“But I still don’t understand!”
Tracy smiled patiently at her friend. The girls were at an Ihop in Omaha, busy
enjoying a bunch of pancakes for breakfast.
Somehow, Sarah had managed to get some sleep after her adventure of the
night before, but she hadn’t stopped thinking over the case.
Yawning, Tracy gave her reply. “It’s quite simple, really. Just what couldn’t you figure out?”
“Well—well, first of all, DeHaan. How did Burks disappear?”
“He was never in the room to begin with.”
“What???” Sarah was flabbergasted. “But—but I saw him—”
“Of course you saw him.”
Tracy smiled. “DeHaan saw him
too, and so did I. Only, Burks
personally wasn’t in the room. That was
just a holographic image.”
“You can do that?” said Sarah.
“Sure, we have the technology,” said Tracy.
“But wait a second,” said Sarah. “He—I mean, his chair shifted back when he
stood up—”
“We had that on rollers,” said Tracy. “Burks was sitting at an identical desk in a chair
that was exactly the same size. When he
pushed his chair back, the chair in that room shifted back in identical
motion. Other than that, you’ll notice
that he didn’t touch anything in the room.
He never held the disk, for example, and he didn’t shake hands with
you. Not because he was sick—”
“But because he wasn’t there,” said Sarah. “OK, that makes sense. Now, how did you suspect DeHaan?”
“That’s not too tough, either,” said Tracy. “You see, when there’s a leak in our
department, we have measures in place to get rid of it. Plenty of units start working on the leak,
but they all do so secretly. We don’t
even report to our department heads, just in case they themselves happen to be
the leak.
“Well, my unit discovered that DeHaan had been involved in or
had access to all the secrets that had been leaked. He wasn’t the only one who had, but he was
the highest-ranked, which meant he didn’t have to answer for as many of his
actions. We started watching him, and
our suspicions mounted, but we didn’t have any definite proof—until your dad
was contacted about the disk. We didn’t
know for sure he’d be on it, but we were pretty certain, so we made sure he
wouldn’t be able to hurt anyone if we were right.”
“In that case, though,” said Sarah, “why let him in on this
to begin with?”
“So he wouldn’t know he was suspected,” said Tracy. “What better way to keep someone from getting
suspicious than asking them to help you investigate the case? DeHaan, for his part, was certain he could
win because Menace was such an established organization. He didn’t realize our every move was plotted
to keep him from winning.”
“But he could have killed me when I was running around
Omaha.”
“You weren’t in much danger, there—”
“Not much!” Sarah exclaimed.
“What do you mean, not much? If I
hadn’t stumbled across that theater—”
“You didn’t stumble across it,” said Tracy. “You were led there!”
“Led there? LED
THERE? Tracy, that clue wasn’t very
helpful—”
“That clue wasn’t the only thing that led you there. Several of our agents helped you along the
way.”
“I wish I’d seen some of them,” Sarah snorted. “When I got off that bus, I immediately
started getting chased by a lady with a fake baby carriage—”
“—now, she was with Menace—”
“Yes, I kind of figured that out. I cut through a restaurant, started being
chased by two other guys, and ran up into a hotel—”
“Did you see a couple ‘workmen’ on the roof?”
“Why, yes!” said Sarah.
“Those were our agents.”
“They were?” said Sarah.
“I thought they were just—”
“They were up there to make sure the door to the roof was
open, so you could jump to the parking garage.
I knew if you went that route, you’d think of it.”
“Well, yes, I did jump to the garage,” said Sarah, “but I
nearly got shot in the process—”
“I know,” said Tracy.
“That’s when you were in the most danger, but even then, we were
protecting you. You heard two shots,
right?”
Sarah stared at her friend.
“How could you possibly know that?”
“The second one is the one that missed you,” Tracy
replied. “The first was our agent shooting
the gun arm of the man from Menace who was shooting at you. That’s why the bullet missed.”
Sarah shivered. “You
mean, if your agent hadn’t have been there—”
“No, he was going to be there,” said Tracy. “We weren’t taking any chances, as you would
have found out if your jump had been short.
There was a safety net ready to catch you if you fell.”
“I didn’t see it—”
“It would have rolled out just as you were falling. Fortunately, that wasn’t necessary. I figured you could make the jump fine.”
“Maybe I did,” said Sarah, “but I nearly got myself caught
after that! I hid in the trunk of one of
their cars—”
“No, that was one of our cars.”
“One of your cars?
Tracy, it had a Menace medallion in the trunk—”
“And just how did you see that inside a closed trunk?”
“Well, a light flashed on—”
“How do you think that happened?”
“You don’t mean—”
Tracy laughed. “We hid
two medallions in there—one on both sides, so you’d be sure to see at least one
when the light came on. Then, the trunk
opened for you right where we wanted you to get out. If you hadn’t been in such a hurry, you might
have noticed that the car was stopped at a green light!”
Sarah shook her head.
“But why the Menace medallion—”
“To keep you running,” explained Tracy. “We wanted you to get to the theater as
quickly as possible.”
“Then why couldn’t that car have just taken me there?”
“Because we needed you to be followed, in order to figure out
just how many Menace agents there were.
Thanks to your flight, we managed to round up all of them.”
“And almost got me killed by one of their agents on the
railroad bridge—”
“No, that guy was working for us too.”
Sarah’s eyes were ready to bug out of her head. “WHAT??? HIM!!!! Tracy, he tried to kill me—”
“No, he didn’t,” said Tracy.
“You were fine, weren’t you?”
“Yes,” said Sarah, “but only because the train below wasn’t
moving, and there just happened to be a—wait a second…”
“Yes, we put the train there, and we had the mattress set up
to break your fall. That guy’s practiced
that move several times before, so he knew you were going to be alright. He just wanted to make it look good so
Menace’s agents wouldn’t start chasing after him.”
“Oh—oh, so when he popped out of the boxcar—”
“That was to put you on the right street. Incidentally, that wasn’t actually him that
came out of the boxcar. He can’t travel
that quickly. We had someone else
disguised as him waiting for you there.”
“But Tracy,” realized Sarah.
“How did you know which route I was going to take?”
“We didn’t know for sure,” said Tracy, “which is why we had
agents set up in a number of different areas.
If you’d gone east, for instance, an agent would have met you
there. If you hadn’t taken the railroad
bridge, we’d have caught up with you south of there. We knew where you were at all times,
though. You see, Sarah, that phone I
gave you has a tracking device in it.”
Sarah yanked the phone out of her pocket and put it on the
table. “This does?” she asked. “Wait, then did DeHaan—”
“He had access to it,” said Sarah, “but not until you got to
Omaha. That’s when we told him about
it.”
“Oh,” said Sarah, “so that’s how the Menace agents kept
finding me—”
“Correct,” said Tracy.
She laughed. “You should have
seen him when the agent threw you off a bridge.
He didn’t see what had happened—all he saw was that you’d stopped moving
on the railroad tracks! Burks and I were
pretending to be worried, and he was too, though for quite a different
reason.” She laughed. “This has to be the most fun assignment I’ve
had in a long time.”
“Easy for you to say,” Sarah snorted, “but there’s another
point—well, there was a time I really almost got killed. What about the incident at the arena? Don’t tell me Ponson was working for you
too.”
“Oh, he wasn’t,” said Tracy, “but you weren’t alone in
there. You couldn’t see it, but we had
an agent in the upper deck, with a rifle equipped with a night-vision sight. He’d have taken Ponson out if you hadn’t
already been there with the Zamboni.
Speaking of which, that’s why Ponson was standing there, waiting for
you. DeHaan must have told him you were
heading through the arena, but all he knew was your position. He had no idea you were driving a Zamboni, so
he had Ponson expecting a runner.”
“I see,” said Sarah.
“Wait, then what about when I arrived at the house? Why didn’t DeHaan try to kill me when I was
in the room? He still thought his gun
was loaded at the time.”
“He did,” said Tracy, “but he also thought Burks was in the
room, and I was there too. At that
point, his cover was going to get blown—unless you couldn’t get the box
open. So, even though he’d been trying
all along to kill you, his best move at that point was to wait and see if you
really did know the password.”
Sarah sighed. “This is
all so confusing.”
“It’ll make more sense once you’ve had some time to relax,”
Tracy said. “I know that experience must
have been trying for you, Sarah. I’m
sorry it had to be that way. But, you
got through it safely, and all your enemies have been taken care of. You’re perfectly safe, now.”
“I never thought I’d say this,” continued Sarah, “but I guess
I owe you my life…and my father’s. That
agent in Atlanta seemed quite confident of your abilities. He said you were one of the best in the
agency.”
Tracy laughed. “He’s
always a little more complimentary than he should be,” she said. “Though, actually, he’s probably right.”
“I’m not arguing with that,” said Sarah. “And, just to think—I never knew—you don’t
have any other surprises in store for me, do you?”
“Just one,” said Tracy, grinning at something. “Turn around, Sarah.”
The girl swiveled around in her booth, then leapt from her
seat. “Dad!” she exclaimed, flinging her
arms around her father.
“Oh, Sarah, it’s so good to see you,” said Mr. Emery,
gripping his daughter in a tight embrace.
Other than some fatigue evident in his face, he looked none the worse
for wear after his long ordeal.
“I was so worried about you,” Sarah admitted, burying her
face in his arm. Tracy tapped her fork
on the table nervously.
“I hate these sappy sentimental scenes,” she muttered
softly…but not softly enough that Sarah couldn’t hear. Her friend turned around, gave her a mock
glare, then looked back at her father.
“I guess you already know we have Tracy to thank for this,”
she said.
“He does,” Tracy remarked, pouring strawberry syrup on her
pancake with one hand and blueberry syrup with the other.
“Boy, do I ever,” said her father. “There’s a lot you never knew about Tracy,
Sarah.”
“Yes, I’ve realized that,” said Sarah, staring at her friend,
“but I’ve learned a lot over the past couple of days. Including one thing, for sure. The best kind of friend is a secret agent!”
THE END
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
THE
MEETING YOU’VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR
Dear
Readers,
Those
of you familiar with my books know that the Anderson Family Mystery Series is
my main effort. Those of you familiar
with this blog probably rank The
Blackwell Terror as one of the best stories ever to appear on it. Now, for the first time, the stars of these
titles meet in one of my most exciting adventures yet!
It
all started when Stephanie Dale ran a red light. Next thing everyone knew, she was
missing. The Andersons started
investigating and soon discovered…that another girl was missing. Their only lead—another unsolved mystery
might be related. The search took them
through Oklahoma City at night, led to gunplay and danger, all for a clue that
didn’t seem to pan out. Little did they
realize that before the hunt was over, they’d come face to face with Oklahoma’s
most famous kidnapper. Would they
recover Stephanie Dale safe and sound, or would they discover something even
worse than The Blackwell Terror? Find
out as, for the first time in print—
THE
ANDERSONS MEET THE PURPLE PORCUPINE
I am so excited!
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