and those continuing on to Berlin, we are now boarding group three.”
Twenty minutes later, as the plane was taxiing into position for takeoff, Wade and Darrell leaned all over each other—and Lily—to get the best view of the city while they took off. It was the last thing Becca wanted to look at. She didn’t mind riding in cars. She kind of liked buses. Trains she really loved. Giant birds made of heavy steel that somehow defied gravity? Not so much.
The engines whined impossibly loudly, and the jet started rolling fast. She gripped the seat handles.
“That’s my arm, you know,” said Lily.
“Sorry—”
“You get used to it. Settle in. Next stop, Washington!”
Her stomach was feeling somewhere between weightless and sinking as the jet rose. After a few minutes she realized that the noise was there to stay, making talking uncomfortable for anybody but Darrell, who seemed to be keeping Wade from paying attention to anyone else. Fine. Even Lily, who loved to chat, finally gave up and just typed her blog post.
The engines droned for the longest two hours in history before she managed to doze off.
“Finally!” Dr. Kaplan said when the jet touched down at Washington’s Reagan airport, where they had to switch planes. As soon as he turned on his phone it buzzed with a missed call. He listened for a minute, pressed a button, spoke several words, then ended the call.
“Because of storms in Atlanta, Sara nearly missed her connection to Bolivia and had to run,” he said. “She’s already in the air again and will probably be off the grid until the end of the week at the earliest. So it’s just us. Let’s use the restrooms, eat, then get some newspapers for the flight. See if we discover any more disasters. Maybe find a link.”
Their layover was shortened when the Atlanta storm system threatened D.C. They hurried back to the gate from the food court, stopping quickly at a news kiosk on the way.
Because her grandparents lived in Austin and babysat often over the years, Becca had learned several foreign languages early. Her French wasn’t great—her German and Spanish were better—but she could read it more or less without a dictionary, so when she saw a copy of Le Monde, she bought it. Not that she knew exactly—or even vaguely—what they were looking for. Tragedies? The whole world was tragic some days. And here she was going digging for more.
“Final boarding call for Flight Three-Fifty-Four to Berlin.”
“We’re off!” Dr. Kaplan ushered them into the Jetway. The cabin door closed soon after they took their seats, and the jet taxied out on the slick runway.
“You can hold my arm if you want to,” Lily whispered to her.
She laughed. “It’s okay. I’m a pro now.”
Hardly. Her lungs felt squashed during the long climb to cruising altitude, and her brain pounded like hammers on an anvil.
“Breathe,” Lily said. “You’ll stay alive better.”
“Thanks.” They finally leveled out. “Maybe I’m not such a pro.”
“Guys, listen to this,” Darrell said, a London paper in his lap. “The oil tanker in the Mediterranean near Turkey that we heard about? They know now that it had seventeen people on board. That’s pretty tragic.”
Then Wade folded his newspaper over and showed it to them. “Is this anything? There was an accident between a truck and a stretch limo outside of Miami. So, the truck driver disappears from the scene but they find him wandering a hundred miles away at almost exactly the same time as the accident.”
“It probably wasn’t even him driving the truck,” said Lily.
Wade shook his head. “There were witnesses at the accident who identified him. Plus, he had the truck keys with him.”
“Okay, that’s a little freaky,” said Lily.
Dr. Kaplan took Wade’s newspaper and read the article. “Heinrich was a dear friend, but he retired some years ago. He kept to himself. I hate to say it, but maybe his email might just have been him getting old. You know, it happens. And he passed away, and there’s no link between these things at all.”
Becca found herself stuck on the words “passed away.” They sounded so peaceful and so unlike the coded message. Devours. Tragedies. Protect. Find. Besides that, they didn’t really know how he died, did they? His housekeeper hadn’t said a word about that.
She was about to close Le Monde when a short news item caught her eye. “It’s not huge, but there was a death at the newspaper’s office in Paris. A person from the night staff accidentally fell down an open elevator shaft. He was killed.”
“Wade, remember this,” said Darrell. “I do not want to go like that. No way.”
“I’ll try to make sure you don’t,” Wade said.
Roald turned. “One of the five in our little group from twenty years ago works at Le Monde. I wonder if he knew the man who died. I haven’t talked to him in ages. His name was Bernard Something—”
“Bernard Dufort?” Becca asked.
“Yes! We called him Bernie. Is he quoted—”
Her blood went cold. “Bernard Dufort was the man who fell down the elevator shaft. Police are calling it an accident, but the investigation is continuing.”
Something happened to Dr. Kaplan then, Becca thought, and it was different from the other weird news about truck accidents and building collapses. His face grew instantly dark and he seemed to fall inside himself. Was it because the bad news was starting to connect? Strangely connect? The email. The death of Heinrich Vogel. The newspaper stories. And now Bernard Dufort.
Darrell leaned to him. “Was Bernie a good friend of yours?”
Roald closed his eyes for a second. “Not really. I mean, a bit. He was just one of us in Heinrich’s little Asterias group, you know?”
“Do you think that’s what he was talking about?” Wade asked. “‘The kraken devours us. You are the last.’
“No, Wade, no,” his father said firmly. “Of course not.”
“But do you keep up with the other people in the group?” asked Darrell. “How do we find out—”
Roald raised a finger, and they all went quiet.
“These newspaper things, I can’t really say. Uncle Henry and Bernard, that’s a different story. Once we’re on the ground there, we’ll probably learn what really happened. In the meantime, we’ll be fine if we stay together.”
“We won’t be any trouble, honest,” Lily said, glancing at the rest of them with a quick nod of her head.
“Heinrich was a good man,” Roald said firmly. “A good human being. Let’s pay our respects. And then we’ll see what we see. You’re right about not being any trouble, Lily.
