ISBN 978-0439651387

Aiden felt every eye in the concourse boring into him. This was the scariest part of being a fugitive. The danger was invisible until it was too late.

Until somebody’s dialing 9-1-1…

The agent checked their boarding passes and examined their school Ids. These had been purchased just the day before from a joke shop near Harvard University in Massachusetts. The cards identified them as Gary Graham and his little brother, Eric.

Meg wasn’t thrilled about pretending to be a boy. But the blow to her pride was still a thousand times better than getting caught. In a pharmacy bathroom, Aiden had used a sideburn trimmer to buzz her hair down to a crew cut. Scowling into the mirror, even Meg had been forced to admit she was a dead ringer for a boy of eight or nine.

Their scam: The police were looking for a brother and sister, not two brothers. It wasn’t perfect, not by a long shot. But it just might get them on this plane. At fifteen, Aiden was too young to hold a driver’s license but old enough to accompany a younger sibling without parental consent forms. They had done research to make sure of that.

The security checkpoint. Aiden took a deep breath. Whatever went wrong, it was going to happen right here.

As they’d rehearsed, the Falconers turned and waved good-bye to the crowd of total strangers assembled outside the entrance to the gates. But it looked much more natural for two kids to have somebody seeing them off.

Meg passed through the metal detector first, and Aiden followed.

Beeep!

The guard approached him. “Please empty your pockets, sir.”

Aiden fought down a wild desire to turn tail and run. Calm down, idiot! You have nothing to hide.

But the truth was, Aiden and Meg had everything to hide. Especially if the guard happened to notice who the letter was addressed to.

Carefully, as if handling nitro, Aiden placed the envelope facedown in the plastic basket.

The next item in his pocket was almost as dangerous. It was a nine-year-old faded photograph of a family friend named Frank Lindenauer. “Uncle” Frank had been their parents’ CIA contact. He was the one person on earth who could prove that John and Louise Falconer were innocent of treason and had been working for their own government the whole time.

Facedown, he repeated to himself, slipping it under the letter.

The last item, placed carefully on top of the other two, was a change-or residence confirmation for the California Department of Motor Vehicles. The address on it was Aiden and Meg’s only clue to where Frank Lindenauer might be found.

His stomach knotted like a pretzel, Aiden watched his family’s entire future disappear into the X-ray machine. He waited until the basket had safely emerged on the other side before stepping back through the metal detector.

Beeeep!

He nearly hit the ceiling. What was going on here? Could this machine somehow read guilt? His fear? Was it picking up the machine-gun rhythm of his hyperactive heart?

It turned out to be much simpler than that. The guard reached around and pulled something out of Aiden’s back pocket. Aiden stared. It was the metal pen they had used to write the letter.

“That should help,” the woman said with a slight smile.

There was a smattering of applause from the lineup of passengers when Aiden make it through the detector without incident.

“Way to keep a low profile,” snickered Meg when they were side by side on the moving sidewalk.

Classic Meg. She could laugh off a near miss like that. But not Aiden. Not with the stakes so high.

This was what their lives had become. This was the new reality – hanging by the narrowest of threads over a pit of disaster. One misstep, one unlucky break, and they were back in custody. Who would search for Frank Lindenauer then?

It would be the end of all hope for Mom and Dad.

A pen! A lousy fifty-cent pen!

Any chance of a future for the Falconer family could crumble over something as insignificant as that.