Kingdom Keepers III(53)

The driver announced himself and must have passed the guard some identification for him and his passenger. Would the guard check the back of the truck?

He didn’t. The truck pulled forward. Thirty yards past the checkpoint Finn’s DHI stopped flickering. He was fully projected now, and he had to get out of the moving truck before being spotted. He calmed himself, repeating the procedure he’d outlined for Philby, not forcing, but allowing his DHI to realize all-clear. Then he rolled over the side of the moving pickup truck and dropped. If he’d been human, he would have broken bones and suffered a road rash that would have stayed with him through Christmas. Instead, he fell to the pavement and bounced. No matter how prepared he’d been, he couldn’t keep fear entirely out of his system. He felt the contact with the asphalt; his elbows and knees hurt as he rolled and sat up, now on the edge of the access road. His palms were scraped, though not badly, and it occurred to him he’d have these wounds when he awakened later that morning, that he’d need an excuse for them to use on his mom. But he was in surprisingly good shape for a kid who had just jumped from a moving vehicle.

He stood up, took his bearings by locating Epcot’s famous golf ball, and headed off to join the others.

His surprise, upon arriving at the rendezvous, was Philby.

He was standing there, wearing only his underpants.

“No, I’m not kidding you,” Philby said. “It was a situation beyond my control.”

“As in?” asked Charlene, who couldn’t keep the smirk off her face.

“As in, I happened to fall asleep before I expected. I was getting dressed—putting some dark clothes on—when I heard my mom coming to check on me. She’d probably heard my dresser drawers or something—”

“Your drawers?” Maybeck said, winning a volley of laughter.

“And I had to get into bed fast, and next thing I know I’m waking up here.”

“Here,” said Jess, who’d worn a sweater. Philby thanked her as he tied it around his waist.

“I can all-clear into one of the gift shops and borrow you a pair of pants. We just have to put them back before we leave.”

That’s exactly what he did on their way to the Wonders of Life pavilion. Finn walked through the front door of the Future World gift shop, found some clothes for Philby, and shoved them through a mail slot. Philby ended up in sweatpants and a Test Track T-shirt.

“Okay, that’s the entrance,” Willa said as they approached a line of potted evergreen trees. The trees had been cleverly placed to both block the entry ramp and screen the closed pavilion from view.

“Over here,” Finn said, moving them into the planting to hide. He lowered his voice. “We’d better split up.” He’d long since accepted that the other Keepers looked to him to have a plan. “That way if there’s trouble, maybe one group can help the other. Or, at the very least, not all of us get caught at the same time.”

“That doesn’t sound great,” Charlene said, the climbing rope carried over her left shoulder.

“Do you feel like climbing?” Finn asked.

She peered out at the round pavilion. “I should be able to get up those Xs to that lip in the middle of the glass. It looks like I can get clear around the building.”

“There’s a sunroom terrace, over there,” Philby said, pointing. “If you could lower the rope—”

“Yeah!” said Maybeck.

“You’ll need to tie off both ends,” Charlene told Maybeck. “I’ll double it, like we do for climbing, so we can pull it down from the bottom after we leave.”

“No sweat.”

“Philby, Willa, and Maybeck will climb and meet you on the balcony,” Finn said. “Philby, you or Maybeck could all-clear and go through the door and get it open.

“Amanda, Jess, and I will hang near the front doors. Once you guys are in, if there’s no one watching the front door, one of you will come let us in. You guys will take the second floor, we’ll take the ground level.”

Charlene held up her mobile phone. She wore a black baseball cap to help hide her blond hair. “I’ll call if I spot trouble.”

“Might be too risky,” Finn said. “Too noisy. Let’s stick with the flashlights. Three flashes is clear. One means we hang here and wait for you to come back.”

“Okay,” Charlene said, the strength in her voice belying her pretense of bravery. “But you’ll need a view of the sunroom.”

“I’m with you,” Maybeck said. “I can give you a leg up, then I’ll get around to the side and wait for your signal. I’ll pass it on.”