The Stowaway Solution

  “Know-it-all,” she muttered aloud.

  He wasn’t even here, and he was distance-nagging her on sculling style. Aiden did everything by the book. According to Mom and Dad, he was the only six-year-old ever to learn to ride a bike by reading the manual.

  Where does he get off lecturing me?

  Suddenly, she was rowing with power and rhythm. The raft slid smoothly through the water at a pretty good clip.

  The madder I get, the better I row!

  All she had to do was think about things that made her angry. Rod Bergeron, Agent Harris, Hairless Joe — this was going to be easy!

  Next stop: dry land.

  Sun.

  Aiden could only sense its presence. He hadn’t seen it or anything else for hours.

  Am I blind?

  No, the salt from the ocean spray had cemented his eyelids shut.

  He didn’t mind the fierce rays that were burning through his hair to his scalp. Most of him was submerged in cold water. This was warmth, and he’d take it any way he could get it. Sunstroke was tomorrow’s problem.

  If there’s such a thing as tomorrow for me.

  Logic told him there wouldn’t be. Rescue seemed about as likely as winning all fifty state lotteries on the same night. He was a tiny dot in the largest body of water on the planet. No one would ever find him.

  I’m going to die.

  Funny — he had faced death more than once in the past weeks, but always in split-second situations. This was the first time he’d had a chance to think about his fate. In fact, thinking was just about the only thing he could do. He had squandered his strength fighting the storm last night.

  Was it really last night? It feels like days….

  Only his brain still worked — and he wasn’t even so sure about that. He had a very clear memory of a long conversation with Meg in the water, bobbing side by side in their life jackets. That was impossible. Meg wasn’t with him. She’d stayed on the raft, hadn’t she?

  Please, please, let her be safe on the raft! She’s Mom and Dad’s only chance now.

  Of course, that would mean Aiden was seeing things. Not a good sign. Hallucination was a textbook symptom. Thirst, hypothermia, exhaustion, and sun poisoning were wearing him down.

  I could be dying already.

  Meg just rolled her eyes and said, “You think too much, bro.”

  No! You’re not here! He wanted to scream it out loud, as if volume might somehow make it true. But his mouth wouldn’t open. It was on the fritz, along with his arms and legs.

  There had to be some way to prove that his sister wasn’t treading water beside him. That she wasn’t about to share his gruesome fate. That she would live on to fight for the Falconer family.

  So he told her the one thing he had never told her — that he never would tell her, because it was too dreadful to be spoken to another living soul.

  “Meg,” he said, and this time his lips did move, although his voice was barely a whisper, “sometimes I wonder if the reason no one ever found evidence Mom and Dad are innocent is because they’re really guilty.”

  He waited for her to pound her fists against him, calling him a monster, an ungrateful, disloyal son. All were insults he silently unleashed upon himself in those ghastly moments when he lost faith in his parents’ cause. But coming from Meg, the attack would cut deeper, sting more painfully. Never once — even for a fleeting instant — had his sister doubted that Mom and Dad were one hundred percent innocent.

  Floating there, he waited for what seemed like a very long time. There were no blows, no angry words. Just the caw of gulls and the distant lapping of gentle surf.

  He would have cheered if he’d had the breath. She’s not here! She’s got a chance! Go, Meg! Despite his fatigue, his clenched fist broke out of the water, punching feebly at the air.

  Wrapped up in celebration for Meg, it never occurred to him to wonder what the sound of breakers might mean for him. He was mostly delirious when his feet struck sandy bottom. He couldn’t walk, not really. Instead, his jelly legs churned in a weak bicycle motion, and he crawled blindly out of the Pacific onto dry land.

  His fist was still balled in triumph for his sister when he collapsed to the beach into a sleep so deep that he didn’t truly understand he was still alive.

  * * *

  When the raft bumped against the shore, Meg nearly wept. It had taken most of the day to reach land. Life on the run had made her tough. But nothing could have prepared her for the agony of rowing. The pulsing ache felt like it was alive — a throbbing, angry tapeworm, growing and claiming more and more territory in her tortured muscles. After the first couple of hours, the pain had spread from her right side to her left. Now it extended from the top of her head to the tips of her toes. Even her hair hurt.

  The urge to sleep for a week was so powerful that she had to slap herself awake. This was no time to relax. Her work had just begun.

  She took in her surroundings. This part of the coast — Oregon? Washington? — was wilderness. Just in from the beach, tall trees and dense foliage began. The nearest town could have been half a mile away or a hundred.

  No five-star hotels, she thought wryly. Guess I’ll have to live in the life raft for a while.

  It made sense. It had supplies, food, and water — she slapped at a mosquito — and the canopy would come in handy in this bug sanctuary.

  There was only one problem with the raft. The crew of the Samantha D knew about it, which meant the authorities would be searching for it. A giant blob of fluorescent orange was hard to miss.

  Hide it in the trees?

  It was the smart move, but her muscles revolted. The thing weighed a ton. She and Aiden had barely been able to get it over the rail of the ship.

  She took out all the equipment and supplies, carrying armloads of gear into the cover of the forest. Then she heaved the empty craft on its end and rolled it into the woods. The brush was so dense that she had to squeeze the bulky raft in between bushes and trunks.

  Fugitive logic: If I can’t see the beach, someone on the beach can’t see me.

  As soon as the water was no longer visible through the foliage, she set the life raft down flat in a small clearing. It was so tight that the inflatable sides pressed up against the surrounding trees. A few minutes later, she had retrieved the provisions and equipment.

  Oh, how she would have given anything to avoid what was next. To have a chance of spotting Aiden, she had to gain altitude.

  That means climbing a tree.

  Biting her lip, she peered up the long, stiltlike evergreens. The gnarled maples around the Falconer home were so broad and overgrown that a handhold or foothold always seemed to be there when you needed it. But these fir trees were straight, narrow, and very tall. This was going to be like scaling a flagpole to the moon.

  She selected a sturdy trunk and shinnied up it, her damp sneakers digging into the bark for traction. Her progress was better than she’d expected — which both impressed and alarmed her. Thirty feet above the forest floor, she was nowhere near the top.

  Don’t look down.

  She climbed on. She’d have to get a lot higher than this for a clear view of the ocean.

  As she ascended, whole vistas opened before her eyes. It was breathtaking — lush green hills rolling into the mountains to the east.

  But not half as breathtaking as the swaying of this stupid tree!

  Gasping, she clung to the bark and prayed for the wind to stop blowing. Don’t look down … don’t look down….

  She did, though — and immediately regretted it. This was at least double the elevation of the cargo crane in the Port of LA. Fall from here, and she’d be very, very dead.

  She pressed her foot against a droopy limb that cracked under her weight. For a terrifying instant, she was slipping, sliding down the trunk like it was a firehouse pole. Her elbow struck the broken branch, sending a stab of fire up her arm. The pain almost caused her to let go. Whimpering, she held on, squeezing the tree
as if trying to insert herself into the wood.

  Deep breath. Fall off a horse, get right back on again.

  Climbing more carefully now, she eased herself up the big fir until she was just a few feet below the top. She could make out a cluster of houses and buildings three or four miles inland — a small town. That was good to know. A town meant transportation. Once she and Aiden were reunited, they would have to find a way to Denver.

  You’re getting ahead of yourself….

  Gingerly, she shuffled around the trunk until the huge expanse of Pacific blue stretched before her. Feet set on a branch, her left arm in a hammerlock on the treetop, she reached down with her free hand and plucked the opera glasses from her pocket.

  Do I really have a chance of noticing a tiny bobbing head in this vast ocean?

  These past weeks had trained her to believe in miracles.

  The tiny island had been deserted for a long time. Once a part of Cape Lookout State Park, the narrow sand spit had been cut off from the rest of Oregon by a storm back in the 1960s. Now it stood alone, empty, unclaimed by the Parks Department. There was no ferry service from the mainland. It was a forgotten place, without even so much as a name.

  On the eighth of September, two backpackers took a small motorboat from Cape Lookout to explore what appeared to be a mound of trees growing out of the ocean itself. The cay they discovered was very much like the state park they had just left — low and rugged, with dense stands of pines.

  The backpackers decided to hike to the shore and picnic overlooking the open Pacific. The trek turned out to be shorter than they’d expected — the little island was barely a football field wide.

  It was the first, and by far the smallest, of their surprises that day.

  There, sprawled on the beach, was a teenage boy, caked with salt and sand. He wasn’t moving.

  The man reached him first.

  “Is he dead?” the woman asked in a tremulous voice.

  The man rolled the body over. The face was lifeless — sunburned the dull pink of volcanic rock. The man bent low, his ear barely an inch from the victim’s blistered lips.

  “He’s still breathing, but it’s faint.” He regarded the life jacket. “This kid went overboard somewhere. We’ve got to get him to a hospital.”

  The woman pulled out her cell phone to dial 9-1-1. “There’s no signal.”

  “Go back to the bay side and try from there,” her companion ordered. “He’s dehydrated — who knows how long he’s been lying here?”

  As she ran off into the woods, the man produced a sport bottle and held it to the castaway’s parched mouth. The water dribbled down his cheek.

  “Drink,” the man ordered. He forced the lips apart, allowing a trickle to creep between them.

  The boy choked on it. Yet even those few drops of water brought him a half step back from his world of darkness.

  Thirty minutes later, when the helicopter appeared above the island, Aiden Falconer was just conscious enough to hear it coming.

  * * *

  Water, Meg thought in disgust. Big deal.

  Who said looking at water was restful? Whoever it was couldn’t have been hanging off the top of a million-foot tree. If he had been, he’d have known that looking at water made a person have to go to the bathroom. Which meant a million-foot climb down and a million-foot climb up again.

  Wait — what’s that?

  The opera glasses fixed on a dot amid the light ocean chop.

  Please let it be him! Please let it be Aiden!

  The dot spread white wings and took flight. Unless Aiden had learned to fly, this wasn’t him.

  For at least the twentieth time, she swallowed bitter disappointment. She could no longer contain the feeling that had been rising inside her ever since she’d awoken in the raft that morning.

  For the past two days, she had been up and down this tree, scouring the coast, scanning the beaches. She’d checked every single whitecap, scrutinized each gull and pelican.

  If Aiden hadn’t gotten here yet, he might not be coming at all. It was time to face the possibility that he might have drowned.

  Stop it. He’s not dead. He can’t be dead. We have too much to do.

  But the dreadful logic kept intruding on her hope. For two days, she had searched, living in the rubber raft, freezing through the nights, crunching gross dehydrated meals, and hiding from any boat or plane that might have been the Coast Guard.

  Two days was a long time. He should be here by now! The same tides and currents that brought me should have brought him, too.

  So where was he?

  She summoned all the strength that was a part of her character. She would not — could not — admit that her brother was dead. That would have broken her. And falling apart was a luxury she did not have.

  Aiden had always been right about one thing — Mom and Dad were all that mattered. She had to carry on the fight to prove they were innocent.

  Even if that meant carrying on by herself.

  The thought turned her to stone. Throughout this nightmare, it had always been Aiden and Meg — in the foster homes, the prison farm, and over these insane weeks on the run.

  Now it would be just Meg.

  Nothing, not even Mom and Dad’s fate, had ever been sadder.

  She clung to her perch, watching the sun set in a fireball. As it had twice before, the blue water blackened. She began to make her way down the tall trunk. She was getting better at this, but her tree-climbing career had come to an end.

  Tomorrow she would head for town, find a way to get to Denver, and continue on their vital quest.

  She had never felt more alone.

  Aiden came back to himself as if crawling out of a deep sinkhole. He noticed the smell first — a sharp antiseptic odor, like in a doctor’s office. Next he was aware of the oxygen feed in his nostrils and the IV tube in his arm.

  A hospital? “Where — ”

  As his vision slowly returned, a dark shadow loomed over him. “Aiden!”

  Why is that voice so familiar? “Who are you?”

  “Where’s your sister?” the voice demanded.

  Aiden struggled with his own hazy perceptions. He’d been just about to ask the same question. All at once, his blurry focus sharpened into the features of a face straight out of his worst nightmares.

  Agent Emmanuel Harris of the FBI.

  Despite his weakened state, the identification made him sit bolt upright in bed. He retreated from his family’s archenemy until he was pressed against the headboard with nowhere to go.

  “Where’s your sister?” Harris repeated. “Where’s Margaret?”

  “What makes you think I’d tell you?”

  But it was a good question. A chaotic flood of memory came roaring back at him. Their escape from the Samantha D, the storm. The last time he saw Meg, she was clinging to the inflatable raft against the onslaught of waves as tall as houses.

  Anything could have happened. For all he knew, she had fallen off the life raft and drowned.

  No. I was way worse off than her. If I survived, she survived.

  But there was no telling where she might be. The sea had been like the inside of a washing machine that night. The raft could have washed ashore almost anywhere. Worse, Meg had no way of knowing where to find him.

  She probably thinks I’m dead.

  “Aiden, use your head,” Harris commanded. “She’s too young to be on her own. You have to tell me where she is!”

  The truth was Aiden didn’t have a clue. But he wasn’t going to share that with the hated J. Edgar Giraffe. No Falconer would ever cooperate with this cold, towering monster.

  Harris leaned in closer, blotting out the light. “Don’t you care about your sister?”

  “I care about my family.”

  Still, Aiden agreed with the despised agent on one point: Meg was tough, but she was only eleven. It wasn’t right for her to be alone in a treacherous world that was doubly dangerous for anybody named Falconer.
br />   And there’s nothing I can do to help her….

  Surely this was the cruelest twist of them all. He had survived the wrath of the Pacific Ocean only to be delivered into the clutches of the man who had ruined their lives.

  * * *

  Meg hiked through the dense foliage, muttering under her breath and fuming.

  Man, I hate the woods.

  She had already tripped twice, twisted her ankle once, and nearly left an eyeball on a dozen branches and brambles. One of those scratches had opened up the scrape on her face. She could feel a trickle of warm blood on her cheek as she trudged along.

  I must look like I lost a heavyweight fight.

  Lost — that was another word that described her situation. The nearest town was only a few miles away. So where was it? She’d been walking all morning — unless she was going in circles, which was a definite possibility.

  There’s no such thing as a straight line when you’re sidestepping a zillion trees.

  Now she was so turned around that she had no sense of which direction was the right one. If only she had a compass.

  Or — while I’m wishing for something I don’t have — how about a bulldozer? Then I could flatten this dumb forest and see where I’m going.

  It was pointless, she knew, to rage against trees when there were so many more important things to worry about. But the more important things would make her think of Aiden.

  And I will — not — cry!

  How many times had the two of them talked about their parents in prison, lamenting, “How could it be worse?”

  Aiden, dead. That was worse.

  She sucked in a breath. I will — not —

  One surefire recipe for getting her mind off her brother — climb another tree. She had to figure out where she was going. The sun was already past its peak.

  Partway up a big-leaf maple, she spied the little town to the southeast. Somehow, she’d wandered north. She programmed the new direction into her brain and started out again.

  It was tough going. Twice more she had to scale trees in order to adjust her course. It was late afternoon before she finally reached the first sign of civilization — a small cluster of summer cabins, mostly deserted.