Dorothy said to us, “Go back to the workshop and shut yourselves in. If these men mean trouble, stay in there until I give you an all-clear.”
Martin and I moved quickly back to the basement, but Alison lingered, peering at the street through a crack in the living room curtains. The switch to close the secret entrance was under the worktable. Martin had his finger on it, but waited in a sweaty silence, hoping Alison would come. At the last minute, as the men began hammering on the front door, she ran down the basement steps to join us.
Martin pressed the switch. We watched the sides of the wall slowly move. The edges came together with a series of bumps, and then a click locked them into place.
I turned to the monitor on the worktable and saw that the men on the porch were Moe and Curly. “Homeland Security,” I muttered.
“See?” Alison hissed. “My father is not tracking you!”
I was trying not to panic, but I didn’t think I could take being sealed in a basement two days in a row. “Martin, is there another way out?”
“At that far wall, under Martina’s telescope platform.”
Through the mike Martin had embedded in the front door, we heard Dorothy’s gruff voice, demanding to know the men’s business. We watched Moe and Curly whip out their federal credentials. Dorothy said they could talk to her from the front porch, she didn’t let strange men into her house no matter how many badges they flashed at her.
“That Mustang parked out front belongs to a woman who is wanted by the Chicago police, and we have reason to believe you’re harboring another fugitive,” Moe said.
“We can open this door without any trouble,” Curly put in. “We’re giving you a chance to cooperate in an investigation that involves our national security.”
“You watch too many cop shows, young man, if you think that kind of talk impresses me.”
While they were talking, I saw another car pull up behind the SUV. We couldn’t see the driver as he got out of the car, but we watched him bend over to pull a large, oddly shaped bundle out of the backseat. As he came up the walk, I thought at first he was carrying a mannequin, but when he got closer to the house I could see he was holding a woman, a skinny scarecrow of a woman with wild graying curls, her bare legs little more than flesh-covered sticks.
“That’s my mother!” Martin was shocked. “What—how—?”
“With Durdon?” Alison whispered.
Their arrival was also a surprise to Moe and Curly, who stopped haranguing Dorothy to look at them.
“Who the hell—oh. It’s the guy from Metargon,” Curly said. “What are you doing here?”
Durdon set Judy down on the stairs, where she fell against the stair rail. “We’ve come for the kid and the documents.”
“This is a federal investigation into a matter that may involve international terrorism,” Moe said.
“Yeah, we know. It was Mr. Breen who told you we might have a rogue programmer selling defense secrets overseas,” Durdon said. “We’ve kept an eye on your investigation. I followed you out here to bring back the proprietary secrets the Binder punk stole from Metargon.”
“Who’s the skeleton?” Moe pointed a toe in Judy’s direction.
Durdon flashed an ugly smile. “Our boy genius’s mother. We’ll let her go if he turns himself in.” He elbowed past the federal agents to face Dorothy through the screen door. “You want to go give young Binder that message? We know you’ve got him here.”
“You don’t know much, then, do you? You got what looks like a real sick lady with you. She needs to be with a doctor; we’ll call an ambulance for her.”
Durdon pulled on the screen door so hard he yanked it from its hinges. We heard a loud cry from Dorothy, and a thud, as if she’d fallen, but we lost sight of the men once they moved through the door and out of the camera’s eye. Moe ordered Curly to keep Dorothy from calling for help, but then moved out of mike range. We could hear feet pounding overhead, Durdon and a Homeland guy ripping their way through the small house.
Martin started to push the button to release the workshop entrance but I pulled his arm away. “I’ll take care of your mother. You have one chance to get yourself and Alison away; go, now, before they find this room!”
I ran to the back wall where I saw a staircase tucked into the ceiling. I tugged on a handle. The stairs came down with a great screeching. A pot filled with geraniums also came down, almost hitting my head: the stairs acted as a trapdoor up to the platform.
I thrust the Mustang keys into Martin’s hand and dragged him to the stairs. “Get out of here now! Alison Breen, show some steel. Get to your feet, get going. Martin needs your help to find his way out of Tinney. I’ll get Judy to a hospital.”
Someone began pounding on the workshop’s outer wall. A gunshot sounded and then another. The wall shook, but didn’t open.
“Just go!” I screamed.