CHAPTER 57

“Bick?” said Dad, shaking his head.

“Too much?”

“Little bit,” said Tommy.

“We’re kind of in a hurry to rescue Storm,” added Beck.

“Right. Gotcha. My bad,” I said sheepishly. Collier is just such an easy target!

“Monsieur Merck?” Dad said, lowering his knife, because the guy was cooperating. Merck was also shaking like a shirt hanging on a clothesline in a hurricane. “Please go on. Tell us everything you know. Don’t leave anything out.”

“Very well. Nathan Collier and his men have been trailing you on motocyclettes, what you call ATVs—all-terrain vehicles.”

Beck and I nodded. “We’re familiar with ATVs.”

“Très bon,” said Merck. “His son, the greasy one they call Chet, was wearing a GPS tracking device the whole time that he was traveling with you.”

“Was the GPS tracker in a pair of earrings?” asked Tommy.

“No,” said Merck. “I believe the transmitter is hidden in what they call a high-school class ring?”

The one that Chet was always twisting and nervously fiddling with!

“Go on,” said Dad.

“Nathan Collier and now his son have solemnly sworn to the Incan cult’s priest that they alone know all the magic words that must be recited for the city of Paititi to rise up from its hiding place.”

“Whoa,” said Tommy. “The Lost City of Gold is underground?”

“Oui. This is what Nathan Collier has told the members of this strange and mystical sect. And only he knows the sacred ritual to make it reappear. And when it does, when Collier—who, as you may recall from my earlier confession, is being paid by Juan Carlos Rojas—gives these New Incas the gold that their ancestors hid from the conquistadors five centuries ago, they will give the rain forest to Rojas!”

Dad still had an extremely stern look on his face.

“This sacred ritual,” he said, “it involves a human sacrifice?”

“Oui. Many ancient Incan rites did. So the new high priest needs to do it, too. That was why they were going to slice me open and remove my still-beating heart from my rib cage and why I am so grateful to you, Professor Thomas Kidd, for rescuing me. Mwah! Mwah! I kiss you tenderly upon both of your cheeks. Mwah! Mwah! I do it again.”

Dad just stood there and took the kisses. From the look in his eyes, his mind was a million miles away in a place that wasn’t very cheerful.

“So,” said Tommy, “if they don’t have your human heart, game over. No golden city rising up from the jungle floor.”

“Unless,” said Dad grimly, his mind snapping back from whatever dark world it had just visited, “they’ve already found a replacement.”

“Oui,” said Merck. “And these strange New Incas, they love child sacrifices.”

The answer hit us.

“Storm!”