Professor and secret government analyst Ian Sanderson's bad day gets worse when he arrives home one miserable November evening to find an apparently incriminating photograph in a FedEx envelope in his doorway, followed by increasingly threatening photographs over the next two or three weeks. It isn't just Ian being set up: his partner, Randy, a lieutenant colonel working on a top-secret Pentagon project, is also at risk. Someone obviously wants something, but what? And from whom?<br><br> Soon, a mysterious caller demands that Randy disclose information about the project he's been working on. When he refuses, Ian's and Randy's sons, David and Paul, are kidnapped from an Amtrak passenger train. Resourceful and intelligent, the boys manage to escape-only to find themselves lost and alone in a remote wilderness. With time running out, can Ian and Randy track down their blackmailers? Or will the man known only as The Broker claim another set of victims?

The Burdens of Truth

“Yeah,” Randy said, “but what, and from whom?”


“Surely it has something to do with your top-secret work,” I said. “Nobody knows about my part-time work for the agency—at that point I hadn’t even told Catherine about it, not that I kept secrets from her, but because I hadn’t gotten around to telling her. In fact, I was going to use my earnings to buy something nice for her and tell her then.”


“We’ll just have to wait until you’re contacted by a party or parties unknown,” Rupert said. “Meanwhile, may I have this?”


“Certainly, and Randy can get you a copy of one or two of the pictures he took.”


“A negative with a date would be even better,” Rupert said.


“I can do that,” Randy said. “They’re in a locked drawer in our safe room.”


“Should we try to defuse things by talking to our superiors at work?” I said.


Chapter 5