Hunting the Hunter Read online

  A night watchman! It wasn’t Hairless Frank, but in his own way, this guy was just as bad. A security guard might hand them over to the police!

  “Run — ”

  The cry was partway out of Meg’s throat when a low growl reached her ears. At the end of a leash in the watchman’s hand, a black-and-tan Doberman appeared, eyes glowing amber.

  We can outrun the guard, she thought, but never the dog.

  “What are you kids doing here?” the watchman demanded.

  Meg spoke up. “Is this Jefferson Park?”

  The words came quickly, almost by instinct. But surely this situation was too much even for her legendary ability to spin excuses. What could possibly explain their presence in a locked food terminal in the middle of the night?

  “Jefferson Park?” The man stared at her. “It’s one o’clock in the morning!”

  “Jimmy got these night-vision goggles from his brother in the marines,” Meg enthused. “We’re all meeting in Jefferson Park to try them out.”

  “This isn’t any park, kid. It’s private property, and you’re trespassing.” The guard kept an iron grip on the leash, holding back the snarling Doberman.

  “Really?” Meg’s voice was pure innocent wonder. “Sorry, mister. We’ll leave you alone — uh, how do you get out of here?”

  For an instant, it seemed like the man was actually going to let them go. Then he looked at Aiden and his eyes narrowed. Meg could pass for a little kid, but Aiden was fifteen and tall for his age. He was a teenager, and to the security guard, teenagers meant trouble.

  “You two are coming with me. We’ll let the police decide what to do with you.”

  The Doberman bared its fangs.

  The administration building of the Denver Produce Terminal was a small flat structure not far from the Great West Supermarkets warehouse. It was the center of all business that didn’t involve the loading and unloading of trucks.

  It was also the base of operations of the night watchman. He reclined in a padded swivel chair, peering at a bank of mounted TV monitors. A control console enabled him to access dozens of cameras throughout the facility.

  His prisoners tonight, Aiden and Meg, sat in utter misery in the locked room next door, waiting for the police officers who were on the way to arrest them.

  “Maybe the cops won’t realize it’s us,” Meg said hopefully. “What are we charged with — trespassing? Maybe they’ll let us off with a warning.”

  “Oh, sure. Two kids with descriptions like ours, who refuse to give their parents’ phone numbers? Come on, Meg — it’ll take them about three seconds to figure out who we are.” He shrugged helplessly. “We should have made a break for it.”

  “Against a guard dog?” his sister challenged.

  “At least then, we would have had a chance. You tamed a prehistoric pig — surely you could stare down one dog!”

  “It showed me its teeth. That means it won’t be stared down unless it’s chewing on somebody. Look, we’re caught. It stinks, but we’re not going to change it with woulda, shoulda, coulda. How do we get out of here?”

  Heart sinking, Aiden surveyed their surroundings. There were only two ways out. The door — locked, with the watchman right behind it — and a small window with a security grate. Aiden tested the strength of the bars. They wouldn’t budge. The floor was linoleum tile over concrete. The walls were solid. The ceiling —

  He found himself staring up at a heating register above the window. “Terror, Sweet Terror,” he mumbled aloud.

  “Huh?” And then Meg clued in. “You mean Dad’s book?” In addition to his job as a professor of criminology, Dr. John Falconer was also the author of a series of detective thrillers.

  “Don’t you remember?” Aiden whispered. “Mac Mulvey is locked inside the abandoned chocolate factory. The only escape is through — ”

  Meg followed his eyes to the register above them. “The heating ducts!” she finished breathlessly.

  The Falconers pushed a chair under the vent. Aiden climbed onto the seat, reached over his head, and removed the grille. He peered up into the narrow aluminum tunnel that led to the guts of the building’s ventilation system.

  “Not exactly roomy in there,” he commented.

  “At least we know that tub-of-guts rent-a-cop won’t be coming after us,” Meg offered optimistically.

  His sister held the chair steady while Aiden climbed onto the seat back and found a precarious balance. There were handholds on either side of the opening, and he was able to hoist himself up and in. The duct rose about eighteen inches before joining the main line. He could feel hot air blowing in his face as he squeezed his body around the tight corner.

  The space was far too constricting for Aiden to turn around to check on Meg’s progress. “Can you make it?” he asked.

  In answer, a hand touched his ankle. “Right behind you, bro.”

  Aiden squinted into the silver-tinted darkness of the ductwork. It continued the full length of the building, branching off to deliver heat to the various rooms. He scrambled ahead in a clumsy motion that was somewhere between a crawl and a slither. Real crawling was impossible — the channel was too low and narrow.

  To keep moving in such cramped space was back-breakingly difficult. His neck and spine ached, and he was drenched in sweat.

  Meg, too, was aware of the discomfort. “If Dad ever tried this stuff instead of just writing about it,” she panted, “he wouldn’t be so quick to put Mac Mulvey through such torture.”

  All at once, Aiden drew in a sharp breath. Directly in front of him, a heating line dropped to the next room. Through the mesh of the grille he could see the pudgy security guard six feet below.

  He twisted around to signal Meg to be silent, but his elbow smacked into the wall of the ductwork. The metal reverberated like the banging of a gong.

  He held his breath, eyes glued to the husky form beneath him. The guard did not react.

  They wriggled on, struggling for every millimeter of progress. Aiden had never before suffered from claustrophobia, but now he felt the aluminum squeezing him on all sides, crushing him —

  Keep it together! he ordered himself, battling his own mind as much as the closeness of the tunnel.

  The supply grille leading to the next room beckoned from below.

  No — not far enough away.

  He dragged himself past the opening, and past the next one, too. He was afraid he might black out when at long last the metallic floor fell away to the register in the ceiling of the last room on this side of the building.

  Sudden terror — how was he going to swing his legs into the opening? Pressed in on all sides, he strained to maneuver, but could not contort himself into the right shape. In desperation, he crawled straight down into the shaft. Upended in the tube, he hung on with his sneakers against the sweat-slick aluminum.

  Suddenly, the rubber soles lost their grip on the metal, and he was falling. He struck the grille headfirst, knocking it open on its hinge. Cringing, he braced himself for a devastating fall. There was nothing between his cranium and the hard floor eight feet away.

  A hand gripped tight onto his left ankle.

  “Gotcha!” came Meg’s strained voice. And then, “Whoa!”

  His weight dragged her through the opening, and they were both dropping. At the last second, Aiden got his arms wrapped around his head for protection. He hit the floor and barrel-rolled onto his back. The impact knocked the wind out of him.

  A split second later, Meg landed right on top of him. Any breath he had managed to recover was gone again. Both lay there, stunned.

  Meg was the first to recover. “You okay?”

  Aiden sat up. “Let’s get out of here!” His eyes traveled to the window. It had the same security grill as their detention room, but this one was ajar.

  They eased the sash up, climbed out over the sill, and dropped to the ground. A few seconds later, they were scampering off, swallowed up by the night.

  Aiden tugged on Meg
’s arm, slowing her down. “Wait —”

  “Move it, bro!”

  “We can’t leave yet,” he insisted. “Hairless Frank is coming.”

  “So are the cops!”

  “We don’t know if we’ll ever get another shot at the guy, Meg. If we could trap him tonight, being arrested would be worth it. At least the police would be there to bust him along with us.”

  Her heart swelled with hope, but she was still torn. “You’d better be right about this,” she muttered as they made their way through the shadows in the direction of Unit 129.

  Aiden wasn’t sure about anything. He only knew that this might be their one chance to end the long nightmare. Passing it up was unthinkable, no matter what the risk.

  They approached Unit 129 cautiously. With no watch, they could only guess at the time. Hairless Frank might already be in there, lying in wait. Aiden reached into his pocket and fingered the heavy padlock he’d brought from the farm. It was such a simple process that lay ahead of them: Roll down the gate, slap on the lock, and the deed would be done.

  But with everything on the line, with the real Frank Lindenauer in there, Aiden wondered if his hands would be shaking too wildly to perform the simple operation of snapping the metal staple into place.

  With a sudden start, Meg took her brother’s arm and grasped it hard enough to splinter bone.

  “What?” he whispered.

  In answer, she moved so close that he could see her face, inches away, in the near-zero light. He felt her breath as she mouthed the words: “He’s here.”

  “Where?”

  The hiss had barely left Aiden’s lips when he heard it. A footfall, then another — not inside Unit 129, but on the gravel walkway — right beside them. Whatever courage came from the feeling of the lock in his hand evaporated in a heartbeat.

  There was a rasping sound, and a match flared, illuminating three faces — his own, his sister’s, and —

  “Who are you?” Meg demanded.

  The man before them was middle-aged, with a few days’ growth of beard, long stringy hair, and unmatched rumpled clothing. He might have been a homeless person. He was not Frank Lindenauer.

  He looked at them in surprise. “You’re just a couple of kids!”

  “What are you doing here?” Aiden demanded. “What do you want from us?”

  “Don’t you recognize your Uncle Frank?”

  Meg was in a state of high agitation. “Get away from us, you — ”

  The match burned down, and he dropped it and lit another. When the glow returned, he had backed away a couple of steps. “Hey, don’t get upset. I’m harmless. I go through the personal ads — sometimes I can make a few bucks pretending to be somebody I’m not. I didn’t realize you were kids.”

  Aiden felt the air go out of him like a collapsing balloon. The realization overwhelmed his relief at being in no danger from this newcomer, and even from their breakout from the administration building.

  It was a hoax. They had never reached Frank Lindenauer.

  Justice for Mom and Dad was as far away as it had ever been.

  Apologizing all the way, the impostor scrambled off into the night, leaving Aiden and Meg hanging on to each other for mutual comfort. They had faced too many reversals of fortune in too short a time: capture, escape, followed by coming face-to- face with the ultimate enemy — only to find out it wasn’t him.

  “We should get out of here, bro,” Meg said finally. “We don’t want to wait around for the cops.”

  “It was a scam, Meg,” Aiden mourned, his voice hollow. “Frank Lindenauer didn’t get in touch with us. What if he never does?”

  “We’ve got to get ourselves home if we’re going to have a chance to find that out,” she reminded him wearily.

  Staying in the shadows, they skirted the fence until they found the opening they’d used to get in. Minutes after that, they were in the truck, starting for the Turnbull farm.

  They had barely rounded the first corner when a squad car appeared, heading in the other direction. They held their collective breath and prayed as it passed them. In the rearview mirror, Aiden watched it pull up to the food terminal gate.

  “No siren, no hurry,” he commented. “I guess they don’t know it’s us.”

  It was about time something went right.

  Five-thirty A.M. If it hadn’t been for his kid sister, Aiden’s depression would have been total. At least he had Meg to milk the cows for him. Cleaning up their stalls, however, was still his responsibility. So he shoveled, eyes watering from the stench, while she milked away.

  For once, he was almost grateful for the manure smell. The Falconers were operating on less than three hours of sleep. The reek was the only thing keeping them both awake.

  Shortly after sunrise, the shooting started.

  Meg shuddered on her milking stool. “Man, I am never going to get used to that. If Mr. Turnbull doesn’t finish the porch soon, his nail gun is going to give me heart failure.”

  Aiden had to agree. Every cracking discharge was a reminder of the many gunshots Hairless Frank had aimed in their direction. How many more lay in their future?

  And, more important, will we even find him again?

  The endless barn chores ran one into the other, until Aiden was practically asleep on his feet.

  “Hey!” Meg said suddenly, pouring the last pailful of milk into the larger canister. “Hear that?”

  Aiden paused to listen. “What?”

  “Nothing. The shooting’s stopped.”

  In his exhausted state, it took Aiden precious seconds to process what this might mean. By the time he glanced out the barn door, Zephraim Turnbull’s right crutch was already thumping through it.

  It was too late to call out a warning, but none was necessary. The fugitives were so attuned to each other’s thoughts and emotions that messages seemed to flash between them by radar. A glance at Aiden’s face was all Meg needed to get the one-word message: Disappear!

  She dove headfirst behind a stack of hay bales, covering herself with loose straw from the floor of the stall.

  “Good morning, Mr. Turnbull!” Aiden exclaimed, much too heartily.

  The farmer swung his way into the middle of the barn and looked around. “Place is clean, milking done,” he observed grudgingly. “I would have bet money you didn’t know one end of a cow from the other. Only hired you ’cause I needed a warm body to seem like he’s working my farm. But you’re not as hopeless as you look.”

  “Thanks,” said Aiden, not really sure the faint praise had been a compliment. He didn’t mention that it was taking two of them to achieve such non-hopelessness. “Uh — how are you enjoying the computer?”

  “Fool thing!” the farmer spat. “Some voice inside keeps saying I’ve got mail. But I can’t for the life of me figure out how to get at it!”

  A roaring came up in Aiden’s ears, and he fought to stay calm. Was that e-mail message for the farmer, or could it be for [email protected]? And if so, was it the message they’d been waiting for?

  “I’ll come over later,” he promised, keeping his voice steady, “and we’ll see what you’ve got.”

  Turnbull acknowledged this with a grunt. “One more thing,” he added, looking uncomfortable. “Do you happen to have a girl living here with you?”

  The question came from so far out in left field that Aiden was turned to stone. The result was an expression so shocked and so bewildered that Turnbull took it for innocence.

  “I didn’t think so. Sorry for even asking. It’s that vulture Holyfield. If he’d spend half as much time minding his own business as he does minding mine, he’d be so rich that he wouldn’t need my farm to sell to Mountain View Homes!”

  Aiden’s head was spinning. This wasn’t a conversation he wanted to continue, especially with his sister hiding behind a bale of hay twenty feet away. “I don’t understand,” he managed. “Mr. Holyfield told you this? He doesn’t know me!”

  “His spies hang around here like che
ap curtains. Sorry to put you on the spot, Gary. But when he told me about you and this girl, I had to get to the bottom of it. He just wants me to fire you so I’ll have no hired man.” He began thump-swinging for the barn door. “Anyway, my problem, not yours.”

  Meg didn’t come out of hiding until she heard the sharp reports of the nail gun resume. Then she emerged, pale and shaken.

  “Wow!” she breathed. “I was sure all that Holyfield business was just in Mr. Turnbull’s head!”

  Aiden nodded. “This farm really is being watched. We’ve got to be more careful.”

  Meg looked thoughtful. “At least Mr. Turnbull didn’t believe him — about seeing me, I mean.”

  Aiden was the worrier of the pair. “It doesn’t matter whether Turnbull believes him or not. Somebody got a look at you. And I’m in plain sight. Sooner or later, someone is going to put two and two together and come up with Falconer. Remember, the FBI’s offering twenty-five thousand bucks for us.”

  “The clock’s ticking,” she agreed sadly. “What are the chances this new mail has something to do with us?”

  “It probably does,” he said dejectedly. “But how do we know it won’t turn out to be another small-time crook like last night?”

  Yet hours later, when Aiden looked at the message, he knew instantly that it was no hoax. The name Frank Lindenauer appeared nowhere in it, nor was there any proof that the assassin was its source. Its style spoke for itself — brief, cold, all business.

  It read simply:

  When and where?

  “I don’t like it,” Meg commented as Aiden parked the truck in the very same grove of trees outside the Denver Produce Terminal. “Two days ago, we almost got caught here. Couldn’t we have found somewhere else for this?”

  “No time,” her brother replied grimly. “We can’t run around Denver, scouting out deserted places that lock from the outside. It’s here or it’s nowhere.”