Praise for
CATHERINE PALMER
and her novels

“Catherine Palmer pens a page-turner with a—thought-provoking plot.”

—Jill Elizabeth Nelson, Romantic Times BOOKreviews on Fatal Harvest

“Veteran romance writer Palmer…delivers a satisfying tale of mother-daughter dynamics sprinkled with romance.”

— Library Journal on Leaves of Hope

“Enjoyable…Faith fiction fans…will find this novel just their cup of tea.”

— Publishers Weekly Religion Bookline on Leaves of Hope

“ Leaves of Hope i s a very emotional tale that’s easy to relate to. Ms. Palmer ignites soul-searching conflict and carries her readers on a remarkable journey they will long remember. This is a sharer.”

— Rendezvous

“Palmer knows how to write about a sensitive subject with wisdom and kindness.”

—Patsy Glans, Romantic Times BOOKreviews on Thread of Deceit

“Believable characters tug at heartstrings, and God’s power to change hearts and lives is beautifully depicted.”

— Romantic Times BOOKreviews on “Christmas in My Heart”

“ Love’s Haven is a glorious story that was wonderfully told…. Catherine Palmer did a stand-up job of describing each scene and creating a world which no reader will want to leave.”

— Cataromance Reviews

Christy Award-Winning Author

Fatal Harvest

A Haven Novel

Catherine Palmer

Refreshed Version, Newly Revised By The Author

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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To Tim Palmer

Thank You, Lord, for blessing me

with the gift of this wonderful man.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

ONE

M atthew Strong bit the curlicue off the top of his dipped, vanilla ice-cream cone. A shard of chocolate shell came loose and dropped right onto his jeans pocket. He glanced at the Princeton University recruiter in the driver’s seat beside him. The man’s gray eyes were focused on the turn into Jaycee Park, so Matt flicked the melting chocolate onto the floor of the brand-new Cadillac.

He wished he looked older than sixteen. If he’d known these two men were going to take him out of class today, he might have gone to a barber. As it was, his curly black hair fell well below his ears and over the collar of his shirt. He had on his blue-and-gold striped tie, as usual. His mom had given it to him before she died. He wore the tie every day, and the mustard stain below the knot was impossible to conceal. That, along with the blob of chocolate on his jeans, made him look like a food-fight casualty.

“A perfect score on the ACT,” the recruiter said for the second time since they’d left Artesia High School. The man was solidly built and had a blond crew cut. His immaculate red tie stood out against the pin-striped gray of his suit. He drove toward a pair of handball courts that had been built between the empty running track and the deserted softball diamond. “For a sophomore to perform so well is amazing.”

Matt eyed his cone, wondering if he should attempt another bite. Why hadn’t he ordered a sundae in a plastic bowl? Still, this wasn’t too bad a deal. He had gotten out of his trigonometry class and had been treated to ice cream from Dairy Queen. In return, he would spend the next hour listening to this man and his colleague in the backseat tell him how great Princeton was. They’d probably show him some brochures and give him a pep talk. They’d go on and on about how much they wanted him to enroll and how many scholarships they could offer.

For a couple of months now—ever since he had gotten his ACT results—Matt had been flooded with phone calls and letters from universities. He wasn’t too surprised at the score. One of his counselors told him he had the highest IQ ever recorded in the school system. These Princeton men were the first two college recruiters who had actually shown up looking for him, but he expected more would follow.

He would have liked his father by his side to help the conversation along. Matt could talk for hours about things that interested him—computers, logarithms, Latin grammar, the shifting of the earth’s tectonic plates. Feeding the world’s hungry filled his thoughts these days, and he was hard at work on a plan to accomplish that goal. But small talk? Forget it. For chitchat at school, he relied on his best friend, Billy Younger, to fill in his fumbling silences. But Billy was still in class, and Matt’s father was never around. He’d be out on the ranch right now, plowing or feeding cattle or something.

“So you’re interested in computers,” the driver said. He pulled the Cadillac to a stop behind the solid concrete wall of the handball court. “We understand you’re able to do some interesting things with a computer, Matthew.”

“Yeah. Especially since I met Miss Pruitt. She’s my computer tech teacher.” Matt pulled on the door handle and stepped out. At least this way, the chocolate bits would fall onto the ground instead of his jeans. “She doesn’t have the latest hardware at school, but her software’s okay. The main thing is, she knows the technology.”

“Is this Miss Pruitt the one who helped you hack into the Agrimax mainframe?”

Matt paused at the unexpected question. “Uh…no, I didn’t…” The two recruiters took a step closer, their eyes trained on his face. “I sent some e-mails…. How did you know about Agrimax?”

“Did Jim Banyon give you those e-mail addresses, Matthew?”

The second man laid a hand on Matt’s shoulder. He was tall and beefy, with an acne-scarred face and a football player’s thick neck. “Answer our questions, boy.”

“What do you mean?” Matt stiffened as the man backed him into the cold gray wall of the handball court. “Questions about my college plans?”

“About Agrimax.”

“It’s a food company. A conglomerate.” Was this some kind of a test? Why did Princeton want to know about his research on feeding the hungry? How had they found out what he was doing?

“Agrimax is one of the world’s top three suppliers of food,” Matt rattled off, breathless and nervous, feeling like he was at a Scholar Bowl competition. “They have a global network of growers, processors and retailers. They own hundreds of smaller companies, and they—”

“Who gave you access to the Agrimax mainframe?” The beefy man’s grip tightened on Matt’s shoulder. “Was it Jim Banyon?”

This wasn’t what he had expected at all. Recruiters were supposed to lure you with nice offers, weren’t they? Suddenly tongue-tied, Matt swallowed hard.

“Did Jim Banyon give you those e-mail addresses?” The blond man shoved him hard into the wall. His shoulders hit the concrete, and he gasped. “Answer me, kid.”

“Addresses for the Agrimax executives? No, I—I got those myself. I opened a database. But not the mainframe. I don’t hack, sir. I would never break into anyone’s private computer system. You can tell Princeton that I—”

“You’re writing a term paper. Where did you get your information?”

“How do you know that? Did you hack me?”

“We’re doing the asking! Who told you about Agrimax? The genetic developments. The terminator genes. The cloning.”

“It’s all on the Internet. Anybody can—”

“Do you know Jim Banyon?”

“Yes, sir. He has a ranch near Hope. He used to work for Agrimax before he retired.”

“What information did he give you?”

Matt stared down at the cone in his hand. The vanilla ice cream was oozing between the cracks in the chocolate shell and running onto his fingers. “Excuse me, sir,” he said. “You’re from Princeton, right?”

“Yeah, right.” The blond man smirked at his companion. “Maybe he’s not so bright after all. Look, kid, somebody downloaded a lot of data from the Agrimax mainframe. Technology. Patented information. Secret formulas. Was that you?”

“I told you I would never—”

“Shut up and answer the questions.” The beefy guy grabbed a handful of Matt’s hair and yanked his head to one side. Matt jerked in pain, and his cone fell to the ground. “Who has the information?”

Matt’s mouth went dry. Think. Think.

“Answer me, kid!”

“I don’t have it,” he mumbled.

“Who does?” The scarred face came closer. “Does Banyon have it?”

“I don’t have it! I promise.”

“Who’s got it?”

The man slammed Matt’s head against the concrete. Bright lights swam before his eyes. He thought he was going to vomit. Or pass out. He tried to breathe.

“Search him!” the blond barked.

The beefy man grabbed Matt’s arm, swung him around and pushed him up against the wall. With one foot, he kicked Matt’s legs apart.

Like a policeman. Like someone trained.

The man was going through his pockets now, taking out the keys to his pickup and then shoving them back. His wallet. They thumbed through it. Thieves? The men studied his driver’s license, credit card, student ID. Then they jammed the wallet into his pocket.

“He’s clean.” The beefy man turned Matt again, one hand pinning his chest to the wall. “Somebody in this armpit town stole our data. Did you take it, boy? Or was it Banyon? Did he give it to you? Answer me!”

“No,” Matt managed.

“No, what?”

“I don’t have it!”

“Where is it?”

Matt couldn’t breathe. He was going to die. “I—I don’t have it.”

With a roar of anger, the man grabbed Matt’s shirt, swung him away from the wall, and then hurled him full force into it. His head smashed against the concrete. The sky flashed a brilliant white. His knees buckled, and the shining light faded to blackness.

“I’m starving.”

The familiar bulk of a teenager leaning into Cole Strong’s refrigerator could be only one person.

“Hey, Billy,” Cole said as the kitchen door banged shut behind him. “Josefina made tamales yesterday. Zap yourself a few of those.”

“Thanks, Mr. Strong.” A celery stick in his mouth, Billy Younger straightened with the plateful of tamales and a jug of milk. He nudged the refrigerator door shut with his heel as he headed for the microwave oven. “You should have seen what they tried to pass off as lunch today at school. A pretzel with cheese sauce! Can you believe that? Matt and I talked about ditching trig and driving over to the Bell, but we didn’t do it.”

“You guys better not ditch trig.” Cole set his Stetson on the counter and reached for an apple from the bowl. He had been plowing since lunch. The spring had been unusually wet for Southeastern New Mexico, and now, in early May, he was behind. “You both have your sights on Harvard, MIT or Stanford. Can’t get into those places if you ditch your high school classes.”

“Yeah, Mr. Strong, but you know Matt. He’s gonna get in wherever he wants to go.” Billy took the steaming tamales out of the microwave. “A couple of college bigwigs were at school today wanting to talk to him. Probably trying to convince him to skip his senior year.” He shook his head. “So where is Matt, anyhow? We were gonna meet after school and go to Dairy Queen to talk about the mission trip to Guatemala. My dad doesn’t want me to go. I waited for Matt, but he never showed.”

Cole glanced down the long hall in the direction of his son’s bedroom. It was unlike Matt to back out on anything he’d planned with Billy. The two sixteen-year-olds had been best friends since kindergarten, and nothing could separate them—not peer pressure, girls, sports or even their increasingly divergent interests in life.

“Hey, Matt!” Cole barked down the hall. “Billy’s here. You better come get a tamale—they’re going fast.”

Billy paused in wolfing down his snack and gave a wide grin. “Yeah, Matt,” he shouted, his mouth full, “you stood me up, dude! What’s with that?”

When his son didn’t answer, Cole headed toward the bedroom. In the rambling adobe house that sat at the center of his large ranching and farming operation, terra-cotta Saltillo tiles kept the floors cool in summer and warm in winter. He trailed one hand along the undulating whitewashed wall.

“Matthew?” The door was open, and Cole stuck his head in. As always, his eyes took in a jumble of comic books, telescopes, computer equipment, dirty clothes, athletic shoes and empty pizza boxes spread over every square inch of his son’s large bedroom. Matt claimed that he alone fueled the orange soda industry. As evidence, empty cans lay scattered around the room. Trails of ants scurried into and out of the open tab holes.

Josefina had flatly refused to continue cleaning Matt’s room. She even made a half-serious vow to quit her job if Cole ordered her to set foot in his son’s domain. She adored the boy and had worked for Cole since his wife died eight years earlier. But as she liked to say, “I got my limits, Mr. Strong.”

Scanning the room to make sure he could distinguish boy from junk, Cole shook his head. “He’s not here, Billy,” he called. “You sure you just didn’t miss him at school?”

“No, sir, he was not there. I waited fifteen minutes.” Billy joined Cole in the doorway. “I figured those college recruiters messed with his head. You know how Matt gets rattled by stuff like that. And he’s been so weird lately anyway, with that research paper he’s doing. Weirder than usual, I mean.”

From anyone but Billy Younger, this statement would have made Cole bristle. He realized his son was different, but he wished others weren’t so aware of it. Reading easily by age three, Matthew had also excelled in math and science. But the boy’s social skills were worse than poor. Shy, gawky, nervous, Matt didn’t help himself by regularly obsessing over one thing or another. Though he was a good-looking kid, with his mother’s dark hair and his father’s blue eyes, he had never been on a date and could claim only one close friend.

“What’s the paper about?” Cole asked.

“You haven’t heard him talking about it?”

“I don’t think so.”

Cole felt uncomfortable not knowing his son’s activities, but he had a ranch to run. Taking control after his own father’s death, Cole had barely saved the operation from bankruptcy. Now profitable, it had been cited by journalists and lawmakers as one of the finest examples of a family-owned ranch in the state of New Mexico. But the hard work had taken its toll on Cole’s relationship with Matt—not that there had ever been much to build on.

Cole had acknowledged long ago that he and the boy had little in common. When they ate together, dinner was a mostly silent affair. When they went on a road trip, Matt hid behind a pair of sunglasses and the headphones of his portable MP3 player. In church these days, Matt sat with Billy and the rest of the youth group. Summers were no better. Matt spent all his free time parked in front of his computer, and unless it related to ranching, such current technology bewildered Cole. There had never been a strong relationship between father and son, and now it was almost nonexistent.

“He’s writing about food or something,” Billy said, wading into Matt’s bedroom—as if walking across old issues of MacWorld and PC Gamer were perfectly ordinary. He approached the tangle of cords and computer equipment piled on his friend’s desk. “It’s like world hunger, you know? The term paper is for English, but we get to choose any subject we want. So Matt gets this idea from Miss Pruitt, who’s like his guru. She teaches computers. Miss Pruitt is cool, though. She goes on all these mission trips with her church. And she really feeds the hungry.”

“I haven’t met Miss Pruitt.”

“She’s intense.” He leaned over Matt’s computer and pressed a key. The screen switched from a pattern of morphing colored shapes into a field of text. “You don’t want to take her classes unless you like to work. She expects a lot out of you, but Matt’s into that kind of thing. He’s always going in there and talking to her.”

“Does he have a crush on her?”

“A crush!” Billy laughed, and Cole realized the term was a little out of date. “No, sir, you don’t get a crush on Miss Pruitt. I mean, it’s not that she’s ugly, okay? She’s just—wow, she’s intense. That’s all I can tell you.”

He peered at the screen. “This is it. This is the first draft of Matt’s term paper for English. It’s about how these huge food companies are controlling the world.”

“What?” Cole frowned. “Food companies doing what?”

“Come on, Mr. Strong—you sell all your beef to Agrimax, don’t you? And your chile goes to Selena Foods, which is owned by Agrimax. Your alfalfa? Who gets that?”

“Homestead. Agrimax owns it.”

“Okay, Mr. S, you’re with me now.” Billy was scrolling through text as he spoke. “I wonder where Matt’s laptop is.”

Cole recalled the minicomputer that his son lugged around along with a graphing calculator and several other gadgets whose names and functions were a mystery to Cole. As with all of Matt’s equipment, the laptop was in a constant state of being “upgraded”—which, as far as Cole understood, meant he wrote countless checks, and then Matt bought and installed various circuit boards of all shapes and sizes. “Matt always has it with him,” Cole told Billy.

“It’s probably in his truck,” Billy said. “It has a newer version of his term paper on it. Matt was showing me yesterday. He learned all about these food companies on the Internet, you know? And he went to see that guy who ranches near Hope—what’s his name? Who retired from Agrimax?”

“Jim Banyon?”

“Yeah, him. And Matt interviewed Miss Pruitt about her work with famine relief.”

“What does famine relief have to do with Agrimax?”

“See, what happened is this. Matt’s doing his research, and he gets this big idea that his term paper can be more than just a school assignment. It’s a plan for Agrimax to help feed the hungry. So he starts crunching all these numbers on his computer, and he’s e-mailing everybody—completely obsessed, you know? He can’t talk about anything else. Anyway, the other day he tells me he was wrong about Agrimax helping feed the hungry. He says they’re only gonna sell their food to the highest bidders, and they don’t even want to hear his ideas. Basically they told him to back off.”

A prickle ran down Cole’s spine. “Back off? What was Matt doing?”

“Writing to them and bugging them—stuff like that.” Billy straightened. “I told him to chill out. Just forget the whole thing. Write the term paper and get the usual A, and then drop it. But you know how Matt is. He gets these—”

“Obsessions. Yes, I know.” Cole raked a hand back through his hair, damp from being under his hat all day. “Do you think Matt is in trouble, Billy? Legal trouble?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Strong. He said they were threatening him.”

“Threatening him! Why didn’t he tell me?”

“I told him he should, but Mr. Strong, you’re always out plowing, or on the road to Albuquerque to see your girlfriend. Matt doesn’t much talk to anyone but me.”

“You and Miss Pruitt.” Cole left his son’s bedroom and took the long hall in five strides, as Billy followed. “Where’s the phone? Why does he always move the blasted phone?”

“Use mine. But I already tried calling him, Mr. Strong. He’s got his turned off.”

Cole took Billy’s cell phone and began searching down the list of numbers Josefina had written on the chalkboard near the refrigerator.

“You don’t know Matt’s cell number?” Billy asked, a tinge of disbelief in his voice. “Here, give me the phone.”

Billy punched a couple of buttons—clearly he had his best friend’s number programmed into his phone. “Hey, Mattman, where are you? You said we’d go to DQ after Spanish. I’m out at your place, and your dad’s semi-freaking about you. So call me, okay?” He pressed another button. “I left him a message.”

Cole hurled his apple core into the trash can. He did have to plow. The ranch took most of his time. And yes, since meeting Penny Ames, he had spent what spare time he had in Albuquerque. Now that they were engaged, she required a lot of his attention in planning the details of their fall wedding. She had chosen Tahiti for the honeymoon, and she insisted that Cole go ahead and get his passport, their tickets and a new set of luggage.

Having a woman in his life again took time and energy, but Cole held every hope that Penny would bond them into the family he wanted—for himself and for his son. He felt more than a little guilty about the lousy job he had done as a father. But Matt had never been an easy kid to parent—wandering in a strange world of his own making. Cole had tried to understand the boy, but the older Matt got, the more distant their relationship grew. With the purchase of his first computer, Matt retreated almost completely into a realm of information, entertainment, and communication. Cole had left him alone, grateful his son was occupied and apparently happy.

He sighed. “I’ve got to finish that field. We plant next week.”

“Yeah, sure, Mr. Strong.” Billy’s brown eyes registered disappointment. “Tell Matt to call me tonight if he shows up.”

“What do you mean ‘if he shows up’? Of course he’ll show up.” Suspicion gnawed at Cole. “Where do you think he is, Billy? Tell me the truth.”

“I don’t know. Maybe he had a wreck. He’s not that good of a driver, you know.”

Cole clenched his teeth at the image of his son trapped inside a mangled truck in an irrigation ditch somewhere. For years, he had tried to get Matt out in the fields to practice his driving. The boy wasn’t interested. But the minute he turned sixteen, of course, he insisted on getting his license. Cole had given his son the use of one of the ranch pickups—an old green Chevy with a rusty bed and balding tires.

“The only road he drives is the one between the high school and the house,” he told Billy. “And you just got here. You’d have seen the pickup if he’d wrecked it.”

“Yeah.” Billy thought for a moment. “He might have gone out to see Mr. Banyon in Hope. The whole Agrimax thing, you know.”

Cole grabbed the phone book from the counter and leafed through the Hope directory. Billy handed him the cell phone, and he dialed.

“Banyon,” a voice said on the other end.

“Jim, this is Cole Strong—Matt’s dad.”

“Oh. Uh-huh.”

“Listen, Matt didn’t come home from school today, and I was wondering if he might be out there visiting with you.”

“No.” Banyon breathed heavily into the phone. “Uh, no. Tell him not to come out. Not to do that.”

Cole paused, concern working its way up his spine. “You okay, Jim?”

“Uh.” There was another pause and more labored breathing. “No. Not…not really.”

“Is there anything I can do for you? Do you need a doctor?”

Another silence. “Just…uh…tell Matt not to come. Definitely not to—”

The phone went dead. Cole stared at Billy.

“What’s with Mr. Banyon?” the boy asked. “Is he sick?”

“I’m not sure.” Cole tapped the phone book, weighing the idea of asking the sheriff to look in on the man. Banyon was in his sixties, but he appeared to be in robust health—not the type to have a heart attack or a stroke. Maybe he was struggling with his farm. On retiring from a white-collar job at Agrimax, Jim Banyon had bought land in New Mexico and was trying to grow cotton on it. Many local farmers had gone belly-up in recent years, and Cole had not predicted great success for his new neighbor. The depression and despair these men felt at the loss of their land and livelihood had led some to alcohol and others to the brink of suicide.

Uneasy over his son’s whereabouts, Cole found his thoughts drawn to his work. It was the one thing that had seen him through his wife’s illness and death, the growing estrangement from Matt, and the surge of emotion he had felt on meeting Penny.

“Well, I’m gonna head out and look for Matt,” Billy said, grabbing the last tamale from the plate. “He might have gone to the library and forgotten what time it was.”

“That would be like Matt.”

“Yeah.” The boy picked up an apple and dropped it into the pocket of his baggy jeans. “If he’s not there, I guess I’ll check the computer store. He’s been eyeing this tiny USB key he wants to buy. Sometimes he just goes over there and stares at it. Or maybe—”

“Wait. A US…B…what?”

“It’s a gizmo that stores information.” He paused. “Mr. Strong, Matt’s the one who can tell you about computer stuff. Don’t you ever ask?”

“I’m asking now. I’m asking you.”

“A USB key is a piece of computer hardware, but it’s cool because it’s so tiny you can hang it on a key chain. Like the size of a pack of gum or something.” He held his thumb and forefinger a couple of inches apart. “You plug it into your computer’s USB port—” Billy paused, regarded the obviously inept adult before him, and then rolled his eyes “—Universal Serial Bus. A USB port uses hubs to let you attach stuff like printers, digital cameras, game pads, joysticks, keyboards, and mice to your computer. And USB keys.”

“All right,” Cole said, trying to envision these electronic gadgets that were so commonplace to Matt and Billy.

“So you plug the flash drive, or USB key it’s called, into your USB port, and then you can load tons of data onto it—two or three gigabytes of information. Matt wants it because he’s got so many programs. I think he’s going to ask for it for his birthday.”

“I see.”

“Maybe Matt’s over at the school talking to Miss Pruitt about his paper. He does that a lot. And I guess I could drive out to Hope and see what’s up with Mr. Banyon. Or you could go.”

Cole considered this option. Surely Matt hadn’t gone far. He’d be home soon. “I’d better get back to that field,” he said. “Call me when you find him, okay, Billy?”

Resentment flickered in the boy’s eyes. “Mr. Strong, you don’t even know where your phone is.”

As Billy stalked out of the kitchen, letting the screen door slam behind him, Cole sucked down a deep breath. He thought of the field, half-plowed. The ranch hands waiting for his return. The cows ready to calve. The seed that needed planting. The afternoon sun dipping toward the horizon.

Grabbing his Stetson, he headed out the door. “Billy, wait up!” he shouted. The boy braked his pickup.

“I’ll check the library,” Cole said. “You go to the computer store.”

Billy grinned. “I’ll meet you at Miss Pruitt’s classroom in an hour—207 in the main building. She’ll be there—she always works late.”

Cole climbed into the car he kept for town trips. “An hour,” he muttered. “That shoots this day.”

“Please feed me.” The small boy, his dirty face streaked with tears, held up a bowl made from an empty gourd. “Give me food, sir.”

Josiah Karume could not resist laying his hand on the child’s tiny head. How old would this boy be, he wondered. Five…or ten? Malnutrition had so withered and stunted his body it was impossible to tell. His dark skin stretched over the bones of his skull, and his parched lips—ringed with flies—were pulled back from his small white teeth. With a head of sparse orange hair and a swollen abdomen, the boy looked like so many other walking skeletons in the long line of refugees that snaked out behind him.

As Josiah scooped up a dollop of cornmeal mush fortified with protein powder and vitamins, someone tapped him on the shoulder. He poured the mush into the boy’s bowl before turning to see who wanted him now.

“A phone call for you, Dr. Karume,” his aide said.

Josiah handed his ladle to the man and hurried across the dry, sandy ground toward the makeshift Somalian headquarters of the International Federation for Environmental and Economic Development. As chairman-elect of the organization, he was forced to spend most of his time dealing with mountains of red tape in the African bureau of I-FEED in Khartoum, Sudan. But Josiah relished the rare opportunity to visit the camps where his hard work actually paid off.

“Karume here,” he said into the phone that sat on a rickety card table inside the office.

“Josiah, this is Vince Grant.”

“Vince! How good of you to phone. What news do you have for me today?”

“I’m just returning your call from Tuesday. Wanted you to know I’m still working on transportation. We’ve got the cornmeal at our Kansas facility, but the logistics are sticky.”

Josiah’s heartbeat faltered. “The paperwork in Khartoum is complete, Vince. I’m certain I shall have no trouble with the Sudanese authorities.”

“I hear you, Josiah, but I just can’t move the product without having all my ducks in a row.”

“Ducks?” Though he’d obtained his undergraduate degree in London and had completed his doctoral work in Texas, Josiah still found American idioms confusing.

“I can’t do anything until I’ve got the official papers in my hand,” Grant clarified. “You understand the risk I’m taking with my stockholders. If I move this cornmeal, and it gets stuck in Khartoum…”

“Yes, yes. Of course I understand. Let’s see, today is Thursday. I leave tomorrow morning for a conference in Paris, but I shall do all in my power to see that you receive official copies of the documents by the first of next week.”

“Great. That’s terrific. Well, I’ve got a meeting here in about five minutes. So how’s the family?”

“They are doing well, thank you. And yours?” Josiah stared out the window at the blowing sand. As the sun beat down on the refugees, a young woman suddenly let out a wail and staggered out of line. Falling to her knees, she clasped her baby to her breast.

“Well, both girls are off at college, and my son’s polo team won—”

“Excuse me, Vince,” Josiah cut in. “I have an emergency here. I shall be in touch.”

Setting down the receiver, he shook his head. As he left the office, he could hear the other women begin to keen. But they would not leave their places in line to lend comfort to their comrade. They were hungry, after all, and it had become commonplace to mourn the death of yet another child.

“I’m famished.” Jill Pruitt bit into the Big Mac her colleague had carried in from the fast-food strip near the high school. “Mmm. Hey, pass the fries.”

“Fries? Jill, I’m surprised at you!” Marianne laughed. “I thought you were strictly a broccoli-and-turnip-greens girl.”

“I can go for the occasional lard-soaked French fry,” Jill said, giving the math teacher a sly grin. Jill’s fellow instructors at Artesia High School knew all about her dedication to famine relief and her interest in computers and technology. But there was a lot they didn’t know, and she enjoyed throwing them off-kilter once in a while.

She scanned the row of grades in her ledger, enjoying the symmetry of the numbers. “You realize most of what we’re eating in these burgers was grown outside the United States,” she spoke up. “Including the beef.”

“Not again, Jill. Could we just finish figuring these midterm grades and go home? It’s Thursday. My favorite show is on tonight, and I refuse to miss it.”

Jill took another fry. “When you grill a burger, the only part that’s American is the fat that drips onto the coals. The rest comes from who-knows where.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. You told me before.” Marianne sipped a soda as she punched grades into her calculator. “You won’t be eating any burgers when you get to Pakistan, you know. Holy cows, and all that.”

“Pakistanis are Muslims, girl. It’s Hindus who don’t eat beef.”

“Whatever. So when do you leave? Aren’t you going to take a break after school lets out?”

“A week, and then I’m outta here.” Jill thought about her battered old suitcase—already packed with cool cotton dresses and a pair of sandals. Unmarried at thirty-six—a long-term relationship had ended the year before—she had set aside her longing for a husband and children to concentrate on other interests. Seven years ago a short mission trip to Honduras had lit a fire inside her. She had seen poverty, hunger, homelessness. She had felt the suffering of the people.

From then on, her life had been different. Everything became centered on obeying Christ—on putting her faith in action. The coming trip to Pakistan particularly excited her. As a volunteer with the International Federation for Environmental and Economic Development, she would go to the very heart of the country’s most desperate area. She had renewed her passport, gotten her vaccinations, and was champing at the bit to get on with the adventure.

“I’m so pumped about this trip, Marianne,” she said. “I can hardly wait. Six weeks in Pakistan! I’ll be right across the border from Afghanistan. Can you imagine?”

“You couldn’t pay me enough to go there. I can’t believe you spend your hard-earned salary to volunteer in places like that. I admire your dedication, Jill, but frankly, I’d be too scared.”

“I love it. Did I tell you a group of my computer tech kids signed up to take care of my garden the whole time I’m away? They are so good. It’s like they’re doing their part, you know?”

Jill tucked a blond corkscrew curl behind her ear and frowned at a row of grades. Matthew Strong was falling behind in website design class again. Matt had so much raw talent, but he typically failed to turn in several assignments each term. She had watched this pattern for two years, and she worried that this time he might bottom out altogether.

“Have you ever had Matthew Strong in class?” she asked Marianne.

“I’ve got him in trig right now. Weird kid. But brilliant. He could do anything he wanted—if he’d bother to turn in his homework.”

“Same thing with me. I hope he hangs in till the end of the year.”

“Did you hear about his ACT score? Good grief, he could go to MIT today if he wanted. A couple of college recruiters showed up at my classroom this afternoon to talk with him, and he never came back. So there goes another homework assignment.”

“Matt’s only a sophomore, for goodness’ sake.” Jill took another bite of her burger. “These colleges need to back off and let him be a normal teenager.”

“Matthew Strong will never be a normal teenager.”

“If his father paid more attention to him, he might learn some social skills. His mom died of cancer, you know. The dad is hardly ever around.”

“Lots of kids have absentee parents, but they don’t turn out like Matt. What about that tie he wears all the time?”

Jill tucked the ringlet behind her ear for the hundredth time that hour. Even as she reached for one last fry, the curl popped back out and bounced around her chin. “It’s just Matt’s style, I guess.”

“Style? That tie is gross beyond belief.” Marianne snapped her grade book shut. “Done! I’m taking off. You’ll be okay here, I guess.”

“No problem. I’m almost through.”

As Marianne grabbed her purse, she paused near Jill’s chair and leaned down. “Uh-oh. Speak of the devil,” she murmured. “I hope this is for you, Miss Pruitt, because I’m gone.”

Jill swung around to see a tall, broad-shouldered man step into the classroom. His chambray shirt and faded denim jeans complemented dusty cowboy boots and an old leather belt. He took off his hat to reveal a thatch of short, spiky, brown hair, and he was looking at her with a pair of blue eyes that could belong to only one man.

“Matthew Strong’s father.” She stood and thrust out her hand. “Pleased to meet you.”

“Cole Strong.” His grip was firm, his palm callused. A working man.

“I’m Jill Pruitt, computer ed. And that was Marianne Weston, Matt’s trig teacher. You’d better run if you want to catch her.”

“You’ll do,” he said. The blue eyes bored into her. “I’m looking for my boy. Seen him today?”

“He was in my class this morning. Why?”

“He didn’t come home after school. Billy Younger tells me Matt likes to stay late and talk to you.”

Jill sensed a thread of suspicion in the man’s voice. “He drops by between classes or at lunch. He’s been working on a term paper—”

“Food, yeah, I know. Billy says you fired him up on it.”

“I mentioned my work with hunger relief. Matt was interested, so we discussed it. I gave him some names and addresses to use as sources. Have you checked with Jim Banyon out at Hope? He—”

“Matt’s not there.” Cole turned his hat in his hands. “Billy says he got crossways with some Agrimax honchos. He was trying to push your ideas on them, and they warned him to back off.”

“ My ideas?”

“My son doesn’t know anything about famine relief, Miss Pruitt.”

“Oh yes he does, Mr. Strong.” She returned his appraising gaze. “He uncovered a wealth of information, and he’s very excited about it.”

“Obsessed, you mean.”

She bristled. “I wouldn’t call it that.”

“You would if you knew Matt.”

“Excuse me, sir, but I do know your son. I know him very well.”

“Then where is he?”

She paused to collect herself. In fifteen years as a teacher, she had faced a lot of angry parents. Frustration, concern for a child’s GPA, confusion about assignments—all these things drove them to confrontation at the school. Jill had learned to back off, take it slow and insist on civil treatment. But the dominating stance of this man, the hostility in his voice, and the insinuations he had tossed out were getting on her nerves. If he were a more involved parent, she would sympathize with his concern. But she knew for a fact that Cole Strong had shown little interest in his son’s life at school before now.

“I’m not sure where Matt is, Mr. Strong,” she told him. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m averaging midterm grades.”

“Did he go to all his classes today?” He took a step toward her.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t have access to that infor—” Jill caught her breath. “Wait a minute. Two men…college recruiters, I think…asked to meet him during his trigonometry class. Marianne—Mrs. Weston—told me he never came back.”

“Who were these guys? Which university?”

“I have no idea.”

“Well, look it up.” He gestured at her laptop. “You’re the computer wizard. Open the file or whatever, and find out who got permission to take my son out of class.”

Despite her irritation with Matt’s father, she felt a stab of concern about the boy. “I don’t have code access to office documents, Mr. Strong.”

“Then break the code. Isn’t that what you’ve been teaching my son to do?”

“Sir, I do not appreciate your tone. And I can assure you—”

“Look, lady.” He stuffed his hat onto his head. “My son is missing. Do you get that? Matt did not come home from school, and he’s not there now. Billy Younger and I have combed this town and haven’t found hide nor hair of the boy. Now you’re telling me two strangers showed up at school and took my son off someplace—and he never came back? And I’m supposed to be nice and polite about it?”

Jill swallowed. “I’ll call Mrs. Weston at home. Maybe she can tell us who the men were.”

TWO

V ince Grant gazed at the tray of glazed crullers on the gleaming mahogany desk in his corner office. His new secretary provided him with sweet snacks each afternoon at four, and he wondered if she was trying to give him a heart attack. He didn’t like Jennifer, and she didn’t like him. But his vision and her efficiency meshed well, and the situation was a lot tidier than it had been with Dawn.

Vince’s wife had known about Dawn and the others before her, but this time she refused to tolerate her husband’s straying. Maybe it was because their children were growing up and moving on—the two girls away at college, their son busy with polo and soccer. Or maybe it was menopause. Cheryl Grant had grown edgy, moody. He would have to be more discreet.

Tapping his blunt-tipped fingers together, Vince tried to resist the crullers. Things weren’t going well on this Thursday afternoon, and food always seemed to calm him. But his tailor—who had used the same patterns for Vince’s $4,000 wool suits since he had taken the helm of Chicago-based Agrimax thirteen years before—had been obliged to take new measurements on his last fitting. Vince didn’t like that. At fifty-eight, he still had a lot of good years left, and he intended to enjoy every benefit of his position. But he had to look the part—trim, neatly groomed, well suited and in perfect health.

Vince Grant had great plans for Agrimax. His blueprint—carefully spelled out in documents to which only he and his top executives had computer access—was both his obsession and his pride. Vince had been consumed by the plan for years. At last, its many components were clicking into place.

In twelve days, the corporation would absorb its two rivals, Megafarm and Progrow. The new conglomerate, with Vince as its CEO, would essentially control the world food market—at which time he could begin putting into place the seed, fertilizer, pesticide and genetic technologies that Agrimax scientists had been developing in secret. The merger and resulting takeover of worldwide food production would assure Vince a place in history and make him a billionaire.

The plan had involved skillful diplomacy, hardball boardroom politics, careful public relations and, finally, subterfuge. His executive board wasn’t completely aware of the complex ramifications of its CEO’s plan, though all would benefit immeasurably. Once in place, the merger would allow Agrimax to overcome all barriers to power and profitability.

But Agrimax’s executive board had found another reason to be restless. They were unhappy over negative publicity about the company’s genetically modified seed. At the last board meeting Vince had promised to squelch the problem. He had his public relations people initiate high-profile food donations to hunger-relief organizations chosen for their news value. The newspapers cooperated admirably. Agrimax’s media spokeswoman had appeared on two national morning television programs and a prime-time talk show. Vince felt confident the company’s image concerns were under control.

Until now.

In the past month, someone who identified himself as a high school sophomore had begun e-mailing Agrimax’s top executives. Annoyed at first, the executives became nervous when the tone of the e-mails switched from that of an idealist who wanted to end world hunger to the voice of someone who knew the company intimately.

Security had pinpointed the source of the e-mails. They came from a small town in New Mexico near the ranch to which one of Agrimax’s leading scientists, Jim Banyon, had just retired. Banyon had been a loyal team player, moving through the ranks until he was awarded a vice president’s position. Vince had liked the man, and his work for Agrimax was groundbreaking. The two became personal friends. Their wives even socialized at the country club until Banyon’s divorce put his ex out of circulation.

In the past couple of years, the scientist had joined some sort of evangelistic religious group. He grew reclusive, losing interest in golf and absenting himself from the regular happy-hour gathering at the club. Vince hadn’t given it too much thought. Last month, Banyon had taken early retirement, and his position had not yet been filled. A week ago, before the e-mails were traced, Banyon returned briefly to Agrimax headquarters in Chicago to clear a few things from his office.

Though the suspicious messages had come from the account of one “Matthew Strong,” Agrimax security believed Banyon was the actual source. Vince ordered an investigation into information transferred recently to his former colleague’s computer. His worst fears were realized when it was discovered that Vince’s own top secret blueprint had been copied from the mainframe.

When his secretary’s voice came over the intercom with a call from the head of security, Vince was quick to grab the phone.

“Harwood, what do you have for me?”

“The kid is no problem.”

“There really is a kid?”

“Matthew Strong.”

“You found him? Talked to him?”

“We took care of him.”

“So it’s Banyon?”

“There’s no question. The two know each other. Banyon’s been feeding the boy the data he used in his e-mails to our executives.”

“What does the boy have?”

“He’s clean. We profiled him before we talked to him. He’s a nerd, a Sunday-school-type kid, spends all his time at his computer. Knocked the top off the ACT, but no social life. A wide-eyed innocent—barely sixteen. He’s writing a research paper. That’s how he got onto us—he interviewed Banyon.”

“That’s the connection, then.”

“Banyon told him a few things, but the kid isn’t the source of our trouble. Banyon’s got the stolen data on a CD at his house. I’d bet my job on it.”

“A CD can’t hold that much information, Harwood. Where’s Technology? I want them in on this.”

“I talked to Technology this afternoon.”

“Don’t talk to them. Get them on the scene.”

“Yes, sir.” Mack Harwood paused a moment. “I’d rather not wait for Technology to arrive, Mr. Grant. This place is the backside of nowhere. I think we need to look up Banyon today.”

“Just get the data, Harwood. Do whatever you have to do.”

Vince set down the receiver. He wished he hadn’t been forced to move his former secretary to Agrimax’s Wichita branch. Dawn had been good for him. Kept him feeling alive, vital, confident. He reached over and took a cruller from the silver tray.

Seated in his pickup under a cottonwood tree, Matt rummaged in the glove compartment for something to eat. From the debris of torn road maps, ballpoint pens, a pocketknife and the vehicle owner’s manual, he rooted out an old Snickers bar and peeled back the wrapper. The candy had gone pale and crumbly, but he wolfed it down anyway. He knew he had to function. Had to keep going. Had to think.

Not fifty feet away, the lights were on in Jim Banyon’s house. But who was inside? Hands shaking, Matt gripped the old black steering wheel as he swallowed the last of the chocolate.

Okay, think, think. Think, Mattman!

The two men who had taken him out of trig class said they were college recruiters. Princeton. They wanted to treat him to ice cream. Talk about their computer science program.

So he had gotten into their car.

“Stupid!” Matt slammed his hand on the steering column. Never get into a stranger’s car. His mom had taught him that. Josefina had echoed it a thousand times. He knew better!

The men had driven him out to the sports complex on the edge of Artesia. That’s when they started asking him about Agrimax. About his term paper. About his e-mails to the company. They wanted to know where he got his information.

“Why did I tell them?” he ground out, dropping his forehead onto the steering wheel. “Dumb! I am such an idiot!”

By that time, he had figured out enough to get scared.

They had slammed his head into the concrete wall, and he had passed out. A moment later he came to, crumpled on the ground, aware of blood trickling down the back of his neck. The Agrimax men leaned against their car, talking in low voices.

That’s when Matt bolted.

They ran after him. Shouting. Threatening to call the police, send him to prison, put him away forever. He wriggled under the park’s barbed-wire fence. Ran down the sidewalk and cut across the yards of several houses. Rounded a corner of the video store. Dashed down an alley. Found a culvert and hid. An hour. Two hours.

Sweating, smelling like dank water, his head throbbing, he ran all the way to the high school just as the last class was letting out. He hid in a clump of bushes and scanned the area for the Agrimax men or their car. Nothing. In the distance near the main door, he saw Billy waiting for him. Checking out the girls. Calling greetings to classmates. Matt wanted to go to him, tell him everything. But what if the two men were watching? Then they would go after Billy, too.

Matt made a dash for his pickup. He sped from the school parking lot, headed out of town. Drove to nearby Hope. Found a thicket of trees near Jim Banyon’s house. Cottonwoods, piñons, salt cedar. Not much cover, but he pulled his pickup as far into their midst as he could.

It was beginning to grow dark, so he checked his cell phone. A message from Billy that Matt’s dad was worrying about him, searching for him.

That didn’t sound right. His dad never cared where he was, did he? Were the Agrimax men holding Billy? Had they made him leave that message?

Shaken, Matt decided to place a call. He pressed the button and listened to the rings on the other end. When Billy answered, Matt barely managed to squawk his own name.

“Mattman, is that you?” Billy’s voice had a calming effect. Yeah, this was Billy. Life was normal somewhere out there. But not here…not in this pickup in the middle of a grove just outside Mr. Banyon’s house.

“Listen, Billy,” Matt breathed. “I got your phone message, okay? But don’t keep looking for me.”

“Where have you been, dude? I waited for you after class.”

Matt remembered their plan to go to Dairy Queen together. Like always. They each would have ordered an M&M’s Blizzard, talked about their classes, planned their weekend. But not now.

“Something bad’s going on,” Matt said. “Really bad.”

“What? You’re freaking me out. Where are you?”

“I’m going away. Don’t look for me anymore.” Realizing he was starting to cry again, which was totally uncool, Matt hung up.

He stared through his tears at Mr. Banyon’s house. Nearly paralyzed with panic, he wadded up the Snickers wrapper and stuffed it into the ashtray. What should he do? What was right—and wrong? None of this was supposed to happen! He had just wanted to help feed the hungry.

He needed to talk to Mr. Banyon. Jim Banyon made sense when he explained ethics, when he discussed the difference that Christians could make in the business world. He sounded just like Miss Pruitt when he talked about Christ’s command that Christians meet people’s needs—no matter what the cost. He understood Agrimax better than Matt ever could. Mr. Banyon would know what to do.

But what if the men were inside the house…threatening him and waiting for Matt? He knew what he ought to do. Leave. Disappear. Get out of town for a while. Isn’t that what fugitives did in the movies? But this wasn’t a movie. This was no computer game, where he could press a button and start all over. It was real.

He wished he could call Billy again. Billy always had advice—even if it wasn’t necessarily right. Matt stared at his phone. Then he threw it out the window into a tangle of tall grass. No phone. No contact. He looked at the laptop lying beside him on the front seat. He was afraid Agrimax had hacked his user account and could read his e-mails and personal information. He should toss that out, too.

No. He could use it to stay in touch somehow. But what if they traced him? Now he was getting paranoid. Matt knew more about computers than those two men did. They weren’t Princeton techies, after all. They were Agrimax goons.

All the same, Matt knew if he stayed around, his dad and Billy, and maybe even Miss Pruitt, would get involved. The way the Agrimax men had slammed him against the wall today, they wouldn’t hesitate to hurt people if that’s what it took to get their data back. Anyone connected to Matt would be in danger, because he had helped Mr. Banyon.

The Agrimax men would soon find out Matt was the one who had told Mr. Banyon that he could copy the incriminating Agrimax information onto a USB key. They would learn that Matt had used his own credit card—which his father had said was just for emergencies—to buy the key. They would discover that Mr. Banyon was going to give the USB key and all its terrible secrets to the chairman-elect of I-FEED, a man named Josiah Karume, who would turn everything over to the right people in government and the media. They would know that, in the name of God, Mr. Banyon was going to ruin them. And that Matthew Strong was helping him do it.

But where could Matt go if he ran? Granny Strong lived in Amarillo. She would take him in. He could drive to Hobbs and cross the state line into Texas. Pick up a map somewhere so he could find the right roads to Lubbock and then Amarillo. Spend what cash he had on gas and food.

He fought the panic that felt like a noose tightening around his neck. Dear God, please help me! I don’t know what to do. I need to talk to somebody. I need help. But You’re all I have.

He forced himself to reason. If God was all he had, wasn’t that enough? God is more than sufficient…a very present help in time of trouble…wonderful Counselor…

“Okay,” Matt breathed out. “Holy Spirit, give me wisdom. And courage, too. Please be my counselor. Help me not to blow this worse than I already have. Amen.”

When he lifted his head, he felt calmer. He wasn’t in such bad shape after all, he realized. He had about fifty dollars, a laptop, a vehicle. He had youth, energy and brains—more than enough to get him out of this hot water. He even had the credit card his father had given him. What more did he need? Maybe the Snickers had just given him a sugar high, but he was feeling better about the situation. He turned his attention to Jim Banyon’s house.

The thing to do was go inside and just talk things through with Mr. Banyon. Maybe everything was really all right. Maybe Mr. Banyon had spoken with the Agrimax men, calmed them down, given them the key, and assured them Matt hadn’t done anything wrong. Maybe they would go away, and everything would be normal again. He and Billy would rent a movie and eat four bags of microwave popcorn and drink a twelve-pack of orange soda.

Drawing a fortifying breath deep into his lungs, Matt eased open the door of his pickup. At the squeak, his palms went damp.

It’s okay, he told himself. It’s nothing. Be calm, Mattman.

He edged out of the cab and crept through the cover of trees. The lights were still on in the house. No silhouettes moving around inside. Darkness was falling fast.

Pausing at the edge of the grove, Matt crouched and scanned the area. There was no way to approach the house without showing himself. He dashed to the front door. It was ajar. He wedged himself against the frame and knocked quickly, quietly. He looked over his shoulder. Was someone moving out beyond the fence?

Gulping down the acid that bubbled up from his stomach, Matt pushed the door open and slipped inside.

“Mr. Banyon?” His voice came out soft and wimpy. Way too high. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Mr. Banyon, it’s me, Matt Strong.”

Nothing.

His own rapid breaths sounding like a locomotive engine, he moved forward. Down the narrow foyer. His rubber soles made a tump-tump sound on the tile.

Living-room light spilled into the hallway, and he stepped across it onto beige berber carpet. Someone was sleeping on the couch that faced the bank of windows opposite the foyer. An arm lay across the top of the sofa. Mr. Banyon’s arm. Matt recognized the turquoise-inlaid silver watchband. Whew. How bad could it be if the rancher was napping? That was normal after a long day’s work. His dad was always zonked out on the recliner in the evenings.

“Hey, Mr. Banyon, sir?” Matt said, moving around the couch. “Sorry to wake you up, but I—”

A monster stared back at him. Swollen eyeballs, blackened teeth, a crimson halo. Red stain on the sofa pillow. Bloodstain. Spatters across the back of the couch.

The body was Mr. Banyon’s—plaid work shirt, silver belt buckle, jeans, those old boots. But the face. Not the face.

Matt fought to keep breathing. Mr. Banyon’s other arm draped down to the floor. Six inches away lay a pistol. Matt’s eyes shot back to the face. The blackened teeth and burn marks on the lips…they could only mean…

No. Matt’s mouth formed the word, but no sound came out. “No,” he said again. “No, God, don’t let this be! Don’t let this be!”

He fell to one knee, grabbed Mr. Banyon’s shirt, and shook him. “Don’t do this! Not this!”

The monstrous head rolled, sliding down the pillow toward the shoulder.

Matt jumped backward, stumbling into the coffee table. He reached behind him to steady the large Hopi pot that always sat there. But it was gone—already lying on the carpet, broken into three pieces. Not wanting to look at Mr. Banyon again—and wanting to look just to be sure he hadn’t dreamed it—Matt forced himself to scan the room. Books that once lined pine shelves now lay scattered across the floor. A kachina doll’s glass case had been shattered. A curtain hung half-torn from its rod.

And Mr. Banyon’s desk near the fireplace…the drawers were out, their contents flung around the room…

The Agrimax men had been here. They came looking for it. For the USB key. They must have threatened Mr. Banyon the way they had threatened Matt. And when they left, taking the key and all its forbidden secrets, he had known he would spend the rest of his life in prison. So he had stretched out on the couch and put the pistol in his mouth and…and…

“It’s my fault!” Matt knotted his fingers in his hair, squeezed, and pulled. He felt like his own brain was going to come bursting out of his skull. “I did this! Me! It’s all because of me!”

He looked back at Mr. Banyon, and his eyes caught the flash of a headlight through the front window. Someone driving along the fence. Approaching the house. The Agrimax men!

Matt pounced on the pistol lying on the floor. He would shoot them. Shoot them both!

No, wait. He couldn’t do that. He had never fired a gun in his life. Hated hunting. Hated violence. Billy had teased him— Come on, Mattman, at least a jackrabbit! No, Matt wouldn’t do it.

Dropping the gun, he couldn’t keep his eyes from falling again on the monster. “I’m sorry!” he mouthed, tears wetting his lips. “I didn’t mean to do this!”

The crunch of gravel on the drive…then a car door slammed. Matt jerked, and his focus fell on a bulge in the pocket of Mr. Banyon’s plaid shirt. It was small, oblong, the size of a cigarette lighter. Only Mr. Banyon didn’t smoke.

As someone rang the doorbell, Matt slid two fingers into the pocket. Before he even touched it, he knew what he had found. The key fit neatly in his palm. He dropped it into the front pocket of his jeans and took off for the kitchen.

“Banyon? You in there?”

Matt could hear the voice echoing down the foyer. His foot landed on a small rug, and he skidded halfway across the kitchen floor. The back door stood ajar. Pushing open the screen, he burst through—remembering just in time to grab it so it wouldn’t slam shut behind him. Then he started toward the side of the house.

Down on all fours, he peered around the corner. The car parked out front didn’t belong to the Agrimax men. It was the sheriff. How had Sheriff Holtmeyer known to check on Mr. Banyon?

Now Matt could see two more vehicles moving up the rutted dirt road, their headlights bouncing. Grateful for darkness, he raced across the yard and dived into the stand of cottonwood trees.

Breathing hard, he yanked open the door to his pickup and climbed in. He turned the key in the ignition, reached for the shift lever, and paused. Leaving the truck idling, he leaned back in the seat and tried to collect his thoughts. If the Agrimax men hadn’t found the USB key, then maybe Mr. Banyon hadn’t killed himself. Maybe they had been looking for the device and had murdered him in the process. This was bad. Really bad.

Should Matt go to the sheriff, turn himself in, tell him the whole story, hand over the key? The information would go straight back to Agrimax, and that would be the end of everything Mr. Banyon had been trying to do. Had died trying to do.

Think, Mattman. Think, think. He wasn’t any good at thinking on his feet. Billy said he had no common sense, no street smarts. Give Mattman a logarithm. Give him calculus. Give him a computer to program. Give him Latin grammar or astronomy. He could puzzle through that stuff easily. But not this.

“Dear God, what am I supposed to do now?” he murmured, gripping the steering wheel. This had all been for God to begin with, hadn’t it? Feeding the hungry. Convincing Agrimax to turn over some of their excess. Finding a way to really do something for Christ—the way Miss Pruitt did.

But Mr. Banyon was dead now. Everything was over, wasn’t it? Matt thought of I-FEED, the organization Miss Pruitt worked with. Mr. Banyon had never heard of it until Matt told him about his teacher’s work in famine-stricken lands. Jim Banyon had spent his career in research and technology development for Agrimax. He had climbed the corporate ladder until he was rewarded with a vice presidency—and had lost his marriage and family in the process. But then he found a new life in Christ. Sickened at what he had been involved in through the years, Mr. Banyon told Matt, he was filled with remorse and anger. Finally, he had taken early retirement and moved to New Mexico to start over.

Mr. Banyon said until Matt came along, he hadn’t thought anything could be done to change the corporation’s practices. Not until the high school sophomore had knocked on his door to interview him for a term paper. Matt talked to Mr. Banyon about I-FEED. About the starving children. About his passion to feed the hungry. And somewhere in there, he mentioned the tiny USB flash drive he had his eye on at the computer store. Just plug it in and copy anything you want.

Anything? Mr. Banyon had gotten excited then. He knew the password system at Agrimax. He could get into the company’s mainframe, couldn’t he? He could download technologies still under development, products waiting to be patented, top secret plans that threatened the world’s ecology and would keep the poor on the brink of starvation. He could copy the details of Vince Grant’s elaborate monopoly scheme, his design for control of the world’s food supply and the ensuing global domination. He could blow the whistle on all the corruption—and in doing so, bring attention to the plight of the hungry. Mr. Banyon knew he could make it all happen, he had acknowledged to Matt. He could do this. He would do this for righteousness’ sake.

Matt had bought the flash drive and showed him how to use it. Then Mr. Banyon made one last visit to Agrimax, copied the data onto the USB key, and began preparing to deliver it anonymously to Josiah Karume at I-FEED. Once leaked to the media, the information would devastate Agrimax. Mr. Banyon said the company would be forced to its knees by a public outcry. Legal and media pressure would force Agrimax to change its policies and practices. The World Health Organization would get involved, and so would every environmental group worth its salt. Public attention would fall on the corrupt practices of the World Trade Organization and the food companies that controlled global food supplies. Vince Grant’s plan to monopolize this system would be exposed and derailed. All this…because of the USB key that now lay in Matthew Strong’s pocket.

Matt covered the small shape with his palm. If Jim Banyon had lost his life in trying to do this good work, could Matt do any less than risk his life to finish it? People were hungry. Children were starving. Babies were dying. For months Matt had been able to think of little else.

Now the answer lay in his grasp. What would he do with it? As the two cars pulled to a stop in the driveway, Matt recognized his father’s tall profile, his hat, his broad shoulders. Was that Miss Pruitt? How did she get into this? And Billy?

Disbelief twisted through Matt’s chest. Had his father really come looking for him? They hardly ever spoke these days. He wasn’t sure his dad even remembered he had a son. But there was Cole Strong, striding up to the door of Jim Banyon’s ranch house.

Had he decided to suddenly play the concerned parent? Matt frowned. It was a little late now. His son was grown—sixteen—and more than old enough to make his own decisions about his life. Matt had a job to do. As the others went into the house, he shifted the truck into reverse and eased out of the thicket. The gas tank was full, and he could drive all night.

“Hold it, Cole!” Sheriff Holtmeyer came around the corner of the living room in the foyer. “Don’t take another step, none of you. I’ve got a body here.”

Cole stiffened. “Is it—”

“It’s not your boy. It’s the old man—Banyon.”

“So where’s my son?” Cole started to edge past the sheriff, but Holtmeyer stopped him.

“This is a secured area, Cole. You can’t go barging in on it. I’ve got to get my people out here.”

“My boy may be in this house, and I intend—”

“Let us just look around for Matt, Sheriff,” Billy cut in. “We won’t touch anything.”

“I’m sorry, folks. These things have to be done the right way.”

“Sheriff, are you sure Mr. Banyon is dead?” Jill Pruitt asked.

“He’s dead all right. Suicide, I reckon.” The lawman shuddered. “You never get used to this kind of thing.”

Cole stared past him at the entrance to the living room. Suicide? Had problems with the farm been that bad for Jim Banyon? And what did Matt have to do with this—if anything? Did he know something about Banyon that had led him to call Billy in a state of panic?

“Cole, you’ve got to step back outside,” Holtmeyer said, hands at his belt. “I don’t think your boy’s anywhere around here. This looks pretty cut-and-dried to me.”

“Come on outside with us, Mr. Strong,” Miss Pruitt said, laying a hand on Cole’s arm. Her fingers were soft, startlingly warm against his skin. “Surely there’s something we can do to find Matt.”

Cole stared blankly at the teacher as she followed Billy out into the night. Vibrant with energy that radiated from her wild blond hair and compact figure, the young woman moved as though on a mission. His own body felt stiff, but his brain spun with questions. Where was Matt? Did he know about Banyon’s suicide? Who were the two men who took Matt out of class? What had they wanted with him? Did their conversation have anything to do with the suicide? Or had Banyon been just another desperate farmer watching his life savings slip away?

“Mr. Strong?” Corkscrew curls framing her green eyes, Miss Pruitt stuck her head back through the door. “I’ve had an idea. Why don’t you come on out, and I’ll tell you what I’m thinking?”

Like a tin soldier, Cole forced his legs down the foyer and out the front door. A dead man lay behind him in that house. Was Matt also in there somewhere? Was he dead, too? Images of his wife swirled upward like dry leaves caught in a dust devil. How ill Anna had looked, lying in bed day after day as the cancer that had begun in her ovaries swept through her body, invading blood and organs and bone. Clouds of dark, curly hair fell out in clumps, but the chemotherapy did no good. How desperately Anna had wanted to live. Not only for Cole, but for Matt. Such a small boy, and so in need of a mother. Cole’s greatest fear rose up inside him…Matt—he couldn’t lose the boy….

“Mr. Strong, drive me to your house,” Jill Pruitt was saying, her hand on his arm again. Touching him, drawing him back. “I’ll take a look at Matt’s computer. Try to see what he’s downloaded recently. Go back over his e-mails, websites he’s visited.”

“Hey, Miss Pruitt,” Billy said, “I just thought of something. Matt probably has his laptop with him. He used to take it to class so he could write programs when he got bored.”

“It wasn’t in his room this afternoon,” Cole said, the realization snapping him back to attention. “Remember, Billy? You mentioned that it had the most recent copy of his term paper.”

“Yeah, that’s right!” The boy’s face broke into the first grin Cole had seen in hours. “If Matt’s got his laptop, we can e-mail him!”

“Okay, I’ll take you to the house, Miss Pruitt. Billy, you can go on home, and I’ll call you if—”

“No way, Mr. Strong! I’m not going home until we find the Mattman. I’m with you guys.”

“Billy, there’s no point. Go do your homework.”

“You think you can just run me off, Mr. Strong?” Billy stepped closer, his chest swelling with bluster. “I know more about Matt than you or Miss Pruitt. I know what he’s thinking, where he likes to go, what he wants to do. And I know what he believes in, too. His mind works weird, and nobody can figure him out any better than me.”

“Yes, but, Billy, you’re a boy. You don’t need to get involved in this. I’m not happy you even know about this suicide thing—”

“I’m sixteen, Mr. Strong! I’m not a kid. I can drive, and I have a job lined up for this summer. I’ve already taken the ACT twice, and—”

“Billy, do you know Matt’s e-mail password?” Jill Pruitt’s hand rested on the boy’s arm now.

“Yeah, but I’m not telling.” He glared at Cole.

“I do think Billy could help us. He’s been Matt’s rudder since childhood.”

Cole looked from one to the other. He nodded. “All right.”

The teacher gave orders. “Call your folks and let them know where you’ll be, Billy. We’ll see you at Matt’s house.”

“Okay, Miss Pruitt.” Billy gave Cole a last resentful glance. “I’ll be there.”

As Billy stalked away, Cole opened the passenger-side door for the teacher. She climbed in and immediately took a cell phone from the bag of school papers and books she had brought along. As he started the car, she began to talk. Even her voice was peppy, as though perpetually on the verge of a laugh.

“Marianne, hey, it’s me! I’m out with Mr. Strong—Matt’s dad.” She paused. “Not out with him. We’re looking for Matt. You know those two recruiters who showed up at your class today to talk to him? Did they take him somewhere?”

She covered the phone and whispered across the front seat. “Marianne says they had gotten a pass at the office, and she assumed they were going to sign him out for an hour or so and take him somewhere to talk.”

As Cole drove back down the bumpy road, he passed a couple of deputies’ vehicles and the county coroner’s car, all heading toward the Banyon place. His fears for Matt were growing by leaps and bounds. Where would the boy go? Matt always came home from school, got to his homework immediately, and then stared at his computer or watched TV. Once in a blue moon, he mowed the grass or took a fishing pole down to the reservoir. Most afternoons, Billy dropped by and ate half the contents of the refrigerator while hanging out with his best friend.

“Okay, call the school secretary, would you?” Miss Pruitt said into the phone. “See if she’ll run over to the admin building and get those names off the log for us. I know it’s a pain, but we’re really concerned.” She paused, then glanced at Cole. “What…? No way. Please, Marianne. Give it a rest. Bye.”

“Give what a rest?” Cole asked.

“She thinks I should date.”

It took a moment for the meaning of her words to penetrate the fog of concern for his son. “Date me? Tell her I’m getting married in November. Which reminds me—can I use your phone? Is it all right if I call Albuquerque? I’ll keep it short.”

“Sure.”

As he drove, he punched out Penny’s number. How odd that he knew his fiancée’s phone number but not his son’s. Disturbed, he listened as it rang.

“Hi, it’s Penny,” she said brightly.

“This is Cole.”

“Cole! Hi, sweetie. I was just thinking about you. What’s going on at the Ponderosa?”

He grimaced at Penny’s name for his ranch. “Listen, this is about Matt. He didn’t come home from school today.”

“You’re kidding! Wow—I never knew he had a social life.” She giggled. “So who’s the lucky girl that snagged him?”

Unnerved at the lightness of her voice, Cole wondered for the thousandth time whether he was doing the right thing in planning a future with Penny. A successful big-city attorney, she nevertheless seemed to enjoy his ranch and the quiet lifestyle there. Cole had long missed the companionship of being married, and there was no question that Penny was pretty and intelligent. But most of all, he had hoped a wife would help bridge the ever-widening gap between himself and his son before he lost touch with the boy completely.

“It’s not a girlfriend,” he told her. “We don’t know where Matt is. See, he was working on a term paper, and he’d gotten friendly with a rancher out here at Hope.”

“Hey, hang on a sec, can you? My microwave just dinged!”

He let out a breath as the phone fell silent.

“She thinks Matt has a girlfriend?” Miss Pruitt asked. “How well does she know him?”

“Pretty well. She’s been down here a few times.” He knew he sounded defensive, but his own doubts were nagging him.

“I’m back! Popcorn,” Penny said. “So what were you saying? Was this one of Matt’s obsessive things? This term paper?”

“I guess you could call it that. Anyway, we went out to the rancher’s house, and the sheriff was there. Looks like he killed himself.”

“Killed himself? Was he a friend of yours? What does this have to do with Matt?”

“We’re not sure. I knew the fellow, but—”

“Who’s we? ”

“His computer teacher is with me…uh, Miss Pruitt.”

“Jill,” she whispered.

“I’m sure Matt’s fine, Cole,” Penny said. “He’s probably at home waiting for you.”

“No, Josefina would have called. We gave her the cell number.”

“Cole, have you called the police? This is what they do. If you haven’t, go home and call them.”

“I’m going home.” He pulled off the main road into the drive that led to his house. “Miss Pruitt is planning to check Matt’s computer. I’ll call you when we find him.”

“Okay. Call tonight, honey. I’m so worried.”

“Penny, there’s one more thing.” He steered the car up to the front of the house and parked. “If we don’t find Matt in a few hours, I’m going looking for him.”

“Looking where?”

“If he’s scared enough, he may try to drive to my mom’s house in Amarillo.”

“Cole, don’t do this! You need to stay put and let the police find him. You need to be at your house when he comes back—not halfway to Texas. Please, listen to me. You have a ranch to run, and Matt is probably fine. I’m sure he’s just off on one of his tangents.”

“Yeah, maybe.” Cole climbed out of the car. “I’ll call you later.”

Josefina was running out of the house and across the front porch. She waved a cell phone in one hand. “Oh, Mr. Strong! Did you find him?” Josefina was crying. “You didn’t call me! Did you find my baby boy? Ai, mi bebe! ”

“We haven’t found him.” Cole took her shoulders. “Have you searched the whole house?”

“Everyplace, Mr. Strong. He’s not here. I think he’s in a wreck. You should have got him new tires, Mr. Strong. I told you that. He’s had a blowout, and he doesn’t even have an air bag!”

“Calm down, Josefina. I want you to stop and think of all the places where Matt might—”

The phone in her hand rang, cutting off his words.

Cole grabbed it and pressed the button. “Cole Strong.”

“Hey, Cole, this is Sheriff Holtmeyer,” the voice said. “Listen, we may have a lead on your boy. My deputy was searching the grounds, and he found a cell phone with Matt’s name engraved on it in a stand of cottonwoods near the house. It looks like there was a struggle in the living room. And the blood spatters on the couch—let’s just say I’m a little concerned about our suicide theory. We’ve got tire marks, and we’ll be dusting the gun for fingerprints. Cole…you need to let me know if Matt turns up at your place. We’d sure like to ask him some questions.”

THREE

V ince Grant swirled the last of his martini and studied the olive that remained in the bottom of his glass. Cheryl had gone to bed hours ago, her Valium performing admirably, as usual.

Vince didn’t mind the silence. His wife’s presence keyed him up—the thousand questions she threw at him the moment he walked in the door each evening. Can I buy this piece of furniture? Are you planning to go to that gala? What do you think of my dress, my hair, my eyes, my jewelry, my latest chemical peel? Frankly, he didn’t know the answers to any of her questions, and he didn’t care. But they’d been married forever, it seemed, and so he tried.

He’d been a good husband, all in all. Cheryl had everything she could want or need. Their kids had been educated in the best private schools Chicago had to offer. The eight-thousand-square-foot house sprawled over some of the most exclusive real estate in the city. An indoor-outdoor swimming pool, membership at three country clubs, a regular pew in a dignified church, seven cars, a chauffeur—it was nothing to sniff at. Maybe Vince hadn’t always been faithful to Cheryl, but he’d done his job as a provider. Better than most, he reasoned.

He didn’t like the idea of anything rocking his boat. Had never tolerated trouble of the sort that dogged him now. Oh, through the years there had been the occasional stirring of the waters. An accountant who had threatened to blow the whistle, transportation snafus, problems with one or another of Agrimax’s international divisions, the terrorism threat. Things had grown hotter than usual since the press got wind of the new terminator gene being developed. Vince felt sure he had that under control. But this—the retired scientist and his teenage sidekick—this was making him nervous.

Seemingly nothing more than a fly in the ointment, the problem should be dealt with swiftly and decisively by Agrimax’s security division. It had to be. The meeting to finalize the merger was less than two weeks away. But if…if for some reason his people lost track of the data…if it got into the wrong hands…if his executive board learned of the unsavory aspects of the plan he had put into motion more than two years before, and right under their noses—Worst of all, if word of the merger leaked to the media, the public outcry would scuttle the whole scheme.

Vince removed the olive from his martini glass. Tomorrow was Friday, and he’d need to be at the office early. He tipped his glass and drained the last of the drink. Then he stared at his phone. Why hadn’t Mack Harwood called? This should all be taken care of by now. Everything under lock and key once again. He slipped the olive from its toothpick and squeezed the pimento onto his tongue. Then he dropped the olive into his mouth and chewed it.

He wouldn’t sleep until he’d heard from his security man. Better make himself another martini.

Cole switched off the cell phone. The three faces staring at him were etched with fear.

“What did the sheriff say, Mr. Strong?” Billy asked.

Cole knew there was no point in trying to keep anything under wraps. The Artesia Daily Press would have the story by morning. The Albuquerque Journal would print it statewide. It would probably headline the evening’s TV news.

“A deputy found Matt’s phone in Jim Banyon’s yard,” he said. “They’ve got tire marks and a weapon, and they’re dusting for fingerprints inside the house.”

“They can’t possibly think Matt had anything to do with the death,” Jill Pruitt said. “That’s absurd.”

Cole studied the petite teacher with her bouncy, shoulder-length blond curls and bright green eyes. She was the most tightly wound woman he’d ever met.

“Sheriff Holtmeyer is suspicious,” he told her. “There was sign of a struggle in Banyon’s house. And the blood spatters…something doesn’t look right to him. He’s not sure it was a suicide.”

“Matt did not kill Mr. Banyon,” Billy said. “There’s no possible way! Matt was like Mr. Peace Activist. He wouldn’t even touch a gun. I couldn’t get him to go hunting with me or nothing!”

“Es verdad,” Josefina echoed. “It’s true. He wouldn’t even kill a cockroach.”

“We’ve got to find out who those two men were,” Jill said. “They’re involved in this somehow.”

“I bet they’re from Agrimax!” Billy exploded. “I’d like to blow that company to smithereens!”

“Calm down, boy,” Cole said. “Anger isn’t going to do us any good. Miss Pruitt, find out what you can about—”

“Call me Jill, for goodness’ sake. And I’m already doing all I can. Marianne will phone me the minute she hears from the high school secretary.”

“That’s not good enough. Somebody took my son out of school today. I want to know who those men are—and I’d better find out which numskull is responsible for sending a sixteen-year-old kid off campus with a couple of total strangers.”

“I’m telling you, if two suits signed in as Princeton recruiters and asked to talk to a top student, they’d get into the building with no problem. It’s not like we check credentials or take a thumbprint or anything.”

She crossed her arms and glared at Cole as if daring him to respond.

“Well, maybe you should,” he said. “Maybe I’ll talk to the principal about the flaws in his security system. And while I’m at it, maybe I’ll mention the fact that instead of teaching computer science, one of his teachers spends class time filling her students’ heads with idealistic tripe about feeding the hungry.”

“The principal knows exactly what goes on in my classroom, Mr. Strong. My teaching evaluations are always among the highest—”

“I’m sure they are, Miss Pruitt. I’m sure everyone thinks you’re just the cat’s pajamas. But you carry the major responsibility in this fiasco, and I’ll nail your hide to my barn if I don’t find my son pretty soon.”

“Mr. Strong—” she set her hands on her hips “—you’re the one who just told Billy that anger isn’t going to do us any good. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to check Matt’s computer.”

“You do that, lady. And make it snappy.”

Jill glared at him.

Before she could speak again, Billy grabbed her arm. “C’mon, Miss Pruitt. Maybe Matt will answer an e-mail.”

“Show me what you know, Billy.”

Rage curling through his chest, Cole followed the others into the large adobe house. As they stepped into the living room, Jill and Billy turned down the hall to Matt’s bedroom. Cole dropped onto a leather-upholstered couch.

“I need to let my mother know what’s going on,” he told Josefina. “Matt may be headed toward Amarillo.”

“Yes,” she said, dabbing her eyes. “That’s where he would go, Mr. Strong. He would go to his abuela. She loves him. She would take care of him if he was in trouble.”

“I don’t know if that pickup could make it all the way there,” he muttered, listening to the phone ring in his mother’s house. “The thing’s on its last leg.”

“I’ll fix you something to eat, Mr. Strong,” Josefina said. “I made carne adovada today. Does that sound good?”

“Sure, sure.” Cole waved a hand to dismiss the little woman. Why did Josefina always think food would fix things? If Matt brought home a B on a report card, out came the empanadas. If a hailstorm damaged the chile crop, nothing would please her until Cole ate a huge plate of enchiladas and refritos. National tragedies were the worst. The attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center had led to three solid weeks of constant cooking. If Cole hadn’t ordered Josefina to cease and desist, she would have kept on indefinitely. The freezer stayed jam-packed, and the refrigerator was always bulging at the seams. Thank God for Billy Younger and his appetite.

“Geneva Strong speaking,” a woman’s voice carried through the receiver.

“Mom.” Cole felt a flood of warmth at the familiar greeting.

“Hey there, boy. What’s going on with you? How’s my little Matthew?”

“That’s what I’m calling about. Listen, Matt may be coming to see you, Mom.” Before she could respond, he quickly explained the situation. “So if he doesn’t turn up here at the house in the next hour or so, I’m going to drive to Hobbs and then on toward Amarillo. I’m concerned he may have broken down on the road somewhere.”

“Are you telling me these people think our Matthew may have killed somebody? Are they out of their—”

“Mom, you know and I know that Matt would never harm anyone. Just keep an eye out for him. If he makes it that far, he’ll be tired and hungry—and scared.”

“I’ll look after him. You know that. And if those fools get within fifty feet of my house, I’ll give ’em what-for, and you’d better believe it.”

“Call the minute you hear from Matt. I’ll have my cell phone.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll call you. And I’ll be waiting up for Matthew. In fact, I’m going to go put on the coffee now—”

“Mom, he won’t make it to your house until early tomorrow morning.”

“Well, he might call! Now stay calm, son. We can handle this. I’m going to phone Irene next door. She’ll come over and sit up with me. We’ll play Skip-Bo.”

Cole let out a breath as he said goodbye and put down the phone. Though Geneva Strong could be a handful, he almost wished his mother hadn’t moved back to her childhood hometown in Texas. But Cole had been happily married at the time. With a combination of endless hours and back-breaking work, he had rescued the family ranch from the brink of bankruptcy. His degree in agriculture had prepared him to use innovative technology and aggressive marketing strategies, and he held dreams of making the ranch a model of profitability. Though Matt had been a difficult baby, he also was the source of great joy, and Cole had been hoping the boy would have siblings soon. No one had expected Anna to be diagnosed with cancer.

Wondering if his wife’s death had erased any natural tenderness he’d ever had, Cole again thought of Matt and all the lonely years his son had spent on this ranch. The aloneness had consumed both of them—so much that they no longer really knew each other. Jill Pruitt, Billy, Josefina, and now Geneva had been quick to deny that Matt could be capable of murder. Why didn’t Cole feel that certainty? Why didn’t he know his son well enough to be sure?

To him, Matt was distant, odd, almost alien. The things boys were supposed to enjoy didn’t interest him—fishing, hunting, horseback riding on the ranch, sports, cars, girls. Actually, Cole didn’t know whether Matt was interested in girls yet. They’d never spoken about it. Instead of acting like an average kid, Matt focused on his strange fascinations—math and science mostly. He hadn’t wanted a dog. No, he’d bought a mouse and trained it to run through mazes and perform tricks.

Once, Cole had found Matt high in a tree, where he was building a tree house. Wonderful and normal. But the tree house had turned out to be a platform for Matt’s telescope. The boy was calculating the height of the tree and the distance from his branch to the ground and whether this would make any difference in his ability to observe the stars. At the time, he was seven years old.

Cole stood and stretched the taut muscles in his shoulders. Penny had discouraged him from setting out after Matt. Maybe she was right. He didn’t really know where his son might have gone. And the sheriff would put out an all-points bulletin. They probably would locate him in an hour or so.

But the thought of a highway patrolman handcuffing Matt and shoving him into the back of a police car sent a shudder through Cole. His son was just a boy, after all. Barely sixteen, and so naive about the world. There was no telling how he’d react to an accusation of murder.

“We used Miss Pruitt’s account and sent Matt an e-mail,” Billy announced, stepping into the living room. “You should see what she’s doing on the computer. She’s getting into all Matt’s files and stuff. It’s awesome! Hey, what’s that I smell? Is Josefina cooking?”

“Carne adovada. In the kitchen.”

Billy veered in that direction, and Cole grinned in spite of himself. He went down the hall and found Jill Pruitt seated at Matt’s desk.

She came across as a bundle of compressed energy in a turquoise skirt and a sleeveless white top. Though she couldn’t be forty yet, he figured she ought to be married by now. She was pretty enough, in a frizzy sort of way. He wondered if teaching and famine relief kept her too busy to be interested in marriage. Or was there something else?

“Billy says you sent Matt an e-mail,” he said.

“And I’m going through all this data he downloaded,” she replied without looking up. Her slender fingers sped across the keyboard.

“What was he copying?”

“Lots of things. The amount of information he compiled on the food industry is incredible. By the way, you’ll be happy to know your son is not into pornography. I can’t find anything suspicious here at all. The gaming sites are weird, of course, all those mythological characters and fantasy worlds.”

“I’ve watched Matt and Billy play.”

“It’s a lot of strategy—I think that’s what appeals to Matt. The RPGs are a concern, but—”

“Wait. RPGs?”

“Role-playing games.” She glanced at him for the first time. “Do you know anything about your son, Mr. Strong?”

His hackles rose. Add abrasive to the list of Miss Pruitt’s attributes. “I know Matt is impressionable,” he shot back. “I know he’s susceptible to the influence of people he admires.”

“Look, I’m aware you want to blame me for his disappearance, but it’s not going to work. Matt’s interest in famine relief was his own.”

“Is that so?” Cole put one hand on the back of her chair, bent down, and tried to read the computer screen over her shoulder. How could anyone who smelled so good be so testy? She was like a rattlesnake hiding in a lilac bush.

“Didn’t you tell my son about your little famine-relief jaunts around the world?”

“Of course I did. I talk about a lot of things in my class.”

“I thought the subject was computer science.”

“If a person has tunnel vision, Mr. Strong,” she said, peering at him with those glittering emerald eyes, “then maybe he or she can only do one thing at a time. Some people let their jobs become their lives. They don’t leave time for family or hobbies…or volunteering…or ministry. I strive for a full, balanced life. And my enthusiasm for it spills over into my job.”

He stared back at her. “Some people don’t have a job that demands constant vigilance—twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, and no weekends or summers free to flit around having a full, balanced life.”

“Yeah, well, some people have children, and they ought to—”

“They ought to stop listening to people who don’t.” He reached over her shoulder and touched the computer screen. “Who are all these messages from?”

As she swung around, her curls fluffed out, grazing the hair on his arm. A jolt of adrenaline raced up his skin, shocking him in its intensity. Irked at this as much as at her words, Cole straightened and jammed his hands into his pockets. Miss Jill Pruitt was a stuck-up little do-gooder who thought she knew how to parent Matt better than his own father did.

“I think it’s them,” she said. “Look at this stuff they’ve written to him. This is appalling. Poor kid!”

Drawing a deep breath, Cole bent over again and read the message Jill had pulled up on the screen. Whoever wrote it had every intention of intimidating and threatening Matt. The writer informed him that he was in violation of privacy laws and that he had better stay out of the company’s business if he knew what was good for him.

Jill closed that message and opened another. More of the same. As she clicked chronologically backward through the long list, Cole saw that the tone of the e-mails had gone from fairly polite to downright hostile. Now she opened another window and found the messages Matt had sent.

“Bingo!” she called out. “It’s Agrimax, all right. This is who he’s been writing to, see? In this message he’s trying to get information. And in this one he’s broaching his concept—that Agrimax participate in a global plan to end hunger. I wish we could find that plan.”

“It’s probably in his term paper.”

“No, Billy and I found a rough draft. It mostly addresses the problem of famine. But his solution—that’s what Matt was really immersed in. That’s what got him into trouble with Agrimax.”

“Maybe it wasn’t his solution that troubled them. Maybe what burned them was the fact that he’d gotten into their system at all. Obviously, they didn’t want him in there.”

She gave him a grudging nod. “Could be. He clearly wasn’t e-mailing their PR department. This person who’s been writing to him has influence. An executive, I think. Matt had gotten further inside the company somehow.”

“Can you tell me why you taught him that?” Cole demanded. “What purpose does it serve? He didn’t need to learn how to break into a huge company’s computer system.”

“First of all, I don’t teach hacking. Whatever code Matt used to penetrate this level of the company is something he learned from Jim Banyon. Or maybe he taught himself how to get inside their communication network. He’s quite intelligent, in case you didn’t know.”

“Too smart for his own good, it sounds like.”

“And second, he hasn’t actually accessed the company’s mainframe. I doubt Matt would do something like that. He’s a very ethical young man.”

“Oh, really? I wonder where he got that?”

She shrugged one shoulder. “All right, I guess you haven’t totally blown it, Mr. Strong. Matt is a great kid.”

Cole wished he could feel better about her compliment. True, he had taken the boy to church every Sunday of his life. They prayed before meals. And Cole had tried to model morality, patriotism and the ideal of the hardworking American male. But how much had he influenced his son in ways that really mattered?

“Okay,” Jill said. “I’m going to take a stab at this. I think what happened is that Agrimax felt threatened by Matt, and they sent two men out here to question him.”

“Matt—threatening? No way.” Cole hooked a thumb in his pocket. “You don’t know my son as well as you claim.”

“I know he was pushing the company to consider his ideas. That’s obvious from the text of his messages.”

“Pushing is not threatening. Does Matt write anything that could be called the least bit threatening to the company?”

“I didn’t read everything.”

“What are you waiting for?”

“Okay, but—”

“Hey, Miss Pruitt, did Matt write you back?” Billy stepped into the room. He had a bowl of thick, red-chile carne adovada in one hand and a spoon in the other. “Did you check?”

“Just a sec. I’ll have to access my account.” Jill leaned forward and ran through a series of motions Cole couldn’t track. In a moment, a message popped onto the screen. “He answered!”

Hope spiraled up through Cole’s chest as he bent to read his son’s words.

hi miss pruitt im ok dont write again tell my dad dont follow me i will be home when its safe matt

“He’s in trouble, man,” Billy said. “He’s scared. He thinks those Agrimax guys are after him.”

“Does the fact that he wrote us mean he’s somewhere with a phone line?” Cole asked.

“Matt’s laptop has a wireless modem,” Billy said. “You paid for it, Mr. Strong, don’t you remember?”

“I don’t know what half the stuff he orders is all about.”

“A wireless modem works like a regular phone connection,” Jill explained. “Matt can use the Internet or access his e-mail account without needing a phone line.”

Cole considered this. “Still, maybe he stopped at a motel for the night. Or maybe he’s at a friend’s house.”

“A friend? He doesn’t have any friends but me, Mr. Strong. You know that.”

“Billy,” Cole said, “is there any place Matt would go other than his grandmother’s house? Somewhere he’d feel safe?”

“There’s places around here where he likes to hang out, you know? Like he spends a lot of time at the cemetery—”

“The cemetery?”

“He goes over there before school and visits his mom’s grave. I think he talks to her, but he won’t admit it. And he comes over to my place once in a while, but my parents are like—whew. It’s bad over there, so we usually come out here to chill. He likes the library, and he likes talking to Miss Pruitt, but he wouldn’t go anyplace around this town to hide, Mr. Strong. Not if he’s afraid.”

“He does sound scared in that message.”

“You know what I think? I think those Agrimax guys might have killed Mr. Banyon, and Matt saw what they did, and now they’re after him. I think that’s why he took off and doesn’t want us to follow him. He thinks we’d be in danger if we got near him.”

“You may be right, Billy.” Cole studied the computer screen, and then he straightened. “I’m going after him.”

“I’ll go with you, Mr. Strong.”

“No, you won’t. Get on home, and I’ll call you if—”

“No, sir! I’m going after Matt. You don’t understand the Mattman like I do. He’s not good at stuff, you know? Regular life is what I mean. Common sense. He doesn’t know how to talk to people or do normal junk.”

“Now what’s that supposed to mean?”

“I mean he needs me, Mr. Strong. If he was blind, I’d be like his seeing-eye dog. I get him through. I help him. I’ve been doing it since forever, okay?”

“I know you’re his best friend, Billy. But you can’t go out on the road with me. Tomorrow’s Friday. You’ve got school—”

“You don’t get it, Mr. Strong. Matt needs me. I gotta go find him!”

“No, Billy, I’m not taking you, and I won’t change my mind on this.”

“You don’t ever bend, do you? You’re just like Matt said—like an old dead stump stuck out in the middle of a dry lake, good for nothing. He said there’s not a single soft place on you, Mr. Strong. Not inside or out. You’re just hard and dead and cold. Well, I’m not like that. Not now, not ever. And if somebody needs me, I’m there. I’m totally there. Do you get that? Do you get it?”

“I get it, Billy. Now, go home.”

“I’m already gone.” He glanced at his teacher. “Later, Miss Pruitt.”

“Later, Billy.” As the boy stalked out of the room, she pushed back the chair and stood. “It wouldn’t kill you to take him along.”

“I don’t need another sixteen-year-old on my hands. But I do need somebody who can work a computer. I’ll get you back by Sunday night at the latest.”

“Me?” She laughed. “Are you kidding? I’m not going anywhere except home. I’ve got a dog to walk, tests to grade, and a full day of classes to teach tomorrow.”

“Yeah, and I’ve got a missing son who just made contact for the first time since he vanished. Now unplug the computer, and let’s go.”

“Are you crazy?”

“No,” he said. “I’m an old dead stump in a dry lake bed, and the only thing around me that’s got any life has disappeared. I’m going to find him, and I expect you to come along.”

“If you understood computers, Mr. Strong, you’d realize—”

“But I don’t. I understand cattle. I understand hay. I know how to make a ranch productive enough to help feed all those hungry people you care about. But I don’t know how to run a computer, and you do. So I’m telling you to pack that thing up, and come with me to find my son.”

“I could stay home and check the messages. If Matt e-mails me, then I could call you.”

“Miss Pruitt.” Cole set both hands on her shoulders and stared into her eyes. “I don’t know how to make this any plainer. I’m going to find my son, and you’re going to come with me. Bring the computer. Stay in contact with Matt, and tell him what I say. And go through that machine with a fine-tooth comb. Read every past e-mail he got or sent. Read all his reports, all his research, everything. If there’s anything else on the computer I need to know, tell me. We’ll find my son, and then I’ll take you home. Is that clear?”

Her chin stiffened. “I will not do this, Mr. Strong.”

“You will do it, because you’re the one who caused all this. You put the bug in his ear about famine relief. You fired him up about all the hungry people in the world, and your big mission trips, and your famine-relief projects. And you taught him every technological thing he needed to know to dig himself into this deep hole. So you’re coming with me, and you’re going to do your dead-level best to stay in touch with my son and help me find him. Do you understand now? ”

Her nostrils flared as she glared at him. For a moment, he thought she was going to buck him again. But he knew if she did, he’d toss the little fireball over his shoulder, throw her in the truck and make her go with him anyway.

“I will need to make arrangements for my classes,” she said through tightened lips. “And perhaps I could be allowed to pack a few things?”

“I’ll take you to your house.”

“My car is at the school.”

“You won’t need it.” He took her arm. “Let’s go.”

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