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  “I’d like to whack him in the back of the head and stick him in a locker, but he probably wouldn’t fit. What a freakin’ buffalo.” Tim shook his head and gathered his books.

  As the bell rang, Alex realized he liked Tim already. Most of the kids he had met would have been ticked off for the rest of the day after an exchange like that. Tim was smart enough to brush off stupid comments and get on with his life.

  “So, where does ol’ Brian live?” Alex asked his new friend.

  “He lives only about a mile from here. He likes to hang around after basketball and torment the little kids at the middle school next door,” Tim replied rolling his eyes.

  “That figures.”

  “Why do you care?”

  “Just curious. That’s all.”

  CHAPTER 6

  IMAGES FLICKER INthe boy’s mind like a silent movie. Two men yell. The gun flashes. No one hears the scream.

  “Alex.”

  Alex leapt up from the sofa. “I must’ve dozed off.” He rubbed his foggy eyes.

  “You don’t have to wait up for me every night, you know,” his mother said.

  “Yeah, I know,” he answered, now fully awake. “I just feel better knowing you’re home.”

  “I know what you mean,” she replied. “I feel the same way while you’re at school. I’m always afraid this’ll be the day someone finds out.” She flopped down onto the sofa next to him. “So, how was school? How is practice going?”

  “Practice is going well. I finally have the ollie down, which is awesome, but I need some more work on my kickflip. School’s okay. The classes are pretty much the same as at the other schools, but the bully is still giving me grief. I get the feeling he’s going to take a swing at me soon, which will lead to a fight, which I really don’t want or need right now.” Alex sighed.

  “You know that you need to be careful,” she said sternly. “Remember, we had to leave our second identity because you hung around with bullies. That got very messy, very quickly.”

  “Yeah,” Alex confessed. “I thought about that.” His eyes glazed over as he remembered another life full of fights, insults, and anger. He blinked and he was back in Virginia Beach. “I didn’t like who I turned into there for a while either. I want to handle this quickly and quietly.”

  His mother shot him that warning glare that all mothers seem to know.

  “I’m only going to talk to him.” He raised his hands in defense.

  Sonya sighed. “Just be careful.” She put her hand on his shoulder. “Now, it’s time for bed.”

  * * *

  “Hey, Alex, what are you doing after school?” Tim asked on the way to homeroom the next morning.

  “Not much. Why?”

  “Me, Nate, and Tyler are going to build a skate ramp in my backyard.”

  “Cool! You mean a big one?”

  “Yeah, pretty big. We’re using some old wood and stuff. My dad’s got tons of tools. We just need to figure out how to build the thing.”

  The word “dad” still hit Alex like a punch, even after all this time. He shook it off and hoped his face didn’t show any emotion.

  “Sounds good. What time?”

  “We’re going right after school. Do you need to ask your parents?”

  “Yeah,” Alex said. “I’ll ask, but it’ll be all right.”

  “You bike to school, so you can just follow us over.”

  “Maybe just give me the directions. I have to help my mom first since we’re still moving in and all. But I’ll be right over afterwards. Will you guys still be going around 5:30?”

  “Yeah, my mom’s getting pizza, so we can work through dinner.”

  As they walked through the classroom door, Alex said, “I’ll be there.” He couldn’t stop smiling.

  * * *

  Basketball ended that day at 5:00. By 5:07, Brian and his crew were harassing the sixth graders at the middle school. The usual stuff: pushing them, throwing their shoes on top of the overhang in front of the gym entrance — ”accidentally,” of course — and daring the sixth graders to do something about it.

  Finally, when the last friend left, and the last fuming sixth grader had gone home to sulk, Brian started his walk home. He cut across the parking lot and stomped through the flower bed, ignoring the sidewalk. This would lead him to the other side of the school and then to the woods.

  Something moved in the corner of Brian’s eye, but he didn’t have a chance to recognize it. He was already on the ground holding his stomach, gasping for breath.

  “That’s your solar plexus, Brian.”

  “Auhh,” Brian groaned.

  “Don’t try to talk or get up.” Alex spoke quietly, but pointedly, as if he had done this before. “There are five other pressure points I can hit without leaving a mark. Wanna see?”

  “Nauhh!”

  “Good. Now, I don’t want to have any more trouble with you. If I do, I’ll have to show you one of the other five points. And I’ll do this someplace public, like in the hallway.” He paused and took a deep breath. “I don’t plan on mentioning this to anyone if you don’t. Got me?”

  “Auhh.”

  “Good. I’ll see ya around.”

  Alex breathed a sign of relief as he slipped onto his bike. That was almost too easy, he thought. He believed that he had convinced Brian not to bother him anymore. If he could convince his new friends that he was a skater, then he could relax a little.

  He left Brian, who was finally starting to breathe normally, cowering under a shrub.

  * * *

  “Denver, Colorado; Macon, Tennessee; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Fort Worth, Texas; Rosette, Utah; Phoenix, Arizona; Caneadea, New York,” recited Frank, pointing at a map in a copy of National Geographic. The locations were only faintly dotted, invisible to the guards, who had to inspect all materials going into and coming out of the prison. Frank double-checked the chronological list he hid in the text of the phony lawyer documents. “There’s no real pattern,” he said to Steve.

  Steve studied the magazine map with the faint dots marking the towns. “Use Google Earth to zoom down and look for their car! Access their satellites and follow them from New York!” he demanded.

  Frank took a deep breath to hide his frustration. “It doesn’t work like that,” he explained. “Google Earth’s satellite pictures are months, sometimes years old. They don’t show live action.”

  “Don’t we have someone who can get us live pictures?” Steve barked.

  Frank sighed. “We’re working on it. We’re negotiating with someone now. But even when we have this guy’s help, we’re still looking at months needed to access old footage from many different satellites.” He shook his head. “It could take longer than we have.”

  “Then you’d better find a pattern before my appeal date.”

  “I told you,” Frank blurted. “City, small town, city, city There is no pattern.” “But,” Steve interjected with his usual condescending tone, “that’s the pattern. It’s too random. There has to be some plan behind each move.” He sharpened his next words with sarcasm and threw them like daggers. “If there were no plan, I’d like to think that you would be able to catch them.”

  “So, what do we do? Just guess their next stop?” Frank was getting desperate.

  “No,” Steve glared. “We look at the areas they haven’t been yet. That would be this area here.”

  “The East Coast? That doesn’t narrow it down much,” Frank protested.

  “It does, since they have already been up north. They will go someplace in the middle here, like Maryland, Virginia, or the Carolinas.”

  “Four states is a lot to cover,” argued Frank.

  “That’s why you’re going to need some help from the girls, and maybe even some help from the FBI.” Steve’s voice was low with contempt. “Here’s what you’re going to do. Write this down, so you don’t forget.”

  CHAPTER 7

  TOM LANKFORD HADbeen with the Federal Bureau of Investigation for twenty-s
even years. His first eleven were spent in the Drug Enforcement Agency. He really liked the job, especially the adrenaline rush he got when bullets went whizzing past his head during a raid. Eventually, though, he realized that he couldn’t bear the thought of widowing his wife and leaving his kids without a father.

  Since then, Lankford, known only by his last name, worked in conjunction with the US. Marshals Service in the Witness Protection Program. It wasn’t as dangerous as it had been in the field, but the covert nature of his work excited him. He loved making up names and histories; with his computer, he could easily create legitimate birth certificates, death certificates, marriage certificates, college transcripts, and social security numbers. He felt like a magician, making people appear and disappear.

  He told no one about his clients and kept whatever information he shared with his superiors to a bare minimum. It was the surest way to keep them alive; after all, there had been leaks in the department before. But for the last sixteen years, he had never lost a client. He was their protector, their lifeline.

  Often, he arranged e-mail contact with his clients to protect them from phone traces, but recently, ISP identification had become more sophisticated. Even with potentially anonymous web e-mail systems, like Yahoo and Hotmail, it was possible to track the user to a specific computer. For these reasons, Lankford advised his clients to only contact him in case of emergency.

  “Okay then,” Lankford whispered to himself in his isolated office as he shut down his computer for the day. No one needed his lifeline today.

  He stood, stretching his body, which was slightly overweight from too much chair time. Lankford packed his junk mail into his briefcase and walked to the front door of the building.

  “Goodnight,” he said to the security guard in the hall.

  “Goodnight, Lankford.”

  He fumbled for his keys on the walk to his car. The former field agent stopped and scanned the area for any sign of danger, and with a little sadness, saw none.

  He let out a sigh; he missed the drug raids.

  Many cars away, Lankford’s killer watched him through binoculars as he got into his car and headed home to his wife and kids.

  CHAPTER 8

  “DUDE, WE SHOULDadd some rails so we can grind!” declared Nate. His hair, which was only long in the front, usually hit the tip of his nose, so he spent the majority of his time flicking it back.

  “Are you slackers done yet, or what?” Alex needled. He dropped his bike and walked toward his friends.

  “Hardly,” Tim said, looking at Alex, then at his watch, then back at Alex. He looked as if he was going to ask Alex a question, but decided not to. “This ramp is turning into an amusement park.”

  “Well, if we’re going to do this,” added Tyler, “I say we build a killer half-pipe and a couple of rails, or we just go back to jumping soda cans in the driveway.”

  “I’ve got a question,” Alex said. “Isn’t there a skate park, like, ten miles down the road?”

  “Yeah,” Nate admitted, “and it’s pretty cool. But roller bladers and BMXers use it too, so it gets totally crowded. And it takes half an hour to get there.”

  “And,” Tyler butted in, “we want to shred everyday. So that bike ride each day after school cuts into our time. Plus, there’s changing, packing stuff …”

  “Listen to you talk about shredding,” joked Nate. “You couldn’t even pull off an ollie a minute ago! You looked like a jumping bean, but the board never left the ground! Boing. Boing. Boing.”

  “Dude, I make one mistake and you — ”

  “Anyway,” Tim interrupted loudly, “this is turning into a huge project. The half-pipe alone will be thirty-six feet long. I’m gonna have to ask my mom if we can add all this other stuff. Plus, we’re going to have to get more wood and some really heavy poles.”

  “Well, if it’s cool with your mom, we could all chip in to buy the stuff,” Alex suggested.

  Tim pushed his hair out of his eyes and stared at the space where the skate ramp would be. Alex noticed that Nate and Tyler waited for an answer, as if he were a judge. “That could work,” he mused, still staring at the space. “I figure we’ll need one low, level rail and another one on an incline. They’ll have to be sturdy, maybe galvanized.” He turned to face his friends. “They won’t be cheap.”

  “Maybe we can check out a junkyard, if you have one around here,” Alex suggested. “Or maybe some yard sales? People always sell the strangest stuff, like broken axles from their trucks. They’re like, ‘Hey, wanna buy my old toilet? It doesn’t work, but you can plant some nice flowers in it.’”

  The boys laughed. “You’re messed up, dude!” crowed Nate.

  Alex tried to hide his pride. He was in.

  “You know what we should do?” offered Nate. “We should take Alex to Mount Trashmore on Saturday, so he can see what we’re going for.”

  “Excellent idea! Alex, are you up for it?” asked Tim.

  Alex smiled. He really wanted to be one of them. But he knew it couldn’t last. It never did. “Saturday’s great.”

  * * *

  The secretary at Anne Arundel High School in Maryland looked up as she put down the handset of her steadily ringing phone. “Hello. Can I help you?” she offered in a friendly voice, which didn’t reveal how her nerves had thinned with each ring of her phone.

  “Yes, my name is Rachel Phillips and I’m from the Department of Education,” lied Gina, dressed in a nice, but easily forgettable, blue suit. “I need some information about any new students who have enrolled within the last month.”

  “Why? Is there a problem?”

  “No,” continued Gina. “DOE is testing a new student record system, and I’m spot-checking schools and student transfers under the current record systems. I’m really just surveying.”

  “Well, our guidance counseling office is the second door on the right. Good luck with your work.”

  “Thanks.” Gina smiled and gave a slight tilt of her head. Good luck is right, she said to herself. This was the first of five schools that she had to visit today alone. It could take months to find that little punk!

  CHAPTER 9

  ALEX KNEW HEwas out of his league. He had been practicing like crazy in the garage over the last three nights with makeshift ramps — ollieing over cans, just as Nate had joked. “Every joke contains some truth,” one of his counselors used to say. So he figured it wasn’t a bad idea to learn how to jump things. He had searched the Internet at the library for skateboarding tricks and he found a site called “Basic Tricks Every Beginner Should Know.” He hadn’t perfected them, but at least he had tried a few. Saturday’s trip could expose him for the fake he was. He was going to have to confess to his friends that he wasn’t very good. After all, he had only been a skateboarder for a week.

  It was a good thing the counselors forced him to get into shape by training on a stationary bike while he was in the hospital. He was a strong rider, so Mom was happy to let him bike to Virginia Beach on Saturday morning, even though they had planned a lot of biking. They would pedal to the beach, hang out there for a while, and then go to the skate park for the rest of the day. Mom told him to be careful and gave him a kiss — in front of his friends. But then she slid him forty bucks, which almost made the kiss okay.

  When they approached Atlantic Avenue, Alex was in the lead. He could see the ocean and he was excited. They chained their bikes near a pizza shop, which was closed for a couple more hours, and grabbed their skateboards. Surprisingly, the streets were fairly deserted, even on this warm November day.

  Today, the sidewalks were reserved for skateboarders and roller bladers. Guys with body piercings and huge tattoos of crosses on their backs were ollieing off the curbs and landing smoothly in the empty side streets.

  “Come on,” said Nate. “Let’s go to the boardwalk.”

  First of all, the boardwalk was cement. Second of all, it took Alex several minutes to realize that. Instead, he noticed girls walking around in les
s clothing than they wore in the other towns he had lived in.

  “Dude,” interjected Tyler. “Haven’t you been to the beach before?”

  “Uh, no,” replied Alex, turning red for the second time this morning. “I haven’t.”

  “Okay, but try not to stare. You’re a local now.”

  Alex nodded. “Let’s skate.”

  They began skating down the bike path, which was paved and flat. They jumped some curbs and ollied over a few cement parking blocks. Nate showed Alex how to stall on the blocks. “Ya gotta learn to get your balance before you can grind,” he explained.

  Alex practiced it a, few times while the others tried some hardflips. That looks painful, he thought. I’m definitely not there yet.

  At 10:30, they grabbed some burgers and then went into a skate shop.

  “I like these long decks,” Alex stated.

  “They’re like surfboards, though,” Tim told him. “You’ve gotta work up to the longer ones.”

  “Do you guys surf too?” Alex asked, feeling like a huge tourist.

  “No,” replied Tim. “But there’s an awesome surf camp up in Delaware. You stay all week and have campfires and stuff. My mom said I can go this summer if I get a job to pay for it.”

  “That sounds cool.”

  “If you guys are up for it, maybe we can all go,” Tim suggested.

  Alex nodded. A second later, he realized he had made his first long-term promise in three years. He hoped he could keep it.

  At about 11:00, they biked out to the skate park. Alex was expecting a couple of ramps and maybe a half-pipe. He was shocked and a little intimidated by what he saw.

  Alex looked around at the huge bowl and the massive street course. “We don’t have to pay to get in?”

  “Right. It’s huge, isn’t it? And it’s a landfill. That’s why it’s named Mount Trashmore. They dumped a ton of garbage, covered it up, and made it a park.” Tyler said grinning. “We’re gonna thrash on the trash!”