Hunting the Hunter Read online

  Besides, nobody looks for fugitives in Veggie Land. Zucchini, maybe, but not fugitives.

  Meg noticed a trickle of sweat on Aiden’s brow as he labored to maneuver the pickup through the close quarters of workers and stalls and other vehicles. The slightest mishap or fender bender could lead to talk of insurance and a driver’s license — and the fact that Aiden didn’t have either. He had taught himself to drive because he’d had no choice. More than once, a car, motorcycle, or ATV had been their only means of escape.

  This is the first time we’ve ever driven something we didn’t have to steal.

  The fresh produce was being unloaded from the trucks into endless rows of connected warehouses. These ranged in size from large storage lockers to the massive complex run by Great West Supermarkets, the Turnbull farm’s number-one customer.

  While Aiden helped the Great West people unload the pickup, Meg tried to lie low. It was impossible. The produce terminal was too crowded, and an eleven-year-old stood out in this adult workplace. The probing eyes produced a fear in her that penetrated her soul. She was not easily recognizable as Margaret Falconer. But she could tell from the frowns and furrowed brows that her features were familiar to people. They knew her from somewhere; they just couldn’t place it.

  And if one of them figures out there’s a twenty-five-thousand-dollar reward on my head —

  A hand grabbed her shoulder, and she practically jumped out of her skin.

  “It’s just me,” Aiden soothed.

  “Let’s beat it,” she urged. “I’ve been getting weird looks left, right, and center. It’s only a matter of time before somebody puts a name to the face.”

  “If we keep on hiding, we’ll never be able to make our move on Hairless Joe,” her brother countered.

  The mysterious bald assassin had been hunting them since Vermont. It had taken a lot of terrifying near misses before they had realized that Hairless Joe was none other than Frank Lindenauer.

  “We don’t have a move,” she pointed out bitterly. “Up till a week ago, we didn’t even know that Hairless Joe was really Hairless Frank. He was just the big cueball who was shooting at us. What makes you think we can go anywhere near him now?”

  Aiden dropped his voice to a whisper. “I might know a place where we could set a trap for him.”

  Meg pounced on this. Capturing Lindenauer was the only way to prove their parents’ innocence.

  “Where?”

  “Here.”

  “Are you nuts?” she hissed. “In this madhouse?”

  “It’s only a madhouse during work hours,” Aiden argued. “At night, it’s probably deserted. Look —” He indicated a few rows of older, shabbier storage units on the far west side of the facility. No trucks were parked in this area; no workers swarmed busily around.

  Meg squinted after his pointing finger. “I guess they stopped using the old section when these newer warehouses went up.”

  He led her around a parked forklift to a small rise where they had a better view of the abandoned structures. They were about the size of single-car garages and could be secured by means of pull-down metal gates. “If we can convince Hairless Frank to meet us in one of those units, maybe we can lock him into it.”

  It was a measure of not just their daring but also their desperation that Meg didn’t even question the wisdom of such a dangerous plan. “But how do we get in touch with him? We don’t have his address or his phone number, and Frank Lindenauer is probably a phony name. It’s not like we can take out an ad in the paper for a murderer and hope that he answers.”

  Aiden looked surprised, then impressed. “Meg, you’re a genius.”

  She was horrified. “I’m kidding!”

  “But I’m not.”

  UNCLE FRANK — We have to stop fighting before somebody gets hurt. Let’s meet and come to an agreement. E-mail us at [email protected]. Your loving nephew and niece, A & M.

  Meg looked up from the paper. “We don’t have an e-mail address.”

  “Yeah, but Mr. Turnbull has a brand-new computer, still in the box,” Aiden explained. “I’ll volunteer to put it together for him. And while I’m setting up his e-mail account, I can sneak in a secret address for us. The guy hates technology — he’ll never know the difference.”

  The two sat in the pickup’s cab in the parking lot of the Denver Chronicle, poring over the text of the personal ad they hoped would lead them to their deadly enemy.

  His sister was unconvinced. “You really think he’ll answer this?”

  “He’ll have to. He wants to find us as much as we want to find him. He’s probably tearing the city apart for us right now.”

  The thought was far from comforting. Frank Lindenauer was a cold-blooded killer, ruthless and efficient.

  Aiden swallowed hard and went on. “Uncle Frank — that’s what I used to call him back when I was six, when he was Mom and Dad’s friend.”

  “Friend!” Meg practically spat the word. “He ruined our lives, and he did it to help terrorists. He doesn’t know the meaning of the word.”

  “The point is, he’ll know it has to be from us,” Aiden insisted. “Let’s just hope he reads newspapers.”

  “Maybe we should put the ad in Killers’ Home Journal.”

  It sounded like a joke; it was nothing of the kind. Aiden and Meg had spent the last few weeks fleeing from this man. Seeking him out on purpose screamed of pure insanity.

  If there was another way … Aiden thought.

  But there wasn’t. Any future for the Falconer family lay in this lethal game of cat and mouse. They had to capture this traitor before he could destroy them.

  Meg stayed in the truck while Aiden entered the Chronicle building to place the ad. It was one thing to be seen together at the produce terminal. But this was one of the many newspapers that had reported the flight of the young fugitives to the world. Aiden navigated the labyrinth of hallways, fighting to control the jitters in his heart. He felt like a trainer with his head inside the jaws of a fierce lion — a front-page story marching through the offices of a hungry news organization.

  Personal Ads was on the main floor, in the far corner behind the employee cafeteria. The office reminded Aiden of a classroom, with a large desk up front and smaller workstations where customers could compose their ads. His hopes of blending in with the crowd were dashed immediately. He was the crowd, except for the clerk in charge.

  The young woman noticed his surprise at the empty office. “These days, most of our stuff comes in over the Internet,” she explained.

  Aiden nodded nervously. He would have greatly preferred to do the same, but without a credit card, he had no choice but to present himself in person. He handed over the paper with the carefully worded ad. “How much would this cost?”

  At lightning speed, she keyboarded the message. “Four lines at fourteen-fifty per line — fifty-eight dollars. That runs it for five days.”

  “Fine,” Aiden replied, placing three twenties on the counter. “Will it start tomorrow?”

  “In the afternoon paper,” she told him. “The morning edition is already set.” She struck a key to send the ad to Composing. “Have you been in here before? You seem familiar.”

  The question struck him like a body blow. “Not me,” he managed to reply. “This is my first time.”

  “Funny,” she mused. “I’m really good with faces.”

  He looked away quickly and caught a startling glimpse of why his appearance rang a bell with her. The office was decorated with mounted Chronicle front pages. One of them, positioned almost directly in front of the clerk’s desk, featured two sickeningly familiar photographs. They were the mug shots of Aiden and Margaret Falconer from the Department of Juvenile Corrections.

  In a panic, Aiden could feel his lunch rising. “Am I all done?” He was already striding through the door, his mind intent on escape.

  “Wait!” she exclaimed suddenly.

  It took a superhuman effort not to break into a sprint for the front exi
t, the pickup truck, and a speedy getaway.

  He turned in the doorway, ready to argue, deny, and when all else failed, to run.

  She was standing up, holding her hand out to him. “You forgot your change.”

  “Oh, right,” he wheezed. “Thanks.”

  He accepted the bills, wheeled, and fled.

  In the parking lot, Meg regarded him in alarm. “What happened? You’re all white.”

  That was life balanced on a knife edge. Even when nothing went wrong, it was still a major frightfest.

  Zephraim Turnbull was unimpressed by the computer that sat on a card table in his living room. When Aiden showed him the finished product, his pronouncement was: “It’s not necessary.”

  “But you can order feed and grain online,” Aiden argued. “And look — this Web site tracks the price of turnips in Chicago trading.”

  “If it can’t keep Holyfield’s goons from sticking their noses into my business, then it’s as useful as udders on a bull,” the farmer decided.

  Aiden wasn’t sure whether or not to believe that the property was under surveillance by its landowner. He had seen no spies himself. Every now and then, Bernard would thunder off on a snarling rampage after something or other. But the watch pig did that every time the mail carrier tried to tiptoe up to the box.

  “You can’t go by a wild beast,” was his opinion, shared with Meg later on in the barn.

  “He’s not wild,” Meg retorted. “He’s just doing his job guarding the farm.”

  Didn’t it figure? Bernard, who hated everybody, had chosen Meg to love. Ever since that shovel in the behind, the pig had been hanging around the barn, scaring the cows, and following Meg like an adoring puppy — or at least a baby elephant.

  “You’re not safe with that thing,” Aiden warned her. “It’s a prehistoric mammal.”

  The pig shot him a baleful look as it presented its huge snout for Meg to pat.

  The good news was that Zephraim Turnbull was encouraging Aiden to try out the computer because “someone should get use out of that chrome-plated whatchamagizmo.” Several times each day, Aiden interrupted his chores to access the secret e-mail account. So far, there had been no response to the Chronicle ad.

  It had been only a day and a half since the personal had first appeared, but Aiden was already nervous. What if their message never reached Frank Lindenauer? He racked his brain for other ways to get in touch with the assassin, but came up empty. That was the Falconers’ greatest fear — not running into danger so much as running out of options.

  It was after midnight when Aiden let himself into the residence and tiptoed to the computer in the living room. His employer had been asleep since nine. With the farmer’s buzz-saw snores resounding throughout the small house, Aiden booted up the machine and opened the inbox for [email protected].

  And there it was.

  Dear A & M,

  I feel the same way. Family shouldn’t be fighting. It’s time to let bygones be bygones. Let’s arrange a meeting so we can bury the hatchet.

  Your Uncle Frank

  He sat frozen, staring at the monitor. The relief that flooded through him was tempered with apprehension. This was a message from Frank Lindenauer, their archenemy. It was just words on a screen, computer code traveling through the Internet. But the mere thought that this brutal assassin could reach them, even electronically, made him feel exposed and vulnerable.

  Calm down, he commanded himself. This is what you’ve been hoping for.

  With trembling fingers, he keyboarded a reply.

  Uncle Frank — meet us at Denver Produce Terminal, inside unit 129. Tomorrow night, 1 a.m.

  See you there,

  A & M

  As he clicked the mouse to send the message, Aiden wondered if he had just signed a death warrant for himself and his sister.

  By the dim light from a sliver of moon, the door of the farmhand’s apartment opened and two shadowy figures stole out into the darkness. They crossed the barnyard, heading for the old pickup truck parked on the dirt drive.

  The hoofbeats came from the left — a steady rhythm, gaining in speed and percussion. Out of the gloom appeared Bernard in full flight, head down, ears flattened — a charging beast approaching ramming speed.

  Aiden was frozen with fright. He stood rooted to the spot, waiting to be trampled.

  Not Meg. She stepped out into the path of three hundred pounds of rampaging pork, threw up her hand like a traffic cop, and rasped, “Hey!”

  Watching the huge creature putting on the brakes would have been comical if the whole thing hadn’t been so scary. Trotters skittering, Bernard ground to a halt by dragging his immense bottom on the turf.

  “It’s just us,” Meg whispered. “Go back to sleep.”

  Aiden watched in amazement as the monster pig turned and slunk off into the gloom.

  “How do you do that?” he hissed as they let themselves into the pickup. “Cows love you, that thing hates everybody, and he loves you, too.”

  “They don’t love me; they respect me. If you show fear to a bully like Bernard, he’ll jump all over you.”

  Aiden kept his mouth shut. Fear of Bernard was not something he was likely to conquer any time soon.

  The drive took only twenty minutes on deserted roads, so they were early. Denver Produce Terminal, once a vast beehive of activity, was dark and empty.

  “It looks like an abandoned prisoner-of-war camp,” Meg observed, surveying the sprawling expanse of wire fencing and buildings, but no people.

  “Creepy,” Aiden agreed. “But not half as creepy as the guy we’re here to meet.”

  Meg bit her lip. Hanging around a commercial wasteland in the dead of night may have been scary. But that fear was a wisp of nothing compared with the prospect of facing down a professional killer in the flesh.

  This is it, she thought. Us against Frank Lindenauer.

  They drove off the main road and nestled the pickup behind a stand of trees. As they approached the front gate, Meg wished she had something darker to wear. When they’d purchased their thrift shop clothing, blending in had been their goal, not disappearing into the shadows of a big city food depot.

  The gate was locked, but the property wasn’t exactly impenetrable. They followed the fence until they found a gap between the ground and the chain mesh. Lean Meg had no problem slithering underneath. Aiden had a few anxious moments when a belt loop on his jeans got snagged on a link, but his sister managed to drag him through.

  The terminal smelled of diesel fuel and rotting fruit. The only illumination came from mounted arc lights, like the ones used by night construction crews. These were located in the busier parts of the big facility. As they made their way toward the out-of-use area that contained Unit 129, it grew so dark that they could barely see their hands in front of their faces.

  Aiden switched on a flashlight and played the beam over the rows of crumbling storage garages. No fuel-and-fruit aroma here; this was no longer a working part of the terminal. It had become a dump. Broken bricks, siding, and roof shingles littered the tarmac. Nothing had been stored in any of these units for a long time. Most of the security gates were so bent, dented, and rusted that they probably wouldn’t have rolled up or down.

  At last, the flashlight shone on a rusted metal placard — 129. In this crumbling forgotten structure, Aiden and Meg would make their stand to win justice for their poor parents.

  Or die trying. Meg thought it but she didn’t dare say it aloud.

  The plan was this: Lie in wait until Hairless Frank entered the unit, then pull down the gate and padlock the assassin inside. Next, call Agent Emmanuel Harris, to tell him that the elusive Frank Lindenauer had been captured. It would be up to Harris and the FBI to prove the case — that Lindenauer had impersonated a CIA agent to dupe John and Louise Falconer into working for foreign extremists by convincing the couple that they were helping their country in the war on terror.

  “Then we turn ourselves in?” Meg whispered.

/>   “Not yet,” Aiden replied. “Not till we read in the papers that Lindenauer admitted how he framed Mom and Dad. That’s when we go to the police.” He took a deep breath. “You know, we’ll still be in trouble for this. Maybe serious trouble. We broke a lot of laws these past few weeks, and just being right about our parents might not get us off the hook. We’ll probably wind up back in juvie.”

  Meg squared her jaw. “It’s worth it,” she said evenly. “Nothing was ever more worth it.”

  “I guess we’d better test the security gate,” Aiden decided. “That’s all we need — to have Hairless Frank right where we want him and the thing won’t close.” He reached up, took hold of the metal handle, and pulled. With a screech of unoiled parts, the iron barrier unrolled like a garage door and slammed against the concrete floor. The crash was earsplitting.

  Hearts hammering, they surveyed the deserted gloom as the echoes died away. It was an awful lot of noise for two fugitives who were trying not to attract attention.

  “If we can’t trap him, maybe the noise will give him a heart attack,” Meg offered with a nervous laugh.

  “We’ll trap him,” Aiden said grimly. It was the confidence born of desperation. This would work because it had to. Otherwise, they would be leaving themselves completely defenseless against a professional assassin.

  They ducked into the shadows around the side of Unit 130. Meg hugged her sweatshirt tight around her. It was still September, but Denver was high country, and the nights were growing colder.

  At moments like this, she envied Aiden his infinite patience. She got fidgety waiting for two-minute microwave popcorn. This was no time to jump the gun.

  And then a voice barked a single word: “Freeze!”

  Shock … bewilderment … panic. Had Hairless Frank seen through their plan?

  The Falconers wheeled, expecting to find themselves at the mercy of the assassin and his gun.

  Instead, the man who stood twenty feet away was not much older than Aiden himself, with a round baby face. His chubby frame bulged inside his nylon windbreaker. An arm patch bore the logo of Rocky Mountain Security.