The Challenge

by Ridley Pearson

  He was about to give up when he checked the bedside drawer. He picked up the Gideon Bible and rifled through its pages.

  A piece of paper fluttered out like a tiny moth. It settled on the carpet.

  Grym bent over, retrieving it. He held it up to his face, pinched it between his thumb and index finger.

  A receipt from Union Station. At the top it read: DAY STORAGE.

  Grym turned it over, a smile widening across his tired face.

  It was date-stamped the day before.

  32.

  Natalie Shufman had surprised the boy. A moment passed before she saw his mother talking to…Could it be? But yes, it was!… one of the agents from the train. The mother’s gesturing was heated and intemperate.

  Then she spotted the other agent from the checkpoint at the train station. He had his cell phone glued to his ear and was looking up at her.

  Applause from the crowd.

  If she was going to do this, it had to be now. Natalie stood and made her way toward the mother, two rows below.

  If caught, then all was lost—not only for her but for the boy as well.

  33.

  Steel saw the woman from the train approaching his mother. All she could possibly bring was trouble.

  He looked for some way off the stage.

  Behind him there had to be exits.

  He looked for the red glow of a backstage exit sign. There! Well off to the side and behind him. He saw not only an exit sign, but below it a crack of daylight from a partially open door.

  Backlit and silhouetted in that shaft of light he saw…

  For a moment he…floated, his head swooning. There was a man standing in the shadowy wedge of light that filtered through the barely open door. Steel couldn’t make out any of the man’s features. But he didn’t need to.

  The silhouetted shape took form.

  It was his father.

  Steel’s legs went rubbery and weak. He reached for one of the chairs onstage and managed to keep his balance.

  He took off running, dodging through the occupied chairs and heading straight for the exit, where the shape of a man exploded into the sunlight of the door opening and then vanished on the other side.

  34.

  Natalie Shufman reached the mother.

  “You don’t know me.” She spoke with urgency, conveying the importance of her message. “And I don’t know you or your son, but I’ve come a long way to tell you your boy is in danger.”

  The mother was too stunned to speak.

  Natalie took advantage of the pause. “Leave town. Now. Forget the challenge. Trust me, you’ll be glad you did.”

  “Who are you? Why are you doing this to me?” The mother sounded on the edge of tears.

  “Your son—” But there was no time. Natalie met the mother’s eyes, attempting to convey her sincerity. “Please, just leave here. Today. Right now. Get him home safely. I can’t do anything more to help you.”

  With the agent nearing, Natalie abandoned the mother and headed toward the back.

  She might have been pursued by the agent had the mother not cried out at the same moment.

  “Steel!” A near scream.

  Natalie glanced up onstage. The boy sprinted off the back of the stage and disappeared.

  The agent gave up his pursuit, turned, and headed toward the stage.

  “Steel!” the mother shouted out again.

  35.

  Larson moved the moment the mother called out. So did Hampton. A kid didn’t run like that unless he was scared, and Larson wanted to know who, or what, had scared him so. He thought he had the answer: the woman in the crowd, the woman from the train platform—but why run from her?

  He sprang up onto the stage.

  The boy was gone.

  A shaft of daylight penetrated from the right: the boy had gone outside.

  He hurried off the back of the stage and headed in that same direction, out and into the blinding light; the boy had a twenty-second lead. Larson caught a glimpse of churning legs as the kid rounded the far corner at the end of the alley.

  Larson blinked rapidly, trying to force his eyes to adjust to the light, but everything was a painful blur as he sprinted down the alley toward traffic. The place smelled of rotting garbage. Larson was a trained hunter. A hunter of humans. He was hunting the boy now, and was determined to catch him.

  Hampton would know to stay with the mother.

  No boy wanted to be caught. And boys were fast, and evasive, and clever.

  He turned the corner and ran smack into a tidal wave of pedestrians.

  36.

  Steel caught sight of the man he believed to be his father. He didn’t stop running, but in his heart of hearts he began to wonder exactly what he had seen and why he’d felt so compelled to pursue it.

  If it was his father, why would he run away? Parents were dependable, but not always predictable. Hadn’t his father promised to come to the challenge? So why had he hidden? And why was he afraid to be caught?

  The street was packed with cars, both parked and moving, the air alive with the noise of engines, the squeal of brakes, and the occasional car horn. Music thumped and pulsed from within a shiny rig with spinning wheels. Steel leaped as he ran, too short to see very far ahead. People stepped out of his way, laughing.

  He’d lost him.

  His father was gone. Nowhere to be seen.

  He bumped into a woman and got spun around.

  And there was one of the agents, running toward him.

  Determined he would not be caught, Steel spun and took off once again, this time the pursued instead of the pursuer. He skirted the flow of pedestrians by tightroping the curb, making his own lane. The great gray concrete wall of the hotel loomed to his left. He timed the next traffic light to cross without pause, dodging through gaps left by the crowd.

  He stole a look back. No use: the agent was definitely closer, less than a half block behind. Steel dangerously recrossed the street, weaving through the slow traffic. Car horns sounded.

  Another look back. The agent was stuck, unable to cross.

  At the next corner, Steel ran left. But it was a mistake. The sidewalk here was less crowded, the going easier. The agent had crossed and was once again closing the distance.

  “Stop!” the agent cried out.

  Steel leaped between two parked cars and stole across the busy street amid another flurry of car horns.

  He never slowed for a second.

  37.

  Worried not only about a young boy being out on the streets, but also concerned that he had been lured away from the science challenge, Larson had no intention of losing Steven Trapp.

  The image that stuck with him was the boy racing across the stage toward the backstage exit.

  Kids disappeared every day, baited and lured by dangerous individuals, never to be seen again. Parents warned their children about not speaking to strangers, not being tricked by questions about lost dogs or the chance to pet a kitty in an unfamiliar car, but kids didn’t always listen.

  Whatever had forced the boy off that stage had to have been a powerful force. He had to have known he’d get into trouble for leaving the challenge. What could account for that? If Larson could figure it out, maybe he’d have more to look for than just a small boy on crowded sidewalks.

  He lost the kid for a second. When he appeared again he seemed ready to recross the street in traffic.

  “Steel! Stop!” Larson called out. Then he jumped off the curb and into traffic himself. Tires yelped as a car skidded to a stop. Larson reached the other side untouched. But again he’d lost sight of the boy. He chased a flash of color to his left. In the confusion of cars and trucks and an army of pedestrians, he came to a stop, realizing he’d run right past the boy.

  A doorway behind him.

  Anger flooded him. He didn’t like being tricked, especially by a kid. He was a professional manhunter; a kid wasn’t supposed to be able to fool him.

  But kids liked games. And
part of the secret to not being found was playing the right game at the right time. The more Larson thought about it, the more he disliked the idea of chasing kids. They could outsmart you.

  The boy leaped from the doorway and started to run. Fast as lightning.

  Larson briefly closed the distance, but it was like a bad dream: the faster he ran, the farther away the kid got.

  Then the crowd swallowed the kid once again, and he was gone.

  Any gap, any shadow might hide him. Larson slowed, taking care not to overlook a single hiding place. Valuable seconds ticked by. He reached a street corner. Looked both ways.

  Nothing.

  He’d lost him. A boy.

  Worse, the boy was in the heart of the city now. Alone. A city not always nice to children.

  The boy had smarts. He had guts.

  Larson thought of the one person who might be able to predict his actions.

  He turned and headed back to the hotel.

  The mother would know.

  38.

  Grym saw himself as just like the wind: he was always there but you couldn’t always see him.

  He returned to Union Station in possession of the receipt he’d found in the boy’s hotel room. The promise of success nibbled at him from the inside out, steadily chewing a hole in his anxious stomach. Arriving at the station—the mall—felt good; the air was cool and a welcome change from the outdoor humidity and heat that had built by midday.

  He reached the day storage counter out of breath.

  “I’d like to retrieve my things,” he told the older man, a man with bent shoulders and a bulbous nose.

  “Well, you’ve come to the right place,” the attendant replied with a twinkle in his eye, taking the receipt from Grym. “Just a minute.”

  The old man wandered off down an aisle between stacks of steel shelving. It looked like a library for packages. He returned a minute later wearing a scowl on his creased face.

  In his hand he held the briefcase.

  Grym could nearly feel its handle in his hand. He’d never let it go. He’d never allow it out of his sight.

  “I’ve got to ask you,” the old man said, keeping the briefcase in hand, well below the counter, “where and how did you come by that receipt?”

  “You…what…?” Grym stuttered, not expecting a question like this.

  “I’m good with faces, mister. Names?” He waved his free hand back and forth. “Ehh! But faces?” He poked his temple with a stubby index finger. “Clear as a bell.” He paused. “And this here receipt was given to a particularly pleasant young man—thirteen, fourteen years old. He left us this briefcase and said he’d be back for it. And now you come along. And where I can see you’ve got yourself the receipt—ain’t no questioning that!—I’d still like to know how you came by it.”

  Grym had no intention of answering the man. In another situation he would have jumped the counter and taken the briefcase forcibly. Who was this old man to question him?

  “I gave you the receipt. Now give me the briefcase.”

  “The boy could have lost the receipt. Fallen out of his pocket. It’s my job to get this item to the person it belongs to, not just the first person to show up with a receipt.”

  “I’d like to talk to your supervisor,” Grym said.

  “What do you think this is, some kind of corporation? You’re looking at the supervisor, the desk clerk, and the sweeper-upper. There’s only one other person works this desk ’sides me, and she fills in on Saturday mornings and when I ain’t feeling well. So if you got a complaint, I’m listening.”

  Grym considered his options. He gained control of his runaway emotions, reached into his pocket, and brought out the fake ID he’d manufactured at the copy shop. He lowered his voice. “I’m the boy’s father, George Trapp. It’s my briefcase.” He didn’t allow the man’s eyes to linger on the driver’s license for too long—just long enough to see his face and read his name. He slipped it back into his pocket. “You’ll find that the briefcase is very light, nearly empty”—he watched as the old man hefted the case—“and you’ll notice when you shake it, it sounds like there’s almost nothing inside, and that’s because there aren’t more than a few papers. But it is mine, and its contents are important to me. I could tell you what’s inside and then show you, to prove that it’s mine…but I’d have to kill you.” It was an old joke, but one he’d never appreciated more than now. He won a slight smile from the old goat. “Why my son decided to turn this into a game, I have no idea. Probably to punish me for having to work while I’m here. But he’s given me the receipt and I’ve come all the way down here, and he’s competing in the National Science Challenge, and every minute I’m here debating this with you is a minute I’m missing some of the competition. So, if you don’t mind…” He extended his hand.

  The old man passed him the briefcase. “Why didn’t you just say so in the first place?”

  Grym couldn’t stop the smile from overtaking his face. Just the feel of the case in his hand warmed him. “Thank you,” he said softly, clutching the handle tightly.

  39.

  Steel slipped through a door without knowing where it led. He smelled fry oil as it opened, and he stepped into what turned out to be a deli. It wasn’t terribly busy despite the noon hour. Maybe that was because of the scowl of the man with the rough complexion who stood behind the counter. He wore a red bandanna on his head like a pirate, and his mustache looked like a dish scrubber. He stood behind a tall glass case that offered hideous-looking meats. Small, handwritten signs had been stuck into the meat with toothpicks: tripe, sweetbreads, tongue, liver. The homemade sausage looked like something that had come out of the wrong end of Steel’s dog, Cairo.

  He asked for the restroom.

  “Ain’t no public toilet, kid,” the grump growled.

  “You gotta buy something ’f you want to use my can.”

  Steel didn’t care about the toilet. He just wanted an excuse to go to the back of the store and find a way out. He thought going to the restroom might get him headed in the right direction.

  He shot a look over his back, toward the street. Then another toward the back of the deli. How long until the federal guy came looking? He dug into his pocket for some money.

  “Ah, forget it, kid. Go ahead,” the man said, cocking his head toward the back. “No charge.”

  A moment later, Steel was in an alley that reeked of decaying meat, stray animals, and empty lives. It was a long, dark tunnel of brick and mortar, dented Dumpsters, and broken glass. Pieces of cardboard and sheets of gray newspaper, wet with rain, were fashioned into a small lean-to. A pair of bloodshot eyes peered out. A scabby hand raised to shield those eyes. Steel had never seen such a sight. For a moment he just stood and stared. Then a tail began drumming from somewhere inside, and a small snout with whiskers appeared from the gloom.

  Steel thought of Cairo, and he couldn’t wait to get back to the hotel to see her. He thought of his mother. His father. How he’d gotten here in the first place.

  The dog growled. No, it was the homeless guy that growled. Steel took off, running right past the guy, the dog’s tail thumping furiously with excitement.

  And there ahead of him, at the end of the alley, came a silhouette much like the specter he’d seen backstage. His father? he wondered. Too small, he realized. The shadowy shape was backlit and difficult to make out. But as he ran toward it, it came more clearly into view.

  Kaileigh. Waving, encouraging him to hurry.

  40.

  Kaileigh led him onto Fourteenth Street, to an upscale set of stores called The Shops at National Place. The White House was only a few blocks away.

  “Do girls just know intuitively where there’s shopping?” Steel asked.

  “Shut up.”

  She found a small bookstore and they went inside, way in the back, where the books for young readers were kept. They were both out of breath, looking around to make sure no one had followed them.

  “What was th
at about back there?” she gasped.

  “Wouldn’t I like to know,” Steel said.

  “What or who were you running from?”

  “I wasn’t at first,” he said. He told her about seeing his father at the stage door and how he’d lost him once he got onto the streets. “Then I look back and I’m the one being chased. Talk about a nightmare.”

  “Yeah, I was in the audience. I saw you take off. But why run from this agent—whatever he is?” she asked.

  “Are you kidding me?” he hissed. “This isn’t about me. It’s about the briefcase. Everyone wants that briefcase—that photo of the woman tied up.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Okay, look. The agent…he mentioned the woman on the platform, a guy on the train…the guy on the train. And it’s his briefcase. So what do you think it’s about?”

  “But chasing you?”

  “I know! Explain that!”

  “So what now?”

  He considered everything that had happened, but couldn’t think of what to say. “How about you? Any luck finding your project?”

  Her shoulders fell forward in discouragement. “It’s not listed in the program. I don’t think it was entered.”

  “So it was just stolen.”

  “Looks that way.”

  “And you’ve come here for nothing?” he said.

  “Not for nothing,” she corrected. “I’m helping you, aren’t I? And I’m not done looking. Someone could try to enter it last minute. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Your nanny?”

  “She’s not my nanny!” she objected.