The Secret Cipher (16 page)

Jax fidgeted. “But we're already involved. Juniper chose us to help.”

“You are children. You do not know what you face.”

Jax scowled and squared her shoulders. “We know exactly what we face. We've been followed and chased and threatened with guns. We watched an urn suck Hope from Tyler's soul. We're not giving up, not now. We'll find the urn of Love with or without you.” She sounded like her old self, no longer nervous and shy with this stranger. “Besides, you haven't been around so you can't tell me what to do.” She folded her arms and glared at him.

Isaac Romero tapped his fingers on the table, his eyes narrow as he stared at his daughter. Then
he stopped tapping and smiled. “I see you are my daughter after all. I will tell you what I know.”

We leaned in close. Luckily, a woman and her husband were arguing about money, so the guards were distracted. Isaac Romero cleared his throat. “Juniper was in the Museum of Fine Arts because that is where she hid the urn of Love. She must have written the code on the belt so she would never forget it.”

“But what does the code do?” I asked.

“I was hired to create the security system for the museum. Whenever I design a system, I include a back door, a secret way to disarm it. I gave this code to your aunt so she could retrieve the object when needed.”

“So it's true,” Jax said. “She was trying to break in.”

“Not really. The object is hers. The museum is simply a hiding place. So even though she would disarm the security system, there would be no theft, technically.” He lowered his voice. “The computer system is located on the first floor in a hidden room. The closest public room is the women's first-floor bathroom. To disable the system, Juniper would enter the women's bathroom, stand in one of the
toilet stalls, and hold a smart phone close to the wall. This would give her the best chance to pick up the system's Wi-Fi signal. When the system asked her to log in, she would type the code.”

“‘Unlock love with a kiss,'” Jax said.

“There would be a slight flicker of the lights, nothing else. The system would appear to be working normally, but that would be an illusion. She would then have exactly fifteen minutes to remove her object. The system would restore automatically.”

“So once it was disabled, she could get the urn and no alarms would sound?” I asked.

“Exactly.”

I glanced at the guard. We now knew how to break into a museum. This was dangerous information.

“Where is the urn of Love hidden?” Jax asked.

“About fifteen years ago, your great-aunt donated two ancient busts to the museum. One is the head of Zeus, the other of Aphrodite. Aphrodite was damaged and had to be pieced back together. As Juniper worked on the restoration, she realized that the hollow space inside Aphrodite's head would be a perfect place to hide the little clay jar.”

I glanced at the clock. Only another minute to go.

“If she has suffered memory loss from the stroke,
it is most important that you remind her to wait until just before closing. The staff will be tired and eager to leave. They are mostly college students and volunteers. They don't carry weapons but they can have police on the scene in under a minute.”

Jax wiggled in her chair. “I'm wondering . . .” She closed her mouth and pursed her lips, as if holding back the question.

“You want to know why I didn't steal the urn for myself?”

“Yes,” she said.

He smiled. “Because I'm not that kind of thief. I don't steal from good people.”

The guard who'd escorted us to the visiting room returned and said, “Jax Malone and Ethan Hoche, your time is up. Please come with me.”

I could tell by the way Jax was fidgeting that she wanted to ask many more questions. We stood. Mr. Romero shook my hand. “Nice to see you,” he said. Then he shook Jax's hand, but as he did, he slipped her a small piece of paper. Then he pulled her close and whispered, “I know what you're planning. Please be careful.”

I
'd heard the saying, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Aunt Cathy always used it when she compared Tyler with his dad. Tyler had a wall of trophies, Uncle Phil had a wall of framed awards. Tyler got obsessed with his games, Uncle Phil got obsessed with his experiments.

Was I like my father? Could I deny it? I was preparing to disable a museum's security system and take a priceless object. Even if Great-Aunt Juniper hadn't gotten me involved with these urns, would I have been destined to this kind of life? I was always dreaming about traveling, about having adventures. And I'd tried to steal that candy bar.

I know what you're planning
.
Please be careful
.

Had my father sensed I was like him? He'd squeezed my hand gently, as if he actually cared about me.

“What did he give you?” Ethan whispered.

I'd already tucked it into my pocket, but not before reading it. “His email address.”

We collected all our belongings. Tyler and Pyrrha were waiting outside the security gate. Tyler was pacing, as if he needed to go to the bathroom. Pyrrha motioned for us to hurry. My purple coat swung from my hand as Ethan and I hurried down the walkway. “Better luck next year with your school photo,” the guard called.

“What happened?” Pyrrha asked. “Did you solve the riddle?”

“Yes,” I happily announced. “The urn of Love is hidden in the Museum of Fine Arts. The code disables the security system so the urn can be taken without setting off the alarms.” Tyler kept pacing. “What's going on?”

“Ricardo robbed another bank,” he said. “But this time, someone got killed.”

We stood next to the car, in the shade of a large elm tree, and watched Tyler's phone. The CNN reporter, a man with a huge chin, pressed his earpiece as he spoke. An ambulance siren faded into
the distance. “The robbery occurred at seven thirty this morning, at the Excelsior Bank in Boston.”

The good news was that Ricardo had remained in Boston, so that meant he hadn't followed us. Phew! But that was the only good news.

“No official statement has been made by police or by Excelsior, but from eyewitness accounts, it appears that the robber approached the bank's manager in the parking garage that you see behind me. The manager had arrived a half hour before opening, as he usually did. People sitting in a café across the street thought they heard a storm and when they looked out the window, they saw garbage cans and garbage blowing out the parking garage's entry. Then the wind stopped and the bank manager and the alleged robber came out of the garage. The robber was carrying a bag, but didn't appear to be holding a gun. The bank manager walked in an odd way, witnesses said, as if in some sort of daze. Then they went into the bank.”

He pressed his earpiece again. “We have a spokesperson here from the mayor's office.” The camera shot widened as a woman stepped up next to the reporter. “Deputy Mayor Olson, can you tell us how the parking attendant died?” He held a microphone in front of her chin.

The deputy mayor spoke into the microphone. “He was an elderly man and it appears he had a heart attack.”

“Do you think this is the same person who robbed the Excelsior Bank in Manhattan?” the reporter asked.

“Until the police make an official statement, we can't say for sure, but the similarities certainly point to the same man, or to two men working together. The weapon used seems to release a force like a gale wind that shatters glass and security cameras. In both robberies, the safe was emptied of cash. But here's what I find most interesting—in both events, the bank employees were easily manipulated and put into some sort of trance.”

“Can you elaborate? What do you mean by a trance?”

The deputy mayor adjusted her sunglasses. “There were ten victims during the first robbery—seven employees and three customers. All remain under medical observation while officials try to determine what happened. Each victim remembers the same thing, that they felt scared when the robber first appeared. He opened some sort of container and a wind whipped through the bank. But after the wind settled, they no longer felt fear. They
believed they knew him and that he had come to protect them. In fact, they all spoke of the robber in god-like terms, calling him all-powerful. They knew they needed to follow him, to do whatever he wanted. No one called police. No one tried to escape. They willingly opened the safe and helped him pack the money into bags.”

“It sounds like some kind of hypnosis,” the reporter said. “How is that possible?”

Tyler paused the news feed. “It sounds like the urn of Faith works differently from the urn of Hope,” he said. “When hope is sucked from your soul, it leaves you feeling nothing, like an empty sack. But when the urn of Faith is opened . . .” He paused, his eyes narrowing as he put the facts together. “It sucks faith from your soul, which makes you desperate to believe anything—even that a bank robber is your savior.”

We stood in silence for a moment. “Does that make Faith more powerful than Hope?” I wondered. “But why?”

“Faith is the act of believing in something,” Ethan said. “I have faith in science. Some people have faith in religion. Others have faith that their government will take care of them. Or that luck
will come their way. That things will work out.”

I began to understand. “So if you're suddenly stripped of all your beliefs and you don't believe in anything, then you will be desperate to believe in something.”

“Or in
someone
,” Tyler said.

Pyrrha's eyes filled with tears. “I'm so sorry,” she said. “Those urns were supposed to make me happy but they are hurting people. This is my fault.”

“It's not your fault,” Tyler said, wrapping an arm around her shoulder. “Ricardo is the one to blame. You did nothing wrong.”

A sinking feeling hit me hard and I grabbed Ethan's arm. “Imagine what the urn of Love will do. If all the love is sucked out of you . . .” We all looked at each other.

“A person without love would have no empathy,” Ethan said. “A person without love wouldn't care if others got hurt.”

“There's no time to waste,” Tyler said. “The Quest to Find the Urn of Love has begun. Museum of Fine Arts, here we come.”

FACT:
Stealing an artifact from a museum is considered a felony. A felony is a crime that carries a one-year-or-more prison term. A misdemeanor is a crime that carries less than a year's imprisonment and/or a fine. Felonies include murder, assault, arson, and burglary. The length of time a thief is sent to prison is often determined by the value of the stolen object. We were about to steal a magical object. You can't get any more valuable than that.

J
ax kept saying we wouldn't be stealing, since the museum never purchased the urn of Love and had no idea that it was hidden inside Aphrodite's head.
“It's like getting something from the lost and found,” she said. “Great-Aunt Juniper left it there and we're going to find it.”

Well, I'm not sure Jax's logic was sound. We would certainly be vandalizing, and that's bad enough.

“Don't worry,” Jax told me as we drove away from Brookville. “No judge or jury is going to throw us into prison. We're minors.”

I didn't tell her that in some cases, minors could be tried as adults. We had enough to worry about. So instead of imagining what it would be like to spend the rest of my life in prison, I focused on the good news. Our parents thought we were spending a second day at the comic-book festival, so in a small way, returning to Boston made me feel better.

Jax told Pyrrha and Tyler everything that we'd learned from Isaac Romero. When she forgot the small details, I filled in.

Pyrrha stared out the windshield, not saying a word. Tyler kept glancing at her. “You okay?”

She didn't answer. Her shoulders were slumped. Was she thinking about the garage attendant who'd died? Was she feeling afraid, like me?

“We'd better make a plan,” Jax said.

“Yes,” I agreed. A plan was good. A series of directions leading to a determined outcome was
better than winging it. A plan was something to focus on.

Here's what we decided to do. We'd locate Aphrodite's head. Then fifteen minutes before closing, Jax would enter the women's bathroom and type in the code using my phone. Once she'd disabled the system, she'd call Tyler. Then Tyler and I would create a distraction by getting into a loud argument. Because Pyrrha was the only one of us who wasn't terrified to hold the urn, she would open Aphrodite's head, get the urn of Love, then set the head back in place. Then we'd all meet in the lobby and walk out as if nothing happened. It sounded good. But as we all know . . .

. . . plans don't always go as . . . planned.

Pyrrha didn't say a word throughout the discussion. She'd been so nice and cheerful during most of this, I wondered why she'd suddenly become so quiet.

I found the museum's website. “It's one of the largest collections in the country, containing more than four hundred fifty thousand works of art. The head of Aphrodite is called the Bartlett Aphrodite. It's in the Greek and Roman Sculpture Gallery. That's number two-eleven on the map.”

“Wait a minute. Today is Sunday,” Jax said. “Is the museum open?”

“Yes, until four thirty.”

“We'll have to use the credit card to get in,” Tyler said. “But that's okay. Mom and Dad will love that we went to an art museum.”

Pyrrha continued to sit in silence.

“What's the matter?” Jax asked. “Why are you so quiet?”

“I am afraid to fail,” she said. “I am afraid to disappoint Zeus.”

I shuddered. What would Zeus do if she didn't bring back the other two urns? I thought about Sisyphus and the boulder and Prometheus and the liver-eating. The worst punishment my parents had inflicted upon me was to make me give up watching the news. But that had only lasted two days.