Public Enemies

by Gordon Korman

  “Ow!”

  He shook his hand, but the ill-tempered fowl would not let go. Heavy wings slapped against his face. At close range, the honking was deafening. An upstairs light came on in the farmhouse.

  He felt a stab of fear. This bird might as well be a mountain lion if it gets us caught!

  Not knowing what else to do, he turned the key and brought his left foot down on the kick start. The Harley roared to life. He squeezed the clutch and nudged the gearshift into first with the toe of his sneaker. But when he twisted the throttle, the engine sputtered and died.

  Enraged by the sudden burst of noise, the goose began pecking at his face.

  Flustered, Aiden tried again. This time, the bike lurched forward a few feet before stalling out.

  “What’s the problem?” Meg hissed, swiping at the blizzard of white feathers.

  “I can’t start this thing!”

  “What are you talking about?” she demanded. “We’ve been riding for hours!”

  “Yeah, but it was already going then!” he explained desperately. “We never started it up before!”

  Now the porch light was on, too. A figure peered out the window in the door, straining to see what was going on.

  Meg recoiled from a jab from the goose. “You’d better learn pronto, or we’re going to have a lot more to worry about than a stupid bird!”

  Fighting panic, Aiden released the clutch, gently rolling the accelerator. When the motor didn’t stall, he wrenched the throttle. The Harley leaped away from the farmhouse in a dizzying burst of raw power. The goose hung on for a few seconds and then flew off the bike, disappearing into the night.

  They were back on the expressway in less than a minute. A slipstream of feathers and down blew off them for the next mile and a half.

  Meg laughed at the comet tail of fuzz, and even Aiden cracked a smile. But in a world where a barnyard fowl with a bad attitude could threaten their quest, nothing was very funny.

  * * *

  The drive to Denver took all night, with two more nerve-racking fuel heists — one in Utah and one in Wyoming. The air grew cooler, and the windchill on the speeding motorcycle felt like the North Pole. Actually, Aiden welcomed the steady blasting cold. He hadn’t slept in close to two days, and fatigue threatened to overpower him. A few times, he felt his sister’s arms relax around his midsection, and he had to pull over and wake her up. If she ever fell completely asleep, she’d be blown clear off the bike.

  Dawn found them just over the Colorado State line, heading south on I-25 toward Denver. They pulled over at the entrance to a state recreation area, where a pipe bubbled with clear, frigid water straight from a mountain spring. The Falconers drank their fill and washed their faces. They were exhausted beyond imagination, and the gnawing hunger pangs had returned. But at least they felt alive again.

  Up ahead, a sign declared DENVER 74.

  Meg wore a big smile. “We made it, bro. HORUS Global, here we come.”

  Aiden marveled at her optimism. How different could a brother and sister be? His own thinking was exactly this: If we can’t pick up Frank Lindenauer’s trail in what’s left of HORUS, we’ve got no place else to go. We’ll be dead in the water.

  It would be the end of the road for the Falconer family.

  They hit the city at morning rush hour and crawled into town amid heavy traffic. There was no way to escape the hundreds of pairs of eyes taking in the sight of two kids on a Harley. Aiden was tall enough to pass for an adult, but not Meg, who was shorter, with a slight build. At least the helmets obscured their faces.

  They turned off the highway and began to explore the neighborhoods north of downtown. They had decided to stop at the first library they found. True, any public place was risky for fugitives. But there were advantages, too. Strangers were welcomed at a library, not questioned. Study cubicles and other nooks and crannies made it easy to keep a low profile. And there were busy parking lots where a certain Harley-Davidson motorcycle might stand out a little less.

  Most of all, libraries had information. The Falconers had never been to Denver in their lives. They knew next to nothing about HORUS Global Group. A library would have maps, atlases, Internet access. It was the ideal place to begin this next phase of their search.

  The Hillsdale branch of the Denver Public Library was in an older section of the city, surrounded by small apartment buildings and modest homes. They tucked the bike into the shadows between two big SUVs and entered the building.

  It could have been any library anywhere — endless metal shelving, institutional furniture, and the Dewey decimal system. To Meg, one feature stood out above all others.

  “A real bathroom!” she whispered longingly. “Find a spot. I’ll be right back.” She hurried off down the hall.

  Aiden selected an isolated cubicle hidden in the 700s and took his place in the stiff-backed chair. There he sat, yawning wide enough to drive a truck through. Funny — he’d been totally exhausted for most of the past two days. But now — in this momentary reprieve from the chase — the full weight of his fatigue landed right on top of him.

  Cut it out, he ordered himself. You’re too busy to be tired.

  From his pockets he pulled a series of folded, dog-eared papers, faded and ruined, waterlogged and dried out several times over. It was all the information they had on Frank Lindenauer. Any chance of getting their parents out of prison depended on this collection of pulpy scraps.

  There were a few faxes that had come from Mom and Dad’s lawyers, a flyer from a charity run by HORUS, and an old vacation snapshot of the family friend Aiden had once called Uncle Frank.

  He turned his attention to the faxes first. The ink was so smeared and washed out that the documents were barely readable. He searched for important names like HORUS or Lindenauer, but nothing jumped out at him.

  The printing had held up a little better on the flyer, but so what? What did they need to know about a fake charity set up by HORUS to funnel money to terrorists? The East Asian Children’s Charitable Fund wasn’t even based in Denver. Their offices had been in California.

  And then he saw it, in fine print on the back of the leaflet:

  CHARITABLE STATUS CERTIFICATE AVAILABLE UPON WRITTEN REQUEST TO:

  Donor Services

  HORUS Global Group

  Suite 1108 — Denver Executive Center North

  2700 Federal Avenue

  Denver, CO 80281

  That was it — HORUS headquarters! True, the organization had been shut down for more than a year. But it was a place to start.

  As long as there’s a clue to follow, a stone left unturned, there’s still hope for Mom and Dad.

  One wall of the reference area was taken up with a huge Denver city map. It was a simple matter to plot a course from the Hillsdale Branch to Federal Avenue. They’d leave the minute Meg —

  He frowned. Where was Meg? In all the excitement of his discovery, his sister had completely slipped his mind. According to the clock, she’d been gone for half an hour. How long did it take to go to the bathroom?

  Could she be wandering through the library, looking for me?

  He searched every inch of the Hillsdale branch.

  Meg was nowhere to be found.

  Worst-case scenarios spun out of control inside Aiden’s head: Meg had been recognized and had climbed out the bathroom window to make a run for it. Or worse — she’d been captured and dragged in to the cops for the reward money. What if she was lying on the lavatory floor, in desperate need of medical attention? It took every ounce of willpower Aiden had to keep himself from charging in to help her.

  That would be a great way to help Mom and Dad — by getting arrested for storming the ladies’ room.

  The first sight of her faded sneaker stepping through the door brought him such a measure of relief and rage it was all he could do from running over and shaking her. The words were already formed in his mouth: Are you out of your mind? I tore this building apart looking for —

 
; Then she came into view, and the heart that had been about to jump through his rib cage melted into slush. Her face was flushed, her eyes squinty and blinking rapidly.

  She had fallen asleep!

  In his crushing exhaustion, it had never occurred to him that Meg must be every bit as tired as he was. Horrible as all this was for Aiden, at least he was fifteen, man-size and approaching adulthood. His sister was just a kid.

  “I didn’t do it on purpose,” she pouted apologetically.

  “It’s okay,” he soothed. “Listen — I found HORUS. I know where their offices used to be.”

  A bucket of ice water could not have brought her to such instant alertness. “What are we waiting for?”

  “Well —” He looked sheepish. “I’m pretty much dead on my feet. And since you’ve already proved it’s possible to sleep on a toilet seat —”

  She favored him with a smile. “If you’re not back in an hour, I’ll pull the fire alarm.”

  * * *

  Meg could feel the librarian’s eyes upon her. She was sure of it — almost like the tingling of Spider-Man’s spider sense.

  Fugitives know when they’re being watched.

  Sure enough, the young woman was walking toward her.

  Meg closed the newspaper and rushed to return it to the periodical shelves. That would be perfect — to be nabbed while reading an article about herself and Aiden headlined PUBLIC ENEMIES NUMBER ONE AND TWO?

  She snuck a glance over her shoulder. The librarian was only a few feet away.

  Should I run for it?

  No — not with Aiden sacked out in the men’s room. She had no choice but to bluff through it.

  “Hi, there,” the woman greeted. “Is there something I can help you with?”

  “Oh, no, thanks,” Meg replied casually. “I’m cool.”

  The librarian smiled awkwardly. “I suppose what I really mean is — well, shouldn’t a girl your age be in school right now?”

  The flood of relief nearly knocked Meg over. She was caught, all right — not for being a fugitive, but for ditching class!

  “I’m homeschooled,” she said smoothly. Meg was never at a loss for an excuse under pressure. “Mom sent me to work on my current events project. She’s a stickler for the state curriculum.”

  That seemed to satisfy the librarian. Still, Meg decided to make herself scarce for a while. She followed a sign that read TEEN SCENE to Hillsdale’s young adult section in the basement. It had a very different feel from the rest of the branch — not as stuffy and quiet. A radio was playing softly.

  There were newspapers here, too, and Meg picked up a copy of the Rocky Mountain News. Luckily, their picture had disappeared off the front page. What an idiot she had been to take that photo on Agent Harris’s cell phone! Before, the police had known them only through mug shots that were almost a year old. Now she’d given the whole world a clear view of exactly what they looked like today.

  Stupid, stupid, stupid!

  Aiden could be a wimp sometimes, but at least he thought before he acted. Her brother never would have made a crazy, impulsive blunder like that.

  According to the Rocky Mountain News, nobody knew they were in Denver. Still, it was scary to see how quickly the cops could put two and two together. They had already connected the abandoned rental car in the car wash with the borrowed plow horse — which had turned up at the very same fall fair where a certain Harley-Davidson motorcycle had been stolen.

  At least the horse made it home okay. And even Black Helmet got away with a concussion, the jerk.

  So the authorities were searching for a Harley, but they had the wrong license number. As far as the police were concerned, Aiden and Meg could be anywhere within a thousand miles of the Owyhee County fair. The FBI was even considering the possibility that they had crossed the border into Canada. Now the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were looking for them, too.

  They’d lost the cops. They had a fresh lead on HORUS. Could it be that things were finally starting to look up?

  And then a voice announced, “I say they take those criminal brats, stick ’em in a cell with their terrorist parents, and throw away the key!”

  Meg tensed. Was there an enemy close by?

  Her eyes fell on the radio, and she realized why the voice was so familiar. Someone was listening to the Mouth of America, the notorious shock jock. No Falconer could ever forget his in-your-face New York accent. Back in the days of Mom and Dad’s trial, the Mouth had been one of the loudest of the Falconer haters. He had even pushed for the husband and wife criminologists to be given the death penalty.

  “And here’s another thing that rots my socks!” Every word uttered by the Mouth was shouted, as if in the heat of argument. “The juvenile justice system. That’s just another way of saying it’s okay to let kids get away with murder while the rest of us fry. Scrap the whole thing. A crime is a crime is a crime. Ohio — you’re on the air.”

  “Hi, Mouth,” came a woman’s voice. “Longtime listener, first-time caller.”

  The shock jock was obnoxious. “You got something to say, or should I grab a nap here?”

  “Well, I’m the mother of a teenager, and I’m not sure fifteen — let alone eleven — is old enough to understand the consequences —”

  “What planet do you live on, lady?” the Mouth interrupted belligerently. “They handcuffed a federal agent to a radiator! They stole a car! And a motorcycle! What difference does it make if they’re fifteen or thirty-five or ninety-five? You break the law, you pay the price. These rotten kids should have to pay just the same as their parents. That’s how I see it! You got a problem with that? Call me at 1-800-US-MOUTH. I’ll set you straight.”

  Meg’s jaw stiffened. What did that big windbag know about justice? As if being a desperate fugitive was a choice, like signing up for soccer or joining the Girl Scouts! Nobody ever took the Mouth’s family and tore it to pieces!

  All at once, she was marching back up the stairs to the bank of pay phones near the front entrance. She punched in the number with a finger like a jackhammer and was almost surprised when the keypad didn’t shatter — 1-800-US-MOUTH.

  She counted twenty-six rings but hung in there, burning to have her say.

  “Mouth Line,” an operator answered at last. “What’s your beef?”

  “Just put me on the radio,” Meg said.

  The man was dubious. “How old are you — ten?”

  “Eleven,” she corrected. “I’m Meg Falconer.”

  There was a pause. “And you can prove that?”

  “Nobody else pretends to be me,” Meg informed him icily. “It isn’t that fun.”

  There was a flurry of activity on the other end of the connection, followed by a whispered argument. The next voice she heard belonged to the Mouth himself.

  “Well, according to the control room, today’s show has a special guest star. Margaret Falconer — can you hear me?”

  On the air with the shock jock and his radio audience of millions, Meg felt her courage deserting her. In that instant, her elaborate plans to give this blowhard a piece of her mind evaporated, and she could barely manage a whispered, “That’s Meg.”

  The Mouth didn’t hear her. “Margaret, are you on the line?”

  “Meg,” she said, louder this time. “People call me Meg.”

  “All right, Meg — if that’s who you really are. Now, exactly where are you and your brother right now?”

  “Do you think I’m stupid?” snapped Meg. “The FBI could be listening.”

  “Right.” The shock jock’s voice dripped with sarcasm. “We can’t have the big bad police scaring the poor innocent kiddies. Since when is it wrong for the cops to arrest criminals? Because that’s what you are — criminals. That’s how I see it. You got a problem with that?”

  “Yeah, I’ve got a problem with that,” Meg retorted. “We hadn’t done a single thing wrong when they stuck us on a prison farm.”

  “Which your brother burned to the ground.”
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  “That was an accident!”

  The Mouth snorted. “Pretty convenient accident.”

  “That farm was run like the Stone Age. They send you out to a barn full of hay with a kerosene lamp. If they’d given us flashlights, the place would still be standing.”

  “That doesn’t explain the cars you stole, the ATV, and the motorcycle,” the shock jock persisted. “That doesn’t explain breaking and entering, destruction of property, and stowing away. That doesn’t explain assaulting a federal agent.”

  “Every time we broke the law, it was because we had no choice,” Meg said righteously. “It was either that or get caught.”

  “That’s no excuse!” the Mouth stormed. “That’s like saying if you rob a bank, it’s okay to shoot at the cops because they’re chasing you! It’s time for you and your brother to give up this Jesse James fantasy and turn yourselves in.”

  “Jesse James fantasy?” Meg was in a towering rage. “Is that what this is to you? Our poor parents are in jail serving life sentences! You think anybody else is looking for evidence to prove they’re innocent? You think the FBI is? Don’t make me laugh!”

  “Wait a second!” There was a note of surprise in the shock jock’s usual bluster. “Are you saying that the only reason you and your brother are on the run is because you’re trying to exonerate your parents?”

  “Our parents were framed by a man named Frank Lindenauer! And we’ve already found out more about the guy than the FBI did during the whole trial. But nobody cares that they were supposed to be innocent until proven guilty! They just wanted someone to blame! And now it’s done and forgotten, and our lives are ruined.” Her voice cracked and she fell silent, gasping into the receiver in her effort to hold back sobs.

  “Meg?” the famous voice prompted breathlessly. “Are you still there?”

  Meg didn’t answer. She couldn’t. She was losing it, tearing up fast. Living this life, minute to minute, you were too busy surviving to see the big picture. But to take stock of it all — everything that had happened to their parents and themselves —