Chapter 21

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 somebody 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 gone 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 seconds. 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 man 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.