Secret Weapons Read Online Free PDF Page A

hanging open. “S-S-Susie says she’s s-s-seen the t-t-terrorists?” he finally stammered. His mind was racing. All he had told Susie about the terrorists was that they were trying to steal Web’s science-fair project. He hadn’t mentioned what they looked like. In fact, he hadn’t even gotten around to figuring out what they looked like. And Susie hadn’t said anything to him about seeing them. In fact, all she’d said was “Wowee!” before she took off and ran home.
    Aurora was nodding. “She said she didn’t tell you that she’d seen them. She said it wasn’t until she got home that she realized that she probably had.”
    “Ohh.” It was beginning to make a little more sense to Ari. Trying to sound like your ordinary investigative reporter—interested and concerned but not at all nervous or guilty—he asked, “Where were they? I mean, where were they when she saw them?”
    “She said there were two of them and they were driving a big black van. And they drove around the cul-de-sac a couple of times and then they parked in front of the Andersons’ house and walked up their driveway.”
    Suddenly Ari remembered something. He remembered that when he was up in the cherry tree he’d seen a big black van doing exactly the same thing. “Yeah,” he said excitedly. “I saw a van like that. But I just thought it was somebody visiting the Andersons.”
    “But they’re not home,” Aurora said. “Remember? They went to Tahoe and they won’t be back for two more weeks.”
    “Hey, that’s right. I forgot about that.” He’d known about the Andersons’ going to their cabin at Tahoe because he’d overheard Aurora talking to Mrs. A. on the phone about watering her houseplants while she was away. Ever since Halloween Aurora and Mrs. A. had been special friends, and whenever the A.’s went away Aurora got the watering job. That meant the guys in the van definitely weren’t visiting the Andersons. “So,” Ari said, “ I wonder who those guys were then.”
    Aurora didn’t answer. In fact, she probably didn’t hear what Ari had said, and she probably wasn’t seeing him either. Instead her gray eyes had that woozy, faraway look that they sometimes got when she was having a mysterious feeling. Ari watched her a little bit nervously, hoping that her mysterious feeling wasn’t clueing her in about how the whole terrorist thing was just one of Carson’s crazy ideas. A crazy idea that he, Ari, had picked up on because he’d hoped it might interest Susie. And it had interested her, as it turned out. A lot more than he’d counted on.
    Ari took a deep breath and said again, “I wonder who they were then.” Aurora still didn’t say anything. Trying to get her attention, Ari added, “You didn’t see them, did you?” And then more loudly, “Did you see those guys in the black van, Aurora?”
    Suddenly Aurora began to nod. “Yes,” she said softly. “Two men in a black van. I saw them.”
    Ari stared at his sister. She could have seen them, of course. If she had been sitting at a window watching for Kate to come home that afternoon, she could have seen them drive by. But somehow Ari wasn’t sure that was what she meant. “You mean you saw them this afternoon? When they were driving around the cul-de-sac?”
    Aurora shook her head. “No. Just now. Just for a minute.”
    Ari stared at Aurora, his eyes wide and unblinking. Most of the time he didn’t mind having a slightly supernatural sister. At least not too much. But there were times when the things she did and said definitely made him a little bit uneasy, and this was one of them. “You did?” he said finally. “You saw them just now? Well—er—what did they look like?”
    Aurora took a deep, quivering breath. “Bad,” she said, shaking her head. “They looked— bad .”
    “Oh yeah?” Ari was puzzled. He wondered what kind of bad Aurora was talking about. Did she mean like, ugly , for instance? Or maybe ragged and dirty. Or sick . Maybe