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

He even appeared to be the right age, and when he produced a photo ID, I took a quick glance at his birth date, confirming his age as twenty. He introduced himself as Sergeant Millar. We gave him a copy of the boys’ schedule, and he followed us down to the basement garage—it had been decided that he would drive us in my car, since it sported a faculty parking decal. The arrangement worked out very well, and I was able to ride back and forth with Sgt. Millar and the boys three days out of five.


About two weeks after classes began, the boys said we needed to have a small family conference.


We settled down in the den, and I said, “Okay, guys, you asked for this meeting. What’s up?”


“We’re not getting any exercise,” Paul said.


“Yeah, we’re actually beginning to lose some of the muscle tone that we built up at The Citadel,” Sean said.


Chapter 61