Chapter 12

CHAPTER 12 "You're… here!" said Amy. "How did you escape?" "How did you find us?" Dan asked. "How did you start the car?" said Nellie. "All will be explained in the fullness of time, my dears." Alistair gestured urgently toward the door. "I suggest we enter the chariot and ride away from our well-muscled nemeses." "I'll drive!" Nellie raced around to the driver's side. "Let me," Alistair said, blocking her way. Amy stepped forward, then stopped in her tracks. Go now. Beware. That was the warning. Hamilton doesn't mean "beware the Holts," she

thought. He means "beware Alistair." "No, Nellie!" Amy shouted. "Don't get in there." Amy fixed Uncle Alistair in her vision. He was cocking his head to one side, his yellow silk scarf gently wrinkling with the motion. "Where do you go when you leave us?" Amy asked. "Amy…?" Alistair said, wiping his forehead with a white handkerchief. Amy took a deep breath and counted to three. It was a technique Mom had taught her. Sometimes that was all it took to check your heart against your brain. "Think about this, Dan. We open our hearts to him every time. He swoops in to save us. We give him whatever we find. Then he vanishes. What does he do with the information? And how did he and the Holts find us at the same time— in the middle of South Africa?" Dan looked uncomfortably at Uncle Alistair. Nellie retreated from the car door. "If you must know," Alistair said, looking

nervously down the hill, "I was held in Indonesia under false pretenses, but I escaped. I gambled on the notion that you were marching to Pretoria, as it were, but most international flights come in to Johannesburg. I was able to convince some airline personnel to reveal flight lists to me. It took detective work among the rental-car people to find which car you took, but we Ekats are good at that. I hired a driver to head for Pretoria. That was when I saw the Hummer, which made me suspicious." "And you followed it…" Amy said. "Precisely," Alistair replied. "Now may we go?" "Wait," Dan said. "How did the Holts find us?" "We can talk inside the car!" Alistair said. "You're a smart guy," Amy said. "You heard Nellie sing the song and boom! You knew the hint. You're light-years ahead of anyone. And you're telling us that the Holts figured all of this out without your help?" Alistair cocked his head curiously. "Are you suggesting I am in an alliance with the Holts? I can't even carry on a conversation with them!"

"Come on, troops," Nellie said, reaching for the car door. "Let's leave Old Burrito Man here with the Frankenstein family. Maybe when they find out their plan failed, they'll use him as a soccer ball." Nellie was in the car now. She turned the engine over once… twice… three times, and it finally started. "You're not going to leave me here, are you?" Alistair was looking at Amy now. His face registered shock, panic. It was an expression she recognized from the fire two nights before. He was willing to save our lives. He was about to jump off a ledge for us, until Irina arrived. But she also knew the look from another time. From seven years ago. When he had come to their house to steal a poem. A poem with a Clue hidden in it. A poem that Hope Cahill and Arthur Trent thought would solve the riddle of the 39 Clues. We only want what is ours. Someone had said that during the night. She'd heard the voice from the study, just after the

commotion had wakened her. Alistair's voice. Alistair hadn't set the fire. But he could have said something. He could have prevented… "Amy…?" Alistair said. "Are you all right, dear?" Amy looked him in the eye. "Why did you keep it from them— the fact that you'd stolen the poem?" "I— this is hardly the time—" Alistair stammered. "You could have told them," Amy said. "You could have shouted, 'I have the poem!' She was running into a fire, Uncle Alistair!" "I was contending with so many people," Alistair said. "I could barely see straight. Eisenhower Holt had some cockamamie idea that we could use the neighbors' garden hose—" "Eisenhower Holt was there, too?" Amy said. "And his wife, Mary-Todd," Alistair said. Dan's face was red. "How many people were there— just standing around, doing nothing to

help them?" Eisenhower. Yes, Amy saw him now in her memory of the night. A gruff man with a red face and bristles for hair. They were all in it together. United. They may not all have set the fire, but without them it wouldn't have happened. They were killers, all of them. Tears rushed to her eyes, but Amy kept them back. Without thinking, she grabbed Uncle Alistair's silk scarf and pulled him toward her. "I don't care if you're working with them or not," she said. "Either way, when they find you, they will make your life miserable." She let go and jumped into the backseat next to Dan. Nellie gunned the engine. "Wait—you can't—" Alistair sputtered, struggling with something at the top of his cane. "Oh?" Nellie said, stepping on the gas. "Watch me."