Cassidy Jones and the Seventh Attendant (Cassidy Jones Adventures, Book Three) (10 page)

“None o’ that,” Marky reprimanded, boxing Rusty’s ears.

We closed the office door to Rusty’s whiny protests.

A couple office doors down, I halted and smacked the back of my hand against Emery’s chest. “Who do you think you are, keeping them all to yourself? They’re awesome. I love them. Why didn’t you tell me about Riley?”

“Because I wanted to see your face when you finally met the girl I’m smitten with.” Emery gave me a gooey look.

“Well, of course I was going to think she was some hot young thing. You met her in college. What was I supposed to think?”

“That Riley is some hot young thing.” He flashed a smile.

“Well, yeah, but are you disappointed?”

Emery raised his eyebrows questioningly. “About what?”

“You know—that Riley didn’t give you any advice”—I lowered my voice to a whisper—“about breaking into the museum.”

“What makes you think she didn’t?”

“You mean she did?” I said, flabbergasted. “So what was the whole ‘I’m reformed’ speech, then?”

“Riley knows I’m trustworthy and wouldn’t go to such extremes unless it was necessary.” Emery was great at replying without really answering my question. “She also knows I’m capable of handling an undertaking of this magnitude.”

“How would she know that?”

“She just does,” Emery said mysteriously. He started walking, while I stood there, staring in amazement at the boy who I knew but didn’t know.

“For your costume,” he said over his shoulder, “should we go with ready-made or custom?”

Seven

The Mummy

As luck would have it, we found a used mummy costume from a movie that had been filmed locally, or so the price tag claimed. The quality of the costume certainly suggested this to be true, and best of all, the costume appeared to be my size. Not wanting to draw attention, Emery wouldn’t let me try it on, so after he purchased the costume and face paints, we crossed the street to a boutique where we pretended to browse for a couple of minutes before I snapped up a dress.

“Can I try this on?” I asked the girl at the register.

She kept her nose in her romance novel as she waved for me to go ahead.

In the fitting room, I wiggled into the costume and smiled, pleased at my reflection. I looked just like a mummy from a B-rated horror flick.

“Mendel,” I said, calling Emery by his middle name, “come tell me what you think.”

Emery slipped through the curtain. A grin expanded across his face.

“Fetching,” he said. “
All
the girls will be jealous.”

I rolled my eyes. “Don’t think it’s me, though. Thanks anyway.” I shoved him back through the curtain and took the costume off.

The salesgirl didn’t even look up when I placed the dress on the counter and left.

Eight

Ambush

The next day, Emery skipped a couple classes at school to scope out the museum for our break-in later that night. I wasn’t clear on what Riley had advised him to do there, but according to Emery, her tips would help him hijack the security system and cameras via his laptop.

The plan went as follows: After Emery took over the security system at midnight, he would pick the locks on the museum’s loading dock entrance and let me in, dressed as the mummy. Connected with Emery by phone, I would wait for the thieves in the seventh attendant’s coffin—ick. But I could do it. When the thieves showed at 1:00 a.m., I would play dead until Emery, watching security feed on his laptop, told me what the thieves were after, which we both believed was an artifact from the exhibit that the microchip had been hidden in. This would be my signal to spring from the coffin and take the thieves by surprise. Once I knocked them out cold, I would grab the artifact and hightail it out of the museum. Emery would then trip the alarm, and the police would show up to find the thieves unconscious. I prayed like crazy Emery’s dad wouldn’t be among them.

As Emery had given me the rundown, I struggled with whether or not to tell him about his father’s involvement, but concluded it still wasn’t the right time. For better or worse, we had to get the microchip before revealing what I’d heard in the tomb—or before Mr. Phillips exposed his involvement by being arrested. We’d deal with any repercussions then. However, my resolve didn’t do a thing to alleviate the tremendous guilt I felt about keeping Emery and Serena in the dark. My only morsel of consolation was that this was
exactly
what they would do if they were in my shoes.

~~~

At 10:59 p.m., I zipped my black jacket over my new yoga outfit, yanked on a black ski mask, pushed my window open, and leapt out, landing in a crouch in our grassy side yard.

Masked, Emery waited for me on the sidewalk. We walked briskly to the end of our block before removing our masks and continuing on to the bus stop at the bottom of Queen Anne Hill.

Fifteen minutes later, we exited the metro bus in front of the museum. Circling the large building, we made our way down a dimly lit alley and stepped into the alcove of a dark doorway next to the museum’s loading dock. After ensuring no one was watching, Emery flipped on a flashlight so he could see. With my feline night vision, I had no problem, of course.

“Is your earpiece in?” Emery lowered into a squat.

“Check.”

He placed the flashlight on the ground and slid his laptop bag and backpack off his shoulder. I realized then that I hadn’t offered to carry one of the bags, having been consumed with fretting and thinking of everything that could possibly go wrong.

“Where’s your phone?” Emery pulled the mummy costume from the backpack.

“Oh, right. Thanks for reminding me.” I took the phone from my coat pocket and had a
duh
moment. My yoga pants didn’t have pockets.

“We’ll establish a phone connection when you’re in the coffin,” Emery said, while I tried to figure out where to put my dang phone. There was only one option that would work.

Checking to make sure Emery wasn’t watching, I quickly slid the phone into my sports bra.

“Sheezzzz,” I gasped when the cold plastic touched my skin.

“What?” Emery asked without looking up.

“Nothing.” I unzipped my jacket and slid it off. The icy air bit into my bare skin, producing another gasp. “It’s freezing.”

“This will warm you up.” He handed me the costume. While I put it on, he prepared white and gray face paint. “Just like old times.” He smeared white paint on my face.

“At least it’s not purple.” I aimed the flashlight beam upward so he could see what he was doing. Before we stormed King Pharmaceutical, he’d had me dress in a ninja costume and had painted my face purple.

“Now for some decay.” Emery daubed gray paint over the white base, rubbing more over my lips with his index finger. “You look like death itself.”

“Charming,” I replied.

“Not my best work.” Emery patted a bit more gray along my cheekbone. “But it will do for our purposes.”

After fussing with the mummy hood and arranging the gauzy fabric over my face just so, Emery took out his cell phone. He struck a few keys and announced, “The alarm is off, and the camera feed is looping.”

“That’s my cue.” I forced a brave expression, not that it mattered with my face all covered in gauze, anyway.

Emery riffled through his laptop bag while I directed the flashlight beam at it.

“This won’t help your nerves,” he warned, taking a small blue case out of the bag. “But it’s necessary for the guard’s safety.”

My confidence took a nosedive. “Guard?”

“Yes, there’s a security guard. I thought it would be better not to tell you beforehand.”

Suddenly I felt a tad less guilty about the secret I was keeping from him.

Emery flipped the top of the case open, revealing a syringe. My head swam as he instructed, “Remove the cover of the needle, sneak up behind him, and administer the sedative in his upper arm, the deltoid muscle. Here.” Emery indicated the spot on his own arm.

“Stick the needle in his
arm
?” I croaked.

“His deltoid muscle.” Emery showed me on my arm. “He’ll be out within seconds. Then hide him.”

“Hide him?” I bent over and clasped my knees. As the instructions sank in, I felt myself begin to hyperventilate.
People will get hurt tonight—by me
.

“Deep breaths.” Emery rubbed the base of my neck. “You can do this, Cassidy. We’re protecting the guard. Moreau could get him out of the way permanently.”

That was all the encouragement I needed. “Give me the shot.” I straightened up and flipped my hand out. Emery placed the syringe in my gauzed palm. The hypodermic needle was ultra thin, not much wider than thread. But geez, was it long!

“So I push this whole needle in his arm?”

“Into his deltoid muscle. You won’t hurt him. If you can’t get his arm, inject the sedative in his midthigh, front or side.” He patted my leg to show me where.

“And I push this thingy down to get the sedative into him?”

“Yes, push the plunger all the way down.”

I nodded. “I can do that.”

“Of course you can.” Emery went to work on the first of three deadbolts with his lock picks.

Studying the syringe, I envisioned removing the plastic cap from the tip, the needle going into the upper arm of a faceless man, my finger pushing the plunger down, and the man collapsing into my arms.
Wait, what about the syringe?

“Replace the cap and dispose of the syringe in a trash can,” Emery said, answering my private thought. I hated it when he did that. It was downright eerie.

The door’s hinges squealed as Emery opened it.

“You did that fast.” I peered into a vast storage room filled with wax United States presidents. Apparently the museum had a special exhibit planned for Presidents Day.

Emery couldn’t see the wax sculptures. To mere human eyes, the doorway looked like a black hole.

“You should be glad you can’t see what’s in there,” I whispered.

Without replying, Emery pulled me into a hug. My fingers curled around the syringe.

“This will go smoothly,” he assured me. “I’ll be at the coffeehouse across the street, monitoring everything on my laptop.” He needed Wi-Fi for the Internet, and the coffeehouse was the closest source. “Remember—”

“Don’t make a move until you tell me to. Then meet you in Post Alley, at Gum Wall.” Post Alley was secluded and blocks from the museum. Gum Wall was self-explanatory. Seattle residents had been decorating it for years.

Releasing me, Emery hefted the laptop bag and backpack onto one shoulder and glanced at his phone. “You have twenty-seven minutes and thirty-three seconds. See you soon.” With that, he swung away and headed toward the street.

My heart pounded like a jackhammer. I wanted to run after him, but I couldn’t. I had to save the world.

“Everything will be fine,” Emery assured me again in a whisper as he walked briskly. He knew I could hear him. “Twenty-six minutes, fifty-seven seconds. Go.”

I took a deep breath and entered the storage room, pulling the door shut behind me.

Darkness swallowed the room, although darkness didn’t really exist for me. My eyes required a very small amount of light in order to see. I felt my pupils expand and was sure they looked every bit as freaky as my surroundings. Who had thought of making wax statues of people, anyway?

Weaving around Lincoln, Truman, Kennedy, Clinton, and a slew of other former presidents, I adjusted my hearing, searching airwaves for the security guard. I picked up the echo of footsteps on the second floor.

With the syringe gripped tightly in my fist, I sped lightly on the balls of my feet through the various exhibits, tracking the security guard by sound and smell. At the main entrance, I flew up the marble stairs, skipping three steps at a time, and glimpsed him in the modern art section when I reached the top.

The portly man in a navy blue uniform made faces in a mirrored sculpture, clearly bored.

He won’t be bored for long
, I thought, removing the cap from the hypodermic needle. Gulping down nerves, I stuck the cap between my teeth and slithered up behind him. His eyes widened when my reflection appeared like an apparition in the small mirrors.

As the guard’s mouth formed into a scream, I jammed the needle into his right upper arm and injected the sedative into his muscle. This didn’t stop the scream.

“H-h-help!” He flopped onto his belly and squirmed across the floor like a salamander. I capped the needle, resisting the urge to tell him he was safe. Letting him hear my voice would be unwise.

He crawled on the floor with great effort. “The crrrrreeeeeture’s real. Yer aliiiivve—” he slurred, and went limp. He had escaped a whole ten feet. Knowing he would wake up safe and sound eased my conscience a tad.

“I’m so sorry . . .” I turned him over. Drool trickled from the side of his mouth. I read the badge around his neck. “Jeremiah Kagan, I’d better hide you before the real fun begins.”

I tossed the syringe away into a trash can positioned next to the women’s restroom and scanned for a place to hide Jeremiah. I decided the safest spot would be the restroom.

I gathered him in my arms, a task that proved awkward due to his size, and carried him to the women’s restroom, only to discover that the door was locked. Luckily, the keys clipped to his belt had jiggled the entire way over.

I set him down and huffed with frustration over the ring packed with keys. There had to be, like, fifty keys.

“Of course,” I grumbled, selecting a key at random and jamming it at the keyhole. It slid right in, amazingly. That was the last thing I had expected. “Yes!” I pushed the door open. “Jeremiah—the first key! Can you believe it? Looks like someone is watching over you.”

Once I had situated him as comfortably as I could on the tiled floor, I locked him inside, placed the keys in a big ceramic urn just outside the restroom, and sped to Queen Kiya’s exhibit, reclining inside the seventh attendant’s coffin a beat later.