Chapter 22

“Hello,” Rupert finally said after numerous rings.

“Any word?” I said.

“Nothing new,” he said.

“I have a question,” Randy said.

“What?” he said.

“Has anybody wondered how they knew which train to be on? We made that decision barely twenty-four hours before the boys boarded it.”

“There’s no question that your phones are safe,” Rupert said. “Did you call your sons on their cell phones?”

“Yes,” I said, “but they’re the encrypted ones we got from you last year.”

“That leaves two possibilities, then,” Rupert said. “Either there are listening devices at The Citadel, or somebody hacked into the Amtrak website.”

“Would Amtrak have any way of knowing if someone gained access to their site?” Randy said.

“Only if they caused some mischief on the site,” Rupert said. “If they just got into the site somehow and looked around, it might go unnoticed. I’ll have some people look into that.”