For Teri Lesesne, college professor and motorcycle grandma
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue
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3
4
5
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About the Author
Also Available
Copyright
Thirty-one miles inland from the rugged Oregon coast, a deserted two-lane road was losing its battle to hold back the encroaching brush. The highway department had long since forgotten this lonely stretch, dozens of dreary miles from the nearest town.
It was the last place on earth anyone would expect to find an FBI agent at two o’clock in the morning.
Agent Emmanuel Harris squinted out the window of the police cruiser into the moonless gloom. “Why are we stopping?” he asked.
Sheriff Donnelly of Tillamook County, Oregon, was at the wheel. “According to the scanner, the cell-phone signal is coming from here.”
Harris did a quick three-sixty. “I don’t see the car.”
“The technology doesn’t lie,” Donnelly insisted. “The car may not be here, but the phone is.”
Wearily, Harris unfolded his towering six-foot-seven frame out of the car, taking care not to spill an enormous hot cup of coffee that had long since gone cold. He played his flashlight beam over the weeds and brambles. This was going to be like finding a needle in a haystack.
“Wait.” The sheriff took out his own handset. “I’ve got a better idea. What’s your number?”
When the ringer went off, it was so close that Harris jumped. He could even see the glow as the faceplate lit up. He reached down and retrieved his stolen phone from the tall grass.
He couldn’t believe the image on the small screen.
It was the last picture taken by the camera function. It showed, in detailed close-up, a fifteen-year-old boy and his eleven-year-old sister: Aiden and Margaret Falconer, the fugitives who had been outrunning him, outsmarting him, and driving him insane for the past several weeks.
They were in a car — his rental car, stolen after they’d left him handcuffed and humiliated in a hospital room! This photo, taken by his phone, was their message to him, and not a very polite one at that.
Harris swallowed hard. He wasn’t sure he deserved any better. After all, he had created these young outlaws by sending their parents to prison for life.
He snapped the flip phone shut. “Let’s get back to the station. I want this picture on the front page of every newspaper tomorrow.”
“What is it?” the sheriff asked.
Harris looked grim. “I think Aiden and Margaret Falconer have finally made their first mistake.”
It was crossing the state line into Idaho that made Aiden decide he couldn’t ignore the gas gauge any longer.
“Meg!” He nudged his sister, who was asleep in the passenger seat.
She was awake in an instant. “What?” No fugitive was a heavy sleeper. Life on the run had trained that out of her. “Where are we?”
“Idaho,” Aiden replied. “I think it’s time to ditch the car. Sun’s up.”
“But it’s a million miles to Denver!” she protested. “How are we going to get there?”
“Not in this car,” Aiden said firmly. “It’s a rental stolen from an FBI agent. We’re okay on back roads in the dead of night, but we won’t last five minutes if the police give us a second look. Besides, we’re running on fumes.”
The reality of their predicament could not be denied. Buying gas was out of the question. Neither had any money — not one cent.
“We could always do the old fill-’n’-fly,” Meg suggested hopefully. “We’ve already got every cop in the west after us. What’s one more?”
“It won’t be just one,” Aiden argued. “Picture the report: two kids in a white Buick with Avis stickers and Oregon plates. How long would it take them to figure out that we’re a lot more than just gas thieves? They’d surround us with roadblocks and come at us from all sides. The one thing we have going for us now is that nobody knows where we are.”
The words were no sooner out of his mouth than a black-and-white police cruiser pulled off the shoulder behind them, lights flashing.
Terrified, Aiden checked the speedometer. Seventy-five.
Idiot! he cursed himself. They had escaped manhunts and had threaded their way through dragnets. How could he risk their freedom now by getting stopped for speeding?
He eased up on the accelerator and began to veer over onto the gravel.
Meg was horrified. “Are you nuts? What if he finds out who we are?”
“Shhh!” Aiden sat motionless, his eyes riveted to the side mirror. It was all he could do to keep from shaking as he watched the uniformed officer step out of the cruiser.
We’re Mom and Dad’s only hope to get out of prison, he thought desperately. It can’t end this way….
With measured steps, the man began to walk toward the Buick. Aiden monitored every millimeter of progress.
Closer … closer …
As the cop reached the back bumper of the rental, Aiden stomped on the pedal. The tires screamed against the dirt and stones, until the left front wheel grabbed pavement. The big car roared away, leaving the officer scrambling for his own vehicle.
Meg looked back. “He’s coming after us, Aiden! Faster!”
Aiden whimpered with fear as the LOW FUEL light came on. But he knew he would run out of time before he ran out of gas.
No way I can win a race against a local cop on his own home turf!
Their only hope was to get lost — now! How could they manage that on a long, straight road with no turnoffs?
“He’s gaining on us!” Meg cried frantically. “Do something!”
“It’s a Buick, not a Lamborghini!” Aiden choked, keeping a death grip on the steering wheel as the speedometer needle vibrated past ninety. At fifteen years old, he had no license — not even a learner’s permit. This was only his second attempt at driving. It was not the ideal time for a high-speed chase.
The tiny town was upon him so fast that he might have missed it. Slamming on the brakes, he wrenched the wheel in the direction of the intersection. But the forward momentum carried the car past the cross street. Suddenly, they were spinning around, out of control, pressed into their seats by centrifugal force. The Buick lurched to a halt in a cloud of dust, facing the highway.
Aiden opened his eyes just in time to see the cruiser flash by.
Now it was the policeman’s turn to brake hard. As he tried to make a U-turn, a lumber truck, loaded with huge undressed logs, came by from the other direction, blocking his way and his view.
Aiden knew it was now or never. He drove straight across somebody’s front yard and lurched onto the main street of the town.
Meg was chalk white. “He’s coming any minute, Aiden! We’ve got to disappear!”
“I know!” But in this place? There was a luncheonette, a general store and post office, a bank, and a gas station with a car wash.
With his shoulders so tense they were up around his ears, Aiden pointed the Buick at the car wash and gunned the engine.
“What are you doing?” Meg was practically hysterical.
A front tire slipped into the slot on the conveyor chain.
“Put it in neutral!” shouted the attendant.
It was as if Aiden had spent every ounce of energy and will to ge
t them this far. It was Meg who had to reach over and shift into neutral. The mechanism drew the vehicle into the washing tunnel. Water began to cascade down on the hood.
“You want hot wax?” the attendant yelled.
“Whatever takes the longest!” Meg called back.
Aiden looked out the rear window, dreading to see the police cruiser coming up behind them. The hanging rubber strips closed, blocking the daylight.
They were safe, but only for a couple of minutes.
“I hope you have a plan,” Meg ventured nervously.
Amazingly, Aiden did.
Forty feet ahead, at the far end of the tunnel, was a dark panel truck, just about to enter the drying section.
It was their only chance. In a town this size, it wouldn’t be long before the process of elimination led that cop to the one place he hadn’t searched yet. There was no way they could leave this car wash in the Buick.
“Follow me.” Aiden threw open the door and scrambled into a downpour of frigid soapy water. A giant rotating brush came out of nowhere and smacked him in the side of the head. He staggered against the car, reeling and spitting suds.
Meg grabbed his wrist, and the two ducked just in time to avoid an enormous spin-scrubber that swooped down on the Buick. They scampered forward through a drenching ice-cold rinse. They knew they had only a few seconds to traverse the tunnel before the car arrived to be doused with hot wax.
The panel truck’s rear doors were only a few feet in front of them when a wind straight from a nightmare hurricane blasted into them, driving them back toward where the wax was now spraying. Shafts of light from the end of the tunnel indicated that the hood of the panel truck was already leaving the car wash.
With a superhuman effort, Aiden flung himself directly into the teeth of the dryer’s gale and threw open one of the back doors of the truck. He and Meg clambered inside, the noise of their movements drowned out by the clatter of machinery. Aiden shut them inside, in total darkness.
“What if it had been locked?” Meg whispered, shivering.
“It wasn’t.” It was the most comfort he had to offer.
This was what their lives had become. Even when things went right, total disaster was never more than a hair away.
Tucked away in the windowless payload, they were unable to witness the dramatic ending to their narrow escape. When the panel truck drove away from the car wash, it passed the police officer, who stood waiting to arrest an empty Buick.
Meg hugged herself in the gloom of the payload. There was no torture quite like having no idea where they were headed. For all they knew, the driver could be taking them to the police this very minute.
Relax, she tried to calm herself. If he knew someone was back here, he would have stopped by now to check it out.
They were okay — for now.
“Hey, bro,” she whispered to Aiden, “what are the odds that this guy’s going to Denver?”
She felt rather than saw his grimace. “Slim to none,” he answered. “But anything that takes us away from that town and that cop has got to be the right direction.”
Meg nodded. “How far from Denver do you think we are?”
“Very,” he replied glumly. “We’d just made it out of Oregon. I’m guessing close to a thousand miles.”
It was a testament to how hard they’d fought that neither considered it impossible. A thousand miles with zero dollars for transportation or food? It was possible because it had to be. It was their only chance to prove their parents’ innocence.
Doctors John and Louise Falconer were the husband and wife criminologists convicted of helping foreign terrorists. They had believed they were working for the CIA. In reality, they had been providing assistance to the Denver-based HORUS Global Group, a front for terrorists. That was why Denver was the next stop on this crazy marathon that had taken Aiden and Meg from Nebraska to Vermont to Los Angeles and up the Oregon coast. They had lost the trail of Frank Lindenauer, the CIA impostor who had framed their parents. Maybe they could find it again in the ashes of HORUS Global, Lindenauer’s true employer.
“A thousand miles,” Meg repeated, wringing some excess water from her T-shirt. “I wish we didn’t have to do it soaking wet.”
“Feels like we’re slowing down,” Aiden observed. “Be ready for anything. If he opens the back, we’re going to have to make a run for it.”
The truck came to a stop. The chassis rocked as the driver climbed out, and they heard the slamming of the door.
Meg tensed. If they were going to be discovered, it would come in the next few seconds.
Nothing.
They waited — five minutes, then ten.
Meg strained to hear outside the metal walls.
No voices, no traffic noises. Not a sound.
The click of the latch seemed like a rifle shot as Aiden eased the door open. They peered out. They were parked on the dirt drive of a neat wood-frame farmhouse surrounded by rolling pastureland. The driver must have gone inside the house, because there was no one around.
Aiden and Meg climbed out of the truck and began to walk quickly down the drive toward the road. With each step, Meg expected cries of Stop! Who are you? What are you doing here? But it was as if they were two people alone in the world.
They reached the pavement and crossed to the opposite side, where some scrub brush would provide cover should they need it.
After all, Meg reminded herself, we’re only fifteen minutes from the car wash.
She turned to her brother. “When our Buick comes out all washed and empty, how long before they realize who we really are?”
Aiden was not optimistic. “How long does it take to type a license number into a police computer? This is bad news, Meg. They’ll be watching all the roads. So unless we can walk to Denver one field at a time, we can’t get out of here.”
“We need to find some kind of ATV,” Meg mused. “Like that quad we had in Vermont. We got halfway across the state without ever driving on a paved street.”
Her brother nodded. “Too bad there aren’t any ATVs around here.”
A soft whinny reached their ears. Below them, in a gently sloping meadow, stood a big black plow horse with a white blaze on its forehead. It stopped grazing and examined them quizzically.
Meg’s voice was full of wonder. “Look, bro — our ticket out!”
Aiden was wide-eyed. “You mean ride away from here? On that?”
“In the old days,” Meg enthused, “that was an ATV. Look — it’s even a quad. Count the legs.”
“But we can’t ride a horse!”
“I can,” Meg shot back. “What did you do in camp all those summers?”
“It was science camp,” Aiden said stiffly.
“Fine. I’ll ride, and you design a particle accelerator.” She grabbed his hand and dragged him down the slope.
He was still protesting. “But there’s no saddle! No reins! We could fall off.”
Meg was disgusted. “Are you serious? After all the stuff we’ve survived, your’re telling me you’re scared to get on a horse?”
He was tight-lipped. “Animals don’t like me.”
“I’ll deal with the animal,” she promised. “All you have to do is hang on. This is a gift, Aiden.” She turned to the horse. “Aren’t you, boy?”
In answer, the beast emitted a loud raspberry through flapping lips.
“See?” Meg announced triumphantly. “He looks friendly.”
“He looks like a moose.”
The horse allowed Meg to approach and stroke his flank. He regarded Aiden with suspicion but didn’t seem to mind the young girl, even when she moved in front of him and began to pat his soft nose.
“Okay,” she said to her brother. “Give me a boost.”
“Are you sure about this, Meg? You’re only a little kid. That animal could eat you. One buck and you’re in orbit.”
Classic Aiden, Meg thought. He knew this was totally necessary, but still he had to complain until the last s
econd.
He took her small foot in cupped hands and heaved. She wrapped her arms around the powerful neck and pulled herself to a sitting position. Then she reached down and helped Aiden climb to the spot behind her.
She took a deep breath. Even she had to admit it was awfully high up.
“Here goes,” she said.
She tried to jump-start the ride by squeezing with her knees. But this was an animal accustomed to pulling a plow. He didn’t respond to riding commands. She tried slapping his flank with no result.
Aiden put his two cents in. “Don’t you have to say ‘giddyap’ or something?”
At the sound of the word, the big animal broke into a lumbering trot, heading for the pasture fence. There he stopped and waited patiently.
“Get down and open the gate!” Meg hissed.
Aiden was clamped on with a death grip. “What if he bolts?”
“This guy wouldn’t bolt if you juiced him with rocket fuel! Look at his white whiskers. He’s a grandfather!”
Gingerly, like he was descending an icy cliff, Aiden eased himself down to the ground and swung open the wire barrier. The horse moved through and patiently waited for Aiden to close the gate and climb back up.
Another “giddyap!” had them on their way, ambling over the scrubby high-desert terrain. They gave no thought to direction. So long as it was away from the town and out of sight of roads that might be patrolled by police, it was the right way.
They heard distant sirens a few times, chilling reminders that they were being hunted by trained and relentless professionals. Capture was never more than one mistake away. But as the hours went by, they never saw a single soul.
Meg clung to the horse’s neck, “steering” by leaning to one side or the other. The endless rocking motion lulled her, causing her mind to wander. She and Aiden were already charged with arson, grand theft auto, breaking and entering, assaulting a police officer, and at least a dozen other crimes. Now they were horse thieves, too. What was next — cattle rustling? Wanted by the FBI, the juvenile authorities, and at least a dozen state and local police departments, should she now be looking over her shoulder for a good old-fashioned wild west posse?
They stopped only once, and it was not by design. They came upon a small pond, and the horse decided he was thirsty. Rather than be catapulted over his head into the water, they scrambled down, grateful for the chance to rest their weary bodies.