Poached Read online

  The stretch between Thanksgiving and Christmas should have been a low-tourism time anyhow, but now it was far worse than expected. So J.J. McCracken had resorted to a few desperate moves to lure people to the park. The first was to drastically slash ticket prices.

  The biggest deal FunJungle now offered was on annual passes. For only five dollars more than the cost of one visit, people could upgrade their FunJungle FunPass and come for free all year-round. McCracken’s idea was that the park could make back the money by gouging repeat visitors for expensive food and park merchandise—although most people quickly caught on to this and started smuggling in their own lunches. However, virtually everyone within a fifty-mile radius had bought the passes. FunJungle, no matter what the weather, was still the most exciting thing to happen in that area in decades, and the discount deal was simply too good to pass up.

  Vance Jessup and TimJim had annual passes. And at fifteen, Vance had his learner’s driving permit. This meant he was only supposed to drive with an adult in the car, but he drove himself all the time anyhow—and since he looked like an adult, the police never stopped him. The boys had all come to FunJungle directly from school and were waiting inside Shark Odyssey for me.

  Normally, Shark Odyssey was one of the most crowded exhibits at FunJungle. In the summer there had often been hour-long waits to get inside. Now almost no one was there. It wasn’t hard to spot Vance and TimJim in the sparse crowd.

  Shark Odyssey was designed to display its inhabitants from many different angles. You began at the top of the massive three-story tank, from which you could look down into the water and watch the sharks from above. From there you moved down a long ramp that spiraled around the tank, allowing you to see the sharks from the side. And finally you ended up in the big glass tube with sharks swimming all around you.

  Vance and TimJim were at the first viewpoint, above the surface of the tank. Vance checked his watch as I approached. “Took you long enough,” he groused. “I figured you’d chickened out. We were about to come looking for you.”

  “I got here as fast as I could,” I said. “The bus has a lot of stops to make before mine.”

  “Whatever,” Vance said dismissively, as if this explanation didn’t make sense. “We’ve waited long enough. Security’s already started to pay attention to us.”

  “How so?” I asked, trying to hide my concern.

  “Some big woman guard with a ton of attitude’s been giving us the stink eye,” Vance explained.

  Large Marge, I thought. Of course. Marge had been a constant thorn in my side since I’d come to FunJungle; she’d always been far more concerned with busting me rather than catching any park guests disobeying the rules. Originally this had been a mere annoyance, as Marge was only a grunt in the security force, but after she’d helped catch Henry the Hippo’s murderer, she’d been promoted to head of park security. In truth, I’d done almost all the work catching the killer, with some help from Summer McCracken. I’d found all the leads, taken all the risks, and finally solved the crime. All Marge had done was punch the bad guy as he was trying to escape. But she’d done that right in front of J.J. McCracken, who’d been impressed and promoted her. Now Marge had an entire security force she could order to keep an eye on me—although she still preferred to try to catch me red-handed herself.

  “Where is she now?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Vance admitted. “She came over a few minutes ago and warned us not to cause any trouble, but then someone called her on her radio and she took off.”

  “Why’d she think you were going to cause trouble?” I asked.

  “What do I look like, a mind reader?” Vance demanded. “She was just being a jerk.”

  “Yeah,” either Tim or Jim muttered. “All we did was spit in the shark tank.”

  I turned on Vance, unable to control my annoyance. “You spit in the shark tank?”

  “What’s it matter?” Vance asked. “It’s not like it’ll hurt the sharks or anything. They live in water—and that’s all spit is.”

  I tamped down the urge to call Vince a moron. Spit isn’t just water. It carries all sorts of diseases, which could be spread to the sharks, for which reason there were dozens of signs posted around the shark tank telling people not to spit into it. The boys had blatantly broken park rules, getting Marge’s attention.

  “We can’t do the prank now,” I said. “I know Marge. She wouldn’t just let you guys off with a warning. She’s probably still lurking around here somewhere.”

  I started for the doors, but Vance seized my arm and squeezed it hard. Even through my heavy winter jacket it hurt. “You’re not weaseling out of this,” he told me. “Just do it. And put some of this on the body parts before you drop them in.” He yanked something out of his pocket and slapped it into my hand.

  It was a squirt bottle of ketchup he’d filched from one of the FunJungle restaurants.

  “What’s this for?” I asked.

  “To look like blood. Duh,” Vance said, like I was an idiot. “If there’s no blood, everyone will know the body parts are fake.”

  “It’s not going to look like blood,” I argued. “It’s going to look like ketchup. And we really shouldn’t put food that isn’t for sharks in their tank. It’s not healthy for them.”

  “Know what’s not healthy for you?” Vance jabbed me in the chest with a thick finger. “Talking back to me. Wait thirty seconds for us to get down to the tube and then do the deed, okay?”

  “Hold on,” I said. “You’re not doing it with me?”

  “And take the fall if you get busted?” Vance asked. “No, thanks. Security’s already got an eye on us. But you’re the prince of this place. Your pal Xavier’s always going on about how you helped find Henry’s killer. So you’ve got immunity.”

  I frowned. Xavier had been right; Vance was more clever than I’d realized. He’d figured out how to see the prank and still keep his hands clean. He was completely wrong about my immunity, though. In fact I was number one on Marge’s hit list. But I knew it’d be pointless to argue this. Vance wouldn’t believe me anyhow.

  I glanced around the exhibit. There was no sign of Marge or any other security, and most of the tourists had headed down the ramp toward the viewing tube. If I was going to drop the body parts in, this was probably the best time to do it. “Okay,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  “That’s the spirit!” Vance hustled toward the viewing tube with TimJim, all of them actually giggling with excitement.

  I peeked into the tank and watched the sharks’ dorsal fins slicing through the surface below me. Although sharks provoke fear in most people, only a handful of the 360 different species are dangerous to humans. And even then they’re generally not hunting us. In the entire world, sharks kill fewer than ten people a year, while coconuts falling from trees take out 150. (Meanwhile, we humans slaughter sharks by the millions, mostly to make shark fin soup, which I’ve heard doesn’t even taste that good.) The tourists still want to see man-eaters, though, but they are notoriously difficult to keep in captivity. Aquariums have tried time and again to feature them—especially great whites—but have inevitably had to set them free. However, FunJungle had recently had some success with one man-eater: the bull shark.

  Bulls aren’t nearly as renowned as great whites, but they’ve actually attacked far more humans, in part because they’re the only sharks that can survive in freshwater. They’ve been found as far up the Mississippi River as Indiana. FunJungle’s bull was a seven-foot-long male named Taurus who’d been caught in the San Jacinto River disturbingly close to downtown Houston. Taurus had only been in Shark Odyssey for a few weeks, but he seemed to be doing all right. Ironically, while the “man-eater” was a decent draw, most tourists couldn’t even pick him out. There were many bigger and far more ominous-looking sharks in the exhibit that were often mistaken for the bull.

  I could see Taurus now, though. The torpedo-shaped fish skimmed below the surface right beneath me. A pair of nurse sharks,
although significantly larger, split apart to give him a wide berth.

  I figured thirty seconds had passed. Vance and TimJim would be in the glass tube by now. All the tourists were a good distance away from me, although I could hear a fresh batch outside the exhibit, approaching the entrance. If I didn’t do the deed now, I’d probably never do it, and eventually Vance would get tired of waiting and decide to pound my face in.

  I unzipped the backpack, whipped out the fake arm, and dropped it over the railing. Then I tossed in the foot. I decided to pass on the ketchup, though. I was quite sure the sharks would ignore the plastic body parts, but one might accidentally inhale the condiment. If Vance wanted to beat me up for this transgression, then he was probably just looking for an excuse to beat me up anyhow.

  The fake body parts didn’t make much noise as they hit the water. All the tourists were too distracted by the sharks to notice them. I figured I’d done my duty and decided to get out while I could. I slung the backpack over my shoulder and doubled back toward the entrance, as the exit was a long distance away. The doors flew open as I approached.

  I ducked my head down, not wanting any of the tourists to get a good look at my face, just in case things went bad.

  Only it wasn’t a group of tourists at all. It was a group of five security guards. And Large Marge was leading them.

  THE ESCAPE

  Marge hadn’t forgotten about Vance and TimJim at all. In fact she’d been so concerned about them she’d gone off to round up the cavalry. “The boys are right this way,” she was telling the other guards. “I guarantee you they’re up to no good.”

  I was right out in the open. There was nowhere for me to hide. The moment Marge saw me, her gaze hardened. “Teddy!” she snarled. “I should have known you’d be involved in this!”

  “Involved in what?” I asked innocently. “I just dropped by to see the sharks.”

  I started to back away, but Marge snagged the hood of my winter jacket. “Where are your pals?” she demanded.

  I tried to sound as convincing as possible. “I don’t know what you mean. I’m here by myself.”

  “Don’t give me that,” Marge snapped. “There were three suspicious teenagers loitering in here a few minutes ago. When I asked what they were doing, they said they were waiting for a friend. And now you’re here. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out the connection.”

  “Obviously not,” I agreed. “You did it.”

  It was the wrong thing to say, but I couldn’t help myself. Behind Marge, two of her deputies snickered.

  Marge’s brow furrowed angrily. “What are you hoodlums up to?” she demanded.

  “Nothing,” I said. “I’m not here with anyone else. I’m on my way to my mom’s office to do my homework and I just stopped in here for a minute. I swear that’s the truth.”

  I sold the lie pretty well. The other security guards, who didn’t share Marge’s innate distrust of me, seemed willing to give me the benefit of the doubt. Even Marge wavered slightly.

  “Look around,” I continued. “Whoever those teenagers were, they’re not here anymore. If they were up to something, you obviously scared them off.”

  Marge cased the exhibit. A slight smile crossed her lips. “Yeah,” she said proudly. “I suppose I did.”

  “So can I go, then?” I asked.

  Marge took another look around Shark Odyssey. Nothing bad was happening. “All right,” she said, letting go of my jacket. “But I’m still gonna keep an eye on you.”

  At which point a tourist gave a bloodcurdling scream. “There’s an arm in the tank!” she shrieked. “A human arm!”

  The security guards reacted with alarm, but Marge instantly suspected the truth. “Teddy!” she roared, and lunged for me again.

  I sidestepped her with an inch to spare. The security guards blocked my escape, though. I had no choice but to spin around and race into the exhibit.

  Marge launched herself after me. “Get him!” she ordered, and her guards dutifully obeyed, falling in behind. And as if five security guards weren’t enough, Marge whipped out her radio and called for backup. “We have a red alert at Shark Odyssey!” she announced, so gravely that one might have thought she’d caught some terrorists armed with a nuclear weapon. “Teddy Fitzroy has really done it this time. I need all available personnel to report here ASAP.”

  I raced past the woman who had sounded the alarm. She was with her family, pointing in horror at the center of the tank, where the fake arm now bobbed amongst the dorsal fins. Her husband had gone green with disgust. Their three children, meanwhile, were thrilled, clambering up on the railing to see if they could spot any other body parts.

  “I think I’m going to faint,” the mother gasped.

  “Just stay calm,” her husband said. “It can’t really be an arm. It must be some debris that simply looks like an arm. . . .”

  “There’s a foot, too!” his daughter shouted excitedly. “I see a foot!”

  The mother made a weak little noise and passed out.

  I continued down the ramp, circling the shark tank. Other guests, alerted by the family’s cries, now spotted the body parts too. The plastic arm and foot had taken on water and were sinking slowly through the center of the tank. If anyone had really taken the time to look closely at them, they could have easily realized they were fake. For one thing, both body parts ended in perfectly straight lines, whereas if a shark had truly wrenched them off a human, they would have ended in torn flesh and shards of bone. But no one was taking the time to look closely. Instead they were gasping in dismay or slapping their hands over their children’s eyes or bolting for the bathroom to throw up. As usual when there was a crisis, many guests’ immediate reaction was to record the event on their phones; thus, instead of watching everything clearly unfolding right before their eyes, they were watching it on miniature screens with poor resolution.

  Marge and the security guards pounded down the ramp after me. I had hoped that at least one of them, faced with a potential shark attack, would have thought to look for the victim. Instead they were blindly following orders and chasing me.

  Normally, Marge, who was easily a hundred pounds overweight, would have been trailing the pack. But since we were heading downward, she had inertia working for her. Not only was Marge leading the attack, but she was actually gaining speed and closing the gap on me. Even more frightening, she wasn’t in complete control of her body. She was in more of a barely controlled fall, her legs racing to keep up with the rest of her as she hurtled down the ramp. I began to worry that instead of catching me, she’d trample me flat.

  Meanwhile, inside the tank, the sharks still hadn’t even noticed the body parts. They continued swimming about without so much as a glance at them, exactly as I’d guessed they would.

  Except for Taurus, who lightly nudged the fake arm with his nose. I don’t know if the bull actively homed in on the arm or accidentally swam into it, but whatever the case, the panicked tourists immediately assumed he had just taken another nibble of human flesh. The air was suddenly filled with screams and shrieks, mingled with a few distinct wet splats: the telltale sounds of vomit hitting the ground.

  I was quickly closing in on the glass tube. This was always the most crowded part of the exhibit, and today was no exception. Even on a slow day the tube was jammed with guests. Most were staring in shock at the descending body parts or riveted to their phone’s camera screens. As promised, Vance and TimJim had stationed themselves here for the show. They were laughing hysterically at all the displays of disgust and horror around them.

  Large Marge was right behind me, her legs pinwheeling madly. In the reflection of the aquarium glass I saw her outstretched hands closing in on my neck.

  There was a very large patch of fresh vomit at the bottom of the ramp, right at the tube’s entrance. I leaped over it, but Marge wasn’t quite so agile. She planted her foot in it and skidded, out of control, into the tube. The tourists were all so focused on the events in the shark t
ank that even Marge’s yelps of fear didn’t grab their attention until it was too late. Marge caromed off the safety rail and bowled over a dozen tourists like tenpins. They all went down in a huge, groaning pile of humanity.

  Fortunately, this blocked the tube behind me. The other security guards had to gingerly maneuver around the sprawled-out tourists, which slowed them down long enough for me to get some distance on them. I wove through the crowded tube and slipped past Vance and TimJim.

  Marge, struggling to worm her way out from under the pile of tourists, howled when she spotted the bullies. “There’s his friends!” she shouted to her underlings. “Get them! Get them all!”

  Vance and TimJim gulped in alarm, then raced after me.

  Despite all the chaos around them, a great number of tourists in the tube were still watching the shark tank. As luck would have it, the disembodied arm had drifted right toward the tube and now settled atop it with a resounding thunk, which provoked another round of gasps, shrieks, and puking.

  I shoved my way to the end of the tube and bolted for the exit. I’d gained ground on the guards, but now I had Vance and TimJim after me.

  “You idiot!” Vance barked. “You led the cops right to us!”

  “They were already coming for you!” I shot back. “They knew you were up to something!”

  “If we get busted for this, I’m gonna kill you,” Vance threatened.

  We burst through the exit doors, only to find a phalanx of security guards racing toward Shark Odyssey, responding to Marge’s call for backup. As the only kid who lived at FunJungle, I was well-known enough for all of them to recognize me at once.

  “There he is!” one guard shouted, and everyone veered toward me.

  Vance immediately showed his true colors and sacrificed me to save his own skin. He lashed out a leg and sent me sprawling. “We’re not with him!” Vance declared. “He’s the one who did it!”