“And we know where to find her,” Meg added. “Liberty High School in Glendale.”
Aiden checked the clock. “It’s after four. School’s out. We’ll have to wait till tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” Meg was distraught. “Aren’t you forgetting something? We have nowhere to live! This isn’t the boonies where you can curl up in any haystack. We’re homeless in a big city!”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Aiden told her. “What if we just stay here?”
“What — at the library?”
“Why not? Listen — when we slept in the bathrooms, nobody had a clue. We hide in there right before closing, lie low while they lock the place around us, and come out when everybody’s gone. Then the whole library’s ours until they open again tomorrow. Maybe there’s an employee kitchen where we can snarf some food.”
That did it for Meg. Neither Falconer had eaten since the pie-eating contest in Idaho. Twenty-four heart-pounding hours had passed since then. She was so famished she was ready to pass out.
“Count me in.” They had certainly spent nights in worse places. They could use the downtime to prepare for their meeting with Mrs. Jessica DeSouza.
And pray she can help us.
Aiden perched on the toilet tank so his feet would not be visible under the stall door. He needn’t have bothered. With the lights off, the windowless bathroom was as dark as deep space.
A toxic mixture of fear and boredom made the minutes drag. It was hard to be afraid of librarians after surviving Hairless Joe. But a bookshelver could dial 9-1-1 as easily as anybody else. A cough at the wrong time, a clearing of the throat within earshot of a nosy employee — discovery was always as close as that.
It seemed like forever since he and Meg had moved the Harley from the parking lot to a less noticeable spot on one of the side streets. That had been about five-fifteen. They’d ducked into the bathrooms right after that. With no watch, it was impossible to tell how long he’d been waiting.
He heard the creak of the heavy door, followed by footsteps. His heart skipped a beat.
The lights came on. After suffocating darkness, the effect was like a nuclear flash. It jolted Aiden into full panic mode.
What should I do? Hide? Run for it?
“So this is the men’s room,” came a familiar voice.
“Meg, you lunatic!” He burst from the stall and glared at his sister. “You nearly gave me a heart attack!”
“Everybody’s gone,” she reported.
Aiden was wary. “Are you sure?”
“Positive. We’re the proud owners of one library — at least till morning.”
Food was the first order of business. They found a staff room behind the checkout desk, but the refrigerator offered only a few ketchup packets and a half-empty carton of cream for the coffeepot. Two gulps each and it was gone. It didn’t even begin to satisfy their ravening hunger.
“What kind of a rip-off kitchen is this?” Meg complained. “Don’t librarians have stomachs?”
“They probably brown-bag it,” Aiden decided. “Or use the snack machines.”
“Maybe we can break into one of those.” Meg riffled through a cutlery drawer and came up with a bread knife. “This ought to do the trick.”
“Too risky,” said Aiden. “A busted machine might tip them off that they’ve got uninvited guests. Let’s check the circulation desk — see if anybody left a sandwich or something.”
But the search yielded nothing except library card applications, employee bulletins, and notepads with Dewey decimal numbers scribbled on them.
All at once, Meg let out a gasp.
Aiden was at her side in an instant. “What?” He goggled.
In a cupboard next to the book return sat a plastic garbage pail labeled OVERDUE FINES. It was piled high with coins.
Meg hesitated. “Seems a little sleazy, doesn’t it? Swiping change from a library.”
“Money means survival,” Aiden said somberly. “Survival means —”
“A chance to help Mom and Dad,” Meg finished. “I’m convinced.”
Dinner was a vending machine smorgasbord — candy bars, chips, pretzels, animal crackers, beef jerky, pop tarts, peanuts, cookies, and Gatorade. It wasn’t exactly a balanced meal, but the hungry fugitives devoured it like starving sharks.
“It’s a good thing Mom isn’t here,” Meg observed, mouth crammed full. “You know how she is about ‘plastic food.’ I can hear her now.”
“‘Some of those pretzels are older than you are!’” the two chorused.
Their cascade of laughter died quickly with the thought of where their mother really was right then — in a federal maximum-security prison in Florida.
“Anyway,” Aiden added soberly, “she’d be happy we aren’t starving. Unhealthy food is still healthier than none.”
Meg carefully counted every penny they removed from the pail — $11.85. “We’re going to pay this back,” she promised. “You know, when Mom and Dad are free, and we’ve got our normal lives again.”
Classic Meg. She could be so tough, yet sometimes she was so naive! She honestly envisioned a rosy future where the Falconers were able to make everything right again. Aiden was only four years older, but he was reasonably sure the world didn’t work that way. Every hour they spent on the run, their list of crimes grew longer. Why, just tonight they’d tacked on more trespassing and burglary. Surely they had passed the point of no return, where apologizing and paying for the damage wasn’t enough.
Even if we do get Mom and Dad out of jail, how can we be sure that we won’t just be taking their places?
* * *
They were in the children’s section, lying in the Book Nook, a miniature castle made of beanbag-chair material. The sun had gone down, so the library was dark. They didn’t dare turn on a light.
Aiden dreaded these moments — the thinking moments — almost as much as the fleeing and the fighting and the fear.
Now there was nothing to do but think — about the mess they were in; about Mom and Dad enduring the horrors of prison. About Hairless Joe and Emmanuel Harris, the J. Edgar Giraffe of their nightmares — the towering, coffee-guzzling FBI agent who had arrested their parents and had set his sights on Aiden and Meg.
And Frank Lindenauer, the worst of a bad bunch. The man who had destroyed John and Louise Falconer while pretending to be their friend.
Did Aiden and Meg really stand a chance of tracking down this terrible traitor and forcing him to admit what he’d done? They’d come so far, battled so hard, yet that goal still seemed a million miles away.
The feeling that came next made Aiden’s stomach twist. It sickened him, yet he could not keep his mind from visiting that dark place, home to his greatest, deepest fear — the one he dared not speak aloud, even to Meg.
If they did find Frank Lindenauer, if the real truth was revealed … what if it turned out that Doctors John and Louise Falconer hadn’t been framed? What if Mom and Dad had been guilty all along?
No! Aiden raged at himself. Stop thinking that way! Shut down your brain!
Beside him in the Book Nook, Meg had already begun to snore.
Aiden tossed and turned.
* * *
Federal Bureau of Investigation, Portland, Oregon.
Agent Harris could not take his eyes off the screen. The videotape, beamed over a secure network, showed Aiden and Margaret Falconer searching HORUS Global Group’s former headquarters … in Denver.
Denver! With their pictures on the cover of every newspaper and a manhunt for them in four states, they had popped up twelve hundred miles away.
Those kids were something else!
“So they were in Denver when the girl placed the call to the radio show,” Harris concluded.
“Definitely,” the Portland supervisor replied. “There’s less than an hour between the call to the Mouth of America and the kids’ appearance on the surveillance camera. The show won’t talk to us, though. They claim they’re protecting th
eir guests’ privacy rights.”
“I know.” Harris had spoken to the Mouth personally to ask permission to put a trace on the station’s phone line just in case the Falconers called in again. The shock jock had bluntly refused, even under threat of a court order. This was the kind of showboat who wasn’t afraid of getting in trouble. He probably craved it. It was free publicity for his obnoxious show.
“Why didn’t the Denver office pick the kids up?” asked Harris.
“It was too late. That camera isn’t monitored fulltime. It was pure coincidence that somebody scanned the tape last night. Lucky break for us, huh? Two fugitives just waltz into an office that’s under federal surveillance?”
“Luck had nothing to do with it,” said Harris. “They want to prove their parents are innocent. HORUS was a reasonable place to go.”
The supervisor was flabbergasted. “Innocent? The Falconers? That was the biggest treason case in fifty years! You think we got it wrong?”
Harris clung to his Starbucks hot-cup. It was a question that kept him up nights — that and too much caffeine. “I don’t know what to think anymore. But if this is my mess-up, whatever happens to those kids is my fault.”
“Come on,” chided the Portland man. “We’re the FBI, not the Keystone Kops. We don’t make mistakes on a case this important. Look” — he pointed to the screen, where Aiden and Meg were still combing the office — “you think those little punks are going to find so much as a crumb in there? Our people swept the place, and we didn’t miss anything.”
Both agents watched, transfixed, as Aiden pulled the wadded-up paper out of the window frame.
Harris started for the door. “Call Washington. I need everything we’ve got on the Falconer affair. Have them fax it to me ASAP.”
“Here in Portland?” called the supervisor.
“No, in Denver. I’m going to get those kids.”
Meg heard the thump, sat bolt upright, and got a faceful of plush castle.
What the —
Then she remembered. The Book Nook.
A shaft of harsh sunlight assailed her bleary eyes. Morning! Head in a fog, she searched the walls for a clock.
Eight-thirty. Oh, no! The library opens at nine!
Another thump. She peered out the window. Car doors! The staff was already arriving for the day!
She shook her brother. “Aiden, get up!”
He rolled over. “Wha —”
“We overslept! We’ve got to get back to the bathrooms! Now!”
One advantage of life on the run was that the Falconers had learned to go from deep sleep to frenzied action in the blink of an eye. They were out of the Book Nook, sprinting through the periodical section, when they heard the key in the lock.
Meg came to a stop so suddenly that Aiden ran into her from behind. The bathrooms were thirty feet away, but for them it might as well have been thirty miles. To get there, the fugitives would have to cross the glass entrance of the library — five feet in front of the employee at the door.
The door swung open, and in stepped a young man in a tweed jacket. Aiden and Meg stood frozen as he began switching on lights. Never before had they been trapped in a place with absolutely zero cover, without so much as a potted plant to hide behind or a shadow to lurk in.
The new arrival set down a briefcase, a newspaper, and a carton full of books. Meg calculated their chances of escape. If we bolt, will he grab us? Or will he be so surprised …
The man turned. In half a second, he’d be looking right at them.
Run —
Just as Meg was about to fly, dragging her brother behind him, the man walked back out to his car.
It was the kind of luck Aiden and Meg knew not to waste. They blasted past the entrance and disappeared into the bathrooms.
In a stall, perched on the toilet tank, Meg had to press down with both feet to keep the trembling of her legs from rattling the seat.
* * *
It took twenty minutes for the machine-gun beating of Aiden’s heart to return to normal. Every time someone entered the bathroom, he practically jumped out of his skin.
Calm down, he tried to soothe himself. This is what you’ve been waiting for. The sooner the library is reasonably crowded, the sooner you can get out of here without attracting attention.
He heard the door open with its characteristic squeak. Two men entered in mid-conversation.
“… I don’t know what takes more guts — running from the FBI or going toe-to-toe with the Mouth of America.”
“Look who you’re admiring,” the second man commented. “She’s an outlaw; her brother, too! They’re probably both traitors, same as the parents.”
“According to the girl, the parents are innocent.”
“Yeah, and so was Al Capone. Some kid calls up the Mouth and says she’s right and the entire United States government is wrong. Get real.”
“I don’t know. She was pretty convincing on the radio.”
Seated on the toilet tank in his stall, Aiden couldn’t believe his ears. Meg — on the radio? On the Mouth of America show?
He waited for the two men to exit the washroom, then slipped back into the library. The building was buzzing with families arriving for story hour, so he attracted no attention.
Meg was already at a computer station, printing MapQuest directions to Liberty High School.
Aiden took the seat beside her. “Tell me it isn’t true. Tell me that, after weeks of breaking our necks to disappear, you didn’t call a radio show with millions of listeners who are just as crazy as the nut job behind the mike.”
Meg was shamefaced. “How’d you find out?”
“You did! How could you be so stupid?”
“It wasn’t my fault,” she said sheepishly. “He was saying all these rotten things about us.”
“Who cares what the Mouth says?” Aiden hissed. “If we had a nickel for every time somebody insulted our family, we’d be the richest people on the face of the earth!”
Meg studied her hands on the keyboard. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “You were sleeping. I do crazy things when you’re not around.”
“Oh, I get it. It’s my fault.” Aiden was bitter. “I hope you had the brains to keep your mouth shut about where we are.”
“Of course. I didn’t give up any information. I just thought I could make some points for Mom and Dad.”
“And did you?”
She looked chagrined. “Nobody makes points with that jerk. It was a big mistake. Don’t worry, I learned my lesson.”
Aiden took a deep breath. “We’ve got enough problems with the cops and Hairless Joe after us, not to mention anybody who wants that reward. We can’t afford to stir up the pot.”
Meg pulled the directions out of the printer. “It won’t happen again,” she promised. “Now what’s the plan for Mrs. Jessica DeSouza?”
The Falconers had already decided it would be unwise to reveal their true identity to the teacher from Glendale. It wasn’t just the risk of being sold out for the reward money. Even a well-meaning adult might think that turning them in was the right thing to do.
“We stand a greater chance of being recognized if we’re together,” Aiden reasoned, “so I’ll talk to her myself. A high school’s a pretty big place. She probably doesn’t know all the students. I can pass as one of them.”
“You can pretend to be doing a project on terrorism,” Meg suggested. “Here, I’ll print that article about her mother’s accident. You did an Internet search on HORUS, okay? And you saw her name….”
Aiden listened carefully. No one had the gift of gab like Meg. She had talked them out of some very tough spots in the past.
En route to Glendale on the Harley, they stopped at a Mobil station to sink four dollars of the library’s fine money into gas. The attendant seemed a little miffed at being paid in change, but otherwise he didn’t seem suspicious.
Liberty High was a sprawling suburban campus — a good sign, Aiden decided. The bigger the sch
ool, the easier it would be to blend in. He left Meg in the parking lot with the bike and headed for the main entrance.
Funny, the instant he set foot inside the building, he felt so normal. After all, a high school student was what he was, what he should have been. The students bustling around, complaining about parents, homework, bad dates — he would have given anything to have their ordinary lives and ordinary problems.
In the office, he met a secretary’s eyes. “I’m supposed to see Mrs. DeSouza,” he announced tentatively.
The reply came in the exasperated tone of someone who had been asked far too many questions that day. “Try the chemistry lab.” And when Aiden didn’t immediately rush off, she added, “Upstairs, straight down the hall.”
Mrs. DeSouza was setting up experiment work stations around an empty science classroom, stalking from table to table, her lab coat billowing behind her like a vampire’s cape. Aiden stepped inside, and the white cotton billowed in his direction.
“What can I do for you? We’re going to be centrifuging here next period.”
Suddenly, Meg’s coaching deserted him, and Aiden went blank. He took the article out of his pocket, unfolded it, and handed it to the teacher.
Her features softened into an expression of sadness as she recognized the story of her mother’s fatal accident. “Why did you bring this to me?” she asked finally.
Aiden found his voice at last. “I’m writing a history paper on how terrorists get their funding. I was researching HORUS, and —”
He fell silent. It hadn’t occurred to him that was probably a painful memory to ask Mrs. DeSouza to relive. For Mom and Dad, he reminded himself, forging on. “And when I found out you work at our school, I thought — ”
“Mother wasn’t mixed up in any of that,” Mrs. DeSouza said insistently. “She was just the secretary — word processing, answering phones, that sort of thing. You could have knocked me over with a feather when I opened the paper and saw what those terrible people were up to. Of course, Mother was already gone by then.”
“I guess her accident was a pretty big shock,” Aiden offered lamely.
She nodded and sniffled. “And the craziest part is the police kept saying she must have been speeding, but Mother was the most cautious driver you’ve ever seen.”