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

Eventually, we lay down on the mattress, wrapped the thin blankets around our bodies, and pulled the other mattress over us, even though we didn’t plan on sleeping. “Tell me again why we’re doing this mattress thing tonight?” Paul said.


“So the thugs won’t see a change in how we’re acting,” I said. “And it does keep us a tad warmer.”


Good intentions notwithstanding, we went to sleep. I woke up sometime later because Paul was jabbing me in the ribs with his elbow. “Wake up,” he said in a whisper.


“Shit, we went to sleep, didn’t we?”


“Shh, we need to sit by the door and listen.”


We crept over to the door, and each of us put an ear to a crack between the door and the frame. “I hear really loud snoring,” Paul said, still whispering.


“Is there any water left?” he said.


Chapter 26