The warden was still protesting. “Deputy Director Adler brought me these prisoners personally.”
“Adler is the idiot who put those kids on a prison farm in the first place,” Harris growled. “Why should I be surprised that he did something even stupider this time?”
They roared off toward the interstate.
“Where are you taking us?” Aiden demanded.
“You two have been calling the shots for a long time,” Harris said grimly. “Now it’s my turn. Just sit tight and keep quiet. You’ll find out soon enough.”
Aiden and Meg exchanged nervous glances. What was J. Edgar Giraffe up to? Where were they going? Were they being transferred someplace even worse than Danforth? Aiden couldn’t imagine what that might be. But hard experience had taught him there was no limit to the misfortune that could be heaped on anyone named Falconer.
In the backseat, the siblings huddled together for strength and comfort. No words passed between them. They did not want to give Harris the satisfaction of hearing their thoughts. Both knew that this ghastly misadventure was about to take yet another sudden turn.
They drove for about half an hour, and then the rental car swerved into the entrance of a private airstrip. Half a dozen small propeller planes were parked outside a lineup of sheds and a prefab terminal and control tower.
Meg could stay silent no longer. “We’re flying somewhere?”
Harris did not answer.
Heart sinking, Aiden guessed at the latest catastrophe — separation. Meg on one plane, himself on another, flown to different prisons, hundreds, maybe thousands of miles apart. It would be the only blow they had not yet suffered — the final step in the dismantling of the Falconer family.
The agent removed the handcuffs that connected them to the car, but left them shackled together.
“We have the right to know what’s going on!” Aiden insisted.
“What’s going on is I need a cup of coffee. And you kids could probably use a snack. Come on. Out of the car.”
The terminal had a lunch counter that overlooked the runway. Harris ordered his usual extra-large coffee. Meg inhaled an enormous bowl of chicken noodle soup, managing it all left-handed.
Aiden refused to eat, although he was starving and exhausted from the five-hour work detail. “Why are we still handcuffed?” he snapped.
“You’re kidding, right?” Harris swept him with a scornful glance. “Don’t even go there.”
Outside, the buzz of a propeller grew louder. Through the picture window, they watched a twin-engine plane touch down lightly, brake, and taxi toward the building.
Harris downed the rest of his coffee. “This is us.” He led his prisoners out through the double doors. There they stood at the edge of the tarmac, watching as a ground attendant opened the plane’s hatch and folded the stairway down.
Harris reached over and removed the shackles from each wrist.
Aiden stood poised, his heart pounding. This was the moment he’d been dreading.
If we were both going on that plane, he would have left the cuffs on!
His suspicions had been correct. He and his sister were about to be separated.
They couldn’t let it happen. Not now, not ever. They had no future, no family. All they had was each other.
He reached out and touched Meg’s arm, trying to transmit a silent message: Run!
And then someone appeared in the doorway of the plane.
Aiden goggled, unable to believe his eyes. Surely he was hallucinating, driven to madness by crushing sorrow, paralyzing disappointment, and the relentless pressure of life on the run.
The passenger was Dr. John Falconer. His wife was right behind him.
Mom and Dad.
All at once, Meg was flying across the tarmac. Aiden watched as she hurled herself into her father’s arms.
Harris gave Aiden a gentle shove from behind. “Well … go!”
Aiden stumbled forward, as if he had forgotten how to walk. The planet seemed to pitch beneath his feet. He might have fallen if not for his mother’s frantic embrace.
“It’s over, Aiden!” she murmured through tears of emotion. “My God, look how tall you are!”
It had been more than a year since the parents and their children had been together — a year of desperation, hopelessness, and misery. Now the shattered family clung together as if trying to fuse the pieces of their broken lives and make themselves whole.
Harris blew his nose with a loud honk and blinked eyes that were surprisingly moist. “We should probably find a TV. At six o’clock, the FBI is issuing a statement that John and Louise Falconer have been proven innocent by new evidence and have been released.”
“Aiden!” Meg’s eyes shone. “We did it!”
He was bewildered. “But we didn’t do it! We failed!”
From his pocket, Harris produced a small tape recorder and pressed PLAY.
The audio transported Aiden and Meg instantly back to that terrifying night on the Turnbull farm. Even their parents recognized the chilling voice on the tape — the voice of their onetime friend Frank Lindenauer.
“… Do you know how easy it was to sucker two college professors into working for HORUS? When I told them I was CIA, and they’d be helping their country, they were like puppy dogs, eager to do anything I asked….”
“But that’s impossible!” Aiden breathed. “I never made that tape! I couldn’t get to my recorder —”
Harris supplied the answer. “Your friend Mr. Turnbull — the one who’s so handy with a shotgun — is in the middle of a lease dispute with his landlord, one Elias Holyfield. Turns out Holyfield had the whole house bugged. This recording comes from his system.”
Meg’s eyes were like saucers. “You were right, Aiden! It worked out exactly the way you planned! Just like in Mac Mulvey!”
“Mac Mulvey?” John Falconer’s jaw dropped. “My Mac Mulvey? From the books?”
“Oh, Dad!” Meg raved. “You wouldn’t believe how many times something from Mac Mulvey saved our necks!”
Their father was horrified. “But I make all that up! I never meant for anybody to actually do it!”
Louise Falconer drew her children close. “I still can’t get my mind around what you two went through for us. I can’t imagine any other kids who would do it — or even try.”
“Let’s hope there aren’t any,” Harris put in feelingly. He turned to Aiden and Meg. “Not that you asked, but the charges against you have been dropped — every last one. You’re welcome.”
Aiden pressed his luck. “Agent Harris, what about Mr. Turnbull? He didn’t mean to shoot you.”
“He meant to shoot me. What saves him is he thought I was Lindenauer. He even gets to keep his farm. The judge ruled that Holyfield’s surveillance was harassment.” The FBI man grimaced. “Don’t be so quick to send your former boss a congratulations card. You’ve got him to thank for your holiday at Danforth. I never would have let them send you to that chamber of horrors, but I was on the operating table at the time — having thirty pieces of buckshot picked out of my gut.”
John Falconer addressed the despised agent who had arrested him and his wife a year and a half earlier and then hounded their children across the country.
“I guess we’re never going to be friends,” he said formally. “But you came through for us in the end. You’ll never know how much it means to our family.”
Harris, who could see exactly how much it meant to their family, had one more offer. “This plane is gassed up and ready to take you wherever you want to go. Maybe you should be on a beach for a couple of weeks while the country gets used to the fact that you’re not the enemy anymore.”
The four Falconers regarded one another blankly, weighing the suggestion. The parents had been locked up for so long that the idea of choice had become alien to them. And their kids had been fugitives, slaves to their quest and the urgent need to stay free and keep on running.
Finally, it was the youngest of them, Meg, wh
o spoke for all.
“We’ve spent enough time away. There’s only one place we want to go right now — ”
When the grin split her face, it came with such intensity that it almost hurt. She wondered how long it had been since she’d last felt joy.
“Take us home.”
GORDON KORMAN is the author of The Hypnotists, and six books featuring Griffin Bing and his friends: Swindle, Zoobreak, Framed, Showoff, Hideout, and Jackpot. His other books include This Can’t Be Happening at Macdonald Hall (published when he was fourteen); The Toilet Paper Tigers; Radio Fifth Grade; the trilogies Island, Everest, Dive, Kidnapped, and Titanic; and the series On the Run. He lives in New York with his family and can be found on the web at www.gordonkorman.com.
Look for more action and humor from
GORDON KORMAN
The Swindle series
Swindle
Zoobreak
Framed
Showoff
Hideout
The Titanic trilogy
The Kidnapped trilogy
The On the Run trilogy
The Dive trilogy
The Everest trilogy
The Island trilogy
Radio Fifth Grade
The Toilet Paper Tigers
The Chicken Doesn’t Skate
This Can’t Be Happening at Macdonald Hall!
Copyright © 2006 by Gordon Korman. All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc. SCHOLASTIC and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
First printing, February 2006
Cover design by Tim Hall
e-ISBN 978-0-545-63208-9
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.
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