by Ron McGee
DEDICATION
Adventures are more fun when you
share them with good friends. Luckily
for me, I’ve got some of the greatest!
This book is dedicated to them.
—RM
CONTENTS
Dedication
Prologue
Part One: Sidelined
Chapter 01
Chapter 02
Chapter 03
Chapter 04
Chapter 05
Chapter 06
Chapter 07
Chapter 08
Chapter 09
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Part Two: Back in the Game
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Part Three: Crank Up the Volume
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Epilogue
About the Author
Books by Ron McGee
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
PROLOGUE
NEW JERSEY,
USA
The music would get them both killed.
That’s what Lawrence always told her, and he was probably right. But without the music, everything felt empty and pointless. How do you stop doing the one thing that makes you feel truly alive?
Nadia didn’t have much time. Lawrence would be home soon, and she wanted to get the last track recorded before he arrived. She had written the new song earlier today during her shift at the Coffee Hut. The lyrics and melody just popped into her head while she made double mocha lattes and nonfat cappuccinos. Every time she got a break, Nadia scribbled notes to herself before she forgot.
The song was almost finished. She hadn’t felt this excited in years. Growing up, music was often her only refuge from a frightening and dangerous world. It was Lawrence who eventually showed Nadia that her voice could be much more than an escape.
It could be a weapon.
And for a while, it had been. But that was years ago. Now she spent her days serving coffee and her nights safely tucked away in this drab little apartment. She tried to make the best of it, but this place would never feel like home.
So once again, music had become her refuge.
The recording would be simple. All she had was a laptop, an electric keyboard, and a beat-up microphone she’d bought at a pawnshop. She put on headphones, then pressed record. A hip-hop beat played. Nadia took a deep breath, leaned into the microphone, and—
The front door of the apartment burst open! The lock splintered with explosive force as two men in black rushed into the room. Nadia screamed and bolted for the back door.
She grabbed the edge of an empty table and yanked it into the path of her pursuers. They barely slowed, leaping it effortlessly. She whirled around the corner and raced through the kitchen. Nadia flung open the back door … and stopped short.
A pistol with a silencer was pointed at her chest. She recognized the man holding it. She’d never forget the horrible scar that stretched across his eye and cheek.
“Hello, doll.” His elegant British accent didn’t mask the menace in his tone. “I know someone who’s gonna be very pleased to see you again.”
Nadia spun around but found her way blocked by one of the other men. She wouldn’t let them take her! She lunged forward with a guttural roar, swiping her long nails across his cheek.
The man staggered back in surprise. Nadia pushed past him, but before she could take another step, she felt a blow to the back of her head. Dropping to her knees, she struggled to focus. But the room was spinning, everything blurry.
Nadia’s last thought was for Lawrence, a prayer that they wouldn’t get him, too. Then she tumbled to the ground, blackness enveloping her.
PART ONE
SIDELINED
CHAPTER
01
NEW YORK,
USA
Heads up, Quinn!”
Ryan pivoted to discover Brendan Jackson making a fast break toward the basket. Ryan mentally kicked himself. He’d been distracted again, his mind wandering.
Ryan tried to catch up, but he was too late. Jackson bounded toward the backboard and executed a perfect layup. Two points.
“Come on, Quinn!” Coach Harris yelled. “Stop daydreaming or get off the court!”
Ryan nodded, frustrated and embarrassed. Baseball was his passion, but that didn’t start until spring, so he’d tried out for the travel basketball team. He made the team because he was pretty athletic, but he was seriously lacking in basic skills. Ryan wanted to get better, and that would require him to keep his mind on the game.
For the next half hour, Ryan forced himself not to think about anything but practice. Not about his parents, not about the Emergency Rescue Committee—he focused on getting rebounds, setting screens, and making jump shots.
And it worked. When he concentrated on the game, Ryan was good. He even made a sweet three-pointer at the end of practice. As the players left the court, Coach Harris came up beside him.
“You want to be here, Quinn?” he asked.
“Yes, sir. Absolutely.”
“You’ve got natural talent. But basketball’s a mental game.” Coach Harris stopped, serious. “When you’re out there, everything else has to go away. Algebra tests, that girl you think is cute, the fight you had with your mom this morning. I don’t care what the problem is, you leave it outside my gym.”
Ryan wished his problems were that simple. Less than four weeks ago, his whole world had changed. He’d watched his mom get kidnapped and had been forced to abandon his injured father in a dangerous country thousands of miles from home. The discovery that his parents were part of the Emergency Rescue Committee had stunned Ryan. Operating secretly for decades, ERC operatives risked their lives rescuing people around the world who were being persecuted and silenced for speaking out against oppression and tyranny. Mom and Dad had been leading a whole cloak-and-dagger life that Ryan knew nothing about until a month ago.
Part of Ryan was proud of his parents and the work they did. But he felt hurt and angry, too. Why hadn’t they trusted him with the truth? Were they ever planning to tell him?
Of course, he couldn’t say any of this to the coach. He knew excuses wouldn’t matter, anyway. “I got it, Coach. Won’t happen again.”
Coach Harris smiled. “That’s what I wanna hear.”
As they headed out of the gym, Ryan saw his friend Danny on the bleachers. “Dude! You done?”
Danny’s wild hair was spiked out in more directions than usual today. A vintage leather bomber jacket covered his concert T-shirt, this one from New Order’s 1988 European tour. Dan
ny was always a bundle of energy, but the last few weeks he’d been bouncing off the walls.
“You’re not gonna believe what I found.” Danny joined Ryan.
“Let me guess,” Ryan said. “Some poor person in a far-off place who desperately needs rescuing?” Since learning about the ERC and helping with Ryan’s first mission, Danny had been searching for some way to get involved again.
“Well, yeah,” Danny admitted. “But this guy really needs us! He’s been locked up in a North Korean prison for, like, twenty years—just for leading a student protest.”
“And how exactly are we supposed to break into a North Korean prison?” Ryan admired Danny’s passion, but this was the fourth prisoner of conscience he’d brought up this week.
Danny shrugged. “It’s not like I’ve figured out the entire plan yet or anything.”
“You know what my parents said. No way they’re letting us get involved in another ERC mission.”
“But that’s so unfair,” Danny said. “It’s not like anything that bad happened.”
“You got stabbed,” Ryan pointed out. “And I got shot at. A lot.”
Danny sighed. “Sure, take their side.”
The truth was, Ryan felt the same as Danny. Since his adventure in Andakar, he felt like he was missing out on something pretty much all the time.
“I’m gonna head over to the library and study for the physical science midterm,” Ryan said. “Wanna come?”
“I guess.” Danny fell into step beside Ryan, heading back toward the school. “But you gotta admit, planning a jailbreak in North Korea sounds like a lot more fun.”
CHAPTER
02
NEW YORK,
USA
New York City in winter was even better than Ryan had hoped. The brisk December air seemed to energize everyone. Bundled in coats and scarves, people were in a festive mood. Decorations were hung everywhere you looked. This would be his family’s first holiday season in their new home, and Ryan’s parents were determined to make it special.
In the last two weeks alone, they’d gone to see The Nutcracker ballet, checked out amazing window displays at department stores, and now they were ice-skating at Rockefeller Center. The biggest Christmas tree Ryan had ever seen towered over them. It was all really touristy, but fun, since he still felt kind of like a tourist. Mom and Dad were trying hard to make it seem like life was “normal” after everything that had happened.
“Out of the way, slowpoke!” Ryan turned as his friend Kasey zipped by, speeding past him even though she was skating backward. Kasey’s wild hair was tucked behind a pair of fuzzy purple earmuffs, her cheeks red from the chafing wind. She made skating look so easy. “Look out!”
Ryan turned just in time to keep from plowing right into the back of a little kid. Skating really wasn’t his thing, and the abrupt stop made him lose his balance. Ryan toppled to the freezing ice as Kasey glided over.
“Sorry,” she said. “You okay?”
Ryan grinned. “Show-off.”
“I spent five years doing competitive figure skating.” Kasey reached out, helping Ryan stand back up. “I’m more at home on the ice than just about anywhere.”
“So why’d you stop?”
“You get to this point where you have to give it one hundred percent dedication if you want to win. Skating has to be your whole life. I have too many other things I’m interested in.”
The more Ryan got to know Kasey, the better he liked her. She was curious about everything, always asking questions about the places he’d lived and wanting to talk about what was going on in the world. They’d been hanging out constantly for a few weeks now and never ran out of things to talk about. And she really was crazy cute.
“Do I have something on my face?” Kasey asked.
“What? No.”
“Then why are you staring at me like that?”
Ryan was saved from answering by the arrival of his mom and dad, holding hands as they skidded to a stop. “Hey, you two, who’s up for hot chocolate?”
Looking at John and Jacqueline Quinn no one would guess they were part of a supersecret covert organization. They looked like regular parents—even a little dorky in their matching striped beanies with the giant pom-poms on top. Mom wanted Ryan to wear one, too, but so far he’d managed to escape that humiliation.
Since learning about the ERC, Ryan had pummeled his parents with a million questions. But they were insistent that he was too young to be working with the group and the less he knew, the safer he’d be. It was incredibly frustrating.
They tried to act like everything was the way it used to be. But it wasn’t.
“Why don’t we go to La Maison du Chocolat?” his mom suggested as the four of them skated off the rink. Having been raised in France, Jacqueline was even more of a chocolate connoisseur than Ryan, and La Maison made some of the best in the world. Normally, he would have been excited to go. But Ryan couldn’t shake the feeling that all this activity was just to keep him from asking more questions they didn’t want to answer.
Mom and Dad had been acting weird the last couple of days, whispering intently when they thought he wasn’t paying attention. Even their suggestion to invite Kasey to join them tonight felt like another way to keep from talking about anything important.
Jacqueline squeezed Ryan’s arm. “We could get a few of those fantastic chocolate pralines, too.”
“Sounds great.” He gave her a reassuring smile as they sat on the benches to take off their skates.
Kasey plopped down beside him. “What’s wrong?”
They hadn’t known each other that long, but already she could read his moods. Ryan glanced at his parents, making sure they couldn’t hear. “I think there’s something new going on. Something they don’t want me to know about.”
“About the ERC?” Kasey knew all about the Emergency Rescue Committee. Her help last month had proved invaluable. But unlike Danny, she knew how to keep a secret and didn’t talk about it unless Ryan brought it up.
“It has to be the ERC. It’s so annoying—they’re still keeping things from me, only now I know it.”
“Give them time.” She picked up her skates. “Come on, some hot chocolate will make you forget all about it.”
Ryan doubted that was true. They joined his parents, finding Mom and Dad staring at his dad’s cell phone, reading something with troubled expressions.
“Everything okay?” Ryan asked.
Dad quickly clicked the cell phone off as they both looked up. His mom’s smile was immediate, but Ryan could tell it was fake.
“Fine,” she said, getting up. “This was fun, wasn’t it? Maybe we should go see the Radio City Christmas Spectacular this weekend. We could invite Danny, too. Kasey, have you ever seen the Rockettes?”
As his mom walked past to join Kasey, Ryan stopped his father. “Dad, what’s going on?”
For a moment, Ryan saw the hesitation in his father’s eyes and thought he might actually tell him. But Dad finally forced a weak smile. “Nothing you need to worry about.”
He tousled Ryan’s mop of hair affectionately, then put an arm around his shoulder as they headed out.
Ryan knew he was right. Something was wrong, and they weren’t telling him what it was. The last time he’d been left in the dark, he had almost lost both his mom and his dad. He wasn’t about to let that happen again.
Which meant he’d have to find out what was really going on some other way.
CHAPTER
03
NEW YORK,
USA
Dad, hold on!”
Ryan leaned over the cliff, reaching out to his father. Dad hung to a rock outcropping, his fingers slipping a little more every second. Down below, the canyon went on forever, disappearing into an endless black hole.
Ryan grabbed his dad’s wrist and pulled. His father dangled, legs twisting in the air, struggling helplessly to find a toehold.
“Don’t let go,” Dad pleaded.
“I
won’t—I promise.” But Ryan was losing the battle. He couldn’t pull his dad back up. He wasn’t strong enough.
“Ryan, I’m counting on you. You have to save me!”
“I’m trying. You’re too heavy, I can’t—” Ryan felt his father’s wrist slip from his grasp. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t hold on any longer.
“Why are you letting go?”
“I’m not!” Ryan yelled. But his dad suddenly fell away, screaming as his arms flailed and he dropped into the black chasm.
“Dad!”
Ryan’s eyes snapped open. It took a few moments for him to realize it was all a nightmare. After a couple of deep breaths, he calmed down.
He’d been having dreams like this since he got back from Andakar. Being forced to leave his father behind while he continued the mission had been the hardest decision Ryan had ever made. He still felt guilty about it.
At first, he thought everything had worked out fine. Ryan finished the job his dad started, getting the rebel blogger Lan out of the hostile country and into the United States. The ERC found an older couple with no kids who took her in, and Lan traded the dangerous life of a spy for a new identity in the safety and comfort of Washington, DC. Chatting with her through an anonymous server a few days ago, Ryan was thrilled when Lan told him how much she loved it there.