The Case of The Treacherous Tunnel

By Cindy Cipriano

Middle School is finally over for Grace Brooks and she couldn’t be happier for her graduation. All that lies between Grace and high school is one final summer. And what a summer it is as Grace and Jack discover yet more deeply hidden secrets and embark on their most unusual trip to date.

When Jack takes one too many secret trips, he finds himself facing the very real possibility of running out of time altogether. Can Grace gather her wits and figure out how to save him from the Treacherous Tunnel before time is up?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vulpine Press
• Release date: Jun 29, 2022
• ISBN: 9781912701896

Cindy Cipriano

Cindy Cipriano lives in North Carolina with her husband, son, and their twenty-seven pets.Not really.Just three dogs who think they are children and three cats who think they are raccoons. It only seems as if they make twenty-seven. When Cindy isn't writing, she enjoys spending time with her family and the avoidance of cooking.Fading, The Fading Series Book One, (Clean Teen Publishing) releases in 2018. This is the first in a three-four book series in which seventeen-year-old Leath Elliott wonders if the new boy in town is literally the boy of her dreams.Cindy's Miller's Island Mysteries series is described as innovative in blending science and fantasy. Eighth graders, Grace and Jack, travel through time solving mysterious science events. Miller's Island Mysteries #1 The Case of the Toxic River (Vulpine Press) released in August 2017. MIMS #1 is the first in an eleven-book series.Cindy's first novel, The Circle, Book One of The Sidhe (2013), won the 2014 Moonbeam Children's Book Silver Award for Pre-Teen Fiction – Fantasy. Other titles in the series include The Choice, Book Two of The Sidhe (2015), and The Lost, Book Three of The Sidhe (2017). Look for The Secret, Book Four of The Sidhe to release in May 2018. The series follows Calum, Laurel, and Hagen from middle through high school as they first rescue Calum's kidnapped cousin, and then save the Otherworld from dark Sidhe. This series is published by Odyssey Books.Cindy's article, Level Up Intrinsic Motivation, was published in the JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY LEADERSHIP in 2016 and two of her short stories were published in the Children's anthology, Doorway to Adventure (2010).

Book preview

Miller’s Island Mysteries

Book 5

The Case of

The Treacherous Tunnel

Cindy Cipriano

Grayscale

Copyright © Cindy Cipriano 2019

Miller’s Island Mysteries Book 5: The Case of The Treacherous Tunnel

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without prior written permission from the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any person or persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Published by Vulpine Press in the United Kingdom in 2019

ISBN 978-1-912701-89-6

Cover by Paige Selby-Green

www.vulpine-press.com

Also in the Miller’s Island Mysteries series:

Book 1: The Case of The Toxic River

Book 2: The Case of The Mysterious Future

Book 3: The Case of The Magnetic Rocket Fuel

Book 4:  The Case of The Mirrored Cat

For AnnMarie

Chapter One

Summer

Summer.

Glorious summer.

My only complaint: it goes by too fast.

The first three weeks of summer vacation are a blur. Sure, I’ve been busy, but it doesn’t seem to add up that so many of our precious days off should have already passed by. So why do I feel like the upcoming week at Aubrey’s will drag on forever?

I know the answer.

I just don’t like to admit it.

It’s because Jack won’t be there.

I’m going to Columbia, South Carolina, to visit my best friend. The last time I saw her was about six months ago during Christmas break, and I can’t wait to see her. I’m filled up with those silly girly feelings, thinking about what we’ll be doing while I’m there.

Aubrey’s mom views my visits as her opportunity to have a second daughter. There will be at least one trip to the spa for a day of pampering and a separate trip for manicures and pedicures. We’ll also go outlet shopping, and maybe this summer my mother will consent to me getting streaks of color put through my hair. I mean, I am starting high school in a few months, so maybe she’ll cut me a little slack in that area.

I’m super excited to see Aubrey and share one whole week of freedom with her. Well, as much freedom as her parents will allow, but it’s going to be an amazing trip. At the same time, I know at some point I’ll feel a little homesick. And that’s not entirely because I’ll be missing Jack.

I really lucked out in the parent department. Overall, Mom and Dad are pretty cool. Even on the rare occasions when we argue, I’m not one of those kinds of kids who says or even thinks, I hate them, or I can’t wait to move out. When I finally move out to go college, I know I’m going to miss my parents. I’m even going to miss them when I’m visiting Aubrey. I always do.

I’m also going to miss my dog, Neutrino. She’s the closest thing I’ve ever had to a sibling. I can’t remember a time without her. We spend every second together whenever I’m at home. Neutrino can be a little bossy but I love her with all my heart. I hope what I’ve always heard about dogs and their inability to grasp the concept of time is true. I tell myself that in Neutrino’s mind, my absence will be similar to a very long day I’ve spent at school.

I scratch Neutrino behind her ears and she gives me a toothy smile. Want to go for a walk, girl?

Her ears perk up at the word walk. She bounds off the couch and goes for the wicker basket on the floor. Her leash is curled up inside like a snake. She nudges through the piles of tiny doggie toys, winter sweaters, and flannel blankets until she finds the leash then brings it to me. I hook it to her collar, slip on my flip flops, and off we go to stroll by the ocean.

When we near the waves, I kick off my sandals and follow Neutrino to the shore where she proceeds to attack the ocean with her tiny mouth. Her fat little legs hurl her toward waves that are easily taller than she. Hence her name: Neutrino.

Yeah, I’m a total nerd.

Neutrino’s small size doesn’t deter her though. She stretches her neck, reaching up to growl and snap at the waves. I’ve never understood why the ocean riles her up so much when it’s been a constant source of comfort to me. Maybe because in her world, water isn’t supposed to behave that way.

You’re a nut, tiny dog, calls a voice behind us.

I don’t have to turn around to know it’s Jack. Seconds later, he’s beside me and takes my hand. I get a secret thrill every time he does this, although we aren’t actually boyfriend and girlfriend. At least not in the present. But, in the future, that’s a whole other story. And, it’s a future that’s not too far away. We’re freshmen now, or we will be when school starts back. At some point in high school, we date then break up. The reason I know all of this is because, well, I’m going to have to just put it out there.

Jack and I travel through time.

We don’t have superpowers or anything like that. Our time travels are courtesy of a mysterious group called 21But22. The only thing we’ve figured out about them so far is that their name is a reference to Einstein.

Yes, that Einstein.

Our first trip was quite accidental, throwing us into the past to a 1980’s version of Miller’s Island. Since then, we’ve worked out how all of this is possible and we can pretty much go at will. We’ve gone to the past and the future. Our future.

In my trip, two years from now, Jack and I were juniors in high school. While we’d been dating, during my visit, we were estranged. I know it sounds complicated, but while I was there future Jack traveled even further into our future. I don’t know what he learned there because Jack and I have a hard rule that we tell no one, not even each other about the future. It’s a rule that was borne out of necessity; we’re trying to preserve our own timelines. But lately, I find myself wishing we could bend this rule a little so it excluded us.

There’s one thing we’ve both confessed about traveling into our futures. Since we’ve already experienced our older selves, it’s hard to reconcile what we know, and the way we felt in the future with our present, pre-high school beings. It is so frustrating, trying to rein in thoughts of older me while trapped in my current teenage fourteen-year-old self.

While Jack and I aren’t currently boyfriend and girlfriend, mostly due to our families’ rules that we don’t date until we’re sixteen, we’ve already experienced some of what’s to come. Aside from an initial glitch in our friendship, we’ve always been close. When we’re together, we usually walk hand in hand, or he’s got one arm draped around my shoulders. It would seem weird to anyone else, but I’m totally comfortable with Jack being my friend-in-between-boyfriend, or whatever he’d be called.

I don’t know, maybe there is such a thing as destiny. For now, I’ll take that secret thrill.

Slow day at The Beanery? I ask. This is the coffeehouse where Jack works. It’s his family’s business.

Jack and his sister, Emma (she’s in college) inherited the coffeehouse two years ago when their parents died in a car accident. Both parents, gone in the blink of an eye, as they drove home from Jack’s uncle’s funeral.

Emma was old enough to be Jack’s guardian and native to this small island town, so no court was going to separate them. Jack works every summer, helping Emma at The Beanery so she can take extra classes during the short session at the university in the world (local slang for the mainland).

Emma knows it’s your last day before you go out of town, says Jack. She took mercy on me.

And now my silly girly trip just seems plain silly. Jack and I have been inseparable since summer vacation began and it’s hitting me hard right now. I’m going to miss him like crazy. As I watch Neutrino bouncing in the ocean, Jack picks up on the shift in my mood.

I can take Neutrino for walks while you’re gone. If you want.

I look up at him, taking in his gorgeous face and piercing green eyes. He knows Neutrino’s not the only one I’m going to miss, because I wasn’t entirely truthful about the superpowers thing. Jack’s got one.

It was during our trip to a NASA rocket lab in the sixties. We had just solved one of the mysteries of the ‘ink,’ the substance that allows us to travel through time. Lost in the excitement, I traveled back to Miller’s Island, accidentally taking the ink with me. When Jack didn’t show up, I realized I’d left him stranded in the sixties without any way to come home.

Thankfully, Jack’s resourceful. He found a first generation ink in the NASA lab and used it to return to Miller’s Island. But, there was a side effect of him using that first-gen ink. Jack can read my mind. Since he can’t read anyone else’s mind, we think that somehow,