Don't give up on me ✓

[31] Rome

Chapter 31: Rome

We came home to a flurry of movement.  Zander had warned us of big news the moment we arrived.  

People were running around us and random things were being brought into the hallway.  Nathaniel and I found ourselves standing calmly in the middle of this chaos.  

He looked over to me and I intentionally looked away.

I hadn't forgiven him for being rude to Dev.

"We got a lead on the location of the new prison site, from the hostage you brought in at the bowling alley."

"I thought he was dead?" I asked.

"Dead men tell tales," Hugo responded, a touch too dramatically, as he ran past us with a trombone.

I'm pretty sure that's not how the saying goes. He didn't learn the pirate code...

Mrs Maythorne was darting around so quickly, it was impossible to get a word in sideways.  We glimpsed Mohan in the study, concentrating hard on something.  So we asked him to fill us in.

"The man said he's been following us since we went sniffing around the old prison site. Turns out he was scheduled to report back on us today," Mohan said, from the calmness of the study.

We closed the doors behind us, to shut out the sounds of chaos outside.  It seemed like Nate and I were the last to know.

Nate said, "That makes sense. When they left the old prison site, they left a few spies behind to pick up on any enemies that came to visit."

"Right. Well guess what happened when they called?" Mohan said... "I picked up."

Not a hard guess.

He was probably trying to be dramatic, so I added in a gasp. Mohan appreciated it, "Yes, I picked up and I pretended to be him while we recorded the conversation."

I guess Mohan can speak their devilish language as well as understand it.

"Can we listen to it?" Nate asked.

"You won't understand it. It's in their tongue, but we replayed that message a hundred times, until we finally heard something."

"What?"

"A train station."

Again, what is with these dramatic moments?

When he saw that neither Nate nor I was hooked, he added, "The announcement of a particular train station in the background: Rome."

"He's in Rome!" I gasped.

"Rome doesn't have a station called Rome. That would make their subway system suck if they only had one stop," Nate said.

"So it's a mystery," I resolved.

"No it's not," Mohan stated, "That clue, along with the +33 country code of the caller ID, points us to one city in particular."

"Paris," Nate said, bursting the theatrical bubble he'd been building.

Mrs Maythorne walked in, bags already packed, "We are going to Paris."

Perfect timing.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

I sat listening in on Mrs Maythorne and Mohan plan logistics in the room next door.  They'd left the door open, so sound traveled easily.

Some may call it eavesdropping, I call it good seating.

"I want to minimize the amount of time they take off school. Say we find a flight that leaves this Thursday night, we'll arrive in Paris on Friday. If we spend three days there, we can fly back on Monday."