I am sitting on.”
Wide-eyed and hopeful, Agnes holds up her pinkie to him. “Pinkie promise?”
Gru stares at her. He notices that the other girls are watching them. Realizing he will do whatever it takes to get those cookies delivered, Gru reluctantly holds out his pinkie. “My pinkie promises.”
Finally
, after the dance class detour, Gru gets the girls back in the van to begin his master plan to steal back the Shrink Ray. He parks down the street from Vector’s fortress and begins to stack cookie boxes in a wagon on the sidewalk. The girls change into their clothes and join him.
“Our first customer is a man named Vector,” Gru says.
Margo looks at her order form. “But he’s a
V
. We’re supposed to start with the
A
’s, then we go to the
B
’s, then we go to the—”
“Yes, yes,” interrupts Gru. “I went to kindergarten. I know how the alphabet works!” Realizing he’s being too harsh, Gru quickly softens and says, “I was just thinking that it might be nice to deliver Mr. Vector’s first, that’s all.”
The girls nod and make their way down the sidewalk toward Vector’s fortress.
Gru suppresses a smile and repeats to himself, “It’s almost over…. It’s almost over.” He goes inside the back of the van and watches the girls on a video screen.
The girls enter the gate, and Vector greets them at the front door. “Ah, girls, welcome back to the Fortress of Vectortude.” He laughs and then leads them inside.
Margo consults her order form as Edith and Agnes put Vector’s twenty-three boxes ofcookies on the counter, including the Coconutties box with the robotic cookies in it. Inside the van, Gru launches Cookie Robot software on his computer so he can control the robotic cookies.
“That will be fifty-two dollars,” Margo tells Vector.
Vector zips open his fanny pack and looks for money. He doesn’t notice that twelve robotic cookies are climbing out of the box and scampering across the counter behind him.
The cookies quickly run a scan of the house and locate the Shrink Ray in a vault. They leap off the counter and scurry down the hall. They form a ladder to reach the security panel beside the vault and then shut down Vector’s security system.
The vault door slowly opens, revealing the Shrink Ray. The Cookie Robots happily high-five each other. But they can’t carry the ShrinkRay out the front door—they are too small! Gru, of course, knows that. So he instructs them to go to the far side of the vault and burn a hole in the wall. Gru and two minions climb in through the hole.
Meanwhile, Vector counts out the money and hands it to Margo.
“Why are you wearing your pajamas?” Agnes asks him.
“These are not pajamas. This is a warm-up suit,” Vector answers, slightly annoyed. He leads the girls out, with no idea of the Shrink Ray robbery happening in his own home.
But the robbery hits a snag. While Gru and his minions struggle to lift the heavy Shrink Ray case, the Cookie Robots accidentally seal up the hole in the wall. They’re all trapped inside!
CHAPTER TEN
“It’s so fluffy!”
—Agnes
Stuck inside Vector’s fortress, Gru has to think fast. He orders the minions to help him lift the heavy Shrink Ray into an air duct. One minion grabs the other minion and shakes him until he glows. Now they have light in the duct! The threesome crawls through the air duct, dragging the Shrink Ray behind them.
To his relief, Gru spots a way out ahead. But he never makes it there. Since the Shrink Ray is so heavy, they all fall through a weak spot in the floor of the duct, and through the ceiling of Vector’s living room! They dangle dangerously above Vector, who is watching TV. Although Vector is oblivious to what’s going on above him, his pet shark is not so clueless. Swimming beneath the glass floor, the shark notices the tender morsel above that is Gru.
The shark lunges, striking the glass hard.
“What the…?” Vector wonders. “Quiet down,