Revenge by Gabrielle Lord Page A

Toxillicide!’
    â€˜Toxillicide?’ I repeated. He’d let the name of the poison slip. What was it? I’d never heard of it.
    Winter nudged me urgently. ‘Boges, look,’ she whispered. ‘There’s someone up there!’ Moonlight streamed onto the floor. Someone had opened the trapdoor. And that someone was up there right now, listening to every word.
    A bodyguard? Rathbone?
    I braced myself for Sligo’s accomplice to show himself. Instead, the moonlight vanished. Darkness fell as the trapdoor closed tightly again.
    I jumped at the sound of Sligo shouting at someone. I couldn’t make out what he was saying through the crackly speaker. Did he have someone in there with him?
    A thought struck me. He was talking to Cal—he was right there on the other side of the wall! Had he been in there all along? I shone my torch on my friends’ worried faces.
    â€˜We need to get into the other chamber!’ I said, grabbing a piece of metal from the broken TV, jamming it into the tiny slit where the door had closed. I tried to use it like a crowbar, but it was no good. It bent under the pressure in seconds.
    Ryan and Winter both grabbed with their fingers, trying to get a grip on the door.
    â€˜Whatever you’re doing out there,’ Sligo roared, his voice deafening through the speaker, ‘stop immediately. Don’t do something you’ll regret! I’ll kill him!’
    I froze at these words and heard Winter’s suppressed sob. But we had to do something to save our friend. I pressed the round depression in the wall nearby. Maybe if we could dismantle the mechanism, we might be able to get the wall to move again. But what could I use?
    Suddenly I knew just what would do it. ‘Where’s my bag?’ I whispered.
    â€˜Here,’ said Winter, picking it up from the corner and handing it to me.
    I swept my good hand through the pocket in the back, trying to find the tin capsule.
    I pulled it out and cracked it open with my fingers. Out fell my latest toy. Unfinished, but that didn’t matter right now.
    â€˜What’s that? A beetle?’ asked Ryan, shining his torch on it.
    â€˜Meet Atom Ant,’ I whispered. ‘It can’t walk yet, but see its abdomen? Filled with explosives.’
    I placed the miniature grenade into the depression in the wall and pulled the tiny fangs out to activate it.
    â€˜Quick!’ I said, grabbing my friends and pushing them down.
    Winter’s eyes widened in shock. ‘You’re going to blow us all up!’
    â€˜Hope not.’ I tried to sound confident. ‘Cover your ears!’
    The Ant exploded in a blinding flash, spraying us with minced concrete and rock.
    Sligo yelled something from the other side of the wall but I couldn’t make it out.
    I bolted over to the door and pulled back with everything I had. Ryan and Winter jumped up to help me, shaking dirt and debris from their hair. Shooting pains pulsed up my injured arm as centimetre by centimetre, the wall shifted.
    â€˜I’m warning you!’ Sligo yelled.
    Finally the door opened enough for us to see into the other, dimly lit, chamber.
    Winter squeezed through the gap sideways and ran in.
    I barely had time to register the size of the other chamber, except to notice it was twice as big as the dungeon we’d been held in. Rubbish littered the corners, there were two makeshift beds, dirty rugs, some buckets, shelves, dirty towels and a couple of lanterns. A tripod for the video camera, a desk, two widescreen laptops—one showing some type of architectural plans,the other flashing green like a sonar screen. And two red-and-white striped mugs, same as the one we’d seen at the lighthouse.
    â€˜Cal!’ Winter screamed, skidding to a halt almost instantly.
    I looked left. Cal lay slumped in Sligo’s arms, hanging like a dead weight. Shocked, I saw the shackle that bolted his ankle to the stone wall.
    But worse than