Carloââ
âShotgun!â said Darrell, settling in next to his mother as she slid behind the wheel, with Wade, Lily, and Becca piling into the roomy backseat. After accustoming herself to the dashboard, Sara pushed the car into gear, and they set off for Monte Carlo.
It was going on six p.m., and the traffic in the thick of Nice lessened slightly when they took the main road to the east. It curved up from the outskirts of the cityâs waterfront and climbed away into the foothills. Wade could see the wandering coast, lit up against the dark water.
âItâs been a while since we saw the Mercedes,â said Becca. âIt could be anywhere at this point. We might have lost it forever.â
âOr we could be incredibly lucky,â said Darrell. âI vote for lucky.â
Sara sped along as quickly as speed limits would allow. More than once, she was forced to stop short as vehicles lumbered carelessly onto the road from driveways hidden on the right. One tiny car popped out from a villa, nearly hurling them off the road into a mess of jagged rock and pine trees.
âGeez, French people, get a license!â Lily shouted out the window.
âCan you imagine a car chase on this road?â said Wade.
âAnd now you did it!â Darrell groaned. âYou pretty much just asked to be in a high-speed car chase on the skinniest road known to man. Nice job, Wade.â
âThatâs soooo . . .â Wade started, but stopped. âActually, itâd be fun.â
âNot with me driving, thank you,â said Sara.
Darrell grinned. âIt would be fun! Like I said, nice job.â
âThereâs a faster road,â Becca said, scanning a road map on her phone. âThe left after the next one will take us up onto a freeway. Weâll make better time.â
âGood call.â Sara smoothly exited the slow coast road, and they were soon motoring far more quickly on the highway.
After a while, Lily, who had been quietly tapping away on her tablet, cleared her throat. âIâve been searching on all kinds of image and language sites, and I think I found something about the tattoo, if your sketch is right, Wade.â
âIt is,â he said. âOf course, Iâm no da Vinci.â
âI should have traced it,â said Darrell. He never let anyone forget that he traced very well. âBut I donât trace tattoos. Too icky.â
Lily shot him a look. âAnyway, the symbol you sawâan O with lines coming into itâseems to be very close to a letter from an old runic Hungarian alphabet. I canât find any secret society that uses it as a symbol, but itâs a corporate logo belonging to a company called Drangheta Enterprises, a shipping company run by a rich guy named Ugo Drangheta. They do lots of stuff, but mainly shipping.â
âUgo Drangheta,â said Darrell. âBy ârichâ letâs assume heâs super rich, and has armies of tattooed assassins doing his dirty work, which means this quest just went up a notch on the danger scale.â
Wade turned to him. âArmies? No one said âarmies.â And âdanger scaleâ?â
âI just invented it.â
Becca cleared her throat. âLil, the triangle with the fives in it is a gift that keeps on giving. I just found another passage. I really thought Iâd found them all, but listen to this.â
In the workshop of the Milanese master we sit by candlelight. He first presents me with a pair of cryptologic lenses, then fashions the silver arm.
Appropriately, the relic, a three-sided mirror, a prism of silvery light, is to be the armâs internal engine. He usesleather gloves to keep the starry prism from burning his fingers. He crafts the arm so that the prism powers it.
âI know what a prism is,â said Darrell. âI canât picture a three-sided mirror.â
âUnless itâs like the kind you see in
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