The Stowaway Solution
Page 9
I was wrong.
He missed the driveway altogether and took several yards of grass with him as he hit the main road. “I’ll get better,” he promised, stomping on the gas.
He had no choice. The only alternatives were getting caught or getting killed.
* * *
With an enormous two-handed heave, Harris pulled the steel radiator off its moorings. He stumbled backward and almost tripped over the startled nurse who had just rushed in the door. A jet of white steam exploded from the severed pipe and began to fill the room.
“What’s happening?” she shrilled.
“Did you see two kids?” he bellowed over the hiss of rushing vapor.
Her glasses fogged over, and she had to take them off. “A teenager and a younger girl? They were heading for the lobby.”
“Call Security!” He tried to pick up the radiator to carry it out of the room, but it was too hot to handle. “Ow!” He dropped it to the floor with a crash and dragged it into the hall. There, he nearly caused a collision of four Tillamook County police officers, converging from their posts at the hospital exits.
“Why did you leave your posts?” Harris demanded.
The oldest of the four spoke up. “The sheriff said you were handcuffed to …” His voice trailed off at the sight of the broken radiator dangling from the agent’s wrist.
“They’ve got my car keys!” Harris raved. “Put out an APB on a white Century with Avis stickers! I need every man you’ve got to stop them before they get too far!”
There was an awkward silence, interrupted by the nurse’s frantic call to Maintenance. “Hurry! The steam is coming out of the room and filling up the hall.”
“Tell them to bring a hacksaw to get these cuffs off!” put in the FBI man. He turned to the four cops standing helplessly with their arms dangling at their sides. “Why isn’t anybody going after those kids?”
“We have priorities, too,” the senior officer explained. “We might be needed to evacuate patients if they can’t turn off the steam.”
“Then call in more manpower!” Harris raved. “Every second counts!”
“We are the manpower,” the cop informed him. “Four on duty, one minding the store. That’s it in the off-season.”
Harris’s broad shoulders slumped.
Those Falconer kids. They were getting away.
Again.
County Road G-114 was a cow path barely wide enough for the Buick. But it headed east, if the onboard compass was to be believed. And it definitely wasn’t the kind of route where anybody would set up a roadblock.
Or so they hoped.
“We’re low on gas,” Meg commented.
Aiden shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. We can’t keep the car much longer. Everybody will be looking for it.”
Meg swallowed hard and gazed out the window into the darkness. “I thought you were dead.”
“I would have been if some hikers hadn’t found me.”
She nodded. “I know. I was about to head for Denver when I heard that on TV.”
He regarded her in awe. “Denver?”
“Where else?”
He nodded slowly, gripping the wheel. She’d been ready to go to Denver. Alone.
His wild, impetuous little sister was the bravest human being he’d ever met. In the past year, her eleven-year-old world had been shattered and the pieces scattered to the four winds. Then, at rock bottom, with the one person left to her probably dead, she had still never wavered in the quest to free Mom and Dad.
She was really something.
“Denver, huh?” he repeated. “I guess that’s where we’re going now.”
“You know it,” she said stoutly.
When the cell phone rang, it was so unexpected that they both lifted off the Buick’s front seat.
“Don’t answer it!” Aiden said urgently. “It’s probably Harris.”
Meg frowned. “I thought he’d still be scuba diving in the toilet, looking for the handcuff key.”
“We should toss the phone,” Aiden decided. “There might be some way they can trace the signal.”
“Good idea.” She leaned sideways into Aiden at the wheel and held the handset out in front of their faces. “Say cheese.” She snapped a picture with the camera function. Then she rolled down the window and pitched the phone into some trees.
The car never slowed down.
The phone came to rest faceup, its tiny sharp photo lighting the patch of weeds where it lay. Oddly enough, these were not the faces of two fugitives, crushed by exhaustion and defeat. The girl was angry yet triumphant, her tongue stuck out in defiance. The boy hunched over the top of the wheel, his determined eyes riveted on the task at hand, the road ahead, the future.
These were two young people who had seen the very worst of the world but were unbowed and unbeaten.
They knew what they had to do — and were on their way to do it.
The all-points bulletin on the latest escape by the young Falconers went out at eight-twenty-one P.M. Pacific time. The message was received by every police radio in Washington, Oregon, northern California, and western Idaho.
One of these receivers was in a small motel just outside Portland. The man in the room jotted down the details on hotel stationery: White Buick Century, last seen at Tillamook County Medical Center. He noted the number of the vehicle’s Oregon license plates. Police procedures were familiar to him, although he was no cop.
Every officer who heard this APB would now be on the lookout for that car. The man in the motel knew he had to find it first. The Buick itself was unimportant. But the two kids inside it were of very special interest to him.
He ran his fingers over a head that was shaved completely bald. The chase was on again. This time, he would not let the Falconers escape him.
It was the man Aiden and Meg called Hairless Joe.
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 © 2005 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, October 2005
Cover design by Tim Hall
e-ISBN 978-0-545-63206-5
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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