Poached by Stuart Gibbs

watching video of FunJungle’s four new Siberian tiger cubs, which were only a few days old. Siberian tigers are almost extinct, so any babies were a huge boon to the survival of the species. People around the world had been thrilled by the news of their birth. Pete Thwacker was chomping at the bit to get them on display—or at least to get photos of them in the papers—but for the time being the cubs needed rest and privacy. Most FunJungle employees hadn’t even had the chance to see them yet. The cubs were all lodged at their mother’s teats, nursing hungrily. They were so helpless; they couldn’t even open their eyes yet.
    â€œHow’re they doing?” Dad asked.
    â€œFantastic,” Arthur replied. “In the wild, two would have been lucky to survive, but here, all four are probably going to come through. Even the little runt there.” He tapped the screen, pointing to a cub significantly smaller than the others. His littermates kept shoving him away, but each time, he’d scramble back into the fray.
    â€œDo they have names yet?” I asked.
    Arthur shook his head. “Pete Thwacker wants to have a big contest to name them. He’s gonna milk these cubs for as much PR as he can.”
    â€œCan’t really blame him,” Dad said. “This place needs all the good PR it can get.”
    â€œMaybe,” Arthur grumbled, “but it’d be nice to call them something other than Cubs One, Two, Three, and Four.”
    Dad grabbed two chairs for us, then pulled a DVD out of his pocket. “My pal in security copied all the footage from the camera feeds outside KoalaVille last night,” he told me. “Turns out, there’s no footage from inside the exhibit. The morons never hooked it up properly.”
    I made a show of surprise, not wanting to tell Dad I knew this already. Because then I’d have to tell him how I knew, which was a conversation I didn’t feel like having quite yet. There was too much else to focus on. “Have you watched all this already?”
    â€œNo. Only a few minutes of it. But I wanted to examine the rest more closely.” Dad inserted the DVD into the hard drive, then brought up the file. It was quite large—a few hours of footage from multiple cameras—so it took a while to load. When it finally popped up, the computer screen displayed four different squares, each showing video from a different angle outside Kazoo’s exhibit. The time was digitallystamped at the bottom of each. The video quality was surprisingly good; one of the many companies J.J. McCracken owned made high-quality surveillance cameras, so he’d given himself a deal on them.
    The video began at four thirty p.m. There were no tourists lined up for the exhibit, as it was supposed to be closed for the night, although lots of people were jamming the bazaar, buying Kazoo merchandise.
    Dad fast-forwarded a few minutes, then slowed down the video again. At 4:43 I ran past one of the cameras, then appeared on another, then showed up at the door to the keepers’ office. My backpack dangled over one shoulder, obviously empty. I knocked, then entered Summer’s code in the keypad and slipped into the office.
    â€œYour knowing that code raised a lot of questions in security,” Dad said. “Apparently, no one there knew J.J. McCracken had his own secret access code. Not even Marge.”
    â€œWhat Marge doesn’t know could fill a library,” I said.
    â€œMarge—and most everyone else—assumes you must have stolen the code somehow,” Dad went on. “Which indicates a lot of premeditation. Like you planned this theft well ahead of time.”
    I swallowed hard, concerned. “Why doesn’t Marge just ask J.J. about the code?”
    â€œI doubt he’d admit the truth about it,” Dad said. “Then his secret code wouldn’t be a secret anymore.”
    I sighed and nodded agreement.
    Dad