Lock and Key: The Gadwall Incident Page 6

  Communication.

  Father.

  James taking off at a full-blown run.

  Something bad was about to happen to Father.

  I didn’t know before that I could run so fast.

  Upon seeing the Stranger, Father looked both ways and crossed the street beneath the umbrella. He moved more fluidly now, all the ungainliness gone from his motion. He appeared tranquil and in no particular hurry.

  James, on the other hand, had been in far too much of a hurry. He caught a toe on a stair tread and went down our front staircase like a duffel bag packed for a ski trip.

  I had no time to help him. My two extra seconds at the window had witnessed the van starting to move and turning the corner, while at the same time, the Stranger also started in Father’s direction. A squeeze play, James called it when we watched baseball.

  They meant to kill or kidnap Father. His son had seen this before his daughter. “Ralph!” I shouted as I pulled my bike with me out our front door.

  Funny how we do things we have no plan to do, things we are, in fact, afraid of. I had no idea why I’d grabbed hold of my bike—of all things, my bike! Despite my intrinsic terror, I’d always wanted to ride it down our front steps like James could. And now was my chance. This was my time!

  I threw my leg over the seat, stood on the pedals, and (trembling) aimed the front wheel over the landing. I careened down the steps like I’d stood on a paint shaker. Squeezing the handles hard enough to bend metal, I was smiling inside as I hurtled onto the sidewalk, managed to stabilize by throwing out a leg, bumped over the stone curb, and onto the street! I’d done it! I raced across the jarring cobblestones, just in time to be fully sideways to the rushing van.

  This was the part where either I died having been struck by a speeding van, or saved Father’s life. Since I’m writing this, I’ll leave you to judge.

  Here’s a hint: as the van threw on its brakes to avoid hitting me, and the driver cranked the wheel, putting it onto a perfect trajectory with a fake gas lamp on a very real lamppost, Father pulled a Mary Poppins and, holding the umbrella upright, leaped over a wrought-iron railing and sailed down into a basement access stairway.

  In a panic at seeing my life flash before me, or at least the grille of a van coming at me, I’d dumped the bike, flipped, slid, and scraped across the cobblestone. I was in the midst of a painfully loud screech that might have reached the Commons when I saw the Stranger withdraw what looked like a gun. He aimed it down at the umbrella.

  I was powerless to move, unable to react. I have had nightmares about losing Father since Mother deserted us, but nothing ever like this. Never a violent death. My nightmare involved a stepmother and a big dog, but enough of that. The Stranger. A gun. My father. My fading scream as my lungs froze in fear, refusing me another cry for help.

  And then a thud. It sounded like someone stomping the floor in a stocking foot, sounded like a cantaloupe striking the kitchen floor, a knee hitting a doorjamb.

  The Stranger wilted. Melted, as if the rain had destroyed whatever compound held him together. A candle in the sun, shot in time lapse. His knees seemed to join his ankles, followed by his waist absorbing his legs, then his chest into his waist, and so on. The Wicked Witch after the bucket of water. Like that. He’d been knocked unconscious by some invisible force.

  The butt end of a baseball bat appeared in my vision. An autographed baseball bat. Not just any bat; the bat swung by Ted Williams on June 9th, 1946, for the longest home run in Red Sox history. A bat that hung in our foyer—or had hung in our foyer—along with oil portraits of ancient Moriartys. A bat that Father said would someday likely be more valuable than our house.

  It thumped onto the cobblestone and rolled for me. I could see a tuft of hair on it.

  A hand, a familiar hand, the hand of a fourteen-year-old boy, reached down and stopped the bat from rolling before it reached me. My brother the baseball player had hit his own home run.

  It was a moment I wanted to celebrate until I managed to look up. James wore a devilish smile that went beyond satisfaction, edging closer to appreciation. He wasn’t just pleased, he was thrilled. That blow to the head had fulfilled some hunger in him; a hunger that, until that moment, I had not known existed.

  CHAPTER 17

  THE POLICE WERE INVOLVED. JAMES AND I, AT Ralph’s instruction, were to remain in the house. We were instructed to say we’d had nothing to do with anything. The point was, there was nothing to be involved in. The police arrived because of neighbors. All they found was a bent lamppost, and, after some looking around, something called a stun gun—a handheld weapon that fired a jolt of electricity on the end of two wires. (It hadn’t been the killer kind I’d imagined it to be.)

  Ralph had pushed the driver aside and stuffed the Stranger behind the wheel of the van. This, while James and I complained at the top of our lungs. Lois, finding me scuffed and upset, had dragged me and James back into the house. Eventually I settled down and decided it was time to compare notes with James. I was especially interested in his take on how Lois and Ralph managed to clean everything up so quickly, and where Father might have gone. The last time I’d seen Father, he’d been doing his Mary Poppins impression.

  Arriving at his bedroom, I found his door hanging slightly ajar. I put my eye to the crack. James, the amazing, the unpredictable, the brother of all brothers.

  Writing in his journal?

  The mind works in strange ways. My very first thought, my only thought, was that James was hiding something from me. From the world. And I knew what it was the moment I saw him: he was writing down a name from the list of Gadwall names. I’d seen him flinch when we’d been going down that list together. Only now did it make sense! He’d spotted a familiar name!

  I knew he wouldn’t tell me. I knew that I wasn’t supposed to know about his diary, but I’d been reading it in secret in order to write my stories about him. I’d been doing it for over a year now. I knew exactly what he’d done and what he was thinking. That diary allowed me to tell the stories I wanted to tell.

  Whatever he’d written in there was the key to Father’s visit to the Gadwall Specialist Center; James was not going to be the only one with that key. That, I would make sure of.

  Father was safe and no doubt proud of the two of us for what we’d done to help him.

  Knowing him, he would never mention it. That event would be erased from the Moriarty record, never to be spoken of again. But the three of us would know. The three of us had this evening to bind us forever.

  I burst through the bedroom door and rushed to his window, straining to try and see the street. “James! James! He’s back!”

  James levitated off the bed, his legs already moving at full speed. Out the door, down the stairs like water over a waterfall.

  I latched onto the diary. I opened the last page.

  I turned back a page. Another. Another.

  And there was James in the doorway. “I’m . . . going . . . to . . . kill . . . you!”

  “You’ll have to catch me first,” I said. Clutching the diary to my chest, I did my best impression of a rock star on stage. I hit the floor running, dropped to my knees, and slid about ten feet. Ducking my head, I went right between his legs, out into the hallway, and banged against the banister.

  I jumped to my feet.

  The chase was on.

  BACK AD

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  AUTHOR PHOTO BY SARAH CROWDER

  RIDLEY PEARSON is the bestselling author of over fifty novels, including Peter and the Starcatchers (cowritten with Dave Barry) and the Kingdom Keepers series. He has also written two dozen crime novels, including: Probable Cause, Beyond Recognition, Killer Weekend, The Risk Agent, and The Red Room. To learn more about him, visit www.ridleypearson.com.

  Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.

  BOOKS BY RIDLEY PEARSON

  Lock and Key: The Gadwall Incident

  Lock and Key: The Initiation


  Lock and Key: The Downward Spiral

  COPYRIGHT

  LOCK AND KEY: THE GADWALL INCIDENT. Copyright © 2016 HarperCollins. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  EPub Edition © August 2016 ISBN 9780062661272

  ISBN 978-0-06-266127-2

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  FIRST EDITION

  ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

  Australia

  HarperCollins Publishers Australia Pty. Ltd.

  Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street

  Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia

  www.harpercollins.com.au

  Canada

  HarperCollins Canada

  2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor

  Toronto, ON M4W 1A8, Canada

  www.harpercollins.ca

  New Zealand

  HarperCollins Publishers New Zealand

  Unit D1, 63 Apollo Drive

  Rosedale 0632

  Auckland, New Zealand

  www.harpercollins.co.nz

  United Kingdom

  HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF, UK

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  United States

  HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

  195 Broadway

  New York, NY 10007

  www.harpercollins.com