Fool's Gold (5 page)

He climbed in on his side and we got in on the
passenger side. He started the car and pulled away from the curb.

We drove along in silence at first, cruising through the downtown of Oshawa before heading into more-open space.

“This is a lot easier than riding your bikes,” he pointed out.

“And a lot faster,” Jack said. “Thanks for doing this.”

“No problem. You two ever been in a police car before?” he asked.

“Lots of times,” I said.

“You have?” He sounded surprised. Probably as surprised as Jack was with my answer.

“Yeah, our uncle has driven us in his car. You might know him. He's the Chief of Police in Whitby.”

“You're related to Chief Smith?” he asked, sounding pleasantly surprised.

“He's our father's brother,” I lied. We'd got to know Chief Smith when we lived in Whitby. He was one of the few people who knew that we were involved with Camp X.

“Do you know him?” Jack asked.

“I know him well. He's a hell … I mean, a
heck
of a good guy.”

“He is,” I said. “Everybody thinks because he's so big and scary-looking that he must be mean, but we know he's really just a softy.”

“The turn is just up ahead,” Jack said.

The car slowed down and he made the turn off the highway. Jack was directing him to our old house— the place we lived when we did live in Whitby.

“Now turn here,” Jack directed. “We're the fourth house.”

The officer pulled the car over to the side of the road, right in front of our old house. It was dark. All the houses were dark. There was no sign of life anywhere on the street. We climbed out of the car and circled around to the trunk. The officer opened it and removed first Jack's bike and then mine.

“Thanks a lot. And when we talk to our uncle, who should we say helped us?” I asked.

“Fred Johnson,” he said.

“Thanks a lot, Mr. Johnson … I mean, Officer Johnson,” Jack said.

“That's okay, boys. You just get yourselves inside and get a little sleep.”

“Thanks a lot and good night,” I said.

Jack and I took our bikes and started to walk toward the house.

“Walk slowly,” Jack whispered. “Maybe he'll drive away.”

I didn't dare look over my shoulder but I heard the car door slam. Unfortunately I didn't hear the engine start. We leaned our bikes against the porch.

“He isn't leaving,” I hissed.

We walked onto the porch. We turned around. In the dim light I could see Officer Johnson sitting in the car, behind the wheel, watching, waiting to make sure we got in safely. Jack waved and I did the same. He still didn't move.

“What now?” I asked.

“We hope the door isn't locked,” Jack said.

He turned the knob and the door opened. Jack turned around one more time, waved to Officer Johnson, and walked in. I was right behind him. Jack closed the door as silently as possible and we stood just inside, in the pitch-black in somebody else's house! My knees were shaking, I was afraid to move, afraid to breathe. Somewhere in the darkness—probably in beds in the rooms where our mother or Jack and I used to sleep—were people. What if they heard us? What if they came out and discovered us in their living room?

From outside I heard the sound of a car starting. Jack shifted over a few feet and peeked out through the window. There was a flash of lights—they must have been the headlights of the car. They swept through the window and then were gone, leaving us in the dark again.

Jack grabbed my hand and pulled me forward, opening the door. We rushed out, closed the door behind us, grabbed our bikes and pedalled off as fast as our legs could make us go.

CHAPTER SIX

I OPENED MY EYES
and then partially shielded them with my hand to block out the brilliant sunlight. I didn't know what time it was, but the sun was already pretty high in the sky—high enough to heat up our little tent. The top of the tent sagged dangerously low, so low that it looked like the whole thing might collapse. No surprise there. Jack had made us pitch the tent in the dark. He wouldn't use the flashlights—the flashlights that he'd given me a hard time about almost forgetting. He said he didn't want to risk somebody's seeing the lights flashing around in the dark and coming to investigate. Like
that
would have happened.

From our old house, we'd taken our bikes along the familiar roads that got us close to the camp perimeter. After that we had to push our bikes, stumbling through the forest, until we were closer to the camp, but far enough from the road that Jack was satisfied no one would see us. It was tough going in the dark, and I got more than a few branches in my face, but we finally stopped at a little clearing … a
little clearing a full mile above the northern boundary of Camp X.

I shifted my body over to the side to try to get away from a rock that had forged a little dent in my back. That worked—sort of. Now I had another rock digging into a different part of my back. If we'd used the flashlights we could have cleared the ground before we set up.

Maybe this was my signal to get up—a sore back and a grumbly stomach. I was hungry. In fact, I was so hungry that I could almost imagine the smell of bacon floating through the air. I inhaled deeply. Wait a second … that wasn't my imagination, I
could
smell bacon cooking.

I sat up. Jack's sleeping bag was empty. I flopped out of mine and crawled over to the flap and peeked out. Jack was squatting by a small fire, a frying pan in one hand and a spatula in the other.

“Smells good,” I said.

He turned around. “It does. I bet it'll taste even better.”

“I'm sure it will, because food always tastes best when you're hungry, and I'm so hungry I could eat a—”

“What makes you think you're getting any of this?” he asked. “You want breakfast, you should make yourself something.”

“That's not fair!”

Jack chuckled. “Maybe you can have a little. Grab a plate.”

I stumbled out of the tent, practically falling flat on my face before I got to my feet. There were two plates sitting on the ground beside Jack and I grabbed one. The frying pan was filled with four eggs—two over hard, the way I liked them—and eight or ten strips of bacon. Obviously Jack had been planning on feeding me from the start.

“Notice how the fire is hardly making any smoke at all?” Jack asked.

I hadn't until he mentioned it. There was just a little smoke coming from the flames, and it disappeared without a trace after rising a few feet into the air.

“I used really dry sticks. Smoke is from the moisture caught in the wood. I didn't want any smoke because it could draw attention to us.”

“Smart, but aren't you worried about the smell of the bacon? That's what caught
my
attention.”

“I hadn't thought about that—do you think somebody might notice?” he asked. He sounded worried.

“There's nobody around for a mile, and even if they did smell something, what would they think—that somebody was making breakfast?”

“I guess you're right.”

Jack took the spatula and put four pieces of bacon and the two over-hard eggs onto my plate. He scooped the rest onto his.

I picked up one of the pieces of hot bacon with my fingers and popped it into my mouth. Jack handed me a fork and then sat down on the edge of a fallen log. I sat down beside him.

“This is really good,” I said.

“Like you said, that just means you're really hungry.”

“Probably from all that bike riding … although I would have been happier if we could have made it the whole way on our bikes and stayed out of the police car,”I said.

“Me too.” He stuffed a piece of bacon in his mouth. “That was pretty quick about us being related to Chief Smith. Probably why he gave us a break. How did you think of that?”

“It just sort of came to me after I lied about our last name,” I said.

“That was pretty smart too. I wish I hadn't told him our real first names.”

I shrugged. “It doesn't matter. So what if he has our first names?”

“Probably means nothing, I guess. But that's going to be one strange conversation when he mentions meeting us to Chief Smith.”

I hadn't thought of that. “Maybe they don't talk. They don't even work for the same police department.”

“Maybe they don't talk very often, but I bet they do talk, or they talk to people who talk to each other.

It'll get back to him eventually,” Jack said.

“Even if it does, he only has our first names. There have to be lots of boys named Jack and George,” I reasoned.

“Who lived in our old house, the one that we were driven to?”

All at once the food that had tasted so good going down started to form a lump in my stomach.

“But I bet you it won't happen in the next few days,” Jack said. “It might not even happen in the next few months. And even if they talk later and they make the connection, what's Chief Smith gonna do? He doesn't even know where we live now.”

He was right, and that was reassuring.

“It's funny, though,” Jack said. “I was thinking about the people in Whitby who knew about us, and besides the people at Camp X there is only one other person—Chief Smith.”

“I hadn't thought about that, but he did know a lot, didn't he?”

“Well, Bill had to tell Chief Smith about the stuff that happened so he'd go along with the cover story to explain how we ended up in the hospital, and how Mr. Krum was supposedly killed in a car crash,” Jack said.

“But you don't think he's the one who told those criminals about us, do you?” I asked.

“Who knows?”

“Wouldn't it be funny if the guy who betrayed us was the guy whose name got us out of that tight spot last night?” I said.

“‘Funny' isn't the word that comes to my mind,” Jack said. “I was thinking about betrayal. Us betraying Camp X.” Jack didn't continue his thought right away. He looked as though all he was thinking about was his breakfast. “We signed the Official Secrets Act, we took an oath, and now look at us,” he finally said.

“We didn't really tell those guys anything,” I argued.

“Maybe we didn't, but think about what we're doing now. We're going to bring some criminals into the camp so that they can steal gold. It doesn't matter what we say or don't say, it's what we're planning on
doing
.”

“What choice do we have?” I asked.

“None. You just gotta know that if they catch us we're in big trouble. We might go to jail. We might get shot. That's what they do to traitors.”

“But we're not traitors!” I protested. “Well … not really. We're just going to help them take a little gold so that we can get our mother back.”

“Still, we'd better not get caught … not just because of what would happen to us, but what would happen to Mom.”

“I don't care what happens to us,” I said.

“You'd better. If we get caught, who do you think is going to save her?”

A chill went up my spine. He was right. We couldn't get caught. We
couldn't
!

“This isn't a game, George. This isn't some kind of fun camping trip. Now, how about you pack up the tent and I'll put out the fire and clean up out here. Then we'd better get going.”

It didn't take long to bundle up the camping gear. I stashed it with our bikes, which were hidden beneath some branches we'd cut down the night before. Jack made sure the fire was out, and then he tried to make it look like there'd never been a fire there to begin with. Together, we did our best to remove every trace of the whole campsite.

Finally we were ready to find our way back to Camp X. Jack led because he knew what he was doing and where he was going. I didn't need to know anything. I just had to follow. Of course that didn't mean I wasn't watching and listening and thinking.

We made our way out of the woods and crossed through an abandoned field. I could now see the railroad embankment up ahead. That was the northern boundary of the camp.

“Do we climb up and get into the camp here?” I asked.

“Not yet, and not here.”

We walked along in the shadow of the embankment.

“I'm still not sure what we're doing,” I said.

“We're scouting. We have to try to see if anything has changed since we were last here. You know, extra security or anything. We have to find the best way in.”

“It just seems like another chance for us to get caught.”

“We might be seen, but that doesn't mean we'll be caught,” Jack said. “As long as it's just the two of us, even if we're seen we can run and the guards will probably just let us go. They'll think it's only a couple of local kids who've wandered by. I bet that happens all the time. But if we get caught looking around with those men, then the guards aren't going to laugh it off. They're going to come after us.”

“I guess you're right.”

“Of
course
I'm right. Now keep your mouth shut and your ears and eyes open.”

I wasn't going to argue, because that had been my plan anyway.

“There's the trestle!” I said, pointing up ahead. The embankment trailed off and was replaced by a high wooden railroad bridge crossing Corbett's Creek.

“They said the gold was being stored in the caves down by the lake so I thought the creek would probably be the best way in. It worked before,” Jack said.

“If they haven't put more guards on it since we went in that way the last time.”

“That's what we're here to find out,” Jack explained. He started up the side of the embankment, and I
started after him. Stones and cinders shifted under my feet as I struggled to climb. I dropped to all fours, using my hands to get me to the top. By then Jack was standing in the middle of the tracks. I looked up and down the line. There was nothing coming in either direction. I stepped over the first rail and stood beside him. Suddenly he got down on his knees and leaned his head against one of the rails.