Kingdom Keepers III(97)

“Do not tell me you want to leave here!” Willa said. When everyone looked at her, she sat upright. “Hey…now wait a minute…enough with those looks. We’ve got to get something straight: just because you may disagree doesn’t mean you’re the traitor! You should see how you’re all looking at me! What if I’m the one voice of reason in all this? Huh? What if I’m right and Philby’s the one leading us out for the Overtakers to catch us?”

They all looked at Philby, whose expression didn’t change one bit. “Nice try,” he said to Willa.

“I’m not trying anything!” she protested.

“Except to make me out to be a bad guy.”

“I’m just asking, are we safer in here or out there? And I think the answer’s pretty obvious.”

“Willa has a point,” Maybeck said, his attention fixed on her. She smiled at him for backing her up and Maybeck looked away. “A couple things are pretty obvious. First of all: we need to stay paired up at all times. If there is a traitor, we can’t allow him or her the chance to signal anyone. Secondly: there are too many of us. We’re too big a group to go sneaking around. I’m thinking we send a search party for the hats. I nominate Finn, Philby, and Charlene.”

“I hate to point this out,” Charlene said, “but whoever the traitor is, he or she would love nothing more than to see the three of us captured. Philby is our brains, Finn our leader—”

“And you’re our jock,” Willa said. “Yeah. I see what you mean.”

Everyone turned his or her attention—and suspicions—onto Maybeck. Finn knew that of all of them Maybeck had been a captive of the Overtakers the longest. He could have been compromised and no one would know it.

“Can I say something?” Amanda said. “Do you people see what’s happening? Jess and I, we’re new to this. But one of the things that’s so impressive about you, about this group, is how you work together. How one person picks up where the other person leaves off. I mean…it’s actually pretty awesome. And now, all of a sudden, in like five minutes, no one is trusting anyone and every decision is taking about twice as long as you usually take. Just an observation,” she said, sitting back.

“How do you undo something like this?” Charlene asked. “It’s not like I want to see any of you as the traitor, but how am I supposed to not? Wayne wrecked it.”

“But he wrecked it for a reason,” Philby said.

“He knew how this would mess us up,” Finn said.

“Wayne operates on serious bandwidth,” Philby said. “He wouldn’t have thrown this out there if it wasn’t important.”

“We’ll pick from a hat,” Finn said. “Three names. They’ll go to the store.”

“No irony there,” Willa said. “A hat?”

“We don’t even have a hat!” Maybeck said.

“It’s an expression,” Finn said.

The gloomy mood was broken.

Charlene wrote out their names on small pieces of paper and folded them up. Jess drew three from the pile.

“Philby, Finn, and Charlene,” she announced, unfolding and reading them.

“Fate,” said Philby.

“I rest my case,” said Maybeck. “I am the man.”





35


FINN HADN’T SAID ANYTHING, but he’d known he had to be part of the scout team; they would need him to fully cross over to all-clear and enter the gift shop in order to open it for the others. After a few minutes of sneaking over to the Mission: Space Gift Shop, being careful not to be seen, Finn unlocked the doors from the inside and admitted Philby and Charlene.

“I don’t feel good about this,” Finn said. “Seems Security—the real park Security—would know if someone was cruising the gift shop.”

“If park Security’s doing anything, they’re dealing with whatever the Overtakers failed to clean up after the Test Track wreck.”

“We still should make it quick,” said Charlene. “We don’t even know if this is really the clue Wayne meant for us.”

“Hats,” Philby said. “It has to be hats.”

It was dark and gloomy in the shop despite the abundance of cheerful gifts, lending the vast space a sense of foreboding. They split up. Charlene knew where the princess hats were; in fact, she knew much more about the layout of the gift shop than the boys did. She directed Philby to the back and Finn to the left.

Finn found a collection of khaki-colored ball caps for sale. The caps bore a variety of logos and emblems, which made him wonder if those details had anything to do with whatever Wayne wanted them to see. Philby discovered a space helmet and some character hats. Finn joined him in the back, feeling overwhelmed. How were they supposed to make any sense of this? There were a dozen or more different hats, any one of which might be important.