“How do the cowboys do it?” Aiden groaned. “I feel like I’ll never sit again!”
But a few minutes later, they were back underway, rocking with the plodding motion of their mount.
They descended into shady valleys before the terrain rose again. Then it flattened into endless potato fields, still green with their fall crop.
“You know,” said Meg, “I’m starting to have a lot of respect for this horse. He’s not exactly a noble steed, but he’s like the Energizer bunny — he keeps going and going.” She grew serious. “I hope he can find his way home after this.”
Aiden hastened to reassure her. “We’ll never make hundreds of miles on this oat-burner. He’ll still be close enough to his own farm that someone will recognize him eventually.”
As they made their slow but steady progress, the sun grew heavy, sinking lower in the vast western sky.
“I think we might be coming to a town,” Meg observed. “Look.” She squinted into the distance. “Four farmhouses. That’s more than we’ve seen all day.”
They trotted along, giving the homes a wide berth. Although they were many hours’ travel from the town of their escape, the actual distance was probably no more than thirty miles. They could not rule out the possibility that people might be looking for them here, too.
A road appeared on the horizon. A couple of cars went by.
“Let’s get away from here,” Aiden advised.
“I’m trying,” said his sister, leaning far to the right on the animal’s neck. “He won’t turn.”
As the minutes went by, it became obvious that the horse had a destination in mind. No amount of pressure could redirect him, and nothing could stop him, not even a very loud “Whoa!”
They crossed two roads and then turned along a third, the horse accelerating to a full trot along the grassy shoulder.
Aiden was getting antsy. “We’re going to have to jump, right? Is there some special way to do it?”
Meg’s thoughts were elsewhere. “Do you hear music?” she asked. She snaked a hand into her pocket and pulled out a dainty pair of opera glasses that they’d been carrying around since LA. The left lens was now cracked, but the right could be used as a telescope. She held it up to her eye. “Uh-oh.”
She was looking at a large cluster of tents, brightly colored fluttering flags, and milling crowds. The sun gleamed off rows of cars and pickup trucks parked in the adjacent field.
“What do you mean, ‘uh-oh’?” Aiden asked warily.
“You know how we’re supposed to keep away from people? I think we just found the county fair.”
Meg handed the binoculars back to him, and he peered through the lens.
The horse broke into something approaching a canter.
“I don’t see any cop cars,” Aiden observed. “Maybe we could blend into the crowd. There’s bound to be a lot of kids there.”
“And do what?” Meg asked. “Ride the Tilt-a-Whirl?”
“We’ve got to hook up with some decent transportation. We can’t take a horse all the way to Denver. There are whole mountain ranges between here and there. The Rockies, for one.” He took a deep breath. “I think we have to go to this thing.”
The horse thought so, too. For a while, Aiden was afraid he would gallop straight into the middle of the festivities, taking down tents and food stands in his enthusiasm. That would have called far too much attention to the young people who just happened to be riding him bareback. To their relief, though, their mount veered around the parking lot to a metropolis of livestock pens. He stopped before the horses’ gate, waiting expectantly.
The Falconers dropped to the ground and let him inside.
Meg patted his flank as he moved past. “So long, old buddy. Thanks for the lift.”
Aiden let out a sigh of relief. He was glad to see an end to the horseback phase of their journey. He grabbed his sister by the arm. “Let’s disappear.”
They rushed past the rows of paddocks and slipped into the crowded midway. The sudden switch from totally alone to completely surrounded was jarring and scary. Any one of these hundreds of faces might belong to the person who would end their freedom. All it would take would be a look of recognition and a cry of “Stop those kids!”
The tension threatened to overwhelm Aiden, and he struggled to keep his nerves under control. Falling to pieces would be more than embarrassing. It would be like wearing a neon sign that flashed CHECK OUT THIS TEENAGER.
Hiding in plain sight was a strategy, he reminded himself sternly. If people don’t expect to see you, they won’t. That line was straight out of The Cyanide Capsule Defense. In addition to his job as a professor of criminology, Dr. John Falconer was the author of a series of detective novels. His hero, Mac Mulvey, was a master escape artist who believed that sometimes the best hiding place was right out in the open.
The food smells of the fair were enough to make any fugitive turn himself in. It had been almost twenty-four hours since either of them had eaten. True, food wasn’t a priority when you were running for your life. But when the hunger hit — like now — it hit with a gnawing desperation that could not be denied.
Beside Aiden, Meg groaned, and he knew exactly why.
“Don’t even think about it,” he advised. “We’re flat broke, remember?”
A second later she was grabbing his sleeve, pinching him through the fabric. “Yeah, but what about this?”
The sign read:
43RD ANNUAL OWYHEE COUNTY PIE-EATING CONTEST ALL WELCOME
Aiden frowned, watching a procession of lumberjacks and Weight Watchers dropouts taking their places around the tables. “What are you talking about? We can’t win a pie-eating contest.”
“Probably not,” she agreed, “but we can eat a heck of a lot of free pie.”
He looked at his sister with respect. Meg could be illogical, impulsive, and sometimes downright crazy. But there were commonsense smarts to her thinking that geniuses couldn’t match.
They slipped into the contestant line. “Don’t make yourself sick,” he advised in a whisper. “It’s a long way to Denver.”
* * *
They lost the contest, but the bloated comfort of a full stomach was so glorious that Aiden felt he now had the strength to move some of the mountains — both real and symbolic — that stood between them and the quest to help their parents.
Meg, too, was reenergized for action. “All right, bro. Now what?”
Aiden dropped his voice to a murmur. “There are a couple of buses in the parking lot. One of them said Boise.”
“Boise? We’re going to Denver.”
“I know. But in a bigger town, there might be a chance to do a few odd jobs, make a few bucks. Then we can buy Greyhound tickets and go to Denver without having to stow away.”
They moved through the crowd, skirting the game booths, sand art, and temporary tattoos. They walked slowly because of the crush, but also to avoid attracting attention.
Just two kids enjoying the fair, Aiden thought. That’s us.
Then the man in the shiny motorcycle helmet — the one who had been behind them since the pie-eating contest — turned left when they did.
Aiden felt his blood run cold. “Meg —”
“I see him,” Meg confirmed. “Long blond hair sticking out of a black helmet. Think he’s tailing us?”
Aiden steered them to the right around the cider stand. The black helmet followed.
“Could he be a cop?” Meg whispered.
Aiden shook his head. “Remember — the whole world’s looking for us. There’s a twenty-five-thousand-dollar reward for whoever brings us in.”
“But how did he recognize us?” she wondered. “He wouldn’t get much of a clean look in this mob, with our faces buried in pie.”
The answer stared up at them from a garbage can. It was a discarded copy of the Boise Register. Right smack in the middle of the tabloid’s front page was a large color picture of Aiden at the wheel of the stolen Buick. Meg leaned into
the frame, sticking her tongue out defiantly at the camera. It was the photograph Meg had taken last night with Emmanuel Harris’s cell phone.
She froze, her face gray. “I’ve killed us!”
Aiden put an arm around her. “Keep walking. If we split up, we might be able to shake him.”
She was shattered. “No!” The one thing his brave little sister feared was that the two of them might lose each other.
“It’s just for a few minutes,” he insisted. “We’ll meet up in the parking lot. Go!”
She darted from his side and melted into the crowd. She was small enough to disappear immediately. Aiden had been counting on this. While Black Helmet’s eyes were scanning for Meg, he dropped to a squat and tried to scamper off, hidden by the fairgoers around him. He was jostled and kicked as he doubled back against the flow of traffic. Weaving through the maze of bodies, he ducked into the exit door of the Haunted House.
It was a tame kiddie attraction, but Aiden was so anxious and keyed up that every cheesy ghost and vampire had his heart pummeling the underside of his rib cage. When he burst out the entrance on the opposite side, he had a clear path to the fair’s front gate. He made for it, hardly daring to glance over his shoulder. Black Helmet was nowhere to be seen.
Safe — for now, anyway. But where was Meg?
“Aiden — over here.” Meg appeared from behind a parked car.
He rushed over to join her. “There’s the bus. If we climb into the luggage compartment —”
He was cut off by the roar of an unmuffled engine. A gleaming silver Harley-Davidson advanced slowly down the row of parked vehicles.
At the controls was Black Helmet.
These weeks on the run had put the Falconers’ reflexes on a hair trigger. Their flight was instant. The motorcycle followed, closing the gap in a couple of seconds. Aiden could practically feel the heat of its engine.
“Jump!”
He and Meg dove between two cars, rolling on the brown grass.
The Harley executed a U-turn and lurched to a stop. “Give it up, you two,” called a voice that was not entirely unfriendly. “I promise you won’t get hurt.”
“What do you want from us?” Aiden demanded, amazed to hear his own voice so steady.
“What do you think?” the cyclist shot back. “Twenty-five grand, that’s what.”
“Our parents are innocent!” blurted Meg.
“That’s your problem,” laughed Black Helmet. He gunned the engine.
With terrifying maneuverability, the machine wheeled on a dime, threading the needle between the two parked cars, barely an inch to spare on either side.
Frantically, Aiden and Meg threw themselves out of its path. They rolled over the hood of a big Ford and hit the turf on the other side. Stunned, Aiden looked up. The motorcycle charged again, its rider grinning with malice.
There was no time even for thought. In a split second, the hurtling machinery would be upon them. Aiden grabbed the chrome handle and pulled the Ford’s heavy door open in front of them.
The crash was teeth-jarring. Black Helmet left his seat and smashed headfirst into the door, shattering the window with the force of his impact. The bike stopped, but the rider did not. He was thrown in an arcing somersault over the barrier, landing in a heap behind Aiden and Meg. The helmet rolled away.
Aiden steeled himself for hand-to-hand combat, but their attacker did not move.
Meg was frozen with shock. “Is he dead?”
Aiden knelt over the man and felt for a pulse. He found a strong, steady one. “He’s in better shape than we would have been if he’d run us over. Come on, let’s crack that luggage compartment. When he comes to, I want to be out of sight.”
“Forget that!” Meg exclaimed. “We don’t have to stow away on the bus. We’ve got wheels!”
“What — the motorcycle?” Aiden regarded the big Harley, leaning against the Ford. It seemed undamaged, but — “I can’t drive that monster!”
She glared at him. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned since we left Sunnydale Farm, it’s that you can do anything.”
Aiden gulped. Was his sister so naive that she actually believed that? Didn’t she see that all his heroics of the past weeks had been a mixture of desperation and pure luck?
The Harley weighed a ton. He barely had the strength to wrestle it fully upright and swing his leg over the seat. It was still idling, which was a good sign. All his motorcycle knowledge came from TV. Wasn’t the throttle on the handlebar? He gave the right one a slight twist and worked up enough forward momentum to move out from between the parked cars. Then he turned to the left and made an experimental run down the field. The acceleration of the bike was scary, like a force of nature was pushing from the rear.
Meg came running up behind him. “Hey — wait for me!”
Aiden squeezed the front brake, and the Harley stopped so suddenly that he almost went the way of the previous rider.
Meg picked up the shiny black helmet and handed it to her brother. There was a smaller one clipped on behind the seat. This she put on herself. “Practice on the road,” she said, climbing on behind him. “When somebody finds that jerk, we want to be ancient history.”
* * *
Driving the Harley was like straddling a rocket to the moon. The speed was dizzying. Even when the speedometer only showed fifty, the hurricane-force winds blasting by threatened to hurl driver and passenger off into space. The slightest pressure on the gas produced an instant spurt of acceleration that left their hearts and stomachs behind.
“This is awesome, bro!” Meg had to bellow directly into his helmet to be heard over the earsplitting roar of the motor. “It’s the only way to travel!”
Leave it to Meg to be having a good time while he was barely managing to keep them upright and alive. She was hanging on with one arm while fumbling to unfold a road map from the seat-side pouch. It billowed like the mainsail of a schooner in a full gale.
They took local roads away from the fair, following signs for Boise. Just before the interstate, Aiden pulled over at a police phone box. “There’s a man lying in the parking lot of the Owyhee County fair,” Aiden told the operator in his deepest voice. “I think he’s been hurt.” He hung up before the woman could ask any questions.
On the highway, Aiden gradually developed some confidence on the Harley. But he never got used to the curves. The bike would tilt forty-five degrees on every bend in the pavement. It was a spine-chilling reminder — they were traveling at car velocity, minus the protection of tons of metal around them.
Wipe out on this thing and you’re instant roadkill.
As they followed the Interstate toward Utah, Aiden’s eyes drifted to the gas gauge. He managed to ignore it for a while. But when the needle was touching the red E, he pulled off at the next exit.
“What’s the matter?” Meg called from behind.
“Gas.”
Different vehicle, same dilemma. With no money, buying gas was not an option. They had to steal it. But to fill-’n’-fly at the station at the turnoff wasn’t an option. There would be cameras at the pumps. That would be like handing the police a calling card, telling them where to look and what to look for.
Aiden drove down the road, racking his brain for some sort of plan. The digital clock on the mini-mart read 9:48 P.M. — not exactly the middle of the night. But in sleepy rural country, most people were probably inside for the evening.
When he spotted the farmhouse, he knew it was the right place. It had a separate garage out of sight of the residence.
“Why are we stopping way out here?” asked Meg.
“You think people won’t notice a Harley-Davidson motorcycle revving on their lawn? We’ll walk it the rest of the way.”
Each took a handlebar and they rolled the bike along the dirt drive. With no forward momentum, the six-hundred-pound piece of machinery was heavy and awkward.
Under cover of a stand of desert pines, Aiden squinted in the moonlight. “Look,” he said.
A John Deere riding mower was parked outside the prefab aluminum barn. “That thing runs on gas. Which means there should be a fuel can around here somewhere.”
As it turned out, the household had several gas vehicles, including a jet ski, a snowmobile, and a Honda motorcycle that was almost as big as the Harley. Two five-gallon cans sat side by side on a high shelf next to some roofing shingles.
Aiden was surprised how easy it was to fill the Harley’s tank. It took less than a single canister. He replaced the cap and looked down to see Meg on her hands and knees with a screwdriver, removing the motorcycle’s license plate.
“What are you doing?”
“Switching plates with the other bike,” she explained. “That way, if a cop feeds our license number into his computer, it won’t come up as stolen.”
“Good idea,” Aiden said, impessed. “Let’s hit the road.”
They were pushing a Harley back up the drive when they heard a rustling sound.
“What’s that?” hissed Meg.
They froze, their ears filtering out the traffic noise from the freeway. There it was — a faint swishing, mixed with the crackling of twigs.
Someone — or something — was stalking them.
Meg looked around anxiously. “Police?” she whispered.
Aiden shook his head. “They don’t hide; they just arrest you.” He kept his real fear to himself — a guard dog. A Doberman, shepherd, or pit bull following them through the bushes, preparing to pounce —
Keep moving. You’re almost at the road….
“Now!” He jumped onto the Harley and helped the much shorter Meg swing her leg over the saddle.
There was an odd honk, accompanied by a wild flapping sound. Aiden felt a rush of air. A scream was torn from his sister’s throat.
“Meg — ” He wheeled to face their attacker.
An enormous white goose hung in the air over Meg, battering her head and shoulders with its three-foot wingspan. Aiden reached back to swat the big bird away. It clamped its powerful beak onto his middle finger.