Case File 13 #2 (18 page)

“How was the sleepover?” Dad asked when Nick walked through the door. He was still working on his wrecked plane.

“Okay, I guess.” Nick washed a green apple and took a bite.

“Where are the guys?” Dad ripped a long piece of duct tape off the roll and wrapped it repeatedly around one wing.

Nick sighed. “Letting Angie Hollingsworth boss them around.”

“Ahhh, girl trouble.” Dad set down his plane and crossed his legs. “Well that's one area where I can definitely help you. What would you like to know about? How to get a girl to like you? What it means when she punches you over and over on the shoulder until you get a really nasty bruise and have to go to the school nurse? Or do you want to know about smooching? There's a reason I was known as Luscious Lips Braithwaite back in the day.”

“I heard it was Liver Lips,” Mom called from the other room.

“No, it's nothing like that,” Nick said. “I just want things the way they used to be.”

Dad tilted his head, looking critically at the plane that Nick suspected would never fly again. “Things change, Nick. That's the way life is. You can either spend all your time wishing for the way things were or adjusting to how they are. But I can tell you this much: People who spend all their time wishing for the past don't accomplish much in the future.” He winked at Nick and whispered, “Your mom almost never punches me in the arm anymore. And she called me Luscious Lips just last night.”

“Gross,” Nick said. He took his apple up to his room and thought about what his dad had said. Not the kissing part, which was just nasty. But about recognizing that things changed. Maybe he was right. Maybe he needed to live with the fact that it was never going to be just the three of them again. The thought made him a little sad.

The rest of the day he tried to think of anything that might help with the plan. For a while he tried dreaming up useful inventions. But inventing was really Angelo's thing. He thought about trying to find a way to make flaming paintballs. But he was pretty sure paintball guns weren't allowed on the BART trains anyway.

Eventually he turned on the TV and watched a Harry Potter movie marathon until it was time to meet his friends.

At eight he headed out the door. “I'm going to hang out with Carter and Angelo,” he called.

“And Angie?” Dad asked, wiggling his eyebrows.

Nick snorted.

“Be safe,” Mom said. “The weather is supposed to get pretty bad tonight. They're saying there's supposed to be lightning storms tonight, and maybe even snow.”

Nick was surprised. Snow in the mountains was common in California, but they almost never got it where he lived. The idea of facing Dr. Dippel and his minions in a fierce winter storm was almost too much to deal with. For a moment, he considered giving the whole thing up.

Instead, he headed out the door. Angie might be bossy, and Angelo and Carter might be annoying at times. But he'd promised them he would be there and he wasn't about to let them down.

They met in front of Angie's house at 8:30. Dana was standing beside a large canvas bag and Angelo was messing with another of his gizmos when Nick pulled up. “Where's Carter?” Angie demanded, bossy as ever.

“No idea,” Nick said. “Where's Jake?”

Angie pointed toward the house. Angelo tweaked something on his gizmo and it gave a shrill wail of feedback before he turned it down.

“What's that supposed to be?” Nick asked.

Angelo turned off a switch on the side of the box and wrapped a pair of black and red cables with alligator clips on their ends around it. “I call it my polarity-reversing overload generator. PROG. If we get close enough to whatever Dippel is doing, I should be able to blow out all of his electrical circuits with this.”

A couple of big wet raindrops hit Nick on the top of his head. “My mom said it could snow tonight.”

“That will make even better cover,” Angie said. If she was nervous, she didn't show it.

A bike came speeding down the street. “Sorry I'm late!” Carter yelled.

“Keep it down,” Angie whispered. “My mom's at work. But I don't want any of the neighbors telling her I had boys over.”

Nick eyed the white case Carter had hung over his shoulder. “Is that a pillow?”

Carter bit the inside of his cheek. “Sort of.” He pulled out his feather pillow, his face turning red.

Angie frowned. “Please tell me that's not your idea of a weapon. Somehow I don't think animated corpses are going to be scared off by a good pillow fight.”

“Unless you're planning on singing them to sleep,” Dana said with a sly grin.

“Very funny.” Carter fished around in the pillowcase. “My weapons are inside.” He pulled out a handful of white packets.

Nick groaned. “Itching powder? You brought itching powder?”

“That's not all.” Carter reached into the pillowcase again and removed a glass of blue liquid.

Angie giggled. “Your weapons are itching powder and
aftershave
.”

“What?” Carter turned the bottle around. “Oh, I thought it was rubbing alcohol. You know, to throw in their eyes or light on fire.”

Nick felt like pulling his hair out. He grabbed the pillowcase and looked inside. Other than the itching powder and aftershave, the only things in the case were a down pillow and a bunch of chocolaty granola bars. He glared at Carter.

“Okay, fine.” Carter sighed. “I was tired because I didn't get any sleep last night. I was just going to take a short nap. But when I woke up it was eight. So I grabbed my pillow and threw in anything I could find.”

Carter was a good friend, and as loyal as could be. But sometimes he was absolutely maddening. “Tell me you did better,” Nick said to Dana.

Dana emptied her bag on the ground, and at first Nick thought it was going to be Carter all over again. Lying on the grass at her feet were three fishing poles, a pair of baseball bats, and what looked like soda cans wrapped in duct tape.

Carter laughed. “So I'm going to put my monsters to sleep while you take yours fishing.”

Dana picked up one of the poles. Two hooks hung from the end of a pair of silvery strings. She pointed the fishing rod toward a lamppost. But instead of casting, she pushed a button on the side of the reel. A powerful spring launched the silver lines. The hooks hit the post and tangled around it. Dana pushed another button and an electrical arc raced from one hook to another. Overhead, the light exploded, sending showers of blue sparks to the street below.

“Whoa!” Carter gulped. “That beats my itching powder.”

“Over fifty thousand volts of electricity,” Dana said.

“It's a homemade Taser,” Angelo murmured, clearly in awe.

Nick rubbed his hands together nervously. “Would it kill someone?”

Dana walked to the lamppost, untangled the hooks, and reeled in the line. “No, but it will temporarily disrupt their sensory and motor-control nerves. One shot from this and they'll be out of commission for a good ten to fifteen minutes.”

Angie nodded, pleased. “And the bats?”

“Just over seven hundred thousand volts. More like a stun gun. Each of the poles is good for five stuns. The bats will run out of juice after two or three.”

Nick whistled. This was some serious hardware. He pointed at the cans. “I take it those aren't Diet Cokes then, huh?”

Dana hefted one of the tape-wrapped cylinders. There were six of them. “Classic smoke grenades. Pull the tab, count to three, and throw. Two yellow, two white, and two purple.”

Angelo shook his head. “I'm impressed.”

Carter dropped the itching powder and aftershave back into his pillowcase. “Anybody want a granola bar?”

Tiffany snorted.

“Now all we need is Jake,” Angie said. “Tiffany's working on a way to get him onto the train without freaking people out.”

Nick glanced around the yard. “If she got him camouflaged, she did an amazing job.”

“Ha ha,” Angie said sarcastically. “You should be a comedian.” She walked to the door and knocked. “You ready in there?”

The door swung partway open and Tiffany stepped onto the porch. “Before I bring Jake out,” she said, “I want to remind you all that he's sort of sensitive about his looks. So don't make fun of him.”

“Why would we make—” Nick started to ask when Tiffany opened the door the rest of the way and Jake stepped through.

Nick's mouth hung open. He blinked, unable to believe what he was seeing. Tiffany had dressed the giant in red, white, and blue stripes. His face was covered with white makeup, except for the blue triangles around his eyes and the red on his lips. His nose was covered by a bright red ball and his hair was tucked under a rainbow-colored wig.

“A clown?” Carter gasped in horror. “You turned Jake into a clown? How could you?”

Jake shifted from one foot to the other, seeming uncomfortable with all the attention he was getting.

Nick tried to catch his breath. He'd never seen anything like it before. “Okay, I give up. How are we supposed to sneak a seven-foot clown onto the train?”

“You aren't,” Tiffany said. “That's exactly the point. I kept trying to think of a way to hide a seven-foot giant. Until I finally realized you can't. He's huge. There's no way people aren't going to notice him. That's when I knew I had to go the other direction. People see a bunch of kids with a seven-foot man, they start to ask questions. They see a bunch of kids with a seven-foot clown, they think they must be coming back from a circus. It's called hiding in plain sight.”

Nick couldn't help grinning. It was either the stupidest idea ever or pure genius.

“Mommy, Mommy, look. A clown!” Half a dozen little kids stood around Jake, staring in delight at the giant in the bright red nose as the train raced toward Diablo Valley.

“Does he juggle?” a five-year-old girl asked.

“Does he breathe fire?”

A little boy held out his hand and said, “Give me five, Mr. Clown.”

Nick leaned forward, afraid Jake would slap the kid's hand right off. But the giant brushed his fingers gently across the boy's palm and slapped each of the other kids five before Tiffany said, “Time to give Mr. Clown a rest. He's tired from doing lots of shows.”

Nick glanced at Carter, who was slouched in his seat listening to his MP3 player, and tugged on his coat sleeve. “What's with the music?”

Carter pulled out an earbud. “It calms me down. If it wasn't for the music, I think I'd be totally freaking out right now.”

Nick knew the feeling. He leaned over to Angelo, who was still adjusting his polarity-reversing overload generator. “You think that thing will really work?”

Angelo wet his lips. “I'd give it about a seventy-seven percent probability of success.”

Nick didn't like the sound of that. They could get all the way to their goal and still have a twenty-three percent chance of failure. Sooner than he would have liked, the train shuddered to a stop at their station. Angie was the first one off. At least he had to give her credit for being brave.

Outside, the rain had changed to fat white flakes that drifted down so thick it was hard to see more than ten feet in any direction. The few other people at the station stuck out their tongues and hands, laughing as they tried to catch flakes.

Jake looked up at the swirling crystals, eyes wide with wonder. “Rainsies are to being coldsies. Pret-ty.”

“Yes, the snow is pretty,” said Tiffany, tugging him by the arm and leading him down the platform steps.

Angie examined her maps, which she'd had the foresight to cover with plastic sleeves. “The tunnel entrance should be about halfway up the hill on the west side of the road—if it's still there. If it's not, this plan could come to a quick end.”

“What'd she say?” Carter asked, removing an earbud.

Nick could hear a faint tune that sounded vaguely familiar. “She said, ‘Turn off your music and pay attention.' ”

Carter grimaced but turned off his player.

Once they were away from the station, they could see no one else but themselves. No people, no cars. It was like they were exploring a frigid wilderness. Angie took turns checking the GPS on Tiffany's phone and comparing it to her map.

“There,” Angelo said, pointing to a concrete bunker built into the side of the hill. With the falling snow, the light-colored concrete was easy to miss. Nick was impressed Angelo had spotted it at all.

They were about to cross the road when Nick saw movement from the corner of his eye. “Wait. Stop,” he hissed.

Angie glanced back at him over her shoulder. “What is it?”

“Not sure,” Nick said. Then he saw it again. This time he knew exactly what it was and his heart pounded against his ribs. “Get down. Get down,” he whispered.

The six of them dropped to the snow-covered asphalt. Jake saw what they were doing and fell down too, grinning like it was a game. A moment later, two hulking shapes appeared, walking side by side.