In Too Deep - 39 Clues 06 (13 page)

Irina stood unmoving, her gaze on the plane. At any moment, Amy expected her to alert the officers. But she just stood and watched.

Why was she just letting them go?"We're off!" Nellie called as the plane picked up speed. Soon they were barreling down the runway. Amy gripped the armrest. She sure hoped Nellie hadn't exaggerated her
piloting skills.

"Do you think we have parachutes?" she asked Dan. He didn't answer. He, too, was gripping the armrest.The plane lifted off smoothly. It rose in the air, banked over the city of Darwin, and headed out across the green water.

Nellie's
voice came over the PA system.

"Okay, passenger peeps, just sit back and enjoy the ride. Next stop, Java."Amy leaned closer to Dan. "It's so weird, all these things we're finding out about Nellie," she said. "It's like she's been trained for this."

Dan didn't answer. He was staring out the window, his face tight and strained. "I'm beginning to wonder if we really know her at all."Dan turned on her fiercely. "I know how that feels."

"What?" Amy asked."Isabel told you that Irina killed our parents? And you didn't tell me?"Amy could see the tips of Dan's ears glowing red, the way his mouth twisted.

His eyes filled with tears."I was going to tell you, it's just that..."It's just that I keep getting these flashes. And sometimes I don't know if they're real. And I'm scared, Dan.

Really scared. What if it's my fault they died?"Oh, and when was that going to be?" Dan's mouth set in a line. "Tomorrow? Next week? Or never?"

"It seemed like it was better to wait." Even to Amy's ears,
her explanation sounded lame.

"Our parents were murdered, and you found out who did it, and you didn't tell me?" "We don't know it was Irina!" "And you believe her?"

"Well, it's not like we can trust Isabel. She tried to feed me to the sharks, remember? And she tried to kill us in the mine. Hello? She doesn't sound like the most trustworthy person, either."

"I deserve to know. You're treating me like ... like a baby brother!"

"You are my baby brother!"

"I'm not a baby!" Dan's face was like a fist, screwed up tight. "I saved your sorry butt enough times. You counted on me enough times to get you out of places when you were too scared to move. So why do you think you have to protect me?"Because you're my baby brother, Amy wanted to say.
But she couldn't say it. She knew if she did, Dan just might jump out of the plane, with or without a parachute.

So she just looked at him, helpless."Secrets and lies," he said.

"Congratulations, sister. You've offi
cially turned into a Cahill."

CHAPTER 21

If there was one thing Dan never expected to hear in his life, it was Next stop, Java as his au pair took off across a sea that stretched in every direction.

If there was one thing he never thought he'd feel, it was this alone.

Once, when he was seven, he'd run into a sliding glass door.

Straight into it, and flat-out running. He'd bounced back and landed on the ground. He still remembered that feeling of sudden, violent shock.

And right after that, the pain.

Now he felt exactly the same way. His parents dying was something he tried not to think about, but of course he thought about it almost every day. He especially tried not to think about goopy stuff like what if. What if Dad was around to take him to soccer? What if Mom had been there for his worst asthma attack? He told himself that it was babyish to have those thoughts. The fire happened. It was fate. Nothing he could change about it.

Nobody to blame, Except there was s
omebody to blame. Someone had
stolen his family. Someone had stolen his childhood. Someone had, one chilly night, deliberately gone into a house with four people who loved each other and set a fire....Dan shook his head violently. He felt his legs trembling. He looked out at the vast sea. Aunt Beatrice used to say, Aren't our problems so small when we look at something big, like the sky? That was her way of comforting two kids whose parents had died. Aunt Beatrice was an idiot.

The Indian Ocean didn't make him feel one bit better. It would be easier if he could talk to Amy, but he'd pretty much decided he'd never talk to her again.

He'd been angry at Amy lots of times. Way lots. This was worse than when she'd made tiny little dolls for all his Matchbox cars right before his best friend, Liam, came over. Worse than when she told

Aunt Beatrice that he loved Beethoven so she should sign him up for piano lessons.

Worse than back in Egypt, when he thought she was grabbing all of their memories of Grace for herself.

That was nothing compared to this.

She'd found out his parents had been murdered, and she'd kept it secret.

The most important thing in their lives!The fire hadn't been accidental. It hadn't been because his father hadn't banked the fire and a spark had hit the rug.

Someone had gon
e in and deliberately set it.

And Amy had known. She'd even been downstairs that night! And she'd never told him.He'd thought they were together. In everything.

He stared out at the green water stretching to the horizon. He didn't know how to get over this. He didn't know how to deal with it. His parents. Grace. Now Amy.There was nobody left.

* * *

It was still light as Nellie landed the plane expertly at Halim Perdanakusuma International Airport, south of the city of Jakarta.

She took off her earphones and let out a breath.

"I'm totally beat," she said.She slung her bag over her arm and picked up Saladin's carrier. "If we run into trouble at customs, let me do the talking," she said.

That'll be easy, Amy thought. Dan wasn't talking at all.They were all relieved when they breezed through customs.

Halim was a smaller airport for charter flights, so it wasn't too crowded.

Within minutes, Nellie had hustled them through the crowd of taxi drivers and picked a blue cab to ride into the city. She worked her cell phone and arranged a hotel room.

"I texted Shep and told him we were safe," she said. "He's going to take a commercial flight and pick up the plane." She shot them a concerned look.

"You guys must be exhausted. I've never heard you be quiet for more than thirty se
conds. Unless you're asleep."

Dan said nothing, looking out the window at the road lined with palm trees. It was dusk, and lights were beginning to come on. The driver wove through the heavy traffic expertly.

The lights of Jakarta approached. The tall buildings glittered through the heavy air. The skyscrapers seemed impossibly tall, like something out of a science fiction movie. The driver turned off the highway and soon they were on a wide boulevard.

The swirling traffic of crowded buses, taxis, and motorcycles whirled them toward a huge circle that surrounded a beautiful fountain. The driver shot off the circle onto a narrower street and gradually, they left the tall buildings behind.

Amy had never been in such a crowded, overwhelming city. She'd thought Cairo was confusing, but this city was a maze, and choked with cars ignoring traffic rules and people dodging between vehicles to cross the traffic-snarled streets. The air was thick and heavy with fumes.Finally, the driver pulled over in front of a bright orange awning attached to a white building.

A doorman hurried out to open the doors and reached for their bags. Nellie counted out the money she'd exchanged at the airport.They stopped at the desk and Nellie checked them in. "We'd like to arrange a trip to Anak Krakatau tomorrow," she said. "Could you help us with that?"

"Normally, yes," the m
an said. "But it's off-limits
right now by order of the government.

When it goes active, you're not allowed to land on the island."Amy wanted to burst into tears. Had they come all this way for nothing? Somehow she'd felt that if she could just take a look at the island, they might find something that Robert Henderson had left behind. She had no idea where to start looking for traces of him in Jakarta.

Nellie looked over her shoulder at them. She smiled understandingly, as if she knew how disappointed and tired they were."Can we get some American food?" Nellie asked. "Like cheeseburgers?"Nellie must

really be worried about them if she was passing up the opportunity for local food, Amy thought. Then again, Amy herself was worried. Dan was never quiet this long.

The clerk smiled. "You can get anything in Jakarta. I can arrange to send food up to your room.""Cheeseburgers, fries, potato chips ... whatever you've got," Nellie said.

They took the elevator up to the room and threw down their bags. Amy lifted Saladin from his carrier.

Nellie turned to them. "All right, out with it. What happened? Why aren't you two talking? When I mentioned cheeseburgers, Dan didn't even yelp."

"No reason," Dan said."Just tired," Amy mumbled into Saladin's soft fur. "Sure," Nellie said. "Bad news about Krakatau, but we can think about wha
t to do in the morning. I say
we order up a DVD and just hang tonight. I've never been so exhausted." She yawned.

"We could maybe go close to the island, but will that tell us anything?" Nellie shook her head. "I'm willing to go, but I'm still not sure what we're looking for."

"I'm not sure, either," Amy said."Really?" Dan asked. "I thought you knew everything."Nellie looked from Dan to Amy, and back to Dan. '"Kay," she said, "I'm making an executive decision. No more talking. Let's eat."

* * *

Amy woke up and didn't know where she was. It was pitch-black, and all she heard was a faint hum of air-conditioning. What hotel, what city, what country? A car horn bleated. The room smelled faintly of ... cheeseburgers. Really bad cheeseburgers. Jakarta.

Java.The names sounded so foreign as she turned them over in her mind. She doubted that a month ago she could have picked them out on a map. They had flown west from Darwin over the Indian Ocean. Was it possible to be farther away from Boston, Massachusetts? She didn't think so.She couldn't go back to sleep. Now that her eyes had adjusted, she could just make out the lump that was Dan, over on the sofabed.

She'd hurt Dan. She
knew that. All evening she'd
wanted to explain. But explaining would mean confessing. And she couldn't face that night. Talking about it out loud would make the whole thing too real. She'd have to relive it. And if she had to do that, she would break.

She sighed and turned over. Nellie was scrunched over on the side of the wide bed, a pillow half over her head. The edge of the curtain glowed orange from the rising sun. Amy's heart beat faster.

Fire."Get the children out!"She threw the covers back. She clapped her hands over her ears. Inside her head, she was screaming. Mommy! Don't go!She sprang up and walked across the room. She pushed the curtains aside. She saw the sun splashing the tall towers with the start of the day.She tiptoed over the carpet and sat on the sofabed.

"Dan," she whispered.

He kept on sleeping."Dan!"He sat up, confused. "Where are we going? Where are my pants?"She laughed softly. But the confusion cleared on his face, and the closed look came back."I'm sorry I didn't tell you," she said."Whatever."

"It's just that--"

"It doesn't matter
." Dan threw the covers back.

"So you forgive me?"

"I didn't say that." Dan's mouth was set in a tight line. "Tell me what you remember. Obviously Irina knows."

"No, she doesn't! And I don't remember much. It's all weird flashes of stuff. I remember hearing people's voices, and going downstairs, and being afraid because a bunch of strangers were in the house. The voices sounded mean. And Isabel Kabra picked me up ..." Amy gulped. She couldn't tell Dan about the koalas.

He was just absorbing the fact that their parents were murdered by some relative of theirs. What if he knew it was her fault?"... and I could tell Mom was scared. And I remember later on hearing the front door close and being glad they were gone. And I looked outside and
they were standing under my window. Isabel said they had to act that night. Nobody else said anything.""What do you remember about Mom and Dad?" Dan pressed.

Amy shook her head. "Not much. I remember Mom getting you and me out, and Dad was taking books down from the shelves."

"He was looking for something.""And then Mom put us on the grass and told me to take care of you, and she ran back inside. And I waited and waited to see them come out. And they didn't." Tears rolled down Amy's cheeks. Take care of your brother. It sounded easy. But what was the best way to do
it?

Dan looked embarrassed at her tears. "Don't lose it now," he said. "We have work to do.""You're still talking to me?" Amy asked tearfully.

"I guess so," Dan said. "We're still on a clue hunt. So let's get to work."Amy pushed away the hurt from Dan's cool tone. Maybe the tension between them would ease. Dan wasn't too good at holding grudges.

She rooted in her backpack. She found packages of peanut butter crackers and tossed one to Dan. "Breakfast.