I was almost to the library door when I nearly tripped over Croc who had just poofed into the room. Though it startled me, I couldn’t believe how happy I was to see that old smelly dog.
“Croc!” I whispered.
Miss Ruby was talking to somebody at the front door. Now I wasn’t sure what to do. Croc bent his head around at the neck and I spied a piece of paper stuffed into his collar.
Q,
Croc is going to create a diversion. Get out of the house somehow and head for the van parked behind the sheriff’s cruiser. Try not to let anyone see you. The sheriff is on our side.
Angela
“Get out of the house somehow?” I whispered to myself. “Thanks for the specific instructions, sis!”
“Okay,” I said quietly, “let’s figure a way out of here.” I looked down, but Croc was gone.
Not more than three seconds later, barking and growling and shouting came from outside. When I peered out the door of the library, I could see Miss Ruby down the hall, standing at the front door. She was talking to the sheriff, who Angela insisted was on our side. All I had seen of the house when they first brought me here was the front door, foyer, hallway, and the library. If there was another way out, I didn’t have much time to find it.
The sheriff was looking over Miss Ruby’s shoulder and must have seen me, but he didn’t let his face betray anything. Instead he said, “It sounds like that mutt is a little hard to handle. I better see if they need some help. I just wanted you to know I was taking care of this personally, Miss Ruby.”
I had no idea what she would do next. So I darted silently out of the library and into the bathroom across the hall. I kept the door open slightly so I could see the front door. My unconscious act must have convinced her because she walked past the library toward the back of the house. When she was out of sight I hustled down the hall to the front door and opened it a crack.
The lights by the front door cut into the darkness a little. I heard more barking and shouting coming from the rear of the house. Croc had led everyone, including Miss Ruby, to the back so I could make it to the van. What a dog. As I ran, someone shouted, “There it is!” followed by “Grab it, you idiot!” They didn’t know they had very little chance of catching Croc if he didn’t want to be caught.
The van was parked right behind the sheriff’s car. It wasn’t that far, but it seemed like miles. I ran as fast as I could to the rear door and threw it open. When I jumped in, there was Angela, waiting. I was never so glad to see someone in my entire life.
“Oh, wow!” we both said at the same time.
“Thank God you’re okay, I thought …” I started to say but couldn’t finish. Angela just nodded, a little teary-eyed. I gave her a huge hug.
“If you hadn’t come out in another minute, we figured you might be unconscious or too drugged to escape,” Angela said. “I was going to try to sneak in and find you.”
“For some weird reason, those drugs didn’t work on me. I have a really bad headache and a dry mouth, but I faked them into thinking I was looped,” I said.
Angela filled me in on how she’d knocked out the guy in the hotel room with Croc’s help. While she was talking I made a mental note never to get Angela really mad at me.
I showed her Miss Ruby’s iPhone and told her how I’d gotten it.
“That’s great, Q!” she said.
“It’s great when we get away. I need to call X-Ray right now. He has to copy it or clone it or whatever he does. What is his number?” I asked.
Angela stared at me, a blank look on her face. “I don’t know it. The gunman forced me to smash my phone and I never memorized everyone’s numbers. They were all preprogrammed,” she said.
“Oh, boy. I hope we get out of here before they find out I’ve got it,” I said.
Just then the back door to the van opened and there was Dirk Peski, holding a wiggling Croc on the end of a catchpole. Croc was lunging and snarling and snapping at Dirk and in the glow from the van’s taillights, Dirk looked a little petrified. We knew that Croc was putting on a show. However, it appeared that Boone’s faithful companion was no fan of the Paparazzi Prince either. Dirk slammed the back door shut, no doubt relieved to have a steel barrier between him and the mutt. Outside we heard the sheriff telling Miss Ruby he was sorry for the inconvenience and was happy the “rabid” dog was no longer a threat.
Dirk opened the driver’s door and hopped in.
“Dirk Peski?” I said to Angela. I couldn’t believe it. Dirk?
Angela shrugged. “According to him, he doesn’t just help Ziv, he’s also NOC. I had to call the president. He sent Dirk,” she said.
“The president? Of the United States? Our president? J. R. Culpepper sent Dirk Peski?” I was stunned.
“Hey!” Dirk said in mock indignation.
Huh, I thought. Dirk, of all people. This was the trouble with all of this spy stuff, as I saw it: You never knew who to trust.
“Dirk, do you have X-Ray’s phone number?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said as he backed the van into a turnaround and steered it down the driveway toward the road.
I waited.
“Would you mind giving it to me, Dirk?”
He recited the number and I called X-Ray. Like always, he picked up before the phone even rang.
“X-Ray, it’s Q, is Boone there?” I asked.
“No, he’s working the crowd right now,” he answered.
“Okay, can you do some of your tech stuff with the phone I’m calling from? Keep what’s on here because it might be valuable to Malak.” I explained what I’d done, and how Miss Ruby needed to think my phone was hers.
“Yes, I can do that. What’s the serial number of the phone you have?” he asked. I recited it to him.
“Give me ten minutes,” he said.
“We might not even have three minutes, X-Ray,” I said.
“I’ll do what I can,” he replied and hung up the phone.
The driveway had a little circle in it near the house and we pulled around it and down the drive to the road. We turned right and sped away. About five minutes later my phone rang; it was X-Ray.
“The SIM cards on both phones have been overridden. Unless she’s memorized her serial number, she’s going to think your phone is hers. But I managed to save all of the data that was on her phone. We’ll be able to mine it once you get it to me. I just spoke to Boone. He says you guys are to stay at the sheriff’s station until this is over.”
I was silent a minute. Boone didn’t want us back there. I understood why. And I doubted that if the sheriff knew everything, he’d take two kids into a city that might have a huge explosion at any minute.
“Q? Did you hear me? Boone says stay there,” X-Ray said.
“Yes. I got it. Okay.” X-Ray, like always, hung up without saying goodbye. But I kept the phone to my ear.
“Yes. What do you need me to do?” I said. I was going to lie and I didn’t feel good about it but I knew Angela would understand and hopefully Dirk and the sheriff would buy it.
“We’ll do our best to get it to you,” I said. I winked at Angela. She would probably guess Boone would want us to stay someplace safe until this was over. But she was also smart and would play along.
My mom and Angela’s dad and a bunch of other people I cared about were right in the middle of a potential blast zone. We just might be the extra sets of eyes that saw the bad guys and stopped this whole thing. I had to try.
“Got it,” I said into the dead phone (and for Dirk’s benefit). “We’ll get it there as fast as we can. I’ll tell the sheriff.” Now I pretended to hang up.
“What’s going on?” Dirk asked.
“We need to get this phone to X-Ray. When he was doing the switch on the phone, he found some app or something on her phone that might be a kill switch. It needs a code to open it. If he has the actual phone he might be able to crack the encryption.” I lied like I have never lied in my life. Even Angela cocked her head at me.
Dirk was looking at me in the rearview and I held his gaze. I am a magician. Or at least I hoped I was right at that moment. Deception.
“Okay,” he said. We were a couple of miles from the ranch.
The van slowed and pulled over and the sheriff’s car stopped behind us.
All of us got out, including Croc. The sheriff looked me over.
“You all right, son?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“Is anybody ever going to tell me what’s going on here?” he asked.
“No time right now, Sheriff,” Dirk said. “But Boone’s tech guy has determined Miss Ruby’s phone has got some really valuable intel on it. He needs it ASAP. And you need to get Angela and Q back right away, before their parents find out they’re missing. We’re talking lights and sirens here, Sheriff. Can you do that?”
Even though Dirk thought he was telling the truth, I marveled at how convincing he could be. Maybe being the Paparazzi Prince was good training for being a spy.
“Somebody owes me an explan—”
“It’s probably best that you don’t know,” Dirk interrupted. “We have no idea how many people Miss Ruby has here. If they find out you’re involved …”
“That’s what everybody keeps telling me,” Sheriff Hackett said. “Can’t say as that makes me real happy.”
“Sheriff, if we could tell you, we would,” I said. “But right now this phone has got information Boone needs and we need to get it to him as fast as we can. It’s a matter of life and death,” I said, holding the phone up in my hand and waving it around. I looked at Angela and she raised her eyebrows at me. I wanted to wait until the last possible moment to tell the sheriff about the car bomb. If he found out, I was pretty sure he’d refuse to take us.
He looked at me. I was a horrible liar and I got the feeling he knew I wasn’t being truthful. But Angela had told me in the van about calling J.R. and how he’d called the sheriff twice today. So he was probably not going to want to do anything that might make the most powerful man in the world upset. There were several seconds of silence. Finally Dirk jumped in and pushed him a little more.
“Right now I need you to take Angela and Q back to San Antonio. I’m sure once you get there, Boone will give you all the information he can. I’ll take the van back to your station and get my Escalade. We need to hurry. They’ll know Q is gone soon and they’ll come looking. The kids will be safer with Boone.”
“Why don’t you take them?” the sheriff asked Dirk.
“Because you have a police car. You can get them through the crowds and other places where I’ll get bottled up. You’ve got to do this, Sheriff,” Dirk said.
“What are you going to do?” the sheriff asked Dirk.
“What I do best. I’ll be watching your back,” Dirk said as he climbed back into the Animal Control van and sped away. Angela, Croc, and I got into the backseat of the cruiser and the sheriff headed for San Antonio.
I tried not to think about anything but the fact that we were traveling toward a city where a massive car bomb was looking for a target.
And I hoped like heck that Boone could figure out a way to stop it.