To Run With the Swift

by Gerald N. Lund

  “D.C.?” Cody blurted from a mouthful of French toast dripping with syrup. “Can we go see things like the White House and the Lincoln Memorial and the Smithsonian?”

  “Sorry,” Clay said. “You’re too high profile now, so that will have to wait. But we’ve got lots of video games for you.”

  “Well,” Mom said, reaching out and stopping Cody from stuffing the next bite in, “this has been wonderful. I love New York. It’s all I thought it would be.”

  “We hope we can have you on your way across the Big Pond by Saturday morning.” Joel turned to Grandpère. “When do your reservations at Le Petit Château begin?”

  “On Monday, but I mentioned that we might be a day or two earlier than that and they said it would be no problem.”

  “Good.” He took a sip of his coffee, then sat back. “Okay, then, let’s talk about today. This may prove to be the most challenging one you’ve done.” He was looking at me and Rick. “The hostess has already made it clear that she wants to put only you, Rick, and Cody on camera.”

  “It’s about time somebody remembered who the real crowd pleaser is,” Cody piped up.

  “Cody,” Mom said, shaking her head in apology at Clay and Joel, “let Joel continue, please.”

  “In what way challenging?” I asked.

  “Life Is Real is a show whose primary audience is women between the ages of twenty-one and forty. It is highly popular and for a cable show gets a remarkably large number of viewers. But the hostess is an ardent feminist. She has a reputation for being confrontational, sometimes even downright combative. That’s part of what makes her popular. She’s known for ambushing her guests, chewing them up into little pieces, then spitting them out on the floor.”

  “I watch it from time to time,” Mom said. “I think you’re being a little hard on her. I would use the word provocative rather than confrontational. And I like that. She doesn’t let her guests get away with the usual platitudes that other hosts do. And she’s very funny.”

  “She is that,” Clay agreed.

  Rick was frowning. “If she is what you say, why did you agree to do her show?”

  “Because the whole country is focused on your story right now,” Joel said. “We don’t want anyone to think that you are taking only ‘soft’ appearances to make yourselves look better. That might suggest that you have something to hide.”

  “Which we don’t, of course,” I said, not liking what I was hearing one bit. “I mean, other than the pouch, and the twenty-million-dollar ransom, and a blown-up mine, and a nest full of rattlesnakes, and a whole boatload of gold. Right?”

  “But she doesn’t know any of that, Danni,” Dad said. “You’ll do fine.”

  There it was again. The word fine. Catch all. Cover all. Without meaning. It didn’t help. I was starting to feel uneasy because I could see that both Clay and Joel were worried. Enough to warn us about it. That’s not my definition of fine.

  Mom slipped her arm through mine. “Dad’s right. It will be all right. The audience is going to love you three. If you can hold your own against Letterman, you’ll do okay. Just don’t let her goad you into saying more than you should.” She was pointedly looking at Cody as she said that.

  I had a sudden insight. “Are you and Clay coming to the show?” I asked Joel.

  “Just Clay. I’m going to the New York office and catch up on where the investigation is. But I’ll see you after the show.”

  “But you’re sending Clay to make sure I don’t screw it up?”

  They both laughed. “Oh, Danni,” Joel said. “You are a piece of work.” But I noticed he didn’t really answer the question.

  “What’s her name again?” Rick asked.

  “Cierra Pierce.”

  “Sierra, like the mountains?” Cody came in.

  “Yeah, only she spells it with a C.”

  “Pierce?” I said dryly. “Like through the heart?”

  Clay laughed. “That’s right.” Then he punched me softly on the shoulder. “You’re going to be fine.”

  “Fine?” I shot back. “Thanks, Clay. I’ve always dreamed that someday I might be fine.”

  Life Is Real Studios, New York City

  When Rick came out of the makeup room, he shot me a look that made me laugh. “You look great,” I said. “Maybe you ought to ask her what she uses. Get some and take it home with you.”

  If he could have, he would have turned me into burnt toast with his eyes right there. There was not even a wisp of a smile.

  “Come on,” I said. “This is the last one. Man up, Ramirez.”

  “I’m here, aren’t I?” he grumbled. Then he gave me a sharp look. “You know something? I think you like this. Maybe even too much.”

  My temperature flared up. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I’m sick of these dog and pony shows, marching out on the show floor, letting everybody have a good look at us, jump through the hoops, maybe do a trick or two.”

  “Man,” I said. “Who put the burr under your saddle this morning?”

  He looked at me for several seconds. “I guess maybe you did, Danni. I’m here because of you. And I’m playing it straight because of you. But I don’t like it. The whole thing is a farce. So why are you lapping it up like it was warm milk?”

  “What are you talking about? I don’t like this.”

  “Aw, come on, Danni. Remember what you said last night on the way back to the hotel. ‘It’s too bad we’re going to France. I might have asked Joel if we could do the Jay Leno show.’”

  Before I could answer that—or give him a good, hard pop on the nose—Mom came bustling up. I saw instantly that she had heard most, if not all, of it, but she was pretending not to have heard anything. “You both look good.” Then to Rick, “You can’t tell you’ve got makeup on. It just takes the shine off your forehead and your nose.”

  “I’m glad for that,” he grumped. “I’ve always been quite bothered about my shiny forehead.”

  I stepped back and watched as he and Mom bantered back and forth. And, for the ten-thousandth time, I thought how lucky I was to have Rick as my friend. So many of my friends were doing royal battle with their parents over who they hung out with, who they dated, and so on. To watch them now, you might think that Mom liked Rick even better than she did me. I knew she didn’t, but it was close. And today, maybe it was switched for the moment.

  There was a fleeting moment of doubt. Was this all going to my head? But there was no chance to answer that.

  “Well, good morning.”

  We all turned to see a woman in a gray pantsuit and red scarf come striding toward us, a female assistant on either side of her. She was tall—probably five eight or nine—and had long, dark hair that curled naturally in soft waves. She was lean and obviously very fit. No. As I watched her stride toward us, I realized she was much more than that. She had the hard, muscular body of a marathon runner.

  She wasn’t what you would call strikingly beautiful—wasn’t everyone in television strikingly beautiful?—but she had pleasant features and two small dimples when she smiled, as she was doing now as she came toward us. It was her eyes that caught and held you. They were a dark brown, almost black, large and without makeup, and with a penetrating intelligence that seemed to take in everything in one quick glance.

  Watch it, Danni. According to Joel, she’s a people-eater. Don’t get sucked in by her charm.

  She came right up to me. “You’re Danni. Hi. I’m Cierra.” She stuck out her hand. It didn’t surprise me that her grip was hard and confident.

  I gripped it back. “Thank you for having us on your show.”

  “Are you kidding?” she said with a short laugh. “Every seat in the auditorium is full, and there are hundreds more outside watching on the monitors. No, we thank you.”

  She came up to Cody. “Ah, the charmer. C
ierra Pierce, Cody. Delighted to meet you.” Before he could respond at all, she turned to Rick. “And you’re Ricardo.” She smiled. “You’re even better-looking in person than you are on the little screen.”

  I stared at her. Was she hitting on him? Rick barely smiled. “Call me Rick. And it’s the makeup,” he drawled.

  “I’m sure,” she said with a short laugh. As I watched his eyes, I could see that he did not like this woman. And it was more than her fawning comment. He was wary of her, like when you approach a dog with its lips drawn back and the hair on the back of its neck raised. They shook hands quickly, but Cierra was already turning to Mom and greeting her. “Well, well,” she laughed. “It’s not hard to see where Danni gets her good looks from.”

  And I decided she wasn’t coming on to Rick any more than she was coming on to Mom. This was just her way. Speak what’s in your head as it comes, no filters, no holding back. “Mrs. McAllister, thank you so much for coming and bringing your family to our show.”

  “Our pleasure. I watch your show all the time. I love it.”

  Oh, this was rich. Yesterday it had been “from time to time.” Today it was “all the time.” Even Mom was intimidated by her.

  “We can get you a chair back here, if you like,” Cierra said. “Or would you prefer to be with your father and husband in the audience?”

  “The latter,” Mom said.

  “Good.” She looked around. “We have about six or seven minutes.” She pointed to a table off to one side. “There are drinks and snacks over there. Help yourselves. I’ll be right back.”

  As she walked away, I heard someone call my name and turned around. Dad, Grandpère, and Clay were coming quickly toward us. Clay motioned for us to join them. We did, and he formed us in a little huddle off to one side. “I just got a call from Joel,” he said, speaking low. “Bad news. Someone broke into your home. Totally ransacked the place.”

  “What?” Mom gasped.

  “Joel is furious. This evidently happened two nights ago, but it wasn’t discovered until this morning. Seems like when you guys came east, the sheriff’s office pulled off the round-the-clock watch and started doing random patrols instead.”

  “But why?” I cried. “What could they possibly be after?” I felt sick to my stomach.

  He looked at me. “Did you leave the duplicate pouch at home?”

  “I ...” I was gaping at him. “Of course. I left it in the bottom drawer of my chest of drawers.”

  “Well, that’s gone. And Mack’s safe was opened, obviously by a professional.” He turned to Dad. “Did you have anything of value in there? Money? Bonds?”

  “No. It’s mostly to protect important papers in case there’s a fire.”

  “What about that ‘gold bar’?”

  “No,” Mom answered. “I made him put that in the safety deposit box along with Danni’s journal a couple of months ago.”

  “Why would they want the duplicate pouch?” I exclaimed. “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “It does if they think it’s the original,” Grandpère said quietly.

  That shocked me deeply. “It’s a battered, worn-out old purse. Except for us and those who are now in prison, no one knows what it is.”

  Just then one of Cierra’s assistants came hurrying over. “Two minutes to air time. We have to check the sound levels on their microphones. The rest of you will have to return to your seats. Danni and Rick, please come with me.”

  Clay nodded and started backing away. “I’ll try to find out more while you’re on.”

  “Good luck,” Dad said and quickly kissed me on the forehead. “Don’t let her rattle you, Danni. Keep it cool.”

  Another odd warning. And suddenly I was feeling very uncomfortable. I reached down and clasped the baggy leather purse I had over my shoulder closer to my body, feeling the reassuring lump that was the real Le Gardien inside. And the feeling immediately left me. The Guardian was here. It would be okay.

  “One minute, Cierra,” the producer said as we got settled, holding up one finger. “Sound test is good. Stand by.”

  She nodded, then turned to us. “I’d tell you two to relax, but after watching you on the other shows, especially Letterman, I can see there’s no need for that.” There was an unreadable smile. “And remember, the producer has decided to let you have the whole show. You’ve become so famous, he postponed the other guests until tomorrow.” We must have looked alarmed, because she smiled sweetly and said, “Oh, didn’t I tell you that?”

  No, she hadn’t. Our commitment was for fifteen or twenty minutes tops, but I could see that it gave her great satisfaction to see that she had caught us off guard. Then I understood. This was her way of throwing us off balance just before we went on.

  “We requested that your first appearance in New York be on Life Is Real,” she said, clearly irritated, “but since you chose to put us last on the schedule, everyone pretty well knows your whole story now, so we’re going to quickly summarize the details and then focus on—”

  Rick cut her off. “We didn’t set the schedule. The FBI did.”

  She was genuinely startled. “What?”

  “Thirty seconds, Cierra,” the producer warned.

  “This is still an active investigation,” Rick noted. “We have to be careful what we say and what we don’t say.” He gave her an innocent look. “Which probably applies to you as well.” He imitated her smile perfectly. “Oh, didn’t they tell you that?”

  Perfect! From the flash of anger in her eyes, I could tell that now we weren’t the only ones who had been knocked off balance. And I forgave his earlier sour mood. I could have hugged him right then for not being sucked in by her oozing charm.

  After the usual brief introduction to the show, Cierra introduced us to the audience and the viewers. Though she mentioned that my actual name was Carruthers, there were no cracks about it—thank you, very much—and thereafter she called me Danni. Nor did she call Rick “Ricardo” again. We received a warm and enthusiastic applause from the studio audience, which helped me relax a little.

  She then explained that since most of the world now knew the basic outline of what had happened to us, they were going to cover the main elements of our story with a short summary of events in a two-minute video. As a narrator summarized the key events, they filled the screen with still shots and short video clips that supported the narration. It included a Google Earth zoom-in on Hanksville and our little homestead, and the same for Rick’s house on the river. They had video footage of Cathedral Valley with the Temples of the Sun and the Moon, and both aerial and ground shots of Leprechaun Canyon. Somehow they had found the actual houseboat that El Cobra had rented and had both exterior and interior pictures of it. They also had a video taken of Iceberg Canyon from Jet Skis, which brought more gasps of admiration. It turned out to be remarkably good, and I was amazed at what they included. The segment closed with mug shots of El Cobra, Eileen, Raul (or Doc), Lew (Gordo), and Jean-Claude. I hadn’t seen these before, and I felt a twist in my stomach as I looked at them.

  The final image was me, Cody, and Rick standing outside the medical clinic in Page—him leaning on his crutches, me with one arm slipped through his, Cody grinning at the camera. When the image froze, Cierra called out, “Ladies and gentleman, let’s hear it for Danni and Cody McAllister and Rick Ramirez, three very remarkable and courageous young teens.”

  The reaction was loud—applause joined with whistles and cheers—and sustained. It only subsided when the image faded out and the lights came back up again.

  We turned back to face Cierra, who was smiling triumphantly. “So, Danni, thank you so much for being with us today. If you don’t mind, let’s start with you. How does it feel to be the new—” she paused and her hand did a little flourish in my direction, as if she were presenting a member of the royal family—“Katniss Everdeen?”

  Talk
about being blindsided. For a minute I wasn’t sure if I had heard her right. Even the audience was taken aback and didn’t immediately react.

  She turned to Rick. Another roll of her hand. Another grand cry. “And with her is our very own Peeta Melark.”

  And as the cameras zoomed in to catch our faces—flaming bright red, I’m sure—and the audience reacted, she cried out even more loudly, “Don’t you agree, people, that what we have here is our own version of the Hunger Games? Two young people fighting back against an evil world.”

  The response was instantaneous and thunderous.

  “Only this is even better, right? Because this story is totally true!”

  She had them. And from the satisfaction in her eyes, I could tell she knew it. And loved it.

  As it died down, her mouth pulled down. “Sorry, Cody, but I just couldn’t quite see you as filling the role of Prim, Katniss’s little sister. But welcome to the show anyway.”

  She let the applause roll for ten or fifteen seconds before raising a hand. It almost instantly ceased. She turned back to us. “Well, I can’t fully express how delighted I am to have the three of you on our show today. That little summary we just saw says much, but it also raises many questions. So let’s get right to it.”

  She picked up a notepad from the lamp table beside her. I hadn’t noticed it there before, but saw now it was filled with lines of handwriting. She didn’t look at it, just placed it in her lap. “Cody, tell me about Hanksville. As we saw from that Google Earth view, it seems pretty isolated. Tell the audience how far you ride the bus to school.”

  “Fifty-eight miles. A little over an hour one way.”

  “Wow!” someone on the audience gasped. “My kids walk a block and a half.” Everyone laughed.

  “And how many people live in Hanksville?”

  Cody shrugged, so I answered. “As of the 2010 census, the population is 215.”

  “So basically, you know everyone in town.”