the sewer grating out from under your feet, and then you fell. Pretty smart thinking on my part, if I say so myself. Now you see him, now you don’t.”

Whit touched the goose egg gingerly. “What about my headache?”

Maxwell looked sheepish. “Well, after you fell, I sort of had to . . . conk you to make sure you came along, uh, quietly. Really, I’m sorry. I only had a second to click off the homing device and pull you through the service door.”

Whit looked around, a little less painfully this time, and saw the door. “A door off the sewer?”

Maxwell nodded and smiled again. “It’s a beauty. You can’t see it from above. And there’s only a handful of maintenance people who know about it. That’s one of the jobs I had before I went to Odyssey. We’re actually still under the Campus Clock Tower. The cops are up there going crazy trying to figure out what happened to you, while we’re safe here below.” He waggled his eyebrows proudly.

“Clever. I suppose this means that Blackgaard is nearby? You two are working together to get this computer, right?” Whit looked down at it and was rewarded with a stab of pain. He winced again. “Ow.”

Maxwell nodded. “Correct on the first.” He shook his head. “Wrong on the second.”

Whit’s eyes narrowed. “Really?”

Maxwell squatted next to him. “Blackgaard’s around, but I’m not working for him. Just the opposite. I’ve been trying to figure out a way to get back at him for all he did to me two years ago. And lo and behold, you drop in, so to speak.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning that I have a little scheme that’ll get us all what we want. But I need your help.”

Whit scoffed. “My help? Why in the world would I want to help you? You caused a lot of trouble in Odyssey for everyone.”

Richard’s gaze dropped. “I know. But you saved my life, and I’d like to do you a favor in return—like helping Connie.”

“If you’re not working for Blackgaard, then how do you know about Connie—or any of this?”

Maxwell grinned. “Maybe I’ve been playing ‘fly on the wall’ for the last few weeks. And maybe Greg Kelly is a former acquaintance of mine who led me to Blackgaard. And maybe I’ve been following him. And maybe I saw Blackgaard nab Connie. And maybe I know where he took her. So maybe I can help.”

“Those are a lot of maybes.”

“Six, to be exact. But they all happen to be true.” Maxwell stood up. “So, are you in?”

Whit tried to look up at him, but the move resulted in another stab of pain. “Why should I trust you?”

“You probably shouldn’t, but then again, I’m the only one who knows where Connie is. If you and the feds wanna stumble around trying to find her, be my guest.”

There was a long pause. Maxwell extended a hand to Whit, who looked at it for a moment and then heaved a frustrated sigh and clasped it. “I guess I don’t have much of a choice.”

Maxwell smirked and pulled him to his feet. “Now, now, don’t be like that. Do it my way and we’ll all be happy. You’ll get Connie, I’ll get Blackgaard, and the government might even get their computer back.”

Whit looked him straight in the eyes. “What’s your scheme?”

Phillips and Woody sat in the back of an agency van in an alley just off campus. That is, Woody sat. Phillips paced back and forth in the small space. “This isn’t possible! He was there one second and gone the next. Turn on the homing device again.”

Woody checked it. “It’s on, sir. No signal. It must not be working.”

“Or Whittaker turned it off. Blast! I knew I shouldn’t trust him! Either he’s on some kind of mission that the agency won’t tell us about—” Phillips halted. A new idea struck him. “Or he’s working on his own.”

“Sir?”

“For all we know, he could be selling the secrets in the computer for himself, a double cross!”

Woody looked skeptical. “I’ll be very surprised if that proves to be true, sir.”

“Look, Whittaker wouldn’t take a chance with the girl’s life unless he was in cahoots with—”

The beep of the homing receiver interrupted Phillips’s theories. Woody checked the device. “Sir! The signal’s back on!”

Phillips plopped into a chair next to him. “Quick! Turn on the map!” Woody flicked a switch, and an overlay of the city appeared on the device. Phillips studied it intensely. “Where is he?”

Woody punched a few buttons. “Checking coordinates.”

“Hurry!”

“He’s in the warehouse district!”

Phillips barked at the driver. “Get moving!”