Aiden played his trump card. “Agent Harris followed up on my hunch before, and it turned out to be right.”
Sorenson bristled, and his cheeks flushed.
John Falconer jumped in quickly. “Harris isn’t here now, and nobody misses him. He had his chance and he could have gotten your sister killed, and you, too. Can’t you see that?”
All Aiden saw was that his parents were so desperate with worry that they could no longer think clearly. Two brilliant criminologists so freaked out that they were powerless to help their own daughter.
* * *
Sleep.
Time and time again Meg wrestled it away. But as the Buick continued west on Route 119, her exhaustion outlasted her resolve. She had spent four days living at the limit of tension and endurance. The darkening sky, the numbing vibration of the car — the combination was like knockout drops.
She awoke to find a pillowcase over her head. She struggled, but a strong force — Spidey? — held it in place.
“Easy,” soothed Tiger’s voice.
She was being carried by her legs and under her arms. The hood was loose around her neck, and she could look down through a narrow opening. Packed dirt and underbrush passed beneath her.
A forest path?
They’re going to kill me and bury me in the woods!
But that made no sense. If they really meant to murder her, they could have done it anytime in the past few days. They wanted ransom. She was worthless to them dead.
So why the nature hike? A hideout, maybe?
Meg watched the odd close-up movie that was playing below her. From such a short distance off the ground, it was impossible to make out any landmarks. She tried to get a sense of just how far they had traveled on foot. A mile? A mile and a half? It seemed as if they’d been walking forever. She was pretty sure the trail was becoming steeper.
A mountain?
At last, Mickey’s voice asked, “Is this it?”
Meg could see nothing, just rocky ground covered by weeds and underbrush. Then she was tipped up to a better angle and caught a glimpse of a log-frame cottage. Separate from the house itself was a pair of flat, wooden cellar doors. Tiger crouched into Meg’s pinched field of vision and pulled open the weathered panels, revealing a cobweb-strewn stairway.
It looked worse than any dungeon, a descent into total darkness.
Pure irrational fear gripped her. “You can’t make me go down there!”
Tiger was calm. “We can make you do whatever we want.”
Spidey and Mickey swung her into the opening and set her feet down on the top step. It was the first solid ground she’d felt in more than an hour. Her legs were like rubber. They nearly crumpled beneath her as she wheeled around on the stair, tearing off the pillowcasehood to confront her captors.
“I won’t go!”
Spidey grinned at her, almost leering.
He’s enjoying this!
He reached out and shoved her. Flailing helplessly, she pitched down the stairs, tumbling into the shadowy cellar. At the bottom, her head smacked against the hard floor, and the blackness was complete.
* * *
1-202-555-7487.
The business card was crumpled, but the number was still legible. Not that Aiden could ever forget it.
Emmanuel Harris’s cell phone number.
He began to dial, only to put the handset back in its cradle before he was halfway through.
What am I, crazy?
This was J. Edgar Giraffe, the enemy who had hounded Aiden and Meg over seven thousand miles …
But, like a heat shimmer on a distant highway, his bathroom vandal theory danced before him. He’d had a way-out hunch like this once before. His own parents hadn’t even taken it seriously. It had been Harris who’d grudgingly followed up on it.
He might believe me now …
1-202-555-7487.
He almost chickened out again when the phone started ringing.
For Meg, he reminded himself.
At the sound of the hated voice, he blurted, “It’s Aiden Falconer — ”
“This is Harris. Leave a message.” A beep called for his voicemail.
The words came pouring out. “I found Meg — at least I think I did. But Sorenson — the new agent — he won’t even listen to me. I know you’re off the case, but you’ve got to help — ”
The tone cut him off in midsentence. It was as if the towering agent himself had slammed a door in his face.
What a waste of time! Why would J. Edgar Giraffe care what was going on with Meg? This wasn’t his case anymore. For all Aiden knew, he was out of town, maybe even out of the country.
Harris was not the answer. Neither was Sorenson. Or even Mom and Dad.
Nobody was going to help him help Meg.
It was up to Aiden and Aiden alone to follow the trail of vandalized bathrooms to his sister. He was the only one who could do it, because he was the only one who would do it.
The question was how.
The dark blue Ford Taurus might as well have had UNMARKED POLICE CAR stenciled on its side, FBI Agent Frank Ortiz decided. Surely half the population of Maryland — and a good chunk of Virginia and DC as well — had already spotted him parked at the curb, keeping an eye on the Falconer home.
A tall, thin teen waved as he turned up the front walk. “Hi, Agent Ortiz,” the kid said.
Aiden’s friend. Richie Somebody. It was impossible to mistake him because he always wore a baseball cap from some minor league team he loved. The kid was never seen without it.
“Perfect timing,” Ortiz called. “Your buddy could use a little cheering up. He’s kind of depressed today.”
“Gotcha.” Richie rang the bell and disappeared inside.
Nice guy, Ortiz reflected. Loyal. Loyalty was always in short supply around the Falconers. A lot of people, including even some of Ortiz’s colleagues in the FBI, still considered them traitors.
A while later, the baseball cap emerged from the house. The tall gangly teen beneath the low visor waved to him before heading briskly down the street. Ortiz waved back. It was his first action of the past hour aside from watching and waiting.
Had Ortiz looked closer, he might have noticed that the boy wearing Richie’s hat and Richie’s jacket was not Richie. But the FBI man was guarding against threats from the outside; why would he give a second thought to a close family friend?
Police work seemed exciting on TV, but the day-to-day of it was boring in the extreme.
* * *
The Greyhound bus headed west out of downtown Baltimore, wending its way through traffic onto the interstate that would take it to the south and west toward central Virginia.
In the shadow of Richie Pembleton’s beloved Greenville Cubs baseball cap, Aiden pored over a sheaf of papers — the article about the bathroom vandals, and online maps of every town, village, burg, and hamlet along a hundred miles of Route 119. They were remarkably few and far between.
They’ve taken Meg to the moon, or at least halfway.
How was he ever going to find her out here?
He had told no one of his plan to search for his sister on his own. His parents would have nailed him to his bed to prevent it. They certainly would have asked Sorenson and the FBI to stop him. Even Richie, his accomplice, knew only that Aiden was going, but not where. When Mom and Dad walked in on the boy, curled up under the covers of Aiden’s bed, Richie wouldn’t have anything to tell them.
It would be a shock for his parents. He felt bad about that. But as long as they continued to rely on do-nothing Sorenson, Aiden had to take matters into his own hands. For Meg, doing nothing amounted to a death sentence.
He peered out the window at the passing country-side. They were moving at a good speed now, but the ride was frustrating. Every time they seemed to be making progress, the bus would pull off the interstate into some one-horse town. It was maddeningly slow, especially since reaching Route 119 wasn’t half the battle. Once he got to the area, he didn’t kn
ow how to track down Meg, or if his theory of her whereabouts was even correct. And if, by some miracle, he really did locate her, he didn’t have the first idea how to get her away from three armed-and-dangerous kidnappers. He had already lost a confrontation with one of them, and nearly cost the FBI two million dollars’ ransom money in the bargain.
Just thinking of each impossible task ahead gave him a migraine. Once he stepped off this bus, he had absolutely no transportation. The clues that held the secret of Meg’s whereabouts could be anywhere along a hundred-mile stretch of road.
How am I supposed to cover that kind of distance — by jogging?
On top of it all, he was a runaway. When his parents realized he was gone, they’d call in the FBI in a heartbeat. Sorenson would put out another APB on another missing Falconer. People would be looking for him — not a major manhunt like his fugitive days, but he definitely had to keep a low profile.
The bus slowed as it took the jug handle and exited into another community — really just a cluster of houses and a gas station. He groaned as he read the sign in front of the roadside luncheonette that served as the depot:
EAT HERE
GET GAS
If he’d had any sense of humor left, he would have laughed out loud.
The driver pulled up to a scratched Plexiglas bus shelter and opened the doors. Nobody got on or off. It was just another useless stop to turn this simple trip into a hideous all-day marathon.
Then he spotted the name stenciled on the milky Plexiglas: KERWIN.
All at once he was wrestling with fourteen pages of printouts from MapQuest. There he found — the meandering hairline of Route 119, and somewhere along its path … the tiny dot of Kerwin, Virginia.
A sharp hiss announced the closing of the doors.
“Hey — hey wait!”
Juggling airborne papers, Aiden sprinted for the exit.
Meg awoke to a cold, damp feeling on the side of her head that hurt like crazy. She cried out in shock and pain. A firm grip on her shoulders contained her struggles.
“Everything’s okay,” soothed a friendly voice. “It’s just me.”
“Aiden?” But when her eyes blinked open, the kidnapper she called Mickey came into focus.
“Hold still,” he advised, dabbing at her with a wet cloth, stained pink.
She winced from the sting. “What is this place?”
The young man’s expression grew wary, and Meg knew he would not tell her. But she remembered the isolated mountain cabin, the open cellar doors leading to darkness.
This must be the basement.
She took in her surroundings. A single flickering candle lit the stone-lined walls, giving the cellar the appearance of an underground tomb. A pile of clay flowerpots, most of them broken, filled one corner. Against the opposite wall leaned an assortment of rusted gardening tools — cultivators, hoes, spades, and rakes.
“Congratulations,” she mumbled. “You’ve found another five-star hotel to put me up in.”
“Hang in there,” Mickey soothed. “You’ll be home soon.”
“Or I’ll be dead soon,” she amended bitterly.
He was genuinely distressed. “Don’t talk like that! We’re not murderers!”
“Maybe you’re not. But can you say the same thing about your two friends up there? He’s a goon, and she’s worse. She talks friendly — until you pay attention to what she says.”
“It’s not like that. We’re just trying to — ” He looked guilty. “You know what we’re trying to do.”
“That’s all I am to you — ransom money. Too bad you can’t stick me in an ATM and make it spit out cash.”
The young man bristled. “It’s easy to look down on money when you’ve always had plenty of it!”
Meg snorted. “Like there’s an excuse for kidnapping.”
“I’m not making excuses,” he retorted. “I’m just telling it like it is. My brother’s in trouble. He needs a lawyer — a good one, the kind that doesn’t come cheap. I’ve been looking after the kid since I was sixteen and he was twelve. What am I going to do — work at Burger King? His trial will be ancient history before I can pay for his defense.”
Meg swallowed a sarcastic boo-hoo. She had no sympathy for criminals. What she did have was a vast understanding of the connection between siblings. Four years. That was the same as her age difference with Aiden. She would never forget their weeks on the run, when they had been each other’s only support. To this day, there was nothing Meg would not do for Aiden, and he for her. Kidnapping? It had never come to that. But Meg was almost certain that anything meant anything.
“What kind of trouble is your brother in?” she asked finally.
“The worst kind,” Mickey admitted. “He got mixed up with a gang. I was working on a fishing boat. Ten-day run. By the time I got back — ” He clenched his fists for emphasis. “I have to get him a good lawyer! He’s going to college. He’s not going to end up like me!”
In spite of herself, Meg was touched by her captor’s attempt to save a loved one the horrors of prison. It was all too familiar. And while Mom and Dad had been released in the end, the fate of the Falconer family could hardly be described as happily ever after.
Brought back to her own problems, Meg tuned Mickey out as he went on and on about his hopes for his younger brother. Her eyes fixed on the labors of a small black beetle. It was digging diligently at a crumbling mortar course in the fieldstone wall. She watched, squinting in the dim orange glow, as the little creature managed to burrow itself into a crack and disappear.
Her gaze shifted to the collection of gardening tools.
If that bug can dig out, so can I.
* * *
Agent Emmanuel Harris had known better weeks. His removal from the Falconer kidnapping still stung. He didn’t blame his superiors for yanking him — he had bungled the rescue attempt, and put not just Meg, but also Aiden, at risk. Yet he didn’t see how Mike Sorenson represented any kind of improvement. Sorenson had a reputation as a by-the-book agent, not a creative thinker. And precious little about the Falconer family ever seemed to go by the book.
It’s not your case anymore, he was quick to remind himself.
He’d wanted so much to help those poor people after all the suffering he’d caused them. Instead, he’d failed them again.
Then there was the embarrassing matter of the cell phone. It had slipped out of his shirt pocket as he’d leaned over the coffeepot. The verdict — liquid damage. Beyond repair. Bad enough he’d been pulled from the case. Now he was the laughingstock of the FBI.
He clutched the new replacement phone tightly as he entered the common room where the DC field agents had their offices. Several dozen staffers were on hand to greet him. At the sight of his towering six-foot-seven-inch frame, the crowd raised their coffee mugs in a welcoming toast. A cell phone sat in each and every one. Held high in salute, the handsets all rang at the same moment — a cacophony of electronic tones.
Harris felt heat rushing to his cheeks. “Hilarious,” he muttered, and disappeared into his office.
He powered up the new phone. Thirty-six unheard voice messages. Terrific. He wasn’t even reassigned and he’d already fallen behind. With a sigh, he pressed the key to play the first one — and heard the words that brought his attention screeching back to the case he was trying to put behind him.
“I found Meg …”
Richie Pembleton had made it to Level 9 Jedi Master on Aiden’s computer when Louise Falconer came in.
“Aiden, you didn’t have any lunch, and — ” She blinked. “Oh, hi, Richie. Where’s Aiden?”
He had been waiting for that question all day, yet when it finally came, it still caught him off guard. “He — left.”
The conversation that followed was every bit as awful as he’d feared it would be. First he faced the disbelief of Aiden’s mother. Then came John Falconer’s shock and anger. Finally, he was dragged in front of Agent Sorenson of the FBI.
“How da
re you interfere with a federal investigation?”
Richie was cowed. “I didn’t interfere with anything! I just gave him my hat and my jacket — ”
“You deliberately let him impersonate you so he could run away!” the lead agent accused.
“He said it was Meg’s only chance!” Richie quavered.
“What else did he say?” Aiden’s father cut in. “Where was he going?”
“He didn’t tell me! Honest! He just said the FBI wouldn’t listen, and he was doing what he had to.”
Sorenson was enraged. “Aiden Falconer is a material witness in this case! Helping him flee is a federal crime! I could have you arrested — ”
“But you won’t,” drawled a familiar voice from the doorway.
Stooping slightly to keep from whacking his head on the frame, Agent Harris stepped into the house. “See, if you arrest Richie, that calls attention to the fact that Aiden Falconer walked out of this house right under your nose.”
Sorenson turned on him. “You have no business here. You’re not on this case anymore.”
Harris shrugged. “I’m here as a private citizen, a friend of the family.”
John Falconer choked. “You’re no friend of ours!”
“Aiden called me,” Harris informed them. “He left me a message that said he’d figured out where Meg was. Know anything about that?”
“It was nonsense,” snapped Sorenson. “A wild theory about blocked toilets.”
“I want every detail,” Harris insisted.
Sorenson was appalled. “You’re taking this seriously?”
“Aiden takes it seriously,” Harris returned. “Crazy or not, that’s the lead he’ll be following. It may have escaped you, but we now have two missing kids.”
Sorenson hung on stubbornly. “Aiden’s been gone less than twenty-four hours. He’s not a missing person yet.”
It was Louise Falconer who relented. “Come with me, Agent Harris. I’ll show you the Internet article Aiden found.”
* * *
The hamburger at EAT HERE, GET GAS was barely edible, but Aiden devoured every crumb. He hadn’t known he was hungry; he’d been far too uptight for that. But in his anxiety to sneak out of the house as Richie, he had skipped breakfast, and now it was late afternoon. This overcooked greasy patty on a soggy bun was better than any gourmet meal.