Installment 12

            We had to walk fifteen miles until the road joined up with the highway. Then, we stood there and deliberated for a while on what to do. Clara wanted to go the opposite direction of where we had originally been headed. That way, she argued, we would be taking less of a risk. I wanted to walk toward the town where we would have stopped, because I was certain that they wouldn’t think to look there.

            “It’s the logical choice, Nathan,” Clara said, exasperated.

            “Exactly,” I replied. “Which is why they’ll expect it.”

            “Operation 497, you mean?”

            “Do we have to call them that?”

            “Yes, we do. Otherwise we’ll get confused. We’re not running away from the police, we’re running away from these…people, whoever they are. Travis’ people. And we’re going to call them Operation 497. All right?”

            I shrugged. “All right, all right. But we should go to the town.”

            Clara shifted her backpack on her shoulders. “We’ll get caught! I don’t like it at all.”

            “Clara,” I said wearily, “We could do it your way and start walking off in this direction. But we’re out in the open, right where anybody could see us by driving by. We have nowhere to hide, and to get to another town we’d have to walk four times the distance.”

            I think that’s what convinced her. Neither of us wanted to be walking that long, especially in the dark on a highway’s edge.

            “Okay,” she answered hesitantly. “We’ll head to the town.”

            It took us an hour and a half, but we finally reached the outskirts of the town. Neither of us knew the town at all, so Clara pulled out the sunglasses.

            “Travis is off the map again,” she commented as she pulled up a map.

            “How does he do that?” I asked out of frustration.

            “I think the real question is why he’s on this thing in the first place. Unless it’s one of their gadgets.”

            That thought hadn’t occurred to me. “But your parents weren’t with the…I mean…they weren’t with Operation 497.”

            “No…but they had all these gadgets, didn’t they? Besides…I don’t really know much about them, do I?”

            There was a pause for a moment as I realized what they might mean.

            “Wait, so…they could have been with the bad guys?”

            “With Operation 497? They could have been. Except that they’re dead, and ‘Travis’ was my father’s last word before he died.”

            I looked over at the girl with the light brown hair standing next to me, arms crossed, studying a map printed on the inside of her sunglasses.

            “You think he murdered them, don’t you?” I asked.

            She uncrossed her arms. “I think that someone did, Nathan. And I think Travis at least knows who it is.”

            “So you decided to help me, since I’m the only one with a connection to him?” I said dryly.

            Clara shrugged. “Something like that.” Then she changed the subject. “So where are we going?”

            I didn’t know. “We need more information. We could try the library. Look up some newspaper articles.”

            “Do some cross-referencing.” Clara’s face lit up at the very mention of a library. “Let’s go. It’s this way.”

            We made it to the library without a whole lot of resistance -- that is to say, we didn’t see anybody we knew the whole way. We kept our heads down and tried not to look too conspicuous, and we were ready to duck in case we saw Larson or Travis Thatcher, but neither one showed up.

            It wasn’t until we had entered the library that a thought struck me.

            “Clara,” I whispered, “I’m an idiot.”

            “Really?” Clara responded, busy looking on the computer archives for newspaper articles.

            “Someone could have seen us -- someone we don’t know, right? I mean, 497 could be anywhere, anyone. Not just Larson or Travis.”

            “But we’re here,” she pointed out. “They wouldn’t just let us go.”

            “They would if there were witnesses.”

            “Safer in here with a crowd than out there,” Clara replied. “Nathan, we don’t have a choice here.”

            I shrugged. She scribbled down a few call numbers.

            “I have a few search terms to start with. Let’s go!”

            Clara was immediately at home in the library. I just followed her. This was obviously her area of expertise. I would prefer to use a computer, personally.

            She handed me a few newspapers and told me to search for anything helpful. I nodded.

            “Can we go to the first floor, though?” I asked. “Being on the third floor makes me nervous. I wouldn’t want to have to jump out a window or something if we were trapped.”

            So we situated ourselves right by a back exit, in a table by the corner.

            I searched through the newspapers. She had cross-referenced several terms we knew -- terms such as Operation 497, Back Door, Travis Thatcher, and Drew Larson. I did come up with an article containing Larson’s name -- but only once. It was a very short piece on his coming onto the police force. Nothing to get excited about. I did note the date, though -- in case it was sometime helpful.

            “Rats,” Clara muttered. “There’s nothing here!”

            She stood up. “Stay here and keep looking. I’m going back to check for more.”

            Clara disappeared around the corner. I sighed and went back to the newspapers.

            Scanning across the headlines, I happened to notice one small headline in particular over a New York Times article. “By John Tripper,” it said in neat letters below. The headline itself read: “Local teenager caught hacking.” With a jolt, I thought they meant me. But the newspaper was dated a lot earlier than that. About twenty years ago.

            That was when the name Travis Thatcher caught my eye.

            I eagerly began to read the article. The article was about Travis -- a teenager at the time -- and his venture hacking into the school system. But strangely, there were few details about the nature of the incident. It didn’t even say the name of the school. Truthfully, there was hardly any information in the article at all

            “Come on,” I murmured out loud. “Give me something useful!”

            “Amusing man, wasn’t he?” came a voice out of nowhere that made me jump.

            I looked up to see Travis Thatcher, in person, arms crossed across his chest. His dark hair covered one eye and, added to his crooked smile, made him look rather impish.

            Instantly, dread fell to the bottom of my stomach and nested there. If Travis had found me, then the others couldn’t be far behind. We were sunk. We were in serious trouble. We had lost, having barely begun to play the game.

            “Who?” I managed.

            “John Tripper,” Travis replied, sitting down across the table from me. I didn’t move. I was certain that he had caught us, but I was determined not to show any concern.

            “How so?” I asked cheerily, hoping to keep any anxiety out of my voice.

            “He covered up a lot of the details there. A good reporter, but an even better agent. I always wondered why he didn’t write a better article about it. I found out why years later.”

            Travis pulled the newspaper over to his side of the table and scanned over it.

            “Why are you reading this stuff?” he commented. “It’s no good. You’re in the wrong section.”

            “Clara looked up all the names -- ” I said heatedly.

            “Names?” he said indignantly. “You should be looking up dates!”

            That shut me up. Of course we should be looking for dates. Dates were all we knew about for sure. The date my parents died. The date Clara’s parents died. How could we have been this stupid?

            “Don’t worry,” Travis said amiably, crossing his legs and leaning back. “It’s not a problem. You have two hours. Look to your heart’s content. Might I suggest trying this one?”

            He shoved another newspaper over to me. I stared at it blankly, not taking in any words.

            “Two hours?”

            Travis rolled his eyes. “Two hours, kid! Did I say it loud enough?”

            “Why would we have two hours?”

            “Well, in two hours, you should start heading out, unless you want to get caught by some fairly nasty people.”

            I glared at him. He spread his arms in a questioning gesture.

            “What? What did I say?”

            “You framed me,” I said in a low voice. “And now you want to keep me from getting caught? I don’t think so. What are you up to? What do you want?”

            “I want a lot of things, kid, a few of them likely, quite a few less likely, several of them possible, and one of them impossible.” He hesitated for a split second before continuing. “But one of those things is for you to get out of here before the rest of them show up, because that won’t be pretty.”

            “Why would you help me? You framed me!”

            Now I was seriously frustrated. Travis Thatcher might as well have been speaking in Romanian for all the sense he was making.

            “Circumstances may have changed a bit. The situation turned out…different than I thought. They -- that is, your enemies -- have decided that you’re more trouble than they thought. So you’re in worse trouble than before if you’re caught.”

            “And why would you mind?”

            “Because I can see what they can’t, kiddo,” he said, rolling his eyes. “I can see that it was a bad idea to get you involved in the first place, and that it’s too much work to cover it up, and that you can do your job from Indonesia just as well as from here.”

            “What if I call the police?” I asked on a whim, but I realized what his answer would be before the words passed his lips.

            “We are the police, kid. And the authorities. And everyone else you think you can count on.”

-Nathan T. Dalton

Installment 11

            Two hours passed, and both Clara and I were astounded that we were still sitting there.

            “You’re certain he saw you?” she asked.

            “Positive,” I answered.

            “How?”

            “He waved at me. I know he saw me.”

            “But…The police cars could have caught up with us long ago. Why are we still here?”

            The landscape rolled by through the windows of the bus. Mostly fields so far, along with…wait. I can’t tell you that.

            Well, let’s just say the landscape wasn’t so interesting, and Clara Stone and I were occupied with our dilemma.

            “Will we make it?” Clara asked, worry coloring her voice.

            I shook my head. “I don’t know. But I do know that if we’re going to get caught, I’d rather we get caught in Washington than on this bus.”

            Clara thought about it, then nodded. “True. It’s more crowded in D.C.”

            Now I know that you’re wondering why I can tell you that we were going to D.C. That’s easy -- because it’s nothing new to my enemies and it can’t hurt you to know. If the information won’t help them, it won’t harm you or me, and that’s what counts right now. Now stop interrupting me and let me go on.

            “But that doesn’t answer the question. Why weren’t we chased down?”

            Clara rummaged through her backpack. “No one else saw you?”

            “No.”

            “Then we have to assume that Travis didn’t tell anyone that we left.”

            I frowned. “I don’t really like that assumption.”

            “He knew our bus number, he could have figured out in seconds where we were going. There’s no other explanation. But just to make sure…”

            Finally, she found what she was looking for in the purple backpack -- the sunglasses from earlier. Clara plopped the backpack between us on the dark blue leather lining and put the sunglasses on.

            A moment later, she said, “He’s not on here.”

            “What?” I grabbed the glasses and put them on, mimicking the blinking patterns I had used before.

            She was right. I could not find Travis Thatcher’s tracking number or little red dot. He had disappeared.

            “I don’t like that,” I muttered. “At all.”

            Clara folded her arms across her chest. “Neither do I, but we don’t have anything else to do right now. It’ll be another hour or so before we reach another station. We could transfer there.”

            I glanced out the window. It had started to rain -- big, heavy droplets that fell down the window like teardrops.

            “I don’t know. We’ll see what to do when we get there.”

            Half an hour later, Clara shook me awake.

            “Nathan!” she whispered. “Nathan!”

            “What?” I muttered back, still partly asleep.

            “There’s a car that’s been following us for the past ten minutes!”

            That jolted me awake. “What? Who? Travis Thatcher?”

            She shook her head. “No, but he’s obviously following the bus.”

            “If he were the police, he could have stopped us.”

            “I know,” Clara said nervously. “I don’t think it’s the police.”

            That shook me. It suddenly hit me that we were not dealing with anyone predictable here. The police had rules, laws -- you could at least know you were safe with them, even if it meant going to jail. But if it wasn’t the police…

            Clara and I could get seriously hurt.

            Then again, that wasn’t really anything new, was it? From the moment I had come home from school nearly twenty-four hours ago to find policemen sitting in my living room, I knew that I was in trouble.

            And this mysterious girl sitting next to me had decided to come with me.

            I felt a sudden burst of warmth toward Clara Stone.

            “We could just get off at the next stop,” I suggested.

            She pursed her lips. “We might be safer on the bus.”

            The look on her face -- a frightened, worried look -- sent a shudder through me. But I barely had time to be surprised of my reaction, because I suddenly realized that the emotion was not sympathy, fear, or anything in between.

            It was anger.

            These people had accused me of hacking into a system I had never heard of before in my life, were following me, and had most likely murdered Clara’s parents.

            I grabbed Clara’s arm. “Come on,” I said in a low, strained voice.

            “What?” she said, shocked. “We’re in the middle of nowhere on a bus. What are we supposed to do?”

            “Exactly what they won’t expect,” I said.

            “What’s that?”

            I pointed out the window, and she saw what I saw -- a tunnel up ahead, and a fairly large one.

            “Come with me,” I insisted. “Over to the seat at the front.

            Crouching low so that we wouldn’t draw attention through the window, we made our way to the seat right by the door. I spotted the lever that opened the door.

            “When I say go,” I whispered, “Jump.”

            Clara’s eyes widened in horror as she realized what I had in mind. “No! Nathan, that’s crazy!”

            “Trust me,” I said quietly.

            “Why?” Clara sounded like I had asked her to jump off the Empire State Building.

            “Because I trusted you. You owe me one.”

            She made a disparaging noise. “I owe you one? I rescued you!”

            “Then let me return the favor.”

            Our eyes met, and I knew this was the moment of truth. The tunnel was coming up fast, and in a moment we would have no time to decide.

            Clara shut her eyes tight. “Okay,” she whispered. “But if I die, you are dead.”

            She clung to her purple backpack, as I kept my eyes on the lever to open the door. Finally, we entered the tunnel, and the world outside the bus windows was plunged into dim darkness. I also felt the bus slowing down slightly. I knew this was our chance.

            I sprang toward the lever and pulled it. The doors opened with a sound like steam coming out of pipes as cold wind blasted into the entryway.

            “Hey!” the driver shouted. “What d’you think you’re doing?”

             “Jump!” I shouted to Clara. She hesitated, then leapt out of the doorway.

            I coiled my legs, then sprang out after her, cold air rushing against me.

            Luckily, we were close to the ground -- but that didn’t soften the impact as much as I thought it might. As soon as I hit the ground, though, I rolled to the side, which kept me from landing with all my force on just one part of my body.

            The lights and whooshing sound of the bus died away quickly as it kept on moving through the tunnel. We were left in semi-darkness, with only the faint orange light of the tunnel ceiling to guide us.

            But I knew we weren’t safe yet. I looked around for Clara, and as soon as I saw her, I grabbed her arm and pulled her flat up against the wall.

            Moments later, a car zoomed past us -- without slowing down, or, apparently, noticing Clara and I.

            Breathing hard, I turned to Clara.

            “Are…you…okay?” I asked, panting.

            Her eyes were screwed shut, and her hair, having fallen out of its neat ponytail, was disheveled, fallen over her eyes -- but she still had a death grip on her purple backpack.

            “Don’t,” Clara murmured, shaking all over, “ever make me do that, ever again.”

            I laughed. I couldn’t help it.

            “We did it!” I exclaimed. “We’re out of there!” I glanced her over. “You didn’t get hurt, did you?”

            Clara slowly shook her head. “No. I think we’re both extraordinarily lucky. I landed on the backpack and probably crushed everything in it. You?”

            “I rolled,” I told her. “Check the backpack.”

            We both unzipped the backpack and swiftly examined the contents. When she had landed on it, Clara didn’t appear to have smashed anything, but there was no telling the exact damage. I reached for the sunglasses and put them on.

            “By the way,” I said as a thought hit me, “Why didn’t you use these when you first pulled me out of the police station?”

            Clara sniffed. “I thought I knew where I was going, obviously.”

            By remembering the course of blinks that was becoming familiar to me by now, I first checked for Travis Thatcher. “He’s back on now,” I announced.

            “What?” Clara tried to pull the sunglasses off me. “Where?”

            I managed to keep them away from her, and examined the map. By trial and error, I figured out how to zoom out and find out his exact location. “He’s in a city somewhere around here…I’m not sure how close, though, this thing is kind of hard to figure out.”

            “For goodness’ sake, just let me!”

            Clara took the sunglasses and was silent for a moment. “He’s not at our next stop,” she said slowly. “Funny…I thought he would be waiting for us.”

            “This whole thing is funny,” I said dryly. “First Travis doesn’t tell anyone where we’re going, then apparently he does, because they start following us, and then he’s gone off somewhere completely different.”

            “He could have been reassigned,” Clara pointed out. “There’s nothing saying that they didn’t just decide he was doing a terrible job and sent him somewhere else.”

            “Maybe,” I said, not at all convinced. “I suppose Larson could have been driving the car. Or someone else. It sounded like there are quite a few agents in their system, whoever these guys are.”

            “Operation 497?” Clara suggested.

            I stared at her blankly.

            “If the bad guys have to have a name, why couldn’t we call them Operation 497? It’s all we have,” she pointed out.

            “Bad guys?” was all I had to say.

-Nathan T. Dalton