The Copernicus Legacy: The Forbidden Stone by Tony Abbott Read Free Book Online Page A

“Do call her Sara. And me Uncle Roald, or just plain Roald. I’ll tell you, I will feel better when she knows exactly what we’re doing.”
    Which is . . . going to Europe! she screamed inside.
    “Passengers for Flight Seven Sixty-Six to Washington, D.C., and those continuing on to Berlin, we are now boarding group three.”
     
    Twenty minutes later, as the plane was taxiing into position for takeoff, Wade and Darrell leaned all over each other—and Lily—to get the best view of the city while they took off. It was the last thing Becca wanted to look at. She didn’t mind riding in cars. She kind of liked buses. Trains she really loved. Giant birds made of heavy steel that somehow defied gravity? Not so much.
    The engines whined impossibly loudly, and the jet started rolling fast. She gripped the seat handles.
    “That’s my arm, you know,” said Lily.
    “Sorry—”
    “You get used to it. Settle in. Next stop, Washington!”
    Her stomach was feeling somewhere between weightless and sinking as the jet rose. After a few minutes she realized that the noise was there to stay, making talking uncomfortable for anybody but Darrell, who seemed to be keeping Wade from paying attention to anyone else. Fine. Even Lily, who loved to chat, finally gave up and just typed her blog post.
    The engines droned for the longest two hours in history before she managed to doze off.
     
    “Finally!” Dr. Kaplan said when the jet touched down at Washington’s Reagan airport, where they had to switch planes. As soon as he turned on his phone it buzzed with a missed call. He listened for a minute, pressed a button, spoke several words, then ended the call.
    “Because of storms in Atlanta, Sara nearly missed her connection to Bolivia and had to run,” he said. “She’s already in the air again and will probably be off the grid until the end of the week at the earliest. So it’s just us. Let’s use the restrooms, eat, then get some newspapers for the flight. See if we discover any more disasters. Maybe find a link.”
    Their layover was shortened when the Atlanta storm system threatened D.C. They hurried back to the gate from the food court, stopping quickly at a news kiosk on the way.
    Because her grandparents lived in Austin and babysat often over the years, Becca had learned several foreign languages early. Her French wasn’t great—her German and Spanish were better—but she could read it more or less without a dictionary, so when she saw a copy of Le Monde , she bought it. Not that she knew exactly—or even vaguely—what they were looking for. Tragedies? The whole world was tragic some days. And here she was going digging for more.
    “Final boarding call for Flight Three-Fifty-Four to Berlin.”
    “We’re off!” Dr. Kaplan ushered them into the Jetway. The cabin door closed soon after they took their seats, and the jet taxied out on the slick runway.
    “You can hold my arm if you want to,” Lily whispered to her.
    She laughed. “It’s okay. I’m a pro now.”
    Hardly. Her lungs felt squashed during the long climb to cruising altitude, and her brain pounded like hammers on an anvil.
    “Breathe,” Lily said. “You’ll stay alive better.”
    “Thanks.” They finally leveled out. “Maybe I’m not such a pro.”
    “Guys, listen to this,” Darrell said, a London paper in his lap. “The oil tanker in the Mediterranean near Turkey that we heard about? They know now that it had seventeen people on board. That’s pretty tragic.”
    Then Wade folded his newspaper over and showed it to them. “Is this anything? There was an accident between a truck and a stretch limo outside of Miami. So, the truck driver disappears from the scene but they find him wandering a hundred miles away at almost exactly the same time as the accident.”
    “It probably wasn’t even him driving the truck,” said Lily.
    Wade shook his head. “There were witnesses at the accident who identified him. Plus, he had the truck keys with