Chapter 20

CHAPTER 20 The Holts had come with climbing equipment. They swarmed out onto the pebble beach carrying ropes, carabiner clips, even pickaxes. "How?" Amy asked, standing there flabbergasted. It was torture to watch the other team move so efficiently toward the cliff. "How what, Amy?" Hamilton asked. He paused for a second in the midst of checking knots in his rope. "How did you solve the puzzle so fast when you didn't have anything but thread?" Amy asked. "And how did you know to bring the ropes and everything?" "Amy, we didn't solve any puzzle," Hamilton said. "We just followed you." "We put a tracking device on Nellie's rental car," Madison said, leering. "And then it was easy to check your flight plan

at the heliport," Reagan gloated. No, Amy wanted to protest. That's not fair! This was our lead! But they'd been in too much of a hurry leaving Stratford to look for tracking devices. They never would have been able to convince the safety- obsessed pilot not to file a flight plan. They hadn't had a chance. "Anyhow, we take climbing gear pretty much everywhere we go," Hamilton added. "Doesn't everyone?" He seemed to take in the stunned look on both Amy's and Dan's faces. "Oh, guess not," he muttered, turning back to his ropes. "Too bad for you." "It's like that famous Shakespeare quote," Eisenhower added, hovering nearby. He squinted, as if thinking hard. Then his face lit up. "Shakespeare always said, 'Be prepared.'" "That's not a Shakespeare quote!" Dan protested. "It's the Boy Scout motto!" "And the Girl Scouts'!" Amy added.

Eisenhower's smug expression didn't change. "Yeah, well, what good is all that fancy knowledge doing you?" he asked. "We Holts are going to leave you down here in the dust. And us— we're going to be up there!" He pointed to the top of the cliff like it was heaven itself. "Claiming the final prize. Holts are going to rule the world forever!" He stuck his ax into the first crack in the side of the cliff. "Who's laughing at us now?" He knows, Amy thought. He knows this is the final stop. The final chance to win. Which… Dan and I aren't going to do. "So what if you can climb better than us!" Dan yelled as all five Holts began ascending the cliff. "The prize isn't just sitting up there waiting for you to claim it! There's a door and a keypad! Bet you anything the door is locked! Bet it's going to take a math puzzle to solve the keypad code! Bet you're just going to have to climb right back down here to beg for my help!" The Holts just kept climbing. This is the greatest day of my life, Eisenhower Holt thought.

He was dangling from a rope thousands of feet above the ground, the fresh sea air in his face, his wife and children by his side. With the exertion, the family togetherness, the adrenaline coursing through his veins— with all that, the climb itself was enough to make this a wonderful day. But this climb would be the best of his life. He'd had a horrible day yesterday, but at least it'd given him valuable information. And now he knew that ultimate victory awaited him at the top of the cliff. His family was about to win the biggest prize they could ever win— the biggest prize anyone could ever win. True, Eisenhower hadn't quite figured out what the final prize in the Clue hunt would be. But he knew it would be something so great it would outweigh everything he'd ever failed at. It would make up for getting kicked out of West Point. It would make up for losing that security guard job when he'd accidentally Tasered his own rear end. It would make up for the other Tomas laughing at him— for everyone laughing at him. And it proved that one of his favorite quotations in the whole wide world was true: "It's

not whether you get knocked down; it's whether you get up." The great football coach Vince Lombardi had said that. Eisenhower wished that there'd been something in the hunt requiring Vince Lombardi quotes because Eisenhower knew them all: "Winning isn't everything; it's the only thing." "If winning isn't everything, why do they keep score?" And… "Dad," Hamilton said softly beside him. "Look." Eisenhower planted his foot as firmly as he could on a three-inch spike and turned his head. Surprise almost made him lose his grip on the rope: Jonah Wizard was stepping out onto the beach from a yacht. The Kabra kids were parachuting down from a small plane. And Alistair Oh had just surfaced on the beach in something that looked vaguely like a submarine. The competition had arrived. "Guess we weren't the only ones who used a tracking device," Hamilton muttered. "The girls and I will go down and hold off our opponents," Mary-Todd volunteered.

"Eisenhower, honeybun, you and Hamilton go claim the prize for all of us." Eisenhower spared a second to gaze lovingly at his wife as she and the girls began their descent. "See, that's teamwork," Eisenhower told Hamilton. "Your mother knew what had to be done, and she did it. It's all about the team. And in this family, the family is the team. I mean, the team is the family. I mean…" "I know what you mean, Dad," Hamilton said, which was a big relief for Eisenhower because he'd kind of lost track himself. Hamilton was quiet for a minute. With just about any other kid—any non-Holt—Eisenhower might have thought it was because the boy was inching up a sheer rock face with little more than a rope and a few carabiner clips between him and death. But Hamilton could climb a little old cliff like this in his sleep. "Get moving!" Eisenhower barked, because that was the only way to deal with mopey kids. But Hamilton hung for a second too long by the point of his ax. He sighed.