Chapter 7
"Aaargh!" Marissa and I both cried as we opened the door and found ourselves face to face with Amazons. We jumped back into the safety of the pipe maze, but before the door closed, a deep, growly voice commanded, "Stop!" and the door crashed open.
My mind flashed with the vision of us being chased through a sweaty maze of pipes by massive women in tight black pants and manly voices. But when I looked over my shoulder it wasn't Amazons chasing us.
It was the Guard Boss.
"Girls! Come back," he shouted.
So Marissa and I had a split-second eyeball conversation, then screeched to a halt and headed back. But then, as we're stepping inside the boiler room, the Guard Boss says, "Wait a minute—you two are in on this, aren't you?"
"Us?" we both say, getting all wide-eyed. "No!"
"What else would you be doing back there?" he says, pointing into the dark hallway of the pipe maze as his eyes narrow into little slits. "And now that I think of it, how else would you ever have found me in that janitor's closet?"
"We were hiding from someone!"
"Oh, yeah?" he says like we're a couple of lying brats. "Like who?"
"Like that record label guy with the fluffy ponytail and gray suit," I tell him. Then I point behind him. "Uh, say bye-bye to your lovely ladies."
"Wha—" he whirls around, but the Amazons have already escaped into the main corridor through a different, larger door. The Guard Boss charges after them, but the Amazons have disappeared without a trace.
When he's done barking orders into his radio, I ask him, "Did you get anything out of them?"
"No! They act like they don't speak English! I dragged them here hoping the other two had taken the boy here." He pulls a scarf out of his pocket. "I found this crammed in the door to keep it from latching, so I know they intended to come back here, but I don't know why."
He squints at me. "And what were you doing in the pipe gallery?"
"You call that sweaty maze a gallery?"
"Quit avoiding the question—what were you doing back there?"
This is what I hate about being a kid. Adults give you zero credit for having any brains and all the credit for causing any trouble. Maybe kids are just convenient targets—I don't know.
What I do know is that when an adult is squinting at me like I'm the cause of his troubles,
I can't seem to help rolling my eyes and saying something sarcastic.
So I rolled my eyes and said, "Playing hide and go seek with scarves."
"What?" he says, squinting at me even harder.
Good ol' Marissa steps in, saying, "We went in a door to the side of the stage that we saw two of the Amazons come out of, and we discovered a trail of scarves—like that one?" She points to the scarf in his hand. "Like the ones they bound and gagged you with? We followed them and they led us here."
He blinks at Marissa. "A trail of scarves?"
So I tell him, "Look, you can waste your time following them back to the stage door if you don't believe us, or we can put our heads together and try to figure this out." Then, before he can say anything, I add, "Ace being hauled off by Amazons was masterminded by someone in the group's entourage."
He hesitates, then asks, "What makes you think that?"
Marissa and I glance at each other, because we both know that the answer will totally blow our credibility.
"Tell me!"
So Marissa delicately clears her throat and says, "Uh . . . flatus of the intestines?"
"What?"
I decide to try a different approach. "You said you were in the stairwell when you ran into the Amazons, right?"
"Right."
"How many of them were there?"
"Three."
"Were they coming up or going down?"
"I was going up, they were coming down."
"It was one of those jog-around-stairwells, right? Could anyone else have been around the corner?"
"Maybe . . ."
"So how did they ambush you?"
"They physically stopped me, blindfolded me, then tied me up, and carried me off."
I look him right in the eyes. "At any time during this whole thing, did you hear anyone speak?"
He nods. "They argued about what to do with me."
"Was there a man's voice? Or were they all female."
"All female." Then he grumbles, "It wouldn't have been so mortifying if there'd been a man. . . ."
"So they did speak English?"
"Yes! Those two were just pretending not to understand me when I caught them and brought them here."
"How about odors. Do you remember—"
"Oh God, yes!" His face pinches up. "They threw me in the closet and honest to God I thought they were fumigating me."
I smile at him and say, "That was flatus of the intestines."
"Huh?"
"Intestinal gas."
He blinks at me. "You're saying that was a fart?"
Just then his radio crackles to life. He whips it off his belt and says, " Sam-One," into it, then listens as the person on the other end says, "We've monitored all exits, no sign of them.
The M M's going to shut this thing down. We told him we had strict orders from you not to, but he's heading to the stage now to pull the plug."
"I'm on it," the Guard Boss says, then signs off and starts talking to us over his shoulder, like of course we'll be tagging along. "So you think one of the peoplewith the band is behind this?"
"Right. They probably didn't want you to see them with the Amazons." Then I ask, "You said they stole your I.D., your radio, your key card—anything else? I mean, how did they know about the pipe gallery, or that it led from the boiler room to a door by the stage?"
He scowls and shakes his head. "They took my I.D. bundle—among other things, it's got a mini map of all the levels—including the pipe gallery."
"Okay," I say, chasing him up one short set of stairs and down another, "so the real question is why did someone want Ace out of the way?" I start thinking out loud: "Love? I doubt it. Money? What money? They must've spent a bundle setting this video shoot up and now the plug's getting pulled?"
But then Marissa says, "How about hate? Toby and Jackson don't seem to like Ace, and neither do their moms. All that tension about Ace doing lead first. And hey, did you notice? Toby's mom's got a silk scarf in her hair!" She was hurrying along right beside me, sort of panting. "Bad timing, though, 'cause it looks like Ace got to be first and last, huh?"
A little tickle ran down my spine. "Marissa!" I gasped, but before she could answer, I took off running.
I needed to get backstage.
Fast.
