CHAPTER 19

“Just what we don’t need,” muttered Mom.

“What is it?” I asked.

“The correct question,” said Mom, “is, Who is it?”

“Okay,” said Tommy. “I’ve got this one, guys. Who is it, Mom?”

“Your uncle Timothy.”

Quick background: Uncle Timothy (who isn’t really our uncle) was Dad’s handler when he was in the CIA. Uncle Timothy pretended to be our legal guardian when Mom was kidnapped and Dad disappeared over the side of the Lost, our family’s treasure-hunting boat. Then Uncle Timmy totally tortured us—he made us go to school for the first time ever! After that, he basically stole the treasure we needed to ransom Mom. Then Uncle T went complete double agent on everybody and tried to kill us, first in China and then Germany.

You can probably tell he’s not our favorite person.

After his stunts in China and Germany, Uncle T was locked up in the most secure federal penitentiary in America: ADX Florence, the Alcatraz of the Rockies, in Colorado. It’s a super-max prison. The cell furniture is just a desk, a stool, and a bed—all of them made out of poured concrete. The pillows are probably filled with pebbles. There are fourteen hundred remote-controlled steel doors, twelve-foot-high razor-wire fences, all sorts of laser-beam motion detectors, and an army of attack dogs.

ADX Florence made our Russian jail look like the Ritz.

But the most important thing about it is that no prisoner has ever escaped from the super-maximum-security facility in Colorado.

Except, somehow, Uncle Timothy did.

That’s what the red alert on Mom’s watch was all about.

“The wolf is on the prowl,” whispered Mom when she finished reading the coded intel on her wrist.

My guess? Uncle Timothy was on his way to Russia so he could steal the stolen art ten seconds after we Kidds recovered it. He probably planned to swoop in like a vulture and snatch it away.

Vulture action is what this particular wolf does best.