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

“Yes, there have. In fact, I was just about to send you an e-mail bringing you up to date.” I gave him an expurgated account of our trip to Charleston and Savannah and said, “A FedEx envelope was delivered to the house Friday containing some more photographs.”


I slid my laptop around on the desk to show him the pictures, and walked him through them. 


“Those boys have turned into good-looking young men,” he said.


“It chills me to the bone to realize that someone was following us around, evidently from Charleston to Savannah and back to Charleston. That last photograph was taken in an area of the school which is usually restricted, but we learned Saturday that a group of VIPs and their entourage were being given a private tour of the campus that day, hence the photo. Someone in that entourage didn’t belong there.”


“What do you think will happen next?” Dr. Jarvis said.


Chapter 16