CHAPTER 2

We were in Italy staking out this particular parking structure because Mom had picked up a hot tip from the pirates who had kidnapped her in Cyprus.

The bad guys kept yakking about smugglers transporting an elaborately decorated 2,600-year-old mummy sarcophagus through Florence.

And it wasn’t empty. There weren’t any wrapped-up pharaoh remains in the ancient coffin, but Mom’s captors said all sorts of precious pottery and sculptures were hidden inside. The “importers” would be handing it off to the “exporters” in this garage.

“EM 429TY,” said Storm from her perch in the passenger seat. “It’s them.”

Storm has a photographic memory, so she’s in charge of memorizing stuff like bad guys’ license-plate numbers. Mom and Dad’s spy friends (the kind of friends with satellites) had been tracking the smugglers’ cargo truck as it made its way into Florence from the Mediterranean seaport of Livorno.

“They’re pulling into the garage,” said Mom as she flipped down her night-vision goggles. It’s still weird seeing her with blond hair. She had to dye it so the bad guys wouldn’t recognize her. Spy stuff. “Their arrival was expected. Two men just came out of the shadows.”

“Let’s roll,” Dad said to Tommy. “Bick? Beck? Mic check.”

Beck and I tapped our chests to activate our supercool tactical headsets.

“Testing, one, two, three…”

“Loud and clear,” reported Mom.

“Tommy and I are going in,” said Dad. “Bick and Beck?”

“Yes, sir?” we said at the same time.

“You two follow us and report back to Mom and Storm. However, you are not, I repeat not, under any circumstances, to enter that garage.”

“No, sir.”

“You mean ‘Yes, sir’?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Okay, Tommy. Charge up.”

Dad and Tommy slid battery packs into their Taser weapons. They didn’t want to shoot any bad guys with bullets, but they’d stun-gun them if they had to.

Mom turned around in her seat.

“Thomas?” said Mom. “Be careful in there.”

Of course, she was talking to both of them: seventeen-year-old Tailspin Tommy and Dr. Thomas Kidd (aka Dad).

But she meant my father particularly, and for good reason.

We’d just found out Dad was alive. We didn’t want to lose him again.