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

“I’ll start wiping things down. This little rented office is small enough that it won’t take very long.”


“Good,” the broker said. “I’ll get the other preparations taken care of.”


While his helper wiped down all of the surfaces in the office, the broker opened a closet, revealing two five-gallon cans of gasoline and three containers filled with various chemicals, all of which were popular with arsonists as accelerants.


“Man, this place is gonna burn like crazy once you toss a match inside.”


“We can’t just ‘toss a match’ into this stuff, we’re going to have to use a timer and a small explosive device—like this one,” the broker said as he removed a small box from the largest drawer of the desk and set it carefully on the floor.


Chapter 77