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

We pulled into the garage, and before the garage door had closed behind us, we were on the way upstairs with our bags. When Paul saw their room, he said, “Holy shit, you guys moved our beds together.”


“We thought you’d like it,” I said. “We’ve got the feet of the beds in those little rubber cups, so they probably won’t slide apart.”


“Yeah,” Randy said, “but if you’re gonna get too frisky, you might want to be sideways across the beds—it wouldn’t do for you to slide down between them.”


“Dad!” Paul said. “That’s getting personal.”


“What!” Randy said in mock surprise. “Are you telling us that you don’t get frisky?”


“Randy,” I said, “there’s no need to make them uncomfortable.”


Chapter 60