Aiden couldn’t keep his emotions from pouring out. “But it isn’t tightening! Ten thousand isn’t so much! You offered more than twice that for Meg and me when we were on the run. What does that mean — law-abiding citizens aren’t worth as much as fugitives?”
Richie put a hand on his shoulder, but Aiden shrugged it away.
“That’s enough,” his father said sharply. “We should be happy the Bureau has finally sent us an agent who’ll get serious about rescuing Meg.”
Aiden kept his mouth shut. He had no great love for Harris. Yet Harris was someone they could trust. He had nearly destroyed their family, but he had never actually lied to them. In spite of all the misery he had brought, he was a fair man. Even Meg would be forced to agree with that.
Aiden’s eyes ran over the creases and bulges of Sorenson’s ill-fitting jacket. This unprofessional-looking rumpled mess now held Meg’s life in his hands.
A line from an old book rattled disquietingly in Aiden’s head: There’s always a rockier road than the one you’re on.
Yes, it was good to be rid of Harris. But what if his replacement turned out to be even worse?
Curled up in a ball in the car, Meg faded in and out of hazy consciousness.
I’ll never get used to that chloroform headache….
A short distance away, her captors were changing the ruined tire. Meg struggled through the fog to tune into their conversation.
“That’s a bullet hole!” Spidey was saying. “We didn’t run over a nail — she shot out the tire from inside the trunk!”
Tiger was impatient. “With what? The ice scraper?”
“Maybe she had a gun, but she pitched it while we were chasing her,” Mickey suggested.
“Don’t be a fool,” Tiger scolded. “Why would she throw away a ticket to freedom?”
“Well, we searched the trunk and we searched her,” said Mickey. “There was no gun.”
Spidey vowed, “I’ll beat it out of her.”
“I won’t let you!” Mickey exclaimed.
“You and what army?”
Tiger put a stop to the argument. “The last thing we want is a damaged hostage. We should have expected something like this. She’s tricky and she’s resourceful. Remember, she and her brother had every cop on earth running around in circles. We’ve got to be extra careful with her.”
“Tie her up?” suggested Spidey.
“Not good enough,” Tiger told him. “We can’t let her out of our sight for a second.”
And so new travel arrangements were born. Meg rode in the car, with sunglasses and the visor of a baseball cap concealing her features.
At least I’m out of the trunk. This was an improvement. Sort of.
Beside her — crowding her against the door, in fact — was Spidey. The bulge in his jacket was unmistakable. His gun, pointed directly at her.
“Try something and I’ll drill you,” he vowed.
Meg took him at his word. In the days since she’d been taken, the burly kidnapper had alternated between rage and cruelty. He was capable of kidnapping; he was capable of violence. She had no doubt that he was also capable of murder.
The spare tire was a “doughnut,” a temporary replacement to get the car to the nearest service station. Twenty miles down the road, the Buick pulled into a dilapidated garage with a hand-painted sign:
FUEL — MECHANIC — LOTTERY TICKETS
“Take her for a walk,” Tiger told Mickey. “I don’t want anybody to get a good look at her.”
The youngest kidnapper was mystified. “Who’s going to see her? We’re in the middle of nowhere.”
“Him, for one.” Tiger indicated the coveralled mechanic, who was strolling to meet them. “These days, every grease monkey has ninety cable news channels and a high-speed Internet connection. This girl is a celebrity.”
“Yeah,” Meg agreed bitterly. “I should get a star on the walk of fame.”
“Watch your lip.” Tiger turned to Mickey. “Get her out of here — now.”
“I have to go to the bathroom,” Meg complained.
“Hold it in,” Spidey growled.
“Forever?”
Tiger released an exasperated breath. “Give me the gun.”
Concealing the weapon in her own jacket, she opened Meg’s door and led her toward the small public bathroom beside the garage.
Meg weighed the possibility of conveying her plight to the mechanic. But how could she lock eyes with him when she was hidden behind sunglasses? He’d never even see she was looking at him. Maybe she could flip up the shades, just for a second — a silent S.O.S. She raised a hand to her temple.
Tiger read her mind. “You’re putting that man in danger,” she warned. “Do you want him to suffer for your mistake?”
Meg lowered her hand. It was bad enough that the Three Animals were prepared to shoot her. But an innocent bystander? Even a chance at rescue wasn’t worth risking the life of another person.
The small bathroom had no windows and only one entrance. Still, Tiger examined it carefully before leaving Meg alone inside. “Be quick about it,” she ordered.
The instant the door closed, Meg knew the clock was ticking. There was no escape from this tiny room. But maybe, just maybe, she could use these precious few seconds of privacy to send out a distress call.
She did an inventory, which didn’t take very long. There was a sink and a toilet — not exactly cutting-edge communications equipment.
It came to her as she was about to flush. There might be a way. It was a long shot. No, to call this a long shot was an insult to long shots.
Her brother was the world’s biggest fan of their father’s novels. During those weeks on the run, it had been Aiden who had used Mac Mulvey’s wild schemes to get them out of the direst situations. Meg had begun studying the books after the family’s ordeal had ended. Hey, you had to stop being a doubter when there was proof the stuff actually worked!
If I do something from Mac Mulvey, there’s a chance Aiden might recognize it.
In An Education to Die For, Mulvey is locked inside a restroom on the unused top floor of a New York City high school. He screams for help, but that only speeds up his breathing of poisonous gases given off by the toxic chemicals planted there. With time running out, the resourceful Mulvey finds another way to make his presence known. He moves along the line of stalls, clogging the plumbing with bathroom tissue. When he flushes, the overflowing toilets send a flood of water streaming out under the door into the building. A worried student reports a cataract cascading down the stairwell, and an investigating custodian frees Mulvey mere seconds before suffocation.
Feeling as silly as she was desperate, Meg removed the tissue roll, pushed it into the toilet, and inserted it directly in the drain opening. Next, she took the backup roll, wondering if she should unravel the paper into the water. That would fill the bowl with mushy cement.
No, she decided. This has to be an exact copycat crime to have any chance of reaching Aiden. Mulvey didn’t have time to make cement. In that story, the clock was ticking as the air filled up with deadly fumes.
She stuffed the backup roll in whole.
There was a pounding at the door and Tiger’s impatient “Let’s go!”
She experienced a moment of panic. What if Tiger had to use the bathroom after her?
No time to think about that …
“Coming,” she called brightly. And she flushed.
The plumbing made an unhealthy gurgling sound as the mushy pulp tried to jam itself through the drain. The water level began to rise.
Meg let herself out of the bathroom and closed the door behind her. “Thanks,” she said to Tiger. “I wasn’t feeling very well.”
Message sent.
Twenty minutes later, the Buick passed a sign advertising a gas station two miles ahead. Meg, who had been complaining of a stomachache since the previous stop, doubled over in pain. “I need a bathroom!” she groaned.
“You just went!” Spidey snapp
ed
“I have to go again! Please!”
“Oh, all right,” Tiger said in annoyance. “But this is your last chance. Get yourself straightened away.”
“I’ll try,” Meg sniffled.
This time there was only one roll, but it was the thick, extra-absorbent brand. It took all her strength to cram it into the narrow drain, while Tiger pounded on the door, urging her to hurry up.
The result was even better than before. The heavy mass of wet paper acted like a giant cork, quickly sealing the opening. She barely got out of there before the overflow hit the cement floor.
“Feel better?” asked Mickey back at the car.
“A little,” she mumbled shyly.
At least until the next stop …
The trick worked twice more. Towns were few and far between on Route 119, a tiny two-lane road that wound its way west toward the Appalachians. But every time the signs told of a gas station, general store, or luncheonette, Meg’s mystery illness returned. She would clutch her stomach and beg for another bathroom break.
“She’s playing us,” Spidey whispered as Meg faked sleep after the third stop. “Nobody goes to the bathroom this much.”
“You do if you’re sick,” Mickey argued.
“She’s got an angle,” the burly man insisted. “She’s marking her trail, leaving clues for the cops. Notes in lipstick on the mirror.”
“She’s got no lipstick, and there are no mirrors,” said Tiger. “These are Stone Age bathrooms, and she has nothing but the clothes on her back.”
“She had no more than that when she shot out our tire,” Spidey observed sourly.
“She had a bullet,” Tiger countered, “because someone was stupid enough to leave live ammunition in the trunk.”
“It isn’t live unless you’ve got a gun to shoot it out of!” Although he lowered his voice, his frustration was evident.
“Well, she did it, so obviously it was more live than you think!”
Meg felt a small measure of satisfaction knowing that her captors were fighting over her antics.
If I drive them crazy enough, maybe they’ll let me go.
If only.
On the fourth bathroom stop, she decided to be careful. Her kidnappers were growing suspicious. She doubted any of them had read Mac Mulvey. Still, a toilet jammed full of tissue rolls would look fishy if Tiger happened to check on her. So she took a single roll and packed the center cardboard tube with a crumpled paper towel. Then she got down on one knee and pressed it far enough into the drain so that it was out of view.
She had barely gotten back to her feet when Tiger pushed the door open and peered in suspiciously. Her narrow eyes tracked up and down the walls and floor, searching for any unusual markings. She found only random doodles and graffiti.
“I’m done,” Meg told her.
“Then let’s go.”
And before following her onto the dirt driveway, Meg reached back inside and pressed the flusher.
She had sent Aiden four “messages,” but what were they, really? Tiny glitches in a universe of plumbing. How many toilets blocked on a typical day? Thousands? Hundreds of thousands? What were the odds that her brother would hear about four of them?
She thought of him, hundreds of miles away by now, distant and remote. All at once, she felt ridiculous. She was the victim of a terrible crime — kidnapped, held for ransom.
And what am I doing to save myself ?
Vandalizing bathrooms.
Reaching Aiden this way would take a miracle.
Aiden stared at the screen until the words on it became meaningless squiggles. The Blog Hog, CNN.com, the website of every newspaper he could think of. Every time he felt the impulse to shut down the browser, his arm would not respond to commands. The next screen, the next link might offer a clue that would help solve Meg’s kidnapping. How could he rest before that happened?
He worked at his sister’s computer rather than his own, hoping that something in her room might jump-start his brain. Surely there was a lead that the FBI hadn’t considered yet? But every time he looked around, it was with a swelling sense of hopelessness and the horrible feeling that time was running out.
No one had the heart to clean up Meg’s stuff since her abduction. Unfolded clothes oozed out of drawers; books and board games were jammed every which way. Meg’s messiness had once seemed like an insult to Aiden’s carefully ordered life. Now this place was sacred ground. When he stood here, he felt Meg’s absence like a vacuum cleaner sucking at his heart. It was painful, yet he cherished the pain because it brought him closer to his sister. It made her real again.
His eyes fell on a stack of folders and work sheets on the edge of the desk. Meg’s homework, sent over by her teachers. It was a show of support more than anything else. Of course Meg would be fine. She had all this catching up to do.
Nobody was bringing homework anymore, Aiden noted sadly. At this point, there was a very good chance that it would remain forever undone.
Focus! he commanded himself.
There were updates about Meg on the web, but they mostly rehashed the botched FBI rescue. They were sprinkled between stories of international events, celebrity gossip, and headlines as varied as AMERICA’S OLDEST BIKER STILL LEADER OF THE PACK AT 97 and DON’T TAKE AWAY PLUTO’S PLANET STATUS, SCIENTIST PLEADS.
People cared more about a lump of frozen rock than Meg’s life.
His eyes fell on the silliest headline of all: THEIR BOWLS RUNNETH OVER — BATHROOM VANDALS HEAD WEST.
DINGLEY, VA: 6:19 p.m. — Somebody has a grudge against the plumbing along Route 119. In the space of barely three hours early this afternoon, vandals struck four consecutive public bathrooms on a stretch of this isolated rural road. The damage? Not broken windows or offensive graffiti, but four badly clogged overflowing toilets.
“It may not sound like much,” said a local police spokesperson. “But that’s every comfort station for a hundred miles.”
According to police, the four incidents are “definitely connected,” each with the identical M.O. — an entire tissue roll jammed directly into the drain. Even so, the department has no intention of going after the perpetrators. “We’ll let Roto-Rooter take care of this one …”
Aiden snapped back from the computer as if he’d been slapped.
No, it can’t be …
He reread the story. An entire tissue roll jammed directly into the drain.
Mac Mulvey? Could this be Meg broadcasting a secret distress signal via Dad’s books?
Her life was on the line! If she got a chance to send a message, would she be crazy enough to waste it on blocked toilets?
All at once, he realized it was the perfect message. Something Aiden would recognize, but her captors wouldn’t — not unless they’d read An Education to Die For.
He pulled an atlas down from Meg’s bookshelf and threw it open, hunting furiously for a map of Virginia. There it was — the town of Dingley, barely a speck. And running right through it, Route 119, a winding farm road that meandered west from the capital region.
She’d been held on the Virginia side of DC. When her kidnappers fled town, they would have followed the last road anyone would be watching — something like Route 119! She’d be kept in the car, well hidden. The one thing they couldn’t deny her was a bathroom break!
And she found a way to send up a signal flare.
His sister was one of a kind.
“Bathroom vandals?”
John Falconer scanned the news story and then swiveled his laptop so his wife could see the screen.
“Don’t you get it?” Aiden exclaimed. “Mac Mulvey did exactly the same thing in An Education to Die For! Meg knows it’s something we’d pick up on. She’s telling us where she is!”
“By blocking toilets,” Mom said dubiously.
“They’re not going to let her send a singing telegram!”
“Aiden,” she admonished gently. “We won’t bring your sister home with sarcasm.”
“Nobody wants Meg safe and sound more than your mother and me,” Dad said earnestly. “But we have to keep our heads. Criminology is our field. A clogged pipe isn’t a lead. It isn’t anything.”
“Yeah, but four of them in a row?” Aiden challenged. “Along a road you’d take if you were trying not to be noticed?”
“You could say that about a hundred roads,” his mother pointed out.
“If it’s such a common thing, how come they wrote an article about it?” Aiden demanded.
She shrugged. “It’s funny. It’s a slice of life.”
Aiden was stubborn. “It’s Meg!”
“You’re talking about an eleven-year-old girl,” his father reminded him. “She’s helpless and terrified.”
“She may be scared, but she’s tougher than all of us put together,” Aiden insisted. “We did Mac Mulvey stuff all the time when we were fugitives! Dad — you of all people should recognize something from your own book!”
Agent Sorenson appeared in the doorway. “Well, I made some inquiries. It’s nothing. Pranks — teenagers with too much time on their hands.”
John Falconer let out a long breath. “I guess that’s it then.”
Aiden was appalled. “That’s not ‘it’! All he did was talk on his cell phone!”
“I spoke to local law enforcement,” Sorenson amended. “You know what they told me? ‘It’s football season.’ Every time there’s a big game coming up, the local high school kids suddenly turn into comedians.”
“But aren’t you even going to assign an agent to go over there to check it out?”
The agent was impatient. “This is a kidnapping investigation. I don’t have the kind of manpower where I can send agents chasing after nonsense.”
“No,” Aiden agreed caustically. “Not when they’re so busy standing around doing nothing.”
“A waiting game is not ‘doing nothing’!” Sorenson snapped.
Louise Falconer took her son’s face between her hands. “Calm down, Aiden. It only hurts Meg’s chances when we squabble among ourselves.”