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
