Read The Impossible Race: Cragbridge Hall, Volume 3 for Free Online Page B

too long. Plus, if the message was right and who knows how many people would be stricken with the Ash, Derick wasn’t the only one in danger. Who knew if any of the Cragbridges would survive?
    Abby stood up and paced for a moment, then stopped in front of her grandfather. “I wish you were awake to help. To help me know what to do.” Still no movement. No sign.
    She kissed her grandfather’s forehead. “I wish I could ask you whether or not the Bridge could show us the future.” She smiled to keep from crying. “Of course, you’d just dodge my question and tell me I had to earn the answer.” She looked at him—so pale and, for one of the few times in his life, not wearing his blazer. He wore it all the time. Abby used to think it was because he was an eccentric inventor, but had discovered that the blazer was where he kept a sphere he needed with him constantly, a sphere that could allow him to see the present, anywhere in the world. She wondered where he kept his key that allowed him to interact with the past. Wait. A sphere. A key. If the Bridge could show the future, it would probably come with something physical that Grandpa would carry with him all the time.
    Abby walked over to the closet in the medical unit wall and opened its doors. She began to thumb through the clothing Grandpa had been wearing when he was tranquilized. It had all been stored here. Abby felt the blazer, covering every inch. She had no idea where something might be hidden. Of course the sphere wasn’t there; Abby had kept it to make sure it was safe. She repeated the same drill with the trousers in the drawer and his shoes. She even brought them over to Grandpa and pressed his fingers along every surface. She knew he had built shoes, belts, and other clothes with fingerprint-activated secret compartments.
    Nothing.
    She examined her grandfather’s rings. Had they been programmed to do something? She looked back at the man on the bed. Maybe he kept something in what little hair he had—or in his beard. That didn’t seem likely. It would be something very precious and keeping something there seemed easy for someone else to notice or discover.
    Nothing.
    She couldn’t think of anything else until, as she was closing the closet doors, she noticed something leaning in the corner of the room. Something that wouldn’t fit in the drawer. Grandpa’s cane.

 
    The Cane
     
    The cane had an ornate handle but a simple wooden shaft. Abby tapped on it every few inches all the way down to the rubber end. She was listening for a hollow compartment somewhere. It sounded firm.
    She inspected it closely, looking for breaks in the grain that might signal that it had been pieced together and held something inside. The body appeared to be crafted from a single piece of oak. At least that was Abby’s best guess. She wasn’t exactly a wood expert.
    No clues. At all. But if there was something else physical to control the Bridge, this had to be it. Didn’t it? She couldn’t think of anything else that her grandfather always carried with him.
    She grabbed the handle and tried to twist it. It wouldn’t give. She gripped the shaft with one hand and the handle with the other and pulled. Surprisingly, the cane lengthened. Not by much, but the handle slid back a few inches, exposing a metal band around the wood. Abby touched the metal. When she pulled back, she could see her fingerprint on the band. Then the band shifted into the handle, revealing a small screen beneath it. Words scrolled across it:
Bring this key, not to my 89 Liberty Street, but something closer to Foote Avenue and Kiowa Street.
     
    It was a message from her grandfather. Abby’s pulse quickened just knowing she was on the right trail. But she had no idea what the message meant. That was nothing new. Her grandpa always made her work for her answers.
    • • •
     
    The four friends passed a pair of teachers griping about the tardy policy. Derick, Abby, Carol, and Rafa slowed their pace