“So what now?” said Keiko.
“The scanners would have picked up a bomb,” I said. “I have to believe that. Maybe—maybe thecountdown is a distraction. A way to make us panic and use the lockdown codes. I don’t know. But we can’t let it continue.” I met the eyes of Leo, Keiko, and then Steve. “We have to do what this office has been trying to do for years.”
“What?” asked Leo.
“We,” I said, “have to kill a coffee maker.”
EIGHT MINUTES REMAINING
“I’m not sure if this is going to work,” said Keiko. She held up a flashlight over the espresso machine. “Shouldn’t we get Prefect or Centurion?”
“No time,” I said. I pressed theONbutton. Whatever internal battery it had was still fully powered. It whirred to life with a pleasant little mechanical tune. “Leo, did you get it?”
Leo bounded into the kitchen, holding a bottle. “Got it!” he said. He held up the vodka bottle proudly. “Harold keeps a stash in her desk. Maybe for her retirement party.”
“Or maybe this is why Herald’s being retired,” muttered Keiko. “And did you just call her ‘Harold’?”
“Isn’t that her name?” said Leo innocently.
I bounced on the balls of my feet, impatient. The espresso machine’s clock ticked down to four minutes. I wasn’t sure exactly what was going to happen when it hit zero, but I wasn’t going to find out. “All right, pour it in.”
Leo dumped the vodka into the machine. “Now what?”
“Run it,” I said.
Keiko took a step back. “Are we sure this is a good idea?”
“Nope,” I said. “That’s why I asked you to get the fire extinguisher.”
Normally, the machine would have taken five minutes to boil the water. But vodka had a lower boiling temperature, and in perhaps two minutes, the machine began making ominous sounds.
This time, we all took a step back.
The machine spat and hissed, gurgled and protested, and then it produced a brown sludge that looked even worse than what the old coffee maker had given us. I took the cup with a grimace. “Now, where is—”
Steve skidded around the corner. “I got it,” he panted. “Here.”
I took the lighter.
“Now this,” I said, flicking it to life, “is how you destroy a coffee maker.” I lit the edge of a paper towel and dropped it into the water tank.
The remaining vodka ignited. I imagined that fire flaring through the pipes, all the way to the coffee grounds. Smoke burst forth from the joints, and illumination spilled across the floor. Keiko hefted the extinguisher higher, keeping it at the ready.
The clock flickered—numbers jolting back and forth. Then it went out.
When Prefect and Centurion came rushing into the kitchen, they found us standing around the smoking remnants of the Brewtiful Day espresso machine.
I handed Prefect the cup of brown vodka sludge. “I finally got your coffee,” I said.
A week later, the old coffee maker was dug out of the basement and returned to its place of honor.
No one ever sabotaged it again.
14
Eames and I stand in the darkened hallway of the third floor. The door to Nonna’s apartment is firmly locked.
“What’s the plan?”
