EMILY CLUTCHED the railing. James yelled, “Go, go, go!” but she was transfixed. The charging man bumped into a camera set on a tripod. The camera owner—a burly man twice the size and height of the one chasing Emily and James—steadied his tripod with one hand and grabbed the pursuer with his other. The men argued.
James pounded back up the stairs and shook her arm. “Let’s go!”
She spun around, feet moving as fast as possible. At the bottom they turned sharply, almost colliding with a woman painting at an easel, and kept running until they found themselves on a quiet residential street. Distant horns honked—reassuring bleats that the men were still being held back.
“What happened to you back there? Did you get zapped with a freeze ray?”
Emily’s heart hammered in her chest. “Didn’t you recognize them? Those men?”
“You did?”
“They’re from the BART station. The security guards who chased us a few weeks ago.”
“That’s impossible. There’s got to be more important stuff that happens in that BART station than tracking down kids who stick a bumper sticker on something. Finding Mr. Griswold’s mugger, for starters.”
James was right; it didn’t make sense. But Emily was sure those were the BART station men. But how could they have found them? She replayed that Saturday afternoon: She found Mr. Griswold’s book, her brother put the Flush bumper sticker on the ticket machine, the men shouted across the station for him to stop—
“Oh no,” Emily said in a small voice.
“What?” James eyed her warily.
“They found my Book Scavenger card. With my username on it. I put it next to the trash can when I found Mr. Griswold’s book. Remember? They probably went to the Book Scavenger website, looked up ‘Surly Wombat,’ and saw our school listed on my profile information. Do you think they followed us from Booker?”
“They found your card where you found Mr. Griswold’s book?” James repeated.
A car sputtered through the intersection ahead, causing them both to jump, but it was only a cab. James grabbed her arm and marched down a block to a screen of trees and overgrown bushes that concealed a small park squeezed between two buildings. Emily prickled with wonder at how well James knew his home turf. She would have walked right past and never guessed a swing set, toddler’s slide, and teepee play structure were hiding behind the wall of foliage. James crouched in front of the teepee entrance and went inside on his hands and knees.
“Since when is plastering a bumper sticker on something that serious of a crime?” Emily said. Leaf shadows and sunlight dappled the backs of her hands as she crawled after James into the teepee. “Why would they go to so much trouble?”
“Hello?” James play-knocked her skull then shrugged his backpack to the ground. “Don’t you get it? Why do you think they looked by the trash can?”
“Because they saw me put my card there.”
“Because they saw you remove the book from there. They want The Gold-Bug, Emily.” James worked the zipper of his backpack up and down until finally he said, “I think we should get rid of it.” James looked serious and, actually, a little scared.
“We can’t be certain those men were after the book,” Emily said.
James spoke to his backpack instead of her. “I know you want to finish the game, but this feels too risky for a game we’re not even sure was completed.”
Emily sighed. Not this again. “It was completed, James. I’m positive. The Black Cat clue led somewhere—don’t you see? If Mr. Griswold hadn’t finished his game that would have been a dead end.”
James didn’t look up from his backpack, so Emily tried a different tactic. “If those men used my Book Scavenger account to track us to Booker, then that’s all they know about us. That we go to Booker. They don’t have my real name or an address or anything. And I’ll post to the forums that I don’t have the book anymore. We’ll walk home different ways, leave from a different school exit. They won’t find us again.” She was speaking faster and faster in her effort to persuade James not to give up.
“It’s not just those men, Emily. There was that guest user on Book Scavenger who asked about the book. Then we found out Mr. Remora needs it. Now this. It’s like the universe is telling us the book isn’t ours.”
“But it’s not theirs!” Emily jabbed her thumb in the direction they’d come from. “If those men want the book that badly, then whatever Mr. Griswold’s scavenger hunt leads to must be valuable. He wouldn’t want those men to have it.”
“Why don’t you give the book back to Mr. Remora?” James asked. “It belongs to him, and then we wouldn’t have to worry about it.”
James’s suggestion was like a slap. “It doesn’t belong to him.”
“If he said he needed it for his job…”
“It’s Mr. Griswold’s book, and Mr. Griswold’s game. He didn’t create The Gold-Bug so it could sit on a shelf and be ignored. Mr. Griswold would want us to play his game.”
“Would you stop saying that?” James’s eyes pinched with hurt. “Just admit you want to play his game. That’s all you’ve cared about since we found that stupid book. I’ve helped you with his puzzles, and you keep saying you’re going to help me with Mr. Quisling’s challenge, but you haven’t.”
Emily’s anger at the suggestion of giving away The Gold-Bug melted into embarrassed horror when she realized that James was right. She hadn’t helped him with the cipher challenge at all. The teepee filled with the twitters of a bird and distant traffic.
“But you didn’t need my help.” Her voice sounded so far away. “You broke Maddie’s cipher last week, and what you came up with today was amazing—”
“And it got ruined in two seconds. Do you know how long it took me to come up with that Baconian idea? All that time wasted. Just because stupid Maddie stole it when we left our stuff to go to the computer.”
The unspoken part of his sentence was “to look up the ISBN number.” Mr. Griswold’s game again.
James went on, “It might have been a cool cipher idea, but I still didn’t win a homework pass, which means I still might lose my bet with Maddie. Anyway, it doesn’t matter if I needed your help or not. I wanted your help. And you offered it.”
“It’s just a silly bet.”
“Well, then I say The Gold-Bug is just a silly game. Does that make it matter any less to you?”
“I didn’t mean—”
“It’s not a game anymore, Emily.”
It wasn’t a game to her anymore, either. Those men were scary, but something valuable was at stake. Something that mattered to Mr. Griswold. And that made her determined to get to it first.
“It’s important,” Emily said.
“No. It’s not.” Each word pushed James’s volume up and up. “I can’t believe you care more about a stupid game than being a good friend.”
James grabbed his backpack and crawled out of the teepee. His footsteps shushed on the dirt path as he walked away.