Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2 Dan picked up the coin. It was some sort of thick metal, stamped with a fancy script "K" on each side. A "K." Of course. "The Kabras," Dan said darkly. The Kabras had become Dan and Amy's worst enemies in the Clue hunt. They were filthy rich— and pure evil. "Of course they even have their own trained monkey to do their bidding," Amy said bleakly. "They probably have their own private zoo," Dan muttered. He rushed to the window, getting there just a few steps ahead of Amy. The monkey was several

stories below them now. He had the paper rolled up in his teeth and was climbing down a rope suspended from the roof. While Dan, Amy, and Nellie watched, the monkey reached the ground and scrambled across the sidewalk. Then a pair of hands reached out of a waiting limo and scooped up the monkey. The door shut; the black limo sped away. "Those were Isabel Kabra's hands," Amy said. She pronounced the name carefully, as if every syllable hurt. It does, Dan thought. He didn't ask how Amy thought she could recognize Isabel's hands from twelve stories up. Isabel had murdered Amy and Dan's parents. She'd tried to murder Amy and Dan themselves back in Indonesia, and threatened them with death in Australia and South Africa. Then there were all those times she'd sent her nasty children, Ian and Natalie, to attack them. Back in Korea, the Kabra kids had tried to leave Amy and Dan to die in a collapsed cave. When someone has been so incredibly cruel and

awful to you so many times, you develop a sixth sense about them. You know when they're around. Dan was just as certain as Amy that those had been Isabel's hands. Dan turned away from his sister because he couldn't stand seeing the agony on her face. He wished he could run after Isabel, beat her up, throw her in jail, take back everything she'd taken from them. But he was an eleven-year-old kid. He didn't have much to work with. The best he could do was to hock up a huge glob of phlegm and spit it out the window. He aimed precisely toward the speeding limo. "Dan!" Nellie exclaimed. "What?" Dan said innocently. "She's evil. Getting spit on her limo— that's the least she deserves." Dan could tell Nellie was trying not to laugh. The advantage of having an au pair who was only twenty was that sometimes she thought and acted like a kid herself. But then she put on a stern face. "I just don't think your aim is that good," Nellie

said. "Not at this distance." "Oh, yeah?" Dan said. He was glad of the distraction. He thrust the "K" coin into Nellie's hand. "Throw that out the window, anywhere you want. I promise, I'll hit it on the first try." Before Dan had a chance to really prove his spitting ability, he felt a tugging behind him. Now what? Was someone trying to steal his backpack? Right off his back? Dan whirled around. It was only Amy. "What are you doing?" he said. "We need to check the Internet," she said. "Immediately." Dan's eyes met his sister's. Sometimes he wondered how they could be related. She was shy; he was a chatterbox. She liked books and quiet libraries; he liked noisy video games and any sort of joke that involved burping or farting. Still, there had been times— especially during this Clue hunt— when Dan felt like he and Amy were practically the same person, thinking the same thought at the exact same time. Now was one of those times.

"Right," Dan said. He lowered the backpack so Amy could get the laptop out faster. She handed him the cord. He plugged it into the wall while she plugged the other end into the computer. While they waited for the laptop to fire up, she gave him a pen and a piece of hotel stationery from the desk. "What are you two doing?" Nellie asked as Dan began writing on the paper. "We're figuring out the lead," Amy said. "I have a hunch, but I want to check it out online." "I thought you were giving up," Nellie said. "I thought you said you couldn't win." Dan looked at Amy and went back to writing. He'd let her explain. "I still don't think we can win," Amy said. "Not the way the Madrigals want." Once she would have said that word— Madrigals— with the same kind of fear and disgust she reserved for Isabel Kabra. But in Jamaica, Dan and Amy had found out that the Madrigals were really the good guys. The way-too-good guys, Dan thought. The ones

who think we can end this all holding hands and singing "Kumbaya" around a campfire someplace. They're nuts! "You agreed with everything the Madrigals wanted in Jamaica," Nellie said. "So did I." "Yeah," Amy said. She sounded distracted. The computer had booted up now, and she was logging on to the Internet. "It just doesn't seem possible. But if we can't win the Madrigal way, the least we can do is make sure the Kabras don't win instead." Dan looked up from his paper. "Can you imagine letting Isabel Kabra take over the world?" he asked. The words hung in the quiet hotel room. This, finally, was something Dan could hold on to. Everything the Madrigals wanted was too big and slippery: peace, love, forgiveness…. Dan hadn't even been able to keep those goals in his mind during a single uneventful plane ride. He would never be able to look Isabel Kabra right in the eye and say, "I forgive you." But keeping her from winning the Clue hunt, stopping her from gaining