CHAPTER 4

“Mom and Dad might need Bick and me,” Beck told Storm, “to do our jobs on the team.”

“Riiiiight,” said Storm. “I almost forgot. You guys are in charge of junk and stuff.”

“No. The team needs us for crawling in tight spaces.”

“Huh?”

“Beck’s right,” I said. “She and I are the youngest and, therefore, the smallest and wiriest members of the family! Getting into tight spots is what we do best.”

Storm rolled her eyes. “Tell me about it.”

“It’s like you said, Storm,” added Beck. “If we don’t stick together, if everybody on our team doesn’t do exactly what they’re supposed to do, then we could lose the Treasure of Lima.”

Storm exhaled. Loudly. “But you two were supposed to stay on board the Lost with me and guard the Room. That was our job!”

“Only because Mom and Dad forgot they might need us to crawl into a cave!” I told her. “If I were a pirate, that’s where I would hide my treasure. Someplace so narrow, only someone our size could reach it.”

“Then how’d the pirates get it in there in the first place?” demanded Storm, because, let’s face it, she’s way more logical than me.

“Cabin boys,” said Beck.

“And monkeys,” I added. “Pirates always have monkeys riding on their shoulders. Unless they go with parrots instead.”

“Fine!” said Storm, sounding totally exasperated. “Whatever. Let’s go find Mom and Dad and Tommy!”

She trudged up toward the jungle.

Beck and I high-fived. We’d totally double-teamed our big sister into submission. It’s another twin thing.

Storm planned on using her photographic memory to lead us to the treasure site that Dad had pinpointed on a map in the Room. He had all sorts of rare maps in there. Some were so old, they even showed where you’d find sea serpents and other mysterious monsters.

One map—a recent discovery that Dad made in, believe it or not, Rome, Italy—might take us to the Lost City of Paititi deep in the Amazon rain forest. The map was an antique (dating all the way back to the 1600s) and cost Dad several hundred thousand dollars.

Legend says the Lost City of Paititi is filled with all the gold and precious gems that the last Incas of ancient Peru wanted to hide from the Spanish conquistadors looting their land.

“We have to hike up Mount Iglesias,” announced Storm, gesturing to the leafy green peak in front of us.

“No problem,” I said, even though I was huffing and puffing and sweating like I had a leaky bilge pump under each arm. (Look for Beck to start adding stink lines to my pits.)

“Um, how high is the summit?” asked Beck.

“Two thousand and seventy-nine feet,” reported Storm.

“Oh,” I said, as if it were no big deal. “At least it’s not two thousand and eighty.”

We had to cross a rickety bridge that park rangers had made entirely out of gear confiscated from fishermen working illegally in the protected waters around Cocos Island. We knew the backstory of the bridge because Tommy had, a day earlier, fallen hopelessly in love with one of the Costa Rican park rangers living on the island.

That’s why Mom and Dad call our seventeen-year-old big brother “Tailspin” Tommy. Every time he sees a pretty girl, he nosedives hopelessly in love with her.

And sometimes, he takes the rest of us down with him!