Into Thin Air Read online

  I blinked, feeling a sudden clarity. “You’re behind the whole thing. The hoax. Your own disappearance.”

  She laughed. “Oh, finally. That’s right, Frank. And I suppose you want to know why?”

  Joe struggled to sit up. “Your father’s a wreck,” he said. “He thinks he’s lost everything.”

  Daisy’s expression hardened. “Good,” she said. “Let him see what it feels like for a while.” She strolled over to the bank of cushy purple seats and sat down, letting out a sigh. “He gave away my entire future to buy this stupid park, this stupid ride. Before Funspot, I was set to go to Dalton Academy with Luke this year, and I had my sights set on Princeton! Now I’m stuck at Bayport with you losers, and I’ll be lucky to afford community college. Thanks, Dad.”

  “But what are you trying to do?” I asked, attempting to hold myself up on my elbows. The room was spinning. “Okay, you punished him, good job. Why not come back now?”

  Daisy pursed her lips. “I didn’t mean for it to go this far,” she admitted. “I thought the Death Ride hoax would be enough to convince my dad to sell the park. But it didn’t work like I hoped it would, so I had to up the ante: disappearing myself.”

  She stood and walked toward Joe, looking down at him with a thoughtful sigh. “I actually did like you,” she said. “Pity. When I found out you were some kind of amateur detective, I realized I had a problem. I thought I could control you if I hired you to look into Kelly’s disappearance, but you two weren’t as malleable as I thought. You actually investigated. Like, without me.” She shook her head. “It became clear I’d have to ditch you. Although it is kind of funny—you’re such a hot investigator, and you never noticed I’m kind of a computer genius?”

  She smiled. “That’s how I hacked into the Piperatos’ e-mail and set up a fake account for Doug Spencer, to throw the police. It didn’t work for long, but, well, it was an effective distraction. The cops haven’t found me yet. But you two were getting a little too close. So I had to get Penelope to do me another favor.”

  Joe rubbed his head. “She’s in on the whole thing,” he said, seemingly just realizing it now.

  Daisy nodded. “She’s an excellent best friend,” she said simply. “Very loyal.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “Where have you been all this time?”

  Daisy smirked. “Wasn’t I just telling you what a good friend Penelope is? She also happens to have a spare attic bedroom in her house. I was quite comfortable there, and her parents never suspected a thing.”

  “But how did you manage to put Poky in our car?” asked Joe.

  “I had Penelope’s help there, too. She followed you to the prison after school and texted me where you were. Then she picked me up and we got Poky from the park, and it was a matter of moments to place her on the driver’s seat.” Daisy looked smug at her cleverness.

  “What about cutting the brakes?” I put in.

  “After Penelope told you about Doug Spencer giving me the side eye and acting suspicious, I knew you’d end up looking for him. So I snuck into your driveway Friday night and did a little job on the brakes, just to slow you down—or not, as the case may be.” She chuckled. “Looks like they failed right on schedule.”

  I looked from Joe to Daisy. “Well, I’m glad we had this little talk,” I said. “What now?”

  She sighed. “Oh, Frank. Oh, Joe. I didn’t want it to come to this, you know.”

  Joe looked unimpressed. “You mentioned,” he said.

  She looked at him almost sadly. “After you tracked down Doug Spencer, I knew it was just a matter of time until you figured out the truth. So you’re going to have to go away for a while.”

  She walked into the center of the circle of seats and leaned over the railing, lifting up the carpet and running her fingers over the floor until she found the catch to the trapdoor that lay there. The door lifted straight up. My stomach dropped, and I looked at Joe, who seemed to be having the same horrifying realization that I was.

  Zzzzzt! A blue spark shot out of Daisy’s hand, and I turned to see that she was holding a Taser. “You’re going to have to get in,” she said, nodding at the tiny crawlspace where Kelly and Luke had hidden before being escorted to a hotel by Cal Nevins, the old G-Force ride operator.

  Joe looked even more horrified. “Both of us?” he asked. “But—but—”

  Daisy sighed impatiently. “It will be uncomfortable,” she said, “but don’t worry—I’ve put plenty of water down there, and a human being can survive up to two weeks without food! If it takes longer than that for my dad to sell Funspot, I’ll come by and bring you some Luna bars.”

  “You’re insane,” I said, the truth dawning on me. The minute I realized what Daisy had done, I’d grasped that she was a little “off.” But no, she was completely, utterly nuts. She was going to lock us in a crawlspace for two weeks? Until Funspot sold? Whenever that might be?

  She narrowed her eyes at me. “I’m determined,” she corrected. “And really, Frank—I tried my darnedest to warn you two. Is it my fault if you chose to put my well-being above your own?”

  She pushed the buttons on the Taser again, and more sparks crackled at us.

  “Get in,” she ordered.

  There didn’t seem to be much point in arguing.

  I looked at Joe, and we slowly got to our feet—my head spinning—and climbed over the railing.

  “You first,” Daisy said to Joe, and he gave me a grim frown before stepping into the crawlspace and getting down on all fours. The space was far too small for us to stand, and with two of us in there, we wouldn’t be able to turn around or move much at all.

  She turned to me and sparked the Taser again. “Now you.”

  I swallowed hard and stepped into the tiny space, struggling to arrange my arms and legs so that Joe and I could both fit.

  Daisy grabbed the trapdoor. “Farewell, boys. Hope you don’t suffocate down there.” She chuckled lightly, and I was struck again by how completely crazy she was. Then she started closing the door. I swallowed and tried to steel myself against the claustrophobia, the horrible feeling of being trapped, but it was even worse than I could have imagined. The trapdoor came down and I almost stopped feeling human. We were just two animals, trapped down here, trying to stay alive.

  At the last minute I moved my hand so that a finger covered the right side of the latch. I clicked my tongue on the roof of my mouth, mimicking the sound the door would make when it caught. I could feel Joe try to turn and look at me, but it was impossible in the small space.

  We could hear Daisy sigh and then grab her baseball bat. A few seconds later, the door to the G-Force opened and we could hear birds, wind rustling through leaves—all the normal sounds of outdoor life. Then the door slammed behind her, and all was silent again.

  When I was sure she was gone, I pushed the trapdoor open and stood.

  TRAPPED

  14

  JOE

  I CAN BARELY EXPRESS HOW relieved I was when Frank opened the trapdoor and stood up.

  “Oh my gosh,” I breathed, grabbing the rim of the crawlspace and stretching my legs. “Frank, you’re a genius.”

  He shook his head, looking around. “It was instinct,” he said. “I didn’t even think about it. I started to panic, and my hand just went over the latch.” He sighed. “Anyway, we’re still trapped in here.”

  “Or are we?” I asked. I reached into my pocket and pulled out Penelope’s cell phone. Daisy had forgotten to take it back from me before she left us to rot away. I was still having trouble believing how completely cruel and messed up she’d turned out to be. But I didn’t have time to think about it right now anyway—we had to get out!

  I clicked the button to wake up the phone and squinted into the screen. No cell service; the thick walls of the G-Force must have blocked the signal. I felt the tiny hope that had lit up inside me snuffed out.

  “No service,” I told Frank.

  He didn’t reply, but just ran over to the side o
f the ride and started banging on it.

  “HELLO! IS ANYONE OUT THERE? WE’RE TRAPPED!”

  I came and joined him, banging so hard my knuckles hurt. “HECTOR! ARE YOU OUT THERE? HELP, PLEASE!!!”

  We pounded the walls and screamed for what seemed like forever but, according to the clock on Penelope’s phone, was only about fifteen minutes.

  “The park’s closed,” I pointed out glumly.

  Frank bit his lip, staring at the walls as if he could see through them. “Hector’s still out there somewhere,” he said. “At some point he has to come look for us, right? And he’ll notice that the G-Force is closed when the door used to be open.”

  I frowned. I wanted to believe that, but Hector hadn’t exactly seemed like himself when we’d last seen him. “I hope so,” I said. “But he doesn’t quite seem rational. And Daisy could be out there too, watching, ready to derail him if he comes close.”

  Frank walked back to the purple seats and collapsed onto one with a sigh. “Think back,” he said. “Who knows we came to Funspot?”

  I shrugged, thinking it over. “Penelope and Jamie,” I replied.

  Frank groaned. “Penelope’s working with Daisy,” he said.

  I nodded. “And Jamie’s like her second best friend—even if she noticed something, I’m sure Penelope could just make up an explanation.”

  I walked over to the seats and sat down opposite Frank. “This is bad.”

  He leaned back, rubbing his eyes. “Nobody will realize we’re missing till school ends, at the earliest. That’s an hour from now.”

  I closed my eyes, thinking. Even when school was over . . . “Daisy’s crazy,” I said, stating the obvious. “And she has Penelope on her side. If someone noticed we were missing, she could probably distract them fairly quickly. Look how many times she distracted us from figuring out she was behind her own disappearance.”

  Frank grunted a response. We were both quiet for a few minutes, thinking our own separate thoughts. Then, suddenly, he jumped up.

  “Hand me the phone,” he said. I did, and he clicked it on. “See? It’s a smartphone. Which means even if we don’t have cell service, I should be able to turn on Wi-Fi.”

  He touched a few icons, dragged his finger across the screen, and then read, frowning.

  “There’s not much,” he said. “Just a weak signal called ‘funspot’—it must be the park’s internal Wi-Fi.” He touched something, then groaned. “It’s password protected.”

  “Try the usual suspects,” I suggested. As investigators, we’d hacked into a computer system now and again. It’s amazing how often people use the same common passwords—things like “password” (as the Piperatos had) or “letmein.”

  Frank typed furiously, but I could tell by his little exasperated noises that nothing was working.

  I closed my eyes and felt myself dip. Sleep felt all too close, like a warm blanket just ready to wrap itself around me. But by my calculations, it was barely one o’clock in the afternoon. I startled awake. “Frank—are you getting tired?”

  Frank continued tapping away at the phone. “I could use a nap,” he replied. “Why?”

  I was starting to sweat, too. It was getting hot inside the G-Force. I looked around, trying to spot the ventilation system. “The ride isn’t turned on, Frank. Are we going to run out of air?”

  Frank didn’t reply, but I could tell by the startled look he gave me that running out of air was a distinct possibility. He scratched his head and held the phone in his lap. “Nothing’s working,” he murmured.

  I sat up, a thought occurring to me. It was getting harder to concentrate, and I didn’t know whether that came from stress, lack of oxygen, or the fact that I’d recently been slammed in the head with a baseball bat. “Daisy is kind of a computer genius,” I said. “That’s what she just told us, right?”

  Frank nodded. “Right.”

  I leaned forward. “So isn’t it likely that she set up the funspot Wi-Fi for her dad?”

  Frank’s eyes widened. He looked down at the phone again. “Then she would have set the password.” He held his finger over the touch-screen keyboard, then looked at me, waiting.

  “Try Joe,” I suggested. Recent events taken into consideration, it seemed like wishful thinking, but I still had to try it.

  “No,” Frank said.

  “Hector,” I suggested. Also unlikely, but who knew?

  “No.”

  “What’s her mother’s name? Lucy.”

  Frank typed it in. “No.”

  I swallowed hard. “Luke,” I suggested.

  “No.”

  I sighed. “Chad,” I said.

  “No.”

  “He probably never existed,” I said, realizing. “She probably made him up and had Penelope feed us the idea to get us over to Funspot. Man, I’m such a fool. Why do I always fall for the wrong—”

  “Wait.” Frank interrupted my self-pity party. “Daisy wanted to go to college, right? It was really important to her. What was . . . ?”

  “Princeton,” I said, remembering.

  Frank’s fingers danced over the tiny screen. His face lit up in a smile. “We’re in,” he said.

  I jumped up and ran over to sit beside him as he opened up Penelope’s e-mail and clicked the compose button. He addressed the e-mail to [email protected] and wrote,

  HELP US! THIS IS FROM THE HARDYS. WE’RE TRAPPED IN THE G-FORCE!! WE FOUND DAISY!

  Then he hit send.

  We waited a few seconds. I half expected Hector to come charging in, but nothing happened.

  “He may not be checking his e-mail,” Frank pointed out.

  “He may be sobbing onto his shotgun and flagellating himself, you mean,” I muttered. Not to put too fine a point on it.

  Frank opened the e-mail account again and quickly dashed off a few more messages—to Dad, to Mom, to Jamie King. It seemed like another half hour went by, and nothing happened.

  I was beginning to lose hope. “What if the Wi-Fi signal isn’t strong enough, and the messages aren’t going through?” I asked.

  But then I heard it. Footsteps charging up the metal steps to the G-Force, and a key turning in the side of the ride.

  “Boys? Are you in there?”

  The door swung open, and a bright shaft of sunlight shone in. A dark silhouette stepped into the ride and was gradually illuminated by the dim lighting.

  “Hector!” Frank and I both yelled.

  “You found Daisy?” Hector asked with a hopeful smile.

  I nodded, shooting a sideways look at my brother. How to put this? “We, ah, have good news and bad news. . . .”

  NEW BEGINNINGS

  15

  FRANK

  WOW,” I BREATHED AS JOE and I stepped through the familiar entrance gates to Funspot a few months later. “I’m getting major déjà vu—and not the good kind.”

  Dad stepped up behind us, clapping us both on the shoulders. “Come on, boys. I know this must bring back some strange memories, but we’re here to support the community.”

  “That’s right,” Mom added, pushing her hair behind her ears as Aunt Trudy put on her beloved garden visor. “I, for one, am thrilled that Doug Spencer managed to get together the funds to buy this place back. I have lots of happy memories of bringing the two of you here when you were younger, and Doug Spencer was in charge.”

  Aunt Trudy smiled. “And I think it’s lovely that those nice Piperato Brothers invested in the park, especially after they were falsely accused of staging those kidnappings.” She stopped short of saying by the two of you, but Joe and I exchanged guilty looks, nonetheless. “It shows that they stand behind their work. I can’t wait to try this new ride of theirs!”

  It was true—Derek and Greg Piperato had made a major investment in Funspot, and so far, they really seemed to care about the park. The two of them had starred in a series of television commercials highlighting all the improvements they’d helped make to the park: “All-new food court! All-new games! And a
n all-new attitude: We want to make great memories for your family!”

  Most notably, the Piperatos had designed an all-new ride, gratis, built where the old G-Force had stood. And tonight—at Funspot’s reopening for the season—it looked like half the county had turned out to give it a try.

  Honestly, the Piperatos, with their stripy zoot suits and waxed mustaches, made the perfect amusement park mascots. When they’d taken Joe and me out to dinner to thank us for helping clear their name—to the nicest restaurant either of us had ever set foot in—Greg told us that they were going to “scale back” their ride-designing business and just focus on Funspot for a while. “This has been, no pun intended, a roller-coaster ride for the two of us,” he said. “It’s helped us get our priorities straight. And I think it’s helped us realize that what we really want to do is bring as much fun to kids’ lives as we can.”

  The Piperatos weren’t the only ones who’d rededicated themselves to improving kids’ lives. When he sold Funspot—as he’d predicted, for notably less than he’d bought it—Hector had to “start over,” as he put it. So he’d gone back to school to study to be a middle-school teacher. “I realize that what I really love is kids,” he’d told Frank and me in a catch-up e-mail the week before. “This way I can make a real difference in their lives, before they end up like me or Cal.”

  “Hey there, Frank and Joe Hardy!” As we walked toward the line for the new ride, Derek Piperato suddenly leaped in front of us with a teeny-tiny video camera. “Have you come to try out the Glee-Force? You know what Greg and I are calling it? The Life Ride! HA!”

  I smiled nervously at the camera. “Hi there, Derek. You’re not getting back in the viral video business, are you?”

  Derek chuckled and dropped the camera. “Gentlemen, certainly not. This is for our company website—no fancy editing, no effects. We’re done with viral videos. We learned our lesson!”