Challenge Read Free Page A

me. Why are you lying?”
    Her impassive face broke, and she looked clearly uncomfortable. She glanced around the busy platform.
    He repeated, “I saw you. I am not making a mistake. I don’t make this kind of mistake.”
    “Well, you have made one now. You will miss the train,” she said. “Thank you for trying to help me, but honestly, it is not mine.” She delivered this with such overbearing, angry determination that he didn’t challenge her. Never mind that she was flat-out lying.
    “Whatever,” he said.
    “Good luck at the challenge,” she said. She answered his puzzled expression by pointing to his sweatshirt. It bore the logo for the National Science Challenge, Washington, D.C., and the dates June 6–8.
    “Oh, yeah,” he said. She’d made her point: he wasn’t the only attentive one.
    “Good-bye.” She said this in a definitive, final way. No room for discussion. She turned and hurried away.
    Steel reentered the train car lost in thought. He absolutely knew what he’d seen. Wasn’t going to hear otherwise. So why had she lied?
    He was about to return the briefcase to the overhead rack when he spotted his mother standing by their seats, nearly shaking from anger.
    He walked down the aisle, past passengers readying for the trip, and joined her.
    “Explain yourself, young man.”
    When she was mad at him—really mad, like this—she scared him. He knew at these times he held no power over her, and that scared him even more.
    He explained himself. What had started out as a good deed had ended in a confused muddle. His mother knew to trust his visual memory. She didn’t question for a moment if he was sure what he’d seen. She’d lived with him for fourteen years.
    “Well,” she said, “I can hardly be mad at you for attempting to do a good deed, now can I?” She glanced up the aisle.
    “I think we should mention it to a conductor. Unattended bags…it’s no different from an airport.”
    “It’s not like she’s a terrorist or something.”
    “Just the same, he’ll know what to do. We’ll mention it to the conductor,” she said.
    And that was that.

2.
    Natalie Shufman reached Union Station’s great hall and looked around for her handler. She bristled at the idea of being babysat, but that was how these people did things. They took extreme care to isolate one thing from another, one person from another. She could pretty much guess who the briefcase was intended for, but she would never be told. If any one of them were arrested or taken into custody, he or she would have so little of the big picture as to be useless to authorities.
    Sounds of track announcements echoed off the high ceiling. People milled about. Spotting him at last—recognizing the intense though common enough face beneath short-cropped hair—she headed over to him. At twenty-eight, he was slightly older than she was, and she feared him, for he was no one to mess with. None of these people were. Had they not rescued her from her stupidity—the possibility of a drug charge they still held over her—she wouldn’t have been a part of any of this. But here she was, and there was no undoing it.
    “So?” he said.
    “I should have just given it straight to our guy.”
    “It’s not how it works. No one is to see his face. It went okay?”
    “Why is he doing this, anyway?” she asked, inferring she already knew who was the intended recipient. “Why would a guy as high up as he is play the part of a lowly courier? It doesn’t make sense.”
    “We don’t question something like that.” It was a stern warning, but she didn’t take it to heart.
    “It has to be something hugely important or hugely valuable. What do you suppose it is?”
    “I asked you if it went okay,” he said pointedly.
    She considered not telling him, but he might have been watching—this could be some sort of test.
    “There was a boy.”
    He glanced at her, and she felt his intensity.
    She said, “He saw me leave the briefcase and he came