Into Thin Air Read online

  That’s when I noticed that Jamie looked as uncomfortable as Penelope did cool. She was fidgeting, wringing her hands and looking all over the locker room. Finally she looked down at me. “Listen, Joe, we know you’re looking into what happened to Daisy.”

  I nodded. “And?”

  Penelope cleared her throat. “There’s something you should know,” she said, then sighed. “Daisy asked us never to tell you. We wanted to be loyal to her, but now—she’s been gone awhile, and we’re getting scared.”

  I raised my eyebrows. This was intriguing. “What is it?”

  Jamie looked nervously at Penelope, then blurted eagerly, “Daisy had been flirting with this guy online! She met him in a college chat room about a month ago. He’s a freshman at Redmond U. Two weeks ago, they started meeting up in real life.”

  I frowned. Totally not what I was expecting. “But two weeks ago, she was dating me.”

  Penelope and Jamie just looked at me.

  Oh.

  “She was seeing someone else at the same time?” I asked. The information hurt, but more than that, it surprised me. Daisy and I hadn’t known each other long enough to make it into serious boyfriend-girlfriend territory, but while we dated, I thought she really liked me.

  Was she just a really good actress?

  Or maybe she really liked us both . . . ?

  I was totally confused.

  Jamie nodded. “See, that’s why we didn’t want to tell you,” she said. Penelope shot a glare at her, and Jamie quickly added, “I mean, that and the fact that we promised Daisy we never would.”

  “I thought she liked me,” I blurted. As soon as the words left my mouth, I heard how pathetic they sounded, but really, I was just trying to figure it all out.

  Penelope looked at me with fake girl sympathy. In our investigations, I’d interviewed enough girls to know the difference between real sympathy and the exaggerated fake kind. “She did like you,” she said. “She thought you were very cute, very nice. . . .”

  She trailed off and looked at Jamie, who jumped in with, “But you were a little boring and kind of goody-goody.”

  Boring? Goody-goody? “But—but—” I stammered, thinking of all the adventures I’d had and how I was so the opposite of boring and goody-goody. On the other hand, why was I trying to defend myself? Was there something bad about being good?

  Penelope gave me a pitying look.

  “Chad was more dangerous,” she went on. “He was a bad boy.”

  Penelope nodded. “He had a bad past. Drug arrests, hanging out with the wrong people. He told her all that was behind him, that she made him want to be good.”

  Jamie sighed. “But he could be mean to her,” she added. “Even before she disappeared, Penelope and I were starting to worry. They would have these huge fights and he would call her up and just scream at her.”

  A chill crawled up my back. This did not sound good. Since Daisy and I had called it quits, I’d been worried about her taking up with Luke again, but now it seemed like something far more dangerous had been going on.

  “Chad was really into the whole Death Ride thing too,” Penelope said. “He kept pumping her for details. He thought it was really cool that he was hanging out with the girl whose dad owned the Death Ride park.”

  My heart thumped. “Why are you just telling me this now?” I asked, anger creeping into my voice. This was all falling into creepy, terrible place, like a jigsaw puzzle from the dark side. Penelope and Jamie looked at me sheepishly.

  “Daisy disappeared a few days ago, on the G-Force. Now, out of nowhere, you’re telling me that she was seeing this nasty guy with a criminal past who was super interested in the Death Ride?” I shook my head in disbelief.

  Jamie looked a little nervous. “We think . . . we think he might have something to do with it,” she said

  I threw my hands in the air. “Ya think?” I asked sarcastically. I sighed. “Seriously, you two . . . I know you’re not my biggest fan, Penelope, but she could be in danger. Frank and I could have been looking into this the night she disappeared!”

  Jamie frowned, looking sheepish again, but Penelope glanced at her, then back at me, her expression still strong.

  “When Daisy first disappeared,” she said, “there was a little part of me that thought she had done it on purpose. There was so much going on, with Luke and Chad and the whole Piperato thing. . . . I thought maybe she just wanted some time to herself to think things over.” She stopped and swallowed hard. When she spoke again, her voice had changed, become more raw. “But if she just needed time to think, she would have come home by now,” she went on, her voice breaking. “She wouldn’t want her dad to worry like this. She was mad at him for some stuff, but they were close. Now I think she really might be in trouble.” She closed her eyes, and tears dribbled down her cheeks.

  I slowly got to my feet, letting out a huge sigh.

  “Thanks for telling me, I guess,” I said after a moment. I still wasn’t willing to forgive them for keeping this from me. This was important information. Information that might even mean the difference between life and death. It was clear to me that I was going to have to find Frank now, and we were going to leave school and go to Redmond and find this dude. “We’ll try to find him.”

  Penelope nodded. She got up and walked over to the bank of lockers, where I now noticed a backpack was resting on the floor. She reached in and pulled out a sheaf of papers, then carried it over to me and held it out.

  “These are e-mails from Chad,” she said, swiping at her eyes. “Things Daisy forwarded to me. You can see how crazy he can be. But maybe the e-mails have something that would help you? Oh!”

  A little chime sounded from inside Penelope’s backpack. She ran over and pulled out her phone, glancing down at it.

  Suddenly her face turned white, and she let out an eardrum-piercing scream.

  I ran over to her and grabbed the phone. “Penelope, what is it?”

  But when I looked at the screen, I understood.

  LOOK N TEH LEMONADE STNNAD—MY LIEF DPENDS N IT!!!

  The text was from “Daisy Rodriguez.”

  TOGETHER FOREVER

  11

  FRANK

  I BURST INTO THE LOCKER room just as Joe was running out. We slammed into each other, but quickly straightened ourselves out. He was holding a phone in a pink rhinestone case and had a wild look in his eyes.

  “To the car,” he said simply. “We need to get to Funspot, pronto. We’ll have to break in. Sorry, Hector!”

  We ran down the hall toward the exit and pushed past the hall monitor—who was, thankfully, a small freshman girl who couldn’t do much to physically restrain us—and out to the parking lot. We bolted to the car and jumped in. I backed up the car and was squealing out of the parking lot before the orange-vested army of monitors burst out the door to follow us. Their concerned, disappointed faces registered for a moment in the rearview mirror, and then we were out on the streets—free.

  “Tell me what’s going on,” I said as I sped toward Funspot.

  So Joe caught me up on what he’d learned. Basically, Daisy had been seeing a bad-news guy at the same time she was dating Joe. Penelope thought she might have staged her disappearance to get some time to think, which was why she didn’t tell us right away. But now even Penelope was worried.

  I have to admit that all this information gave me a sinking feeling. Scary, criminal boyfriend?

  I wasn’t feeling good about Daisy’s chances, but then Joe told me about the text.

  “The lemonade stand?” I repeated. It had to be the stand right near the G-Force. The stand where I’d gone to fetch lemonade when I was starting to feel like a third wheel on our first trip to ride the Death Ride.

  Joe nodded. “Her life depends on it,” he repeated darkly.

  “That means she’s still alive,” I pointed out. It was cold comfort, maybe, but Joe and I knew enough about missing persons cases to know that this was good news.

  “So
does Chad fit the profile?” I asked, thinking out loud. “He really doesn’t want to be caught—check. If his motivation was to get Daisy, of course he would want to do everything he could to keep us from finding him.”

  Joe was scanning a few printouts of what looked like e-mails, but he nodded and added, “Has access to Funspot—check. If he has Daisy with him, she could get him all the access he wants.”

  I nodded. “He set up a fake e-mail account for Doug Spencer and hacked into the Piperatos’ e-mail—check. If he’s a college student hanging out in chat rooms, I’m guessing he has the ability and the means to figure out basic e-mail hacking.”

  Joe sighed, flipping through the papers. “But why would he have set up the Death Ride hoax?” he asked. “That’s what’s holding me up. If he just wanted to be with Daisy . . .” He stopped, frowning at one of the printouts. “Hmmm. Listen to this. ‘I know you’re fed up, sweetie, but don’t worry. I have a plan for us to be together forever—no parents, no school, no frustration.’ ”

  Joe looked over at me.

  “That could fit a plan to abduct her,” I said. “Maybe he knew she wouldn’t go along with it, so he’d have to use force?”

  Joe frowned, scanning further. “It looks like she was complaining to him about the Death Ride hoax—how scary it was, how worried she was about Kelly and Luke.” He turned to the next page. “He told her not to worry about it. It would all work out for the best.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Which would make sense, if he was behind the whole thing.”

  Joe sighed again. “Maybe he was trying to distract everyone so he’d have an easier time getting Daisy when he was ready?” he suggested. “Still, it seems strange. I was sitting right near Daisy when she disappeared. I didn’t hear any kind of struggle.”

  I glanced at my brother. “Maybe she was in on it,” I said quietly. “Maybe she wanted to run away with him, but somewhere along the way, it turned bad.”

  Joe didn’t say anything for a while. When I turned to look at him again, he was staring out the window, frowning.

  “Maybe,” he agreed finally, in a small voice. “Clearly, I didn’t know Daisy as well as I thought I did.”

  A few minutes later I pulled into the deserted Funspot parking lot. I pulled close to the fence, and we jumped out. Near the administration building, I knew, only a tall chain-link fence separated the parking lot from the park grounds. I figured my brother and I could scale it with no problem, and I was right.

  Inside, Funspot was completely empty. The silence and the total lack of people were disconcerting. We were used to seeing Funspot full of life, laughter, screaming kids. But now it was so quiet, like a funeral home. Or a morgue.

  I tried to push that thought from my head as we ran to the lemonade stand just across from the G-Force.

  For the first time—maybe it was the lack of people and life, or maybe just seeing the park in the cold light of day—I noticed how run-down the rest of the park was, aside from the shiny, space-age shape of the G-Force. The stands and attractions all bore a fresh coat of paint, but many of them had roofs that leaned precipitously, or beaten-up interiors. It almost seemed like Hector had spent all his money on the G-Force, then had to scramble to make the rest of the park look presentable.

  Suddenly a loud chime pierced the silence, making us both jump. We were only halfway to the lemonade stand. Joe pulled Penelope’s phone out of his pocket and held it out to me.

  There was a new text from Daisy Rodriguez.

  WHERE R U?

  COMING, he wrote back. “We have to hurry.”

  We turned a corner and suddenly there it was: the G-Force, the site of so many chills and so much heartbreak. After Daisy’s disappearance, the ride’s demolition had been put on hold. I felt a wiggle of fear in my stomach just looking at it. The front door hung open, and the ride almost looked as if it were leering at us. It stopped me in my tracks.

  “There it is,” Joe said, seeming to read my thoughts. He slowed to a stop beside me.

  “The ride that Hector thought would be his salvation,” I said.

  “Which turned out to bring on his downfall,” Joe added.

  I took a deep breath. “Let’s go,” I said, reaching out to touch my brother’s shoulder.

  But before we could move, I felt something cold and hard pressed between my shoulder blades. I had been on the wrong side of an armed man enough times to know that it was the barrel of a shotgun, and my blood ran cold.

  A creepy, raspy voice spoke up then: “You’re too late.”

  HLEP M

  12

  JOE

  I TURNED AROUND TO LOOK into the crazed eyes of Hector Rodriguez, who was holding a shotgun to my brother’s back.

  “Hector?” I asked, using my gentlest voice. “I thought you were in jail. Are you okay?”

  It was a rhetorical question, really. Clearly Hector was not okay. He had wild hair and eyes, and he looked like he hadn’t slept in days.

  “Oh,” he said now, the tension in his face disappearing, making his expression droop like a collapsed soufflé. “They let me out. Doug Spencer dropped the charges. He realized you can’t punish a man who has nothing left.” He looked from me to my brother. “Joe and Frank. I appreciate your coming to help, looking into the case, but it’s too late.”

  “Too late?” Frank asked, turning now and rubbing the spot on his back where Hector had pressed the shotgun.

  “I’ve lost everything,” Hector went on, staring into the distance. “All my money. My daughter. Maybe my mind.” He barked out a short laugh that held no mirth whatsoever. “All because of this stupid amusement park,” he went on, gesturing all around us. “I wanted to create something amazing out of something seedy—to give kids the childhood I never got.”

  Suddenly Hector stopped, and his expression changed. His face seemed to crumple in on itself, and then all at once he was crying. “Instead I lost my own child,” he said with a sob. “She didn’t want me to buy it. I should have listened to her. Now I’m trying to sell it, but there are no buyers, and even if one came forward, I would lose money. No one wants to own the park where children have disappeared.” He swiped at his eyes, the shotgun dangling in his other hand.

  “Hector,” Frank said gently. “Can you give me the gun? I know you don’t want to hurt anybody.”

  Hector looked at him blankly. “The gun is all I have left.”

  Uh-oh. There is nothing—nothing—more dangerous than a man who thinks he has nothing left to lose.

  “That’s not true, Hector,” Frank said in a rushed voice. “It isn’t too late. We think Daisy is still alive. We just got a text from her phone!”

  Hector’s eyes brightened. “What?”

  But before Frank could answer him, the phone chimed again. I looked down.

  YOU MUST COME ALONE. MUST!!!! IF YOU WANT ME ALIVE.

  “That’s right,” I said, shooting a look at Frank. “In fact, Daisy just texted me again, saying we should look in the administration building. Hector—can you unlock it?”

  Hector’s eyes brightened. “Of course!”

  Before I could say another word, he spun and ran off in the direction of the administration building, not even checking to make sure we were behind him.

  I grabbed my brother. “Come on!”

  We ran toward the lemonade stand, our feet thundering on the blacktop path.

  The lemonade stand had an open front where the lemonade was sold, but that was completely empty. There was a small door leading into a closed back area, but that was locked up tight. I leaned forward and tried to look inside.

  “Where is she?” Frank gasped behind me.

  I grabbed the phone and typed as fast as I could.

  WHERE R U?

  It was only seconds before the phone chimed with a response.

  HELP

  Then a few seconds later:

  PLZ! HLEP M

  My heart was pounding in my chest. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know wha
t to do! Frantic, I texted back:

  HOW? WHERE?

  Seconds later the phone chimed again.

  INSIDE

  Inside where? My fingers twitched with the impulse to text. But before I typed anything, I looked the stand over again. That’s when I noticed that the padlock on a chain that held the door shut wasn’t locked—it was dangling. I lunged over, grabbed it, and unlinked it from the chain. Yanking the chain off completely, I slammed the door open and charged in.

  It was less than a second before something huge and heavy struck me over the head. Pain exploded through my brain. I fell like a stone, keeping consciousness just long enough to see Frank pounded over the head and dragged in behind me.

  Then everything went black.

  UNMASKED

  13

  FRANK

  DID YOU ENJOY YOUR SNOOZE?”

  I came to with my head pounding. It felt like an entire fifty-story skyscraper had been dumped onto my head. I moaned, reaching up to rub it, only to find that every part of my body hurt now. Wait—where was I?

  I blinked and looked around. I was in a dim room lit with small purple lights. Actually—I felt vaguely ill as I realized this place was all too familiar. It was the site of one too many unhappy moments in my recent life.

  We were inside the G-Force.

  “Boys? Are you ready to talk?”

  That’s when I noticed her. Standing over us, dressed in a sleek turtleneck sweater and jeans, looking like a million bucks. Not a hair out of place. Makeup perfect. An aluminum baseball bat sitting at her feet.

  Daisy Rodriguez.

  Seeing me watching her, she smiled. “Ah, Frank. I always suspected you were the quicker one of the two.” She walked over next to me and suddenly kicked a huge heap that lay just a few feet away. The heap moaned, and I realized that it was Joe.

  “Wake up, sleepyhead. I think we should talk about our relationship.”

  Joe moaned again. “You’re so mean,” he whimpered, which was both sort of pathetic and dead on, under the circumstances.

  She smiled again. “I wouldn’t have to be if the two of you would just take a hint,” she said, sighing and running a hand over her perfectly smooth hairdo. “Really, guys? A rattlesnake? Cut brakes? Honestly, Joe, if I’d known you were this devoted to me, maybe I would have given you more of a shot.”