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

“Because in addition to teaching and writing books,” Sean said, “Dad does some kind of analyst work for an extremely secret government agency. I don’t even know its name. Also, Paul’s dad works with top-secret stuff at the Pentagon. Our house is very secure. Dad even has one of those gizmos that you can carry around from room to room and check for bugs, I mean listening devices.”


“Good,” I said. “Please continue.”


“So, he took the envelope down to the safe room and opened it,” Sean said.


He went on to narrate the story with an occasional prompt from Paul. I was watching Robbie’s face when they came to the part about being forced off the train at gunpoint—his eyes got very wide at that.


“So,” Sean eventually continued, “we bunched the drop cloths up, sat down on them, and leaned back against the housing of your diesel engine. It sort of lulled us to sleep. The rest you know.”


“Care to add anything, Paul?” I said.


“I think that about covers it,” he said.


Chapter 38