Unstoppable: Breakaway Part 6

Amy barreled past a trio of stunned tourists and took the stairway two steps at a time. When she got to their floor Amy ripped their hotel room door open and stomped inside, heading straight for the telephone.

"Who are you calling?"

"The police!"

Dan slapped his hand down over the receiver before Amy could pick it up. "Whoa, Amy. You know how this works. If we call the police -"

"We can't just sit here while Pierce does who knows what to their father, Dan. That's the game we played with Damien Vesper, and I'm not playing it this time."

"Amy -"

"We went to Dr. Rosenbloom for help, Dan."

The pain in Amy's voice was heart wrenching. As much as Dan hated to admit it, he knew she was right. They'd lost people before, and were still trying to cope. How could they take that chance again, with Atticus and Jake's own father? Dan let his hand slip off the phone and Amy grabbed it and started to dial. Before she could finish, the phone was ripped off the table and out of Amy's hand. They turned to find the phone cord clutched in Jake's fist.

"Calling the police will get him killed," Jake said. "Pierce taking him means he wants to bargain, and that gives us an opportunity. We wait to see what he has to say and then we pull one over on him."

"Jake -" Amy started.

"That's how this works," Jake said. "You know that."

"Att," Dan said. "You on board with this?"

Atticus was standing behind his brother, arms crossed over his chest, head down so his dreadlocks shadowed his face. He nodded slowly.

"So what do we do in the meantime?" Dan asked.

"Our job," Jake said with a deep, shuddering breath. "We still have to find the silphium. Atticus, go through Olivia's notebook line by line in case we missed something. Dan, see if you can find anything on the web. Amy, help me look for places in the area with a Founders Media connection. Maybe we can narrow down the places they might be holding Dad."

"We won't find him," Amy said.

"Come on, Amy," Dan said with a pale smile. "Our record for outsmarting homicidal madmen is the best in the league!"

"But Pierce is smarter than any of them," she said, looking from Dan to Jake to the still-unmoving Atticus. "Isn't he?"

The four of them spread out through the room and worked silently, hunched over papers and computer screens. Dan craved the usual chatter of their research sessions, but even he was too tense to kick it off. He couldn't stop looking over at the phone. Why didn't Pierce just call and end the waiting?

When Dan wasn't staring at the phone, he was watching Atticus. Someone who didn't know Att would probably think he was as focused as ever, but Dan saw the truth each time Atticus fumbled his pencil and on every page his friend lingered over just a second too long.

"That's it," Jake said, sitting back and rubbing his LCD-burning eyes. "I've done it. I've reached the end of the Internet."

"What's there?" Dan asked.

"Pretty much what you'd expect," he said. "A lolcat."

Jake had the right idea. Dan was fried, too. He reached across the table and flicked the TV on to an English-language news channel.

"Dan," Amy said.

"What? I just want to see how my Sox are doing. You find anything on Founders Media?"

"Nothing," Amy said. "Despite owning every other media outlet in the world - along with pharmaceutical companies and Internet start-ups - Founders Media has nothing in Tunisia."

"That can't be possible."

"It's true," Jake said. "We even had Pony do some digging back home. Pierce doesn't have any reach here. Not one that leaves a trace anyway."

"Atticus?"

"Zilch," he said, rubbing at his bloodshot eyes. "I mean, there's all kinds of stuff in here, but it's hard to figure out what's important and what's a four-hundred-year-old shopping list."

"Uh-oh!" Dan sat up in his chair and fumbled for the remote.

"What?" Amy said. "Dan, what is it?"

"Nothing!" Dan snapped the TV off. "Don't worry about it. Hey! Who wants to go break into the Tunisian national archives?"

Amy tore the remote out of his hands.

"No, Amy, wait -"

The TV came back on, showing two highly polished talking heads at a ma.s.sive chrome-and-gla.s.s desk. Amy took a seat behind Dan and dropped the remote by a large crystal ashtray on the table next to her.

". . . and for more news on those globe-trotting troublemakers, Dan and Amy Cahill, we now turn to senior international crime correspondent Chet Waterdam. Chet?"

"Come on, Amy," Dan said. "We don't need to see this."

A leathery-looking man with orange skin and bright red suspenders appeared on the screen.

"Thanks, Wes. The Cahill kids! At first, we here at CVB News thought it was all fun and games, but now we have learned that what we are looking at is actually an international criminal conspiracy of staggering proportions. But first, the Cahills - who are they!?"

The dopiest picture Dan had ever seen of himself popped up on the screen.

"Dan Cahill!" Chet exclaimed. "Second in command. A fanatically loyal but weak-willed and dim-witted hanger-on."

"Hey!" cried Dan.

"The real power of the Cahill cabal rests here."

Dan's picture was replaced by a grainy one of Amy at the mouth of a seedy-looking street in some unnamed city, looking mysterious and furtive.

"Amy Cahill! A reckless thrill junkie in the guise of a librarian in training."

"Well, they got you there," Dan said, hoping for a laugh, but getting a glare instead.

"Ms. Cahill is cruel. Never willing to get her own hands dirty, though, she has a history of luring boys into doing her bidding."

The TV screen filled with a shot of a smiling Evan, standing in the sun. Dan looked back at Amy. She was transfixed, eyes wide, skin pale.

"Amy," he said. "Seriously. Turn it off."

"Evan Tolliver," the voice-over intoned. "Brilliant student and beloved son of Terrence and Let.i.tia Tolliver. But why don't we let them tell you about him . . ."

Evan's picture faded, replaced by a gray-haired man in a white T-s.h.i.+rt and a woman in a prim blue dress. They were sitting side by side on a sunlit porch with a farm stretching out behind them.

"Our son loved Amy Cahill," Let.i.tia Tolliver said in a pain-racked voice. "He loved her more than anything."

Terrence Tolliver drew his wife close as she pulled off her gla.s.ses to wipe a single tear from her cheek.

"That's right," Terrence said. "He loved her and she killed him. Sure as if the girl had held the gun in her own hand. She drew him into her world, and this poor boy, our only son, never made it out alive. And she runs around the world like she doesn't have a care."

"Amy . . ." Jake said, but even he went quiet as the camera moved closer to Mr. Tolliver's face. He and his wife each looked far older than they used to. An off-camera voice spoke up.

"And what would your message be to anyone a.s.sociating with Ms. Cahill now?"

"Get away from that girl as fast as you can," Let.i.tia said. "She looks innocent, but she's a snake."

Amy was motionless, leaning forward in her chair. In the flickering light of the TV, her eyes were dark hollows.

"Strong words," Chet continued. "Ones that lead to perhaps the most important question of all - has Amy Cahill already found her next victim?"

The screen faded to another picture. It was Jake, caught standing in that medina alley. He wore an angry sneer and his fist was c.o.c.ked, ready to strike the reporter who sat bleeding at his feet. Amy stood in the shadows behind him, watching it all with a look on her face that, had Dan not known her, he would have read as distinctly pleased.

"Jake Rosenbloom - star athlete, honors student, a young man with a bright future ahead of him. How long until Amy Cahill takes all that away, too? For more on this -"

Something zipped through the air by Dan's head and the TV screen exploded in a shower of gla.s.s and plastic and electrical sparks. Dan jumped out of his seat as a crystal ashtray hit the floor and shattered. Dan turned to see Amy standing at the edge of the table with tears in her eyes.

"It's Pierce that's doing this," Dan said. "You know that. This is meaningless."

"It's not meaningless to me!" Amy cried. "Maybe you can just run away, Dan, but I can't. I have to stay! I have to deal with this!"

"I'm not running away!"

"I must have been crazy," Amy said. "I don't know why I thought this would work. Dan, call the pilot. Tell him he's taking Jake and Atticus home. Tonight."

"Amy," Jake said. "You can't think I believe any of this."

Amy whirled on him. "It doesn't matter what you believe! We are done talking about this. Dan and I will find the silphium and the police will find your father and that's it."

"No," Jake said. "Amy, that's not how this is going to work."

"This is crazy," Dan said. "You can't expect them to -"

"That is an order!" Amy roared.

Dan felt himself knocked backward, the sting of Amy's words like a punch. Everyone in the room went silent. They were like four statues, frozen in opposite corners of the room, muscles tense as steel, vibrating with anger.

"I am the leader of the Cahills," Amy said, her deadly calm more frightening than a scream. "I don't want to hear any more thoughts or any more discussion. This is how it's going to be and that's it."

Before anyone could say another word, Amy threw open the door to her bedroom and slammed it behind her.

Jake and Dan and Atticus didn't move.

"Dan," Jake said. "You have to talk to her."

Dan nodded but he didn't turn back to Jake or Atticus, he just kept staring at the smashed TV.

Amy sat on the floor of her shower, searing water falling over her head and shoulders and filling the room with steam. She had turned the water so hot, her skin was red and aching, but she couldn't stop s.h.i.+vering.

The faces of Evan's parents haunted her. It was as if they had been printed with phosph.o.r.escent ink on the back of her eyelids, inescapable no matter how hard she tried to block them out. For so long, Amy had drowned out the guilt that raged inside her with the voices of all of the people who told her that it wasn't her fault. That Evan knew the risks.

Now a few words from Evan's parents, and the wound was raw again. Evan had gotten involved because of his feelings for her. Amy could have stopped him, but she hadn't.

Amy shut the water off and went into her bedroom, wrapped in a towel. It was quiet on the other side of the door. She could only imagine what the boys must have said when she left the room. What they must think of her. Amy fell across her bed just as her cell phone began to ring. She wanted to ignore it, but the caller ID showed up as coming from Attleboro. She took a breath and made herself answer it.

"We're thinking it must be drugs."

Amy almost smiled with relief at the rich lilt of Ian Kabra's voice.

"Some sort of truth serumlike compound -"

"But not one that makes you tell the truth!" Hamilton shouted in the background.

"I said truth serumlike, Hamilton. Now please, I'm trying to talk. Tomas," Ian grumbled and then turned back to the phone. "We think Pierce must have slipped some kind of will-weakening drug into their water so when the reporter suggested what he wanted the Tollivers to say, they said it. Simple, really."

Amy was on her back, staring at the pressed-tin ceiling. The heat from the shower had dissipated and a chill was snaking up her legs. She felt distant from herself, like she was watching from above.

"Amy?" Ian said. "Amy, are you there?"

"It wasn't drugs," she said.

"You can't believe that these people would honestly think -"

"How often do you think about Natalie?"

Now it was Ian's turn to go silent. Amy's ear was filled with the soft in and out of his breathing.

"I don't think it's appropriate to . . ." he started with his usual brusque energy but then his voice faltered. "I think about her all the time," he admitted.

Amy turned onto her side, pressing the phone between her ear and the pillow.

"But sometimes is it like you . . " Amy struggled with an idea that seemed to retreat from her even as she grabbed at it. "Forget?"

"Forget what?"

"That she's really gone? Like one day you'll just turn a corner and" - Amy's voice caught in her throat but she pressed on - "she'll be there? Or you'll look at other people and for a second you see her in their place."

"I hear her voice sometimes," Ian confessed. "I mean I think I do. There's always this split second when I think, Oh, no, what does she want me to do now? but then I catch myself."