“Can you get that off and hot-wire it or whatever?”
He’d see. He opened up his backpack and removed his tool kit. The two-by-four was easy to pry off, but underneath the piece of wood, he found . . . nothing. No switch, no wires, nothing to indicate that anything like that had ever been there.
“Rusty was a bit more thorough than I’d expected,” he mumbled. He couldn’t get thwarted by the janitor again.
Scarlett cast a glance at the door. “Whatever you’re going to do, be quick about it. Remember, Dr. Brown knows you’re here.”
He was so close. He would not let his poor project spend one more day in that dank old passage. “Where did Orchid say the passage entrance was?”
“Behind the bookshelf,” said Scarlett, wringing her hands.
Okay, time for the blunt approach. He studied the shelves, examining the decades-old layers of varnish for anything that looked like a recent application. There—bright as a copper penny, a line far too straight even for New England maple. He dug the tip of his crowbar into the varnish and—CRRRRRRRAAAAACK. The line split into two neat halves. An opening! He pulled harder on the edge of the crowbar. The bookcase shifted.
Scarlett let out a small squeal. “How are we supposed to hide that from Dr. Brown?” she hissed under her breath.
They’d figure it out. They always did. He opened the entrance. “Hurry. We still need to figure out how to get in and get to the other passage.”
“You want me to come with you?” She shook her head. “I thought I was just a lookout.”
He handed her a flashlight. “Yeah, and right now, I need you to look out for whatever door leads into the other passage.”
She seemed dubious.
“It’ll go faster with both of us,” he promised.
Scarlett had apparently done the same calculation. She took the flashlight and followed him down into the passage.
This one was deeper than the one where he’d hidden his work. Finn noticed that right away. He supposed it made sense for one to go over the other, since they had to cross somewhere. Also, that root cellar or whatever was at the kitchen end of this one—where Mrs. White had dragged Karlee and Kayla—was pretty far underground.
The stairs ended, and the passage curved around to a straightaway. Scarlett shone the flashlight on the rough stone walls and grimy ceiling.
“I’m not going to be happy if I get spiderwebs in my hair. Or spiders,” she added after a second.
“And I am?”
“What is this project, anyway?”
“A dye,” he said. “A very, very black dye.”
“Wait,” Scarlett said, unamused. “I’m risking spiders and the wrath of Dr. Brown for a dye? I thought at least whatever you’d invented was worth money.”
Finn rolled his eyes, though he knew she couldn’t see that in the dark. “I wonder if Dick Fain had people telling him that his invention was ‘just a glue.’ Trust me, this is going to be big. Electronics, military—”
“Okay! You’ve convinced me.” Scarlett was quiet for a few steps, as if thinking it over. “Black dye from Blackbrook, huh?”
Not from Blackbrook, if he had his way.
“Why were you hiding it here, anyway?”
“Well, I was hiding it in the lab at school, but someone must have found out about it before the storm last year. They tattled on me to Headmaster Boddy. It’s terrible that he died, but it does mean that I’m safe.”
“Why does it mean that? Only Boddy is dead, not whoever tattled on you.”
Finn didn’t answer that.
“Well, it had better be worth millions,” Scarlett grumbled from behind him. “And you’d better be prepared to be very generous with me for helping you.”
That sounded like his best friend. He looked back at her, grinning. “Come on. Admit you missed our schemes.”
She bit her lip. “Okay, just a little.” She shot her beam of light behind him. “What’s that?”
He followed the direction of the light. It was a metal latch in the ceiling. “The trapdoor! You were right!”
“It must lead to the other passage!” Scarlett exclaimed. She hopped up and down. “Open it!”
He handed her the flashlight and gripped the crowbar in both hands. Carefully inserting the tip in the crack in the trapdoor, he pulled.
The door fell open.
And a body dropped out and onto their heads.
6
Mustard
Mustard opened the door to his dorm room and found his roommate making out with a girl. Again.
“Dude!” Tanner Curry exclaimed as his girlfriend rushed to cover herself and Mustard backed quickly out into the hall.
While he waited, Mustard examined the whiteboard affixed to their door for the coded markings they’d worked out last week. A red mark in the upper right corner of the board meant “stay out.” The board was clear.
“You forgot the code,” he called through the door.
“Tanner!” Amber complained, exasperated.
“Sorry, baby!” his roommate said to her. “I’m not used to roommates. You know that.” He called out through the door. “You can come in, soldier.”
Tanner always called him that, with a cocky grin. Mustard didn’t mind, if he was being honest with himself. It reminded him that this banishment, this school—it was all temporary.
They’d had the usual “call me Mustard” conversation when he’d first moved in. Mustard, of course, had started out calling his new roommate by his last name, which was what the boys always did back at Farthing Military Academy. But Tanner had said that was weird, and he already had enough trouble living up to his family’s reputation.
Mustard supposed he of all people should call others by the names they preferred.
He entered to find Amber—Tanner’s girlfriend—yanking her sweater back down and rearranging herself on the couch. Their hair was mussed.
“Hey, Mustard,” she said sheepishly.
“Hey.” Mustard walked over to his side of the room, where the sheets on his bed still had perfect hospital corners, pulled so tight you could bounce a quarter off of them.
At least they’d stayed off his bed this time. He took off his coat and hung it in the closet, then sat down at his desk. Tanner ran a hand through his hair and picked up the controller for his video game console. The familiar strains of the game’s theme song rang out of the top-of-the-line speakers installed at strategic points in the room. Amber sighed and grabbed her cell phone.
“Want to play?” he asked Mustard.
“Nah, I’ve got homework,” said Mustard. Besides, he’d just spent the past half hour giving one-syllable answers to the world’s perkiest guidance counselor. Perry Winkle had wanted to “touch base” with all the students who’d been on campus during the murder of Headmaster Boddy, but Mustard didn’t have much to say about that night.
Everything traumatic had come afterward, anyway.
Tanner shrugged and picked single player. “Probably better, anyway. You kick my ass at this game.”
Tanner never seemed to have homework. Mustard wasn’t sure what that was all about. Most of the kids he’d met at Blackbrook last term were nuts about their academics. Finn Plum certainly was. But Tanner seemed to view the whole thing as just another checkmark in his family’s plan for him, and he kept his commitments as light as possible. He rowed crew and played a game Mustard had never heard of before called squash. Neither seemed to be something Tanner cared much about in his off hours. It was just part of the routine: diploma from the right kind of upper-crust New England prep school, followed by a degree from the right Ivy League college, followed by a position at the right Wall Street hedge fund and the right seat on the right kind of boards, like his father and his grandfather and every other ancestor had enjoyed, all the way back to the Mayflower, probably.