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