"Drop dead." She pulled out her pad and started to tap something into it. No doubt she was about to text her friends--all 78,906 of them--and tell them her tale of woe.
Dad saw this. "Melissa...no, you can't do that." Before she could object, he reached forward and took the pad from her. "I'm sorry, but this is something you can't talk about."
She squawked about this, but he wasn't listening to her. He took the pad into the house and returned a moment later without it. Melissa could always buy another one from the next vending machine she saw, of course, but as my father closed the back door and used his remote to lock it, I realized again that secrecy was something he was taking very seriously.
Dad slammed shut the van's side hatch and rear gate, then climbed into the driver's seat. He thumbed the ignition; the engine beeped twice, but he didn't switch on the headlights. Instead, he placed his hands on the wheel and slowly pulled forward, moving down our short driveway to the street so unobtrusively that even the neighbor's cat couldn't have been awakened.
But when he turned right and drove past our house, I noticed that he'd left the bedroom lights on. That wasn't like him...unless he was deliberately trying to give the impression that we were still home. And it wasn't until we were away from the house that he finally switched on the headlights.
"Okay," Melissa said, "I've had it. I've really had it. I want to know..."
"Be quiet, MeeMee, and listen to me." Dad glanced back in my direction. "You, too, Jamey. This is important, and I only want to say it once." He paused, taking a deep breath as he slowly drove through our darkened neighborhood. "I know this is unexpected, and I know you'd rather still be in bed. If there was any other way..."
He stopped himself, then went on. "Something has come up, and you've got to leave. Not tomorrow, but now...right now. So I can't have any arguments or disagreements from anyone. I just need for you to do what I say, with no ifs or buts about it. Understand?"
Jan nodded, even through his words weren't meant for her. Melissa opened her mouth to protest, but then she caught Dad staring at her through the rear-view mirror. Apparently she realized that this was a bad time to be hard-to-please MeeMee, because she sulkily folded her arms across her chest and nodded.
"I understand," I said, "but...why won't you tell us what's going on?"
My father didn't respond, but Jan did. "Trust me, mon petit frere...the less you know, the safer you'll be."
That's when I began to get scared.
Burtonsville, the town where we lived, is just north of Washington, DC, about a quarter of the way to Baltimore. Dad got on I-95 just outside of town and headed south. This was the route he normally commuted to his job at the International Space Consortium's American headquarters in DC. He went to hover mode and retracted the wheels, but he didn't switch to auto. Instead, he kept his hands on the steering wheel, carefully watching the dashboard display so that he kept within the 80 mph speed limit. That wasn't legal; cars on the interstate were required to be navigated by the local traffic control system unless there was an emergency.
Melissa noticed this, too. "You're going to get pulled over," she said, smug in her knowledge that our father was breaking the law.
"No, I'm not," Dad replied, not looking back at her. "I removed the GPS and traffic control chips before we left and put in ringers instead. So far as anyone is concerned, we're still parked in the driveway." He pointed to the traffic scanners we passed every hundred yards. "When they tag us, the phony chips identify us as another car and tell the system we're on auto. So long as I maintain a constant speed and don't make any strange moves..."
"It'll think we're someone else and won't be able to track us," I finished. "But why...?"
Jan gave me one of her looks--no questions, Jamey--and I shut up. At least I knew what my father had been doing when I caught him beneath the dashboard. And I had little doubt as to where he'd been able to lay his hands on outlaw tech like this; ISC was full of guys who could make ringers in their basement workshops. But Dad had always been the law-abiding type. Why would he do something like