‘Your alarm,’ Autumn said as she reached under the pillow and pulled out Kensy’s watch, then turned the device off.

  ‘Is it time for the beach?’ Kensy asked, still groggy.

  ‘No, it’s one o’clock in the morning. We’re meeting the boys so we can find out who that lady is,’ Autumn reminded her.

  ‘Oh,’ Kensy yawned. ‘Oh!’ It was as if someone had suddenly hit the on switch. She leapt out of bed and was dressed and ready to go within seconds, pulling her hair into quite possibly the messiest ponytail Autumn had ever seen.

  Autumn had already thrown her phone and a couple of torches into a small black backpack, along with some other gadgets she’d squirrelled into her luggage – not that she was planning to tell the others about them unless absolutely necessary.

  ‘We should take Ferdinand,’ Kensy said, quickly grabbing the drone and the two pairs of glasses from the desk. It was a pity there still hadn’t been time for her to put the listening device back together, but never mind.

  The floorboards in the hallway creaked, causing both girls to hold their breath until Max peered around their bedroom door. The boys were dressed almost identically in black T-shirts, trackpants and caps. Curtis was carrying a backpack. Like Autumn, he also had some additional equipment – just in case.

  Max pointed at Kensy, then at the patio doors. They’d been doing a lot of work on visual signals at school recently, and Max thought this was the perfect time to use them.

  As Kensy and Autumn padded out onto the terrace they could see a light coming from Cordelia’s bedroom window. Kensy indicated the problem to her brother and Curtis. In a series of hand gestures, Max let the rest of them know that he was going to take the lead and go ahead.

  The boy edged his way along the terrace and peered through the voile curtains. His grandmother was lying on her back, a book open on her chest and her laptop sitting on the bed beside her. She’d obviously fallen asleep reading. He pressed his finger to his lips and directed the rest of the group to come one by one. The children hurried across the terrace and silently padded down the stairs.

  Max was about to make a run for it when Wellie hopped out of his bed and skittered to the window. The boy’s heart was pounding. He held his breath and ran, reaching the stairs just before the dog gave a yap. He heard Cordelia rouse and tell the creature off, then the light went out. Max gave a sigh of relief and made his way down the stairs. They were in the clear for now at least.

  ‘Did Granny see you?’ Kensy whispered.

  Max shook his head. ‘I don’t think so, but it’s fortunate Wellie can’t talk. Come on.’

  Rather than risk the crunchy gravel driveway, the children sped across the soft lawn and through the garden to the boundary fence. It was only when they reached the road that Curtis noticed the lights blazing in the guesthouse, which was set apart from the main villa.

  ‘Song and Sidney are up late,’ the boy said, looking at the three people silhouetted in the window.

  ‘Is that your father?’ Kensy asked, looking at Autumn.

  ‘Most likely. I’d guess he’s snuck off to drink beer and play mahjong,’ Autumn said. ‘I heard him and Song talking about having a game earlier when we were finishing up charades. He’s always trying to get Mum to play but she isn’t a fan – she’s probably thrilled that he’s found some fellow devotees.’

  The children scampered down the road, winding their way to the village. At this time of night, there were only a few odd lights from villas dotted across the hillside and they had yet to encounter any vehicles.

  ‘So how exactly are we going to find out who the woman is?’ Curtis asked.

  ‘I think we might need to get inside,’ Kensy replied.

  The others all stopped in their tracks.

  ‘You never said that before,’ Max snapped.

  ‘I didn’t think about it before,’ the girl replied, turning around to face everyone. ‘Come on, we’re almost there. I can send Ferdinand in – we don’t have to go ourselves . . . hopefully.’

  ‘We’d better not get caught,’ Autumn said. ‘I’m a little bit wary of the Portuguese police, but I’m way more scared of your grandmother.’

  ‘Me too,’ Max said with a grimace.

  The children rounded the last bend and approached the house. The villa was in darkness.

  A black van was parked rear-to-curb out the front, with the rear doors open. Next to it was a silver Peugeot sedan that had seen better days. The full moon was providing plenty of light.

  ‘What’s with the van?’ Max whispered.

  The others shrugged. He scurried around to take a look, but the back was empty. Maybe someone had forgotten to close it up? It seemed a little odd.

  The children surveyed the house. The windows all looked to be shut tight upon first glance.

  ‘How do you propose that we get Ferdinand inside?’ Autumn whispered to Kensy.

  ‘There’s a laneway around the back. We should check it out,’ the girl replied, tugging on her friend’s arm. She looked at Max and Curtis. ‘You stay here and keep watch. See if you can find an opening for Ferdinand in case we don’t have any luck.’

  The boys nodded.

  As the girls rounded the back of the building, the front door opened, startling Max and Curtis, who frantically looked for somewhere to hide.

  They crouched down at the front of the van. ‘Hurry!’ a man’s voice urged.

  Now the van’s open doors made perfect sense.

  ‘She’s waking up,’ another voice whispered, ‘and she is much heavier than she looks.’

  ‘So is this suitcase,’ the first voice said. ‘You should have put the whole dose in her tea.’

  Max looked at Curtis, his eyes wide in alarm.

  He gestured that they should make a run for the Peugeot. There, they might have a chance to see what was going on.

  Silently, the boys made their dash and slid in beside the sedan.

  They pressed themselves against the car, and Max leaned around the front tyre, trying to get a view of what was going on.

  ‘Where are you taking me?’ they heard a woman whimper groggily.

  ‘You need to disappear for a while,’ the first voice hissed.

  ‘Are you going to kill me?’ the woman asked.

  ‘That all depends on you. It’s a pity that, with all your education, you must fail so spectacularly – but it has to be done,’ the man said. Max thought there was a hint of an American accent in the careful way he spoke. ‘Now shut your mouth.’

  There was the sound of a struggle and some grunts and groans, then silence.

  ‘What did you do?’ the other man asked.

  ‘What I should have done in the first place,’ the man replied as he closed the van doors. Something hit the ground. Max spotted a syringe under the van. ‘Get in.’

  The boys heard two doors open and one close, but then the passenger, clad head to toe in black, ran back to the villa.

  The driver leaned out. ‘What are you doing?’ he growled.

  ‘Her phone is in the kitchen, and her handbag,’ the man said.

  Curtis had an idea. He quickly pulled a device from his backpack, rolled under the Peugeot and stretched out as far as he could towards the van. It was almost in reach but not quite. He edged out from under the car.

  Max realised what his friend was up to. He kept watch on the villa’s front door – when the passenger returned, he would be heading straight for the boy.

  Just as Curtis was right in the middle of the pavement, in full view, the man appeared in the doorway. Max picked up a pebble from the road and threw it. It clattered to the ground on the other side of the van.

  The man looked towards the sound, giving Curtis just enough time to make his move and roll back under the Peugeot.

  ‘What the heck was that?’ the man said, taking a few steps. For a second he stood right beside where the boys were hiding.

  ‘Probably a cat – this town is full of strays. Hurry up,’ the driver urged. ‘Do you have the letter?’

  ‘Of course,’ the other man replied.

  The boys held their breaths as the van started up. Seconds later, it sped away down the hill.

  ‘That was close,’ Curtis puffed. He fiddled with his watch.

  ‘Have you got them?’ Max asked as the boys hopped up from their hiding spot.

  Curtis waited for the red dot to appear. ‘Yes.’

  With the kidnappers gone, the fastest way to find Kensy and Autumn was through the house. Max turned the handle of the front door and was almost bowled over by the girls on their way out.

  ‘Her name is Claudia Montez. She’s in charge of production for a new company called Wolf Motors, which must be an offshoot of Wolf Racing, and has a stack of degrees in mechanical engineering and industrial design and pretty much anything else you can think of to do with cars,’ Kensy blurted. ‘If I knew her I’m sure she’d be my idol.’

  ‘She’s also just been kidnapped,’ Curtis said.

  ‘We know,’ Autumn replied. ‘We heard them in the house.’

  ‘Did you see them?’ Max asked.

  Autumn shook her head. ‘It was too dark and they were wearing balaclavas.’

  ‘I thought you were going to send Ferdinand in,’ Max said.

  ‘I did, but then he got stuck so we went after him,’ Kensy replied. She was nursing the drone in her palm, one of its wings clearly damaged.

  ‘I’m tracking them,’ Curtis said.

  Kensy grinned. ‘Amazing! I could totally hug you right now, Curtis Pepper. But don’t worry, I won’t, because I know you’d die of embarrassment.’

  That wasn’t exactly how Curtis felt but perhaps it wasn’t the right time to say he would have been okay with it.

  The boy looked at the blip on his watch. It had stopped moving and wasn’t terribly far away.

  ‘Hiding in plain sight, perhaps?’ Curtis said, showing the screen to Max.

  Autumn nodded. ‘What do we do now? We can’t just leave her with those guys.’

  ‘Dead right we can’t,’ Kensy said.

  She was ready to go, but Max bent down to pick up the syringe he’d seen the man drop while bundling Claudia into the van.

  ‘Don’t touch that,’ Kensy ordered. ‘It’s gross and dangerous.’

  ‘It’s evidence. I think this is what the guy used to knock Claudia out,’ Max replied.

  Curtis pulled a small cylinder from his backpack and took the syringe from Max, depositing it safely inside.

  ‘What else have you got in there?’ Kensy asked. ‘A DNA scanner? That would come in handy right about now.’

  Curtis shook his head. ‘Mrs Vanden Boom won’t give me one of those. Believe me, I’ve tried.’

  At the mention of the woman’s name Kensy’s stomach tightened. She hadn’t even thought about the note Max took from Magoo’s study in the past couple of days, nor why Mrs Vanden Boom would be out to get them. Being reminded of it again now made her feel sick.

  ‘Let’s not talk about her at the moment,’ Kensy said, glancing at her brother. ‘Are we going or not?’

  The children nodded. Together, they ran down the road towards the centre of the village. Curtis was in the lead, following the red dot on the map on his watch and hoping that the van stayed put until they got there.

  ‘How far is it?’ Autumn asked as they jogged along the cobbled streets.

  ‘I think once we reach the palace with upturned ice-cream cone chimneys, it’s about seven hundred metres,’ Curtis replied.

  It didn’t take long for the children to get to the Sintra National Palace, running until they were literally just around the corner from the van.

  ‘Is it still there?’ Kensy asked, puffing.

  ‘Yup,’ Curtis replied. He spotted an ancient water fountain on the side of the road and stopped for a quick drink. They were heading towards another palace – the Quinta da Ragaeleira.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Max whisper-shouted back at him.

  ‘Coming,’ the boy replied, quickly catching up. ‘According to this, the van should be about one hundred metres away.’

  The children charged around the bend and stopped.

  ‘What?’ Autumn gasped. ‘Where is it?’

  Curtis checked his watch. The red dot hadn’t moved, but clearly it was no longer attached to the van.

  ‘The tracker must have fallen off,’ Kensy said. ‘That’s a disaster. How are we going to find Claudia now? They could have taken her anywhere.’

  The children stood outside the ornate gates to the palace, which were locked up tight.

  ‘We need to find the tracker,’ Max said.

  ‘I don’t see what difference that’s going to make,’ Kensy replied. ‘We’ve lost them.’

  But her brother wasn’t so sure about that.

  ‘Think about it. If the tracker is out here on the roadway, then fine – we’ve lost them – but if it’s on the other side of those gates, then that’s a different story. The van would have to be inside the grounds for it to fall off there.’

  Autumn smiled. ‘That’s great thinking, Max.’

  Kensy rolled her eyes. She wished she’d come up with that. ‘Come on then, genius.’ She looked at her brother. ‘Let’s find it.’

  The children scanned the roadway and the much trickier cobblestones in the layback right outside the palace entrance. After twenty minutes of searching, they had nothing.

  ‘We’ll have to go over the gates,’ Max said. There was nothing tricky about them – with their ornate metal curls and relatively low height, scaling them was barely a challenge.

  ‘No!’ Autumn said. She’d been checking for security cameras and realised that what she initially thought was just the tip of a sculptured stone gatepost was actually concealing a device. She had only just seen the reflection in the light and hoped that no one had been watching them.

  She pointed covertly so the others could see what she was talking about.

  Max had it covered. He quickly took a piece of chewing gum from a packet in his pocket and popped it into his mouth, then scaled the gatepost before placing the masticated blob on the lens. He checked to make sure there was no camera on the other side.

  ‘Come on,’ he urged the others to follow him over the gates.

  Curtis dropped down and looked at his watch. The blip had suddenly become brighter.

  ‘It’s here somewhere,’ the boy said, eyes on the ground.

  ‘There!’ Kensy declared, seconds after she’d landed. She bent down and picked something up, examining it closely before she got a whiff of a smell that caused her to gag. ‘Ew, false alarm,’ Kensy said, throwing it back down and wiping her hands on her pants.

  ‘Really, Kens, you can’t tell the difference between a tracker and a piece of dog poo?’ Max said with a chuckle.

  ‘Of course I can,’ Kensy retorted, looking around to see if there was a tap anywhere close by. The stink was awful.

  Minutes later, Autumn’s excellent eyesight triumphed once again. She bent down and picked up the tiny black device, holding it out for Curtis to see. ‘Is this it?’

  He nodded.

  ‘So they drove the van inside the gates,’ Max said. ‘That means Claudia could be here somewhere.’ He pointed towards the castle. ‘And the van could be too – there’s a garage over there.’

  ‘But where, exactly?’ Curtis said, looking around. There were multiple outbuildings and a smaller turret-like construction further up the road – it would take an age to check all of them.

  ‘We need to split up. We can cover more ground that way,’ Kensy said. The idea of racing around a strange place in the dark was a little disconcerting, particularly after her grandmother had told her about the well in the grounds.

  ‘Autumn and I will go together,’ Max declared. The girl grinned.

  ‘Okay, Curtis, looks like it’s you and me then,’ Kensy said.

  ‘We’ll take the palace and everything further down the hill,’ Max said. ‘You two head up there – near the outbuildings – and keep in touch.’

  Thunder grumbled in the distance and a shard of lightning split the sky.

  ‘Let’s hope we find something before the storm hits,’ Autumn said.

  The only thing Claudia could hear was the sound of her own breath. She willed her eyes to open. Every muscle in her body was aching. Perhaps this was what being run over by a bus felt like, or getting a dose of horse tranquiliser.

  The last thing she remembered was being bundled into the van and a sharp sting in her neck. She had no idea where she was or how long she’d been out, but the bed she was lying on was surprisingly comfortable. Claudia pushed herself up on one elbow and tried to focus.

  Perhaps she should have said something to James when all of this had begun a month ago – then maybe she wouldn’t be here now. Then again, maybe someone would be dead. Claudia had brushed off the first couple of notes as a joke – it had sounded as if someone was playing games. Then things had started getting more serious. First there was some nonsense about driving nails. She’d had no idea what it was supposed to mean until a couple of days later, when the Electra they were testing had four flat tyres with no clear explanation of what had happened. Then there were bigger problems. One of the staff members at the track had almost been run down when the car’s steering had failed. And yesterday there had been a note about a spark. Strangely, her own car had needed new spark plugs, but it was now clear that the message had been a warning about the explosion today.

  On top of the threats and potential sabotage, Claudia was fully aware that the Electra still had problems of Wolf’s own making that only she could make right. The engine wasn’t running as smoothly as she wanted, and the gearbox wasn’t quite as it should be. There was a small issue with the battery as well. They couldn’t afford any mess ups. The car had to be faultless by the time it was unveiled in Berlin.

  She wondered about Patrick and Antonio too. Both of them had left so quickly, and with little savings to fall back on. Perhaps they had been paid off. No one had offered Claudia money, but the threats were clearly real. She hadn’t called the police either, knowing that if she did, James and his family were in grave danger.

 

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