Free Danger Guys and the Golden Lizard by Tony Abbott

ONE
    It was a dark night. No moon. No stars.
    A soft breeze swept across the rooftop of the three-story building.
    Crunch-crunch! The sound of footsteps running up hard behind me. I whirled around.
    It was my best friend, Zeek Pilinsky, dodging skylights and exhaust pipes.
    â€œWe’ll never make it,” I whispered.
    â€œForty-five seconds, Noodle. We’ll make it.”
    Zeek flashed me a big grin and punched his thumb up in the air. Then he trotted across the roof.
    I love when he does that with his thumb.
    But I still didn’t think we’d make it.
    I followed him to a low wall at the edge of the roof and peeked over the side. “Three floors. It sure seems a lot higher when you look down.”
    â€œHey, getting down is easy. The tricky part is getting over there.” Zeek nodded toward the rooftop of the far building. It was at least fifty feet away.
    â€œImpossible.”
    Zeek laughed. “Sure it is. For everybody else in the world. But we’re Danger Guys, and we happen to have one of these.” Zeek held up a long thin rope with a claw tied to the end of it.
    He’s right. We are Danger Guys, a couple of buddies who get into some major danger stuff. And right then, we were smack in the middle of another dangerous mission.
    Zeek hurled the claw into the air toward the other building.
    Fwing! It hooked tight over the edge of the roof.
    What an amazing arm!
    Yeah, that’s Zeek. Great at baseball, great at football, great at basketball. The star of Mayville.
    He tied the end of the rope to a metal hook on our roof. Then he dug into his pocket and took out a couple of pulleys. The kind you hold on to.
    â€œYou first, Noodle. Over the side.” He handed me a pulley.
    I looked again to the far roof. “I don’t know.”
    â€œIt was your plan, Noodle.”
    He was right. It was my plan. I’m the plan man, the guy who thinks of all the ideas.
    I’d even written this one down.
    I whipped out a crinkled piece of brown grocery bag paper, unfolded it, and stared at the dotted lines and Xs. “I gotta rethink this.”
    â€œGive me that!” Zeek grabbed the paper and shoved it in his pocket. “It’ll work. Let’s go.”
    He was right. With his muscles and my ideas, of course the plan will work. We’re a great team. We do everything. We’ve done everything.
    Well, not exactly everything. I imagined the long fall we would take if this plan did not work. We’ve never been broken into a thousand pieces.
    â€œTwenty-eight seconds, pal.”
    â€œOkay, okay.” I set the pulley thing on the rope and grabbed the sides with both hands. Just as I was about to leap off—
    Errrkkk! A shiny black limo pulled up fast and screeched to a stop below. Six men in black suits tumbled out onto the sidewalk.
    â€œWait a second,” I whispered. “Who are—”
    Umph! Zeek gave me a shove.
    Zwirr! I slid down the rope to the far building.
    Wump! I kicked against the wall when I hit it. Zeek slid down right after me.
    A second later we were lowering ourselves down the wall, from window to window, like spider kids.
    â€œThis one,” I said, nodding at the window in front of me. “It’s in here. It has to be.”
    â€œIf it isn’t,” whispered Zeek, “we’re toast!”
    I pushed lightly. The window opened.
    We hopped down into the room. Zeek pulled out two pen-sized flashlights and tossed me one.
    We darted across the room to where I thought we would find what we were looking for.
    I searched. “It’s not here! We’re dead!”
    Then I heard a rustle. My flashlight beam caught Zeek in the face. He was grinning, holding a sheet of paper covered with writing.
    I smiled, too. “Bingo!”
    Moments later we were out the window, on the ground, and scrambling across the grass to the main building.
    â€œSpotlight!” Zeek hissed, pointing to a bright white glow flooding our