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  No sooner had the thought crossed his mind than an earsplitting siren cut the air.

  They barreled through the automatic sliders, propelled by the terror of their worst fear coming true. In thirty seconds, LAX would be locked down and searched. Escape had to be now or it would definitely be never.

  Then he saw it: the Hertz Rent-A-Car courtesy bus, parked at the curb directly in front of them. The open doors beckoned like a lifeboat to a drowning pair.

  They bounded onto the step an instant before the doors folded shut. In the rearview mirror, they caught a glimpse of the driver’s questioning eyes on them. Meg defused that with a wave into the crowded interior. “It’s okay, Dad. We made it.”

  Seven minutes later, they were pulling into the Hertz lot, the wailing of the airport alarm now out of earshot. As the other passengers lined up at the rental counter, the Falconers hailed a passing taxi and jumped inside.

  “Where to?”

  Aiden unfolded the DMV letter and read the address. “One-fourteen Cabrini Court, Venice Beach.”

  Meg slumped back in the seat, suddenly too weary to hold herself upright. “Well, how do you like California so far?”

  If he hadn’t laughed, Aiden was pretty sure he would have burst into tears. Constant danger, nonstop pressure, nonstop terror — it should have been old news by now.

  He was discovering that you never got used to it.

  * * *

  Three thousand miles away from Venice Beach, Agent Emmanuel Harris of the FBI entered the luxurious dark-paneled lobby of the Royal Bostonian hotel in Boston, Massachusetts.

  He was an imposing figure, standing six feet seven inches tall, holding a Starbucks hot-cup — size venti, just like Harris.

  He crossed the lobby in three expansive strides and showed his badge to the uniformed desk clerk. “Aiden and Margaret Falconer stayed here. I want to know — ”

  “Spell that, please,” the woman interrupted.

  “The Falconer kids!” Harris exploded. “They’re fugitives, wanted by half the government. You think they registered under their real names?”

  The clerk was flustered. “I — I didn’t — I’ll get the manager.”

  Harris took another sip and wondered how it had all gone wrong. A year ago, he’d been a national hero, bringing the most notorious traitors in half a century to justice. Doctors John and Louise Falconer, the criminologists who had lent their expertise to terrorists. A slam-dunk case.

  The Falconers claimed to have been working for a CIA agent named Frank Lindenauer. But Lindenauer had disappeared off the face of the earth — if the man had ever existed in the first place. The result: life sentences for the Falconers, and a big promotion for Harris.

  Yet Harris had gotten something else out of the deal — sleepless nights. What if the husband and wife college professors had been telling the truth? In that horrible scenario, not only were two innocent people suffering in prison, but their children were on the run like hunted animals for no reason.

  And it’s all my fault.

  The manager hurried over. “What seems to be the trouble, sir?”

  Harris flashed his ID once more. “I’m here about Aiden and Margaret Falconer.”

  “Ah, yes — they left the hotel on Monday without checking out. Registered under Graham, I believe.” The man tapped the keyboard expertly. “Here it is. Louise Graham.”

  Harris recognized the name immediately. “Louise Graham is in a maximum-security prison in Florida. How could she possibly pay for a five-star hotel room in Boston?”

  “She didn’t,” the manager replied. “Our records say the three-night stay was purchased over the Internet with SkyPoints from Trans-Atlantica Airlines.”

  Harris was thunderstruck. “Frequent-flier miles?” The FBI had frozen the Falconers’ financial assets. But frequent-flier points?

  Clever. No, not just clever — brilliant. His grudging respect for those resourceful kids went up a notch.

  He flipped open his cell phone and dialed his assistant in Washington, DC. “I need you to access a Trans-Atlantica SkyPoints account for me. The name is Louise Graham. Give me all the recent activity.”

  There was a long pause on the line. Even the FBI needed special authorization to access a private company’s customer records. “Okay, I’ve got it,” the reply came finally. “In the past week, I see an award deduction for a deluxe long weekend at the Royal Bostonian hotel — ”

  “I’m there right now,” Harris said impatiently. “Anything else?”

  “Two airline tickets. The flight lands … whoops, it landed a few minutes ago.”

  Harris could feel his heart thudding in his chest, something that happened when he drank a lot of coffee, which was always. “Landed where?”

  “California. LAX.”

  Harris wasn’t sure whether to curse himself for losing the Falconers in Boston or hoot with glee that they were back on the radar screen. “I’m on my way to the airport. Book me on the next flight. And get some local agents to check LAX immediately.”

  “Should I instruct the airline to freeze the frequent-flier account?” his assistant asked.

  “No, but put a tracer on it. If anybody uses those miles, I want to be the first to know.” He hung up and turned to the manager. “Thanks for your help.”

  “We always cooperate with the police,” the man said primly. “I gave the same information to the other detective.”

  Harris froze. “Other detective?”

  “He was here just this morning. You know, your office should really get its assignments straight so you don’t waste manpower posing the same questions to the same people.”

  “Describe him,” Harris demanded.

  “He was large — although not as large as you. Quite muscular. Oh, yes, and his head was shaved completely bald. That was his most striking feature.”

  Emmanuel Harris felt his blood chill inside his veins. It was him — the unidentified bald male suspect. He had police ID, but he was no cop.

  He was out to harm Aiden and Margaret Falconer, possibly even kill them.

  But why? The parents were the traitors, not their kids.

  There was no time to waste on speculation. If Harris knew about the frequent-flier miles, the bald impostor did, too. He was probably on a plane to California already, hours ahead of the FBI.

  Harris rushed out of the hotel and hailed a taxi with a skyscraping wave of his arm. It was now doubly important to arrest Aiden and Margaret Falconer.

  It might be the only way to save them.

  114 Cabrini Court was a three-story stucco apartment house just inland from the surf shops and tourist traps that lined Venice Beach. It was a well-kept place, with hibiscus bushes by the door and flower boxes along the broad balconies. The paint was fresh, if a little too pink.

  The taxi drove away, leaving the Falconers looking up at the building.

  Meg could barely raise her voice above a whisper. “Do you think there’s a chance that the real Frank Lindenauer is in there?”

  Her brother squared his shoulders. “Only one way to find out.”

  They entered the vestibule, and Aiden pressed the buzzer above mailbox 2C.

  A woman answered in an Eastern European accent Aiden couldn’t place. “Yes, who is this, please?”

  Aiden took a stab at it. “Mrs. Lindenauer?”

  “What?” The voice was blank. “Mrs. Who?”

  Meg jumped in. “We’re looking for Mr. Lindenauer. Mr. Frank Lindenauer.”

  “You come to the wrong place. No Mr. Frank here.”

  “He used to live there,” Aiden explained. “Uh — did you know the person in the apartment before you?”

  “No — I don’t know nothing.” The click over the intercom indicated that the conversation was over.

  Aiden let out a breath. “So much for the lucky break.”

  Meg was furious. “I didn’t come three thousand miles for ‘I don’t know nothing’! Somebody has to remember this guy.”

  B
efore Aiden could stop her, she rang every doorbell on the board. There were a few voice replies before one unwary soul buzzed them in.

  They started with their quarry’s former neighbors on the second floor. There were a couple of not-homes and a pair of Japanese exchange students who couldn’t even pronounce Lindenauer, let alone recall meeting him. The young woman in 2D didn’t recognize the name or the photograph, and she had been living there for three years.

  “He was probably gone before you moved in,” Aiden concluded.

  A man with an armload of groceries appeared and dropped his parcels in front of the last door in the hall. “Are you talking about the Harpers from 2F? They moved back east about five years ago. We had a block party the day they left and took that parakeet with them.”

  “What about Lindenauer?” Meg asked urgently. “Frank Lindenauer.”

  The man frowned. “Don’t know any Lindenauer — ” And then light seemed to dawn. “You’re not talking about the Phantom? Big guy — red hair, beard. Lived in 2C.”

  Aiden stepped forward eagerly. “You knew he worked for the CIA?”

  The man gawked. “Did he really? We were just kidding! We called him the Phantom because he was so weird. He came and went at all hours, disappeared for months at a time. A real nut-job about privacy, too. Wouldn’t even put his name on the mailbox.”

  “When did he move away?” Meg asked.

  “Who could tell? He was never really here. The only person he ever talked to was the super. You should ask him — apartment 1A.”

  The super instantly recognized the photograph. “Oh, that guy! Yeah, I remember. Frank somebody.”

  “Do you have any idea where we can find him?” asked Aiden.

  The man shrugged. “He paid his rent on time, that’s what mattered to me. And always in cash. The tenants were afraid of him — thought he was in the mob or something. You can call the management company to see if he left a forwarding address. But that would be five, six years old.”

  The letdown was so intense the Falconers could almost taste it. Sure, they didn’t think it would turn out to be as simple as knocking on a door and having Lindenauer answer it. But they hadn’t expected the trail to be so cold.

  The super sensed their disappointment. “He’s a relative of yours?”

  “Our father,” Meg lied, flashing saucerwide tragic eyes. “He and Mom lost touch when I was just a baby.”

  “Wait — I think I’ve got something for you.” The super disappeared into the apartment and returned a moment later with a dusty shoe box. 2C had been scribbled in Magic Marker on the masking tape that held the lid in place. “It’s just a few odds and ends your old man left in his place when he moved out. I’d been saving it for him, but, hey — you’re his flesh and blood, right?”

  “We sure are,” confirmed Meg.

  The way she said it, no one would have doubted it for an instant.

  Venice Beach attracted a wide variety of people, from LA’s hippest hipsters to tourists in Hawaiian shirts and cheap sunglasses, from combat-booted punks to aging hippies who looked like Gandalf.

  The Falconers sat on a bench by the bike path, poring over the contents of the shoe box — which were every bit as bizarre and mismatched as the motley crew riding and Rollerblading past.

  There was a deck of cards, a doorstop, a wrapped bar of soap from the Oriental Hotel in Bangkok, a high school ring, a lady’s hoop earring, three shirt buttons, a dainty pair of opera glasses, the shell casing from a .32 caliber bullet, a handful of coins from Malaysia and the Philippines, and a small brass key bearing the number 347.

  Meg was crestfallen. “Just a bunch of old junk.”

  “Come on, Meg,” Aiden chided. “Didn’t you learn anything growing up in a house with two criminologists? There’s a ton of information in this box.”

  Her eyes flashed anger under a frown. “You’re not talking about criminology. You’re talking about Dad’s books.”

  In addition to his career as a college professor, Dr. John Falconer was also the author of a series of detective novels. His hero, Mac Mulvey, had an uncanny ability to find clues in other people’s castoffs.

  “Look,” Aiden continued, “a hotel in Bangkok, money from Malaysia and the Philippines — that proves he travels, especially in Asia.”

  “We know that already — the neighbor just told us he was never home. The earring — we know he had a lot of girlfriends. The bullet — we know he’s CIA. What’s left? The ring — so he has fingers. Eureka.”

  “Take a look at that key,” Aiden insisted.

  She shrugged. “A suitcase key.”

  “I don’t think so. There’s no brand name or logo. And the number — 347. This is a locker key.”

  Meg was instantly on board. “And if a CIA agent thinks something is so important that it isn’t safe in his apartment — that he has to lock it up someplace else — ”

  “Then it has to be big stuff,” Aiden finished. “Maybe even something about Mom and Dad.”

  “So we’ve got the key,” his sister said excitedly. “All we need to do is find the lock that it opens.”

  Aiden stared at her. Meg could go from the depths of depression straight up to the stratosphere in the blink of an eye. Her idea of “all we need to do” completely boggled his mind. In a city of millions of people, with who knew how many bus stations, train stations, airports, shopping malls, swimming pools, and public beaches, it was not going to be a piece of cake to find the right locker 347.

  It was dusk, and at that moment, the streetlights over the pathway came on, growing to full brightness. Aiden was surprised to see a mark on the key he hadn’t noticed before. He held it directly under the lamp and examined it closely. Near the key-ring hole, four tiny letters had been engraved in the metal: SMRC.

  “SMRC?” Unsure of his own eyes, he handed it to Meg. “What do you make of this?”

  And when he looked away from her, a scene straight out of a TV movie of the week was unfolding not five feet in front of him.

  A lanky teenager with razor-short hair and a goatee stood at a beachside shop, holding up a baggy T-shirt. A shorter, stockier teen in a Dodgers jersey seemed to trip on thin air and stumble into the first boy. As he fell, the clumsy newcomer reached a hand into his pocket.

  A click. The glint was unmistakable. Streetlight on metal.

  A switchblade!

  Aiden was never sure why he did it — only that the reaction was instantaneous and almost automatic. With a warning cry of “Knife!” he launched himself forward and rammed his shoulder into the g in Dodgers.

  The attacker was knocked back, staggering into a table of bathing suits. He sprang up again, brandishing the blade in front of him. In a chilling reality check, Aiden took full account of the terrible mistake he’d just made. He had picked a fight with a knife-wielding city kid when he himself had no means of defense.

  The first slash missed the tip of his nose by an inch and a half — so close he felt wind as the blade sailed past. He wanted to run, but in his overpowering dread, his legs wouldn’t respond to instructions from his brain. He was turned to stone, waiting for the burn of cold steel slicing into him.

  Amazingly, it wasn’t fear of the pain that stoked his terror. It was the thought of leaving his gallant little sister alone and unprotected. She was a tiger, but she was still only eleven.

  I’m sorry, Meg! I did the best I could!

  He braced himself for the strike … and then Dodgers Jersey wheeled and fled.

  Huh?

  The boy with the goatee and two other teens flashed by in hot pursuit. One of them upended a sale rack of sunglasses. Tourists screamed, and the shop owner burst out of the door, hurling curses.

  Aiden watched in a mixture of fascination and horror as Goatee and the newcomers chased Dodgers Jersey through the narrow lane between storefronts, leaping over garbage cans and discarded boxes.

  A late-model Mustang convertible screeched to a halt in the roadway at the end of the alley. Wit
hout missing a stride, Dodgers Jersey vaulted over the rear door, landing in a heap in the backseat. The car peeled away.

  Meg appeared at Aiden’s side. “What are you, nuts? What did you do that for?”

  The scene was bedlam. Spectators flooded to the shop, where dozens of pairs of sunglasses were scattered about the wreckage of the broken rack. The owner was scrambling around, trying to recover his merchandise, dialing 9-1-1 on a cell phone. A little kid who had been knocked over in the chaos was crying. His mother dabbed at his skinned knees with a wet napkin while his father raved about how the neighborhood was going to the dogs.

  Sirens wailed in the distance — Aiden’s second unpleasant surprise of the past minute. He had done nothing wrong. In fact, his actions had been heroic, if risky and stupid. But face time with the cops was the last thing a fugitive needed.

  Especially not on a day when we’ve been spotted busting out of the Los Angeles airport.

  He grabbed the shoe box from his sister, tucked it under his arm, and began pushing her through the gathering crush of people.

  Meg wanted answers. “What’s going on? Why did you bodycheck that guy?”

  “Not now,” he muttered through clenched teeth.

  Once clear of the crowd, he ran, towing Meg by the arm. They dashed along the bike path and ducked into one of the side alleys, zigzagging inland via short residential streets. It was only when they were well in from the water, lost in the spiderweb of the Venice Beach grid, that Aiden slowed to a fast walk.

  Meg scrambled to keep up on her shorter legs. “Come on, Aiden,” she panted. “Tell me what happened!”

  “I think” — he was in a daze, but he didn’t interrupt his stride — “I think I just stopped a murder.”

  @leaves.net, the famous Venice cyber tea shop, saw its clientele change several times each day — bodybuilders early, artists in the afternoon, business-people after work, and college students late. Very few school-age kids turned up for @leaves.net’s combination of designer teas and Internet access. But that night around ten p.m., what appeared to be a teen-ager and his younger brother were hunched over a monitor, ignoring a cup of steaming Earl Grey.