Edison's Gold (16 page)

From behind his metal-and-glass desk, a wiry man gazed at Tom with a face devoid of any expression. From his slicked, silver hair to his starched white pajamas and black silk robe, he was well groomed to the point of obsession.

As Tom took another step into the room, he noticed several sheets of paper with the Alset Energy letterhead stacked near the edge of the silver-haired man's desk.

What does all this have to do with dad's old company?
he wondered.

“Well, if it isn't the heir to the great Edison legacy,”
said the man. There was something disdainful about the way he'd enunciated Tom's last name. As if he'd meant it to be a punch line. But Tom was used to people saying his name like that.

“Who are you?” Tom asked.

“Someone who's been keeping close tabs on your family.” The man rose from behind his desk in slippered feet and crossed the room to a small bar trolley, where he snapped open two old-fashioned glass Coke bottles and handed them to Tom and Colby. “I think it's fate that you and I are meeting now, Tom. Imagine my surprise when I learned that the boy who broke into my museum exhibit also happened to be the son of one of the lowly engineers I'd just laid off.”

Tom's knees nearly collapsed from under him. He'd never even seen a photo of Curt Keller, yet the man was the reason so much had gone wrong in his life.

“What do you want from my family?” he asked. But as Keller turned, reaching for his remote to change the channel on his flat-screen, the answer became clear. Arranged neatly on the table behind his desk were all the clues they'd found so far: the wax record, the movie film, the Firestone photo. All on obvious display.

“There's nothing to fear from us, kids. I'm just taking a few necessary precautions.” Keller allowed himself a tight-lipped, joyless smile. “We only intend to hold you here until Grandpa Edison's formula is safely in my hands.”

Tom tried not to let the shock appear on his face.
What
else did
this guy know?

“Now is there anything more you'd like to tell me?” asked Keller. “Something else you've found?”

“We didn't find anything,” said Tom, trying to keep his voice from rising. “Our search was a dead end.”

Keller leaned in close. Unlike fat Nicky's breath, his smelled like mentholated cough drops, and his bloodshot eyes seemed to look both past and through Tom.

“I can read people better than a polygraph machine,” he hissed, “and you're not exactly someone I'd call a practiced liar.”

Tom went silent, hoping Keller wasn't close enough to hear his heart beating like crazy.

“Really, though, I should be thanking you kids.” Keller returned to his desk, where he picked up the wax record, spinning it in the edges of his hands. “As you know, my company's had a rough few years, with alternative energy sources cutting into my profits.” Keller now turned his
attention to the Firestone photo, inspecting it casually. “But what's a couple million when you've got the formula to make gold, right?”

This time his laugh was genuine, and it took every ounce of restraint for Tom not to lunge over and snatch the clues right out of his bony hands.

“My great-great-grandfather hid his secret specifically to keep it from people like you.”

At that, Keller's face tightened, defensive as a closed fist. “Don't get started with me, son. The brilliant Thomas Edison also ruined a great many lives.”

“What did he ever do to you?” asked Tom. He could feel Colby's hand on his sleeve.

“Tom, pick your fights. Trust me, this isn't one of them,” she whispered. He could see something was troubling her.

Keller regarded the two of them coolly. The calmness in his blue eyes made him seem that much more terrifying.

“No, no. I'm happy to tell you.” Keller smiled. “The story's quite simple, actually. Your great-great-grandpa destroyed the career of the modern era's greatest inventor, then robbed him of the credit he deserved.”

“That's a lie.” Tom knew his double-great-grandfather's life better than any of his history teachers, and if there was a bitter feud he'd ever had with a rival scientist, Tom certainly would've read something about it.

“I will do whatever it takes to restore my great-grandfather's name and bring the formula back into my family. Where it's always belonged.” Keller tipped back in his chair as he made a dismissive sweep of his hand. “I'm afraid our visiting hour is over,” he said with a glance toward Nicky, who'd been glowering in the corner of the office the entire time. “Please show our guests to their luxury suite.”

Keller swiveled his body back to his desktop computer as Nicky grabbed each of the kids by an elbow, then unceremoniously marched them toward the door and out of the office.

T
here was nothing luxurious about the luxury suite. Tom and Colby saw that right away as Nicky escorted them down two flights of stairs, then locked them into the dark, dingy room, somewhere deep within the mansion's basement. A clunky armoire and a rusty, cracked metal cot with a bare mattress were its only furnishings.

Once the fat man was out of earshot, Tom started to pace the room nervously, tapping the walls and listening for hollow points.

“Tom, what are we gonna do?” Panic crept into Colby's voice as she dropped down onto the cot, which caused it to collapse on the floor with a crash.

“You okay?” Tom turned from checking the armoire's drawers and ran to her side.

“Yeah. The mattress softened the fall.”

“I'll get us out of here, Colb,” said Tom, then went back to checking the room for any grates or drains. “It looks like they've got us in some kind of old servants' quarters.”

“My nana's gonna be up in two hours.” Colby slumped forward and stared down at the cracked cement floor. Just thinking about her poor, worried-sick nana calling the police made her nauseous. “If she's not already.”

It didn't take much longer for Tom to realize that the only way out of this room was through the door. Which was bolted shut.

After a moment, he sidled up next to Colby on the mattress.

“Maybe Keller will let us go,” he said weakly.

“I don't think so.” Colby was shaking her head slowly. “I couldn't help noticing that the word
Alset
? Is just
Tesla
spelled backward. Like Nikola Tesla.”

Tom cocked his head. “That can't be a coincidence, right? I mean, he kept talking about restoring his great-grandfather's reputation.”

At the sound of Tesla's name, Tom did recall reading
something once about a professional rivalry between the two inventors, but there was obviously something more personal to it.

Colby snuck a quick hit off her inhaler. Even though it hadn't worked for years, she needed some kind of security blanket right now. “So maybe Edison and this Tesla dude had a falling-out over the formula, and now Keller wants it back in his family.”

“And if Keller is Tesla's great-grandson,” said Tom, “it must've made it that much sweeter for the old jerk to fire my dad.”

“And one more reason he's not letting us go anytime soon.”

Tom dropped his face into his hands and tried to rub the stinging sleep out of his eyes as the full reality of their hopeless situation came crashing down.

“Everything's gonna be fine,” he said, though it was more to comfort himself than anything.

Colby leaned closer and rested her head on his shoulder. “I'm really gonna miss you next year, Tom.”

He could feel the edge of his nose twitch, and his eyes well up. This wasn't how he'd imagined the adventure
ending. Locked in some rich guy's basement, waiting for him to steal the formula from Tom's family and force them to leave New York.

Once again, he'd taken things too far. He'd gotten so wrapped up with saving his family that he'd forgotten all about their feelings. His parents had enough stress right now without a kidnapped son.

How could he have been so thoughtless?

“I guess the Edison men are just a buncha losers,” said Tom with a long, defeated exhale.

“Don't be an idiot.” Colby's sneaker dug into a loose mattress seam and ripped its stitching a tiny bit. “You're probably the smartest guy I know.”

“Then how come I'm rocking a C average in school, and every invention I ever build ends up either blowing up or falling apart?”

“That would be because you lose interest in stuff before you ever see anything through.”

It hurt Tom to admit it, but the girl had a point. It was what every teacher had been telling him since he could remember, and it was why he currently held the Saint Vincent's Academy record for most trips to Headmaster
Phelps's office in a year. He loved the rush of inspiration more than the labor of planning or studying.

Neither of them spoke for a while, and for some unknown reason Tom couldn't stop staring at Colby's sneaker. The hole she'd ripped through the mattress seam was now twice the size it had been. His eyes then caught pieces of broken cot scattered around them.

There has to be a way out
, he thought.
Every problem has a solution
.

He just had to slow down and think it through for once.

For an hour, Tom stared blankly at the wall while Colby managed a few moments of sleep.

And then, somewhere around five a.m., inspiration struck.

“If I could reassemble the cot,” he mumbled quietly to himself, “we could use the weight of the falling armoire to tighten …” His voice trailed off as his brain built momentum. And then …

“Colby, I've got it!” He bolted to his feet as she woke with a gasp. “This time, I'm seeing something through to the very end.”

“I know that face.” Colby frowned as she blinked the tiredness from her eyelids. “What completely scary task does this involve me doing?”

“You'll see.” Tom began to rip one long seam of the cot's worn covering. “Eh. It's not giving.”

“Here. Let me help.” Colby took a step close to him, her exhaustion forgotten, ready to play her part as a new plan began to take shape.

E
veryone's face was sick with worry, and all of them silently blamed one person.

Noodle.

Tom's parents, Noodle's mom, and Colby's nana had been called into the Yonkers Police Station when Tom and Colby hadn't returned by morning, but what was even worse was that Lieutenant Faber had somehow been tipped off to what happened, and for nearly an hour, the stern-faced police officer had grilled Noodle about his story, forcing him to retrace every detail again and again. With a sinking heart, he had come clean. He had to. Colby and Tom were missing, and he needed to do everything he could to help get them back safe.

The others had listened, stunned, as Noodle described
the Firestone photo, the short film, the fat guy from the pet shop who'd kidnapped Colby—and probably now had Tom, too. He'd kept one detail to himself, though. He wouldn't say a word about the metal box—which, at this moment, was hidden deep inside his clothes hamper—until he could have a word with Tom's dad alone.

“So. It's not a history project. It's a treasure hunt,” Lieutenant Faber concluded once he'd finished.

“A really important, and now possibly extremely dangerous one,” Noodle added.

“But you don't even know what kind of treasure you're looking for.” Her eyebrows were arched and her mouth curled as if he'd just told her a really corny joke.

“Well, Tom thinks that the Sub Rosa's trying to protect some secret from falling into the wrong hands. And that it's up to us to find it before the bad guys.”

“The bad guys. Oookay.” Faber glanced at her notes, barely listening to Noodle's story. “And you think that this abductor is after the same thing as you? This … Sub Rosa secret?”

At the word
abductor
, Colby's grandmother threw her head into her hands. “Please, please. You must do
everything in your power to catch this criminal,” she implored.