The security team was in overdrive now, communicating the information they’d just received to squad cars outside. Down on the street seven stories below, a siren began to wail. Even from the secretary’s office they could hear the car burn rubber as it peeled away from the State Department and out into the surrounding city streets. From a distance they heard other sirens answering the first one’s call as the hunt for the three thugs began.
“Is that a good idea—the sirens and all?” asked David. “Don’t you want to do this on foot? Because—”
Katie interrupted him. “But what about Mom and Dad?” she asked anxiously. “We don’t just have to catch the guys outside. We also have to—”
Alicia silenced her with a quick sharp look and a finger across her lips. Her eyes gestured to the security team and she shook her head very slightly. Katie stopped in confusion. They weren’t supposed to know?
“Mario, are you guys set?” asked Alicia, looking inquiringly at the grim-faced man.
“We’ll bring ’em in for ID as soon as we catch ’em,” said Mario and, rising, he beckoned to the frowning woman and the two guards to follow him out. The frowning woman balanced her laptop on her arm and kept on poking at her keyboard, even as she backed out through the mahogany doors.
No sooner had the doors shut than Alicia turned to David. “Don’t you worry,” she said proudly. “Our security is the best, and they will catch your Trixie and her friends.” Then she turned to Katie with a reassuring smile.
“And as for you: Mom and Dad indeed,” she said. Once again, she picked up her phone. This time she seemed to straighten her posture so that she stood tall and strong. She punched in a number she obviously knew by heart.
Alicia’s enormous office seemed very still in the wake of the clattering security team. Her three visitors waited in this hush, wondering.
“Thank you,” Alicia murmured after a moment, to someone who had apparently answered. “Yes. Yes, I’ll hold.”
Then she snapped to attention and stood, if anything, even taller.
“Mr. President,” said the secretary of state in a strong, clear voice.
Katie gasped softly.
“I am sorry to disturb you after dinner. Thank you for taking my call.”
She paused. Then she said, “It’s about Katkajan. They have the Bowdens.”
With the president himself involved in the search for their parents, Katie and David should have been relieved. But they were not. By the time they left the State Department that night, they knew their troubles were not over. Trixie, Nose, and Hair had not been found.
The government would keep on searching. The Katkajanians were now wanted criminals. But until they were arrested, Katie, David, and their uncle Alex would have to be protected.
The night before, they had slept in Alex’s small house on the mountaintop. That night they were to sleep in a State Department safe house in Washington DC.
It was practically dawn by the time they finally went there. Alicia herself escorted them from her office, with Mario the security chief, the laptop woman, and the two armed guards swarming after them. Squeezing themselves in, they all rode a special elevator to an underground garage. Then Katie, David, and Alex were ushered into an unmarked, dark car.
“This is the way I travel,” said Alicia, hugging them. “I and my most important foreign visitors. I don’t want you to worry, kids. You’re completely safe.”
“I know. Thanks,” said Katie, hugging her back. But she climbed into the backseat and slid across the slick upholstery with a heavy heart.
The kids and Alex slammed the doors and waved. The two security men with the earpieces and microphones climbed into the front seats. There was a thick, plastic privacy wall between the backseat and the front seat, so they could not talk to their drivers. But as the car rolled up the ramp of the garage toward the exit, they could see the men muttering into their microphones, issuing instructions to security personnel who were waiting in their vehicles above them on the street. As soon as they were out, these cars were supposed to follow them inconspicuously to their destination.
“I knew that was a bad idea,” said David as their car emerged into the night. “Sending out all those sirens and everything!”
“It’s too late now,” said Katie wearily.
“Trixie and the other two—they had a head start of, like, an hour! By the time the security guys got on it, they were probably sitting in some restaurant eating dinner somewhere! What you have to do is walk around on foot and just—”
“Uncle Alex!” said Katie.
David ignored her interruption. “Of course, security’s probably checking out the restaurants now,” he continued bitterly. “And Trixie and those guys are probably done with dinner and back in the bushes, watching our car.”
“David, quiet,” said Katie. “I mean, you’re right, but we know. Uncle Alex? Why did Alicia tell me to shush when I asked about Mom and Dad?”
“Because that information is need-to-know, Katie,” said her uncle. “And those people in her office—the security team—they work here. They can’t help us find your parents in Katkajan. So they had no need.”
“Right, ‘need-to-know,’” said David. “I remember about that. It’s why we never get to hear about Rover.” He was still fuming about the way the search had been bungled, so he spoke more angrily than usual.
Alex’s face closed up, the way it always did when Rover was mentioned. “That is correct, David,” he began. “There is no need to—”
David cut him off. “I want a gun,” he said.
Alex was stunned. After a moment he responded. “No,” he said.
“Trixie and those guys are out there,” said David.
“You will be perfectly safe,” said his uncle. “Sometimes—very regrettably—it is necessary for adults to have guns. But children with guns? That is an abomination.”
“I want one too,” said Katie.
At this Alex gave a strangled sort of yelp. For a minute or two they rolled toward the safe house in silence.
“Mace,” said Alex, recovering at last. “It’s like a pepper spray. If someone tries to attack you, you squirt it in their eyes and it buys you some time. It’s illegal, but with a permit—”
“We know what it is,” said David. “We want real weapons.”
“I’ll get you some mace,” said Alex angrily.
“Thank you,” said Katie. “Thank you for the mace.” And she crossed her arms and looked out the window.
“Me—no thanks,” said David hotly. “A spray, when my enemies are armed. Why don’t I just trip ’em instead?”
Luckily for all of them, they had arrived. And at this point in their wanderings—exhausted as they were—just to arrive at a place like the safe house was enough to distract them. Nobody who wandered past this house would know there was anything unusual about it. It looked like an ordinary family home and it was located in an ordinary Washington neighborhood. But it was secretly protected by armed guards day and night.
And almost more important to Katie, David, and Alex, despite being owned by the government, it was a house, with private rooms and showers, toilets and television. The next day, a woman from the State Department was even going to bring them clothes.
To Alex’s disgust, the house was also kept supplied with fantastic foods: frozen pizzas and marshmallow fluff; garlic ’n onion chips and double-stuffed cream-filled cookies. Late though it was, and tired though they were, the kids broke open this stash as soon as they arrived. They were famished. Taquito Frito had been their last meal, and that had been practically yesterday. It was only a moment’s work to turn a bag of corn chips and a jar of microwaveable cheese sauce into a platter of nachos.
There were no two ways about it: It was a huge relief to be sitting at their new kitchen table and demolishing the nachos without looking over their shoulders and wondering who might be creeping up to snatch them. But it was a short-term relief: a here-and-now relief. Out there—beyond th
e guards who protected this house—Trixie and the others still lurked. And out there, their mom and dad and Theo were still captive.
For the first day or two David and Katie were tired and they did very little. People from the government were looking for Trixie and her gang in the streets of Washington, and for their parents and Theo in Katkajan. Katie and David slept, wandered listlessly on the Internet, and watched TV. Alex—who despite their troubles found time to disapprove of the computer and the TV—brought them some books.
They were comfortable and that part was good. But they were no better than prisoners, and they had no idea how long it would last.
Even worse, they had no idea how the search for their parents was going. This was especially hard for Katie. She always felt better when she knew what was happening, and just when things were getting very, very important, it seemed she was to know very little. A few days turned into a week, and one week turned into two. Yet she found that no matter what she asked or how badly she needed to know it, her questions were turned aside with soothing words that said nothing and reassurances that did not help.
And that was when they saw their uncle. Most of the time they did not see him. Technically the house was for him, too, but he was working closely with the government to solve the Katkajanian problem, or “manage the crisis” as he put it. That kept him busy night and day. The government had set up what it called a War Room in a top-secret location, and Alex had a desk there.
“With Alicia, I guess,” said David, grinning. He shared Katie’s concerns, but the steady supply of snack foods and cable TV had improved his mood.
Katie, though, was not amused. “It’s a war?” she asked Alex when he told them how things would be. “There’s a war in Katkajan?”
“Not really,” said Alex cautiously. “Not yet, anyway, and we hope not ever. But there’s a plot, as you know—a very fast-moving plot. Your parents are caught up in this. And that’s all I can say.”
This irked Katie. They had wanted him to help. That’s why they had gone to find him! But they had not wanted him to take over and to shut them out. “So where is this War Room?” she asked. “I mean, is it in the city or what?”
“I can’t discuss that, Katie. The location of the War Room is top-secret.”
“Like I’m going to tell!”
“How’d the president meet Mom and Dad?” asked David. He continued to think this part was very cool.
“Rover was kind of a big deal,” said Alex modestly.
“Obviously,” replied Katie, rising to her feet in anger. “Not, of course, that we know what it is.”
Her uncle looked at her reproachfully.
“They treat kids like hamsters around here,” she said, and she stomped off to her room and shut the door hard.
But as the days passed, the strain of waiting began to wear even on David. Two weeks became three. They could go nowhere. School had begun, and for the first time ever they wanted to go, but they were not allowed to. Tutors were sent to them at the safe house instead.
Katie usually liked math, but she stared listlessly at the problem before her. It was a pretty hard one, and there were seven to go.
Since they weren’t going to school in the usual way, and their uncle was gone all day long, it was up to them to decide when to do their work. David had already taken to doing his in the last few minutes before their tutors showed up. Katie, though, wanted to make this life she was living feel a little less weird, so she clung to a semi-normal schedule. This meant that now, at ten in the morning, she sat in her safe-house bedroom at the small desk they had provided, fighting with homework.
And it was completely impossible to concentrate and completely, completely impossible to feel even halfway normal.
She dropped her pencil in disgust and tossed herself backward onto her bed. For a moment she lay staring morosely at the ceiling. Then she rose and crossed the room to the window. Katie’s window faced the street, and the security team had ordered her to keep her blinds closed. She never did, though. Her life was bad enough without sitting in the dark.
It was nice out: blue sky, puffy white clouds, and the trees autumn red. Of course it was nice! Why wouldn’t it be, with her trapped inside?
She looked down the street. There was the mailman. Soon he would be at their house—not that they ever got mail here. And across the street and one house down, a cute dog was out in his yard. Despite their recent experiences with Chester and that dog in Melville, Katie actually liked dogs and wouldn’t mind meeting this one. That would never happen either.
The dog had started barking, though. A woman was walking up the sidewalk, approaching the house across the street from Katie’s window. Katie was pretty sure those people weren’t home, but the woman was fishing in her enormous bag for a key. Probably she worked there, as a cleaner or something.
Katie could not see this woman’s face, but she was short and squat with a heavy, thudding footfall. It was not Trixie. This woman’s hair was brown with blond streaks, and very curly. Nonetheless, she looked enough like Trixie that Katie felt slightly sick, even just seeing her walk.
Would she be like this for the rest of her life? Was she doomed to get a stomachache every time she saw a short, squat woman? Well, she would overcome it. She would make herself watch.
The stranger’s bag was deep and wide, but she had found her key. She opened the gate and stomped—thud, thud—up the front walk. As she turned to fit the key into the lock, something glittery on the back of her hand flashed in a shaft of the bright morning sunshine.
Whoa. That was a heck of a flash. Katie had caught the gleam even from the second story of the house across the street. She wondered why this woman was wearing that kind of ring to clean the house.
The woman dropped the key back in her bag and put her hand on the doorknob. Flash—there it was again. But as her hand turned, the ring stopped reflecting and for a split second Katie saw the color beneath the sparkle. It was a brilliant purple.
With a gasp that seemed to tear itself from her chest, Katie threw herself onto the floor. Was she too late? Had she been seen through the window?
For a second or two she lay there with her heart pounding. Then a terrible thought occurred to her. David. Where was he? Was he sitting in a window somewhere?
She had to find him. She rose to a crouch and—staying low—crawled to her door. The moment she reached the hallway she leaped to her feet and broke into a run.
The daytime security guard was a youngish, round-faced guy named Curtis. Curtis was in the kitchen, sipping a cup of coffee, munching on a doughnut, and tapping at his laptop, and he did not so much as look up as Katie sprinted through. Not the sharpest tool in the box, she thought, passing him by.
David was sprawled on the sofa in the basement, watching extreme skateboarding on TV. Katie burst in. He only had to see her face to know that whatever it was, it was bad. He, too, leaped to his feet.
“Mom and Dad—are they—”
She cut him off. “No, it’s Trixie! David . . .” Katie was panting so hard that she could scarcely speak. “David,” she repeated, clutching at her chest. “She’s across the street.”
He went pale. “How do you know?”
This was too infuriating in her current state of mind. “I saw her, stupid!” The skateboarding program switched to an ad for some kind of power drink and the sound of it blared over their voices. “Would you turn that thing off?” she cried.
David fumbled for the remote and pushed the button as Katie struggled to catch her breath.
Gripping the back of the sofa for support, she continued. “Trixie,” she said. “She walked right into that house—that yellow one there. Right in through the front door—she let herself in with a key! She must be pretending to be a cleaning lady or something. At first I didn’t recognize her. I mean, I did recognize her, right away, but she’s wearing a wig so I thought it wasn’t her. I was so dumb! But then I saw that ring!”
“What ring?”
&
nbsp; “That big purple one—the one she stole from Mom. She’s wearing it, David! It’s her!”
At the mention of the ring, David sank back onto the sofa. “Oh,” he breathed. “Oh, man.” He thumped the sofa with his fist. “What an incredible coincidence.”
“David, get real! It’s not a coincidence! She’s there on purpose! She knows we’re here. She must have gotten some kind of job there, as a cleaning lady or something. She’s pretending to work there so she can watch us.”
“Oh. Right,” he said, recovering quickly. “You’re probably right!”
“Of course I’m right!” Katie dropped into an overstuffed chair but instantly realized that she was too agitated to sit. She rose and began to pace.
For a moment her footsteps were the only sound as both of them pondered this development. Then a smile crept across David’s face.
“It’s fantastic,” he said.
Katie stopped her restless pacing and stared at him, stupefied. “You’re kidding. What on earth is so fantastic, David? This safe house is terrible! We’ve been stuck here for weeks, just so we could have this protection that’s supposed to be so great, and Trixie found us anyway! It’s a good thing we didn’t get kidnapped. Or shot! We know she has a gun!”
“Katie,” David said patiently, “you’re missing the point. She didn’t find us. I mean, she did, of course; that’s true. But we also found her, and she doesn’t know! We know where she is, but she doesn’t know that we do. She’s a sitting duck! All we have to do is tell Curtis, he’ll get some reinforcements, and they’ll pop across the street and grab her.”
“Them, David. We need to grab them.”
David was silent. She continued. “Nose and Hair? If our guys surround that house, the first thing she does is pick up her cell and tell them to run.”
“Oh.” This problem took David only a moment. “That’s not a problem, Kat,” he said decisively. “That’s just a matter of following her. It means instead of grabbing her right here, our guys just have to follow her when she leaves.”
The Secret of Rover Page 18
