The Lost Brother Read online

  Left to the Wild

  The bear behind me let out a terrifying roar. The sound echoed through the forest.

  Then something answered:

  AROOOOOOOO!

  “Wolves!” I blurted out in disbelief.

  No way. Like being chased by a bloodthirsty bear wasn’t bad enough?

  But there it was again. The bone-chilling howl.

  #1 Extreme Danger

  #2 Running on Fumes

  #3 Boardwalk Bust

  #4 Thrill Ride

  #5 Rocky Road

  #6 Burned

  #7 Operation: Survival

  #8 Top Ten Ways to Die

  #9 Martial Law

  #10 Blown Away

  #11 Hurricane Joe

  #12 Trouble in Paradise

  #13 The Mummy’s Curse

  #14 Hazed

  #15 Death and Diamonds

  #16 Bayport Buccaneers

  #17 Murder at the Mall

  #18 Pushed

  #19 Foul Play

  #20 Feeding Frenzy

  #21 Comic Con Artist

  Super Mystery #1: Wanted

  Super Mystery #2: Kidnapped at the Casino

  #22 Deprivation House

  #23 House Arrest

  Haunted: Special Ghost Stories Edition

  #24 Murder House

  #25 Double Trouble

  #26 Double Down

  #27 Double Deception

  Super Mystery #3: Club Dread

  #28 Galaxy X

  #29 X-plosion!

  #30 The X-Factor

  #31 Killer Mission

  #32 Private Killer

  #33 Killer Connections

  #34 The Children of the Lost

  Super Mystery #4: Gold Medal Murder

  Available from Simon & Schuster

  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ALADDIN

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  First Aladdin paperback edition October 2010

  Copyright © 2010 by Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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  Designed by Sammy Yuen Jr.

  The text of this book was set in Aldine 401 BT.

  Manufactured in the United States of America 0910 OFF

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Control Number 2010924238

  ISBN 978-1-4424-0256-0

  ISBN 978-1-4424-0257-7 (eBook)

  1. Blind Terror

  2. Dead Ends

  3. Fact-Checking

  4. Surprising Outbursts

  5. Seeing the Light

  6. New Suspicions

  7. Asking Alice

  8. Scene of the Crime

  9. Exploring

  10. Nuts and Bolts

  11. Caring and Sharing

  12. More Mysteries

  13. Food for Thought

  14. Mr. Smith Comes to Idaho

  15. Nowhere to Run

  16. A Different Kind of Horsepower

  17. The Tunnels

  18. Burning Questions

  19. Found

  Blind Terror

  I was running for my life. It was so dark I could barely see two steps ahead of me. The woods were alive with nighttime sounds—insects buzzing, owls shrieking overhead, the rush of a river somewhere nearby. But the only sound I could focus on was behind me.

  The grizzly.

  It was huge. When I glanced back, the beast’s red-tinged eyes glowed at me out of the darkness.

  Close. Way too close.

  I pushed myself to run even faster. My lungs and muscles burned.

  “Ow!” I shouted as my elbow banged into a tree, sending fireworks of pain through my body.

  The bear behind me let out a terrifying roar. The sound echoed through the forest.

  Then something answered:

  AROOOOOOOO! “Wolves!” I blurted out in disbelief.

  No way. Like being chased by a bloodthirsty bear wasn’t bad enough?

  But there it was again. The bone-chilling howl.

  I ran faster. The wolves kept wailing, sounding closer all the time.

  The trail fell away before me. I skidded down a steep hill, trying not to twist an ankle. If I did, I was dead.

  At the bottom of the hill, I found myself at the edge of a lake. Its broad, rippled surface gleamed in the moonlight. How far away was the opposite shore? I couldn’t tell.

  ROAAAAAAR!

  The bear was almost on me. What choice did I have? I dove in and started to swim. The water was ice-cold.

  By the time I reached the far shore, I was shivering and exhausted. I staggered up onto dry ground, hoping I’d outrun the predators at last.

  SPLASH!

  I spun around. The bear was just lumbering out of the water! Behind it, I could see the wolf pack swimming fast to catch up. Then an otherworldly cry came from somewhere off to the left. Glancing that way, I saw a mountain lion perched on a ledge, staring down at me.

  “No way!” I breathed.

  As the big cat leaped down and bounded toward me, I spun around and started running again. My legs felt like waterlogged bags of sand. I knew I wouldn’t be able to outrun all those animals for long. But I couldn’t give up. An ATAC agent never gives up. . . .

  BZZZZZZ!

  Uh-oh. Sounded like my cell phone. I was too busy to answer at the moment, but I was pretty sure I knew who was calling. It had to be ATAC HQ. They were probably checking in to see if Joe and I had made any progress on our mission yet.

  BZZZZZZ!

  “Joe,” I murmured, my already thudding heart skipping a beat. Where was my brother?

  As I ran, I searched my mind for the answer. Why didn’t I know where Joe was? Had the animals gotten him? How had I ended up here, anyway?

  Okay. This was weird. Why couldn’t I remember where I was or what was happening? It just didn’t make sense. . . .

  BZZZZZZ!

  I sat bolt upright, my heart pounding.

  BZZZZZZ!

  Whew! It had been a dream! The grizzly, the wolves, the mountain lion, the crazy chase, all of it.

  “Oh, man,” I murmured, my voice sounding hoarse in the darkness. It was so dark I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face.

  I reached out, feeling for my alarm clock to hit the of
f button. My hand hit something hard and unyielding. A wall. A concrete wall? Hmm. That was weird.

  BZZZZZZ!

  I blinked, trying to help my eyes adjust. No dice. I still couldn’t see a thing.

  That was weird too. My bedroom was never completely dark even at midnight, thanks to the neighbors’ porch light. What time was it, anyway?

  Lifting my left arm, I was surprised not to see the familiar glow of my ATAC-issue watch. It glows in the dark unless I hit the little button to deactivate that feature. Had I done that before going to sleep?

  I felt my left wrist with my other hand. It took a few minutes. For some reason my arms were being a little slow to respond to my brain’s commands. I was feeling pretty groggy overall, actually. I figured I must have been deep, deep asleep when I’d been awakened.

  BZZZZZZ!

  Okay, the buzzing was getting annoying now. Also, I was slowly realizing something else. My alarm clock didn’t buzz. It made a sound like a rooster crowing—my aunt Trudy’s idea of a fun birthday gift. Joe always said it sounded like a barnyard next door.

  That thought helped wake me up a little more. Where was I?

  I tried to shake the grogginess from my mind. But it wasn’t working. I felt as exhausted as if I really had just outrun all those animals from my dream. It didn’t help that I also had a raging headache.

  BZZZZZZ!

  “Focus, Frank,” I murmured to myself. Speaking out loud, hearing my own voice, actually made me feel a little more alert. So I kept it up. “My name is Frank Hardy. I live in Bayport, outside New York City. I’m an ATAC agent with my brother Joe. Our latest mission is to investigate a series of disappearances in Misty Falls State Park in Idaho. . . . Oh!”

  I blinked in the darkness as the memories began to ooze back into my brain. I wasn’t at home. I was on an ATAC mission. Wasn’t I?

  BZZZZZZ!

  Still feeling fuzzy, I searched my mind for the details.

  It had all started in the usual way. ATAC had contacted us about the mission. Dad had helped run interference with Mom and Aunt Trudy, who didn’t know about ATAC. Dad knows, of course, since he started the group. ATAC—American Teens Against Crime—sends teenage agents out to investigate cases where adults might raise suspicion. In this case, we were posing as students writing a paper on a series of missing kids known as the Misty Falls Lost.

  Joe and I had flown out to Misty Falls, Idaho, and met Detective Richard Cole, who had filled us in on all the details. Over the past twelve years, eight children had disappeared while camping at the ruggedly beautiful state park. One of the kids’ remains had turned up later in a bear cave, though none of the others had ever been found. Still, most people had seemed willing to believe they’d all fallen prey to wild animals or other natural causes.

  Until one of the kids returned.

  “Justin Greer,” I murmured, the name swimming out of the fog in my mind.

  Joe and I had been called in when Justin, one of the Misty Falls Lost, had turned up with no memory of who he was or where he’d been for the past dozen years. His reappearance had reopened the case, and things had only gotten weirder from there.

  But nothing quite as weird as this. Where was I?

  I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to focus. The last thing I could remember was being at our campsite in the park. A big grizzly had turned up and taken a swipe at Joe.

  That explained my weird dream, I guess. But why couldn’t I remember what had happened next? Had the bear gotten me, too? Was I in the hospital? And what had happened to Joe? Was he okay?

  Panic grabbed at me again. I didn’t know the answers to any of those questions, and I didn’t like that feeling. I like knowing what’s going on, having all the facts in order. It’s kind of my thing.

  I realized the buzzing noise had finally stopped. That was a relief.

  Shoving back the scratchy blanket, I carefully swung my feet around, searching for the edge of the bed I was on. When I felt cool metal beneath my hands, I realized it was more like a cot.

  My feet touched a hard, cool, smooth floor. I pushed off with my arms, staggering to my feet. It was still too dark to see anything, so I felt my way around.

  Smooth concrete walls forming a room about six feet square. The cot. The outline of a door, tightly closed with no handle and only a tiny slit of a window at around eye level.

  Nothing else. No light switch, nada.

  I stood there in the darkness, swaying slightly and trying to think through the fuzz still coating my mind. My ATAC training had prepared me for a lot. But not for anything like this.

  Feeling my way back over to the door, I peered through the little window. Or tried to, anyway. I couldn’t see a thing.

  That pushed my panic up another notch.

  “Help!” I shouted, pounding on the door. “Somebody! Where am I? Help! Let me out of here!”

  Dead Ends

  It takes a lot to make me panic. But I was panicking now. Big-time. “Dude, there’s got to be a clue out here somewhere!” I said for about the millionth time.

  Detective Rich Cole shot me a sympathetic look. “Don’t worry, Joe,” he said, pushing back the brim of his cowboy hat. “We’re not going to give up until we find Frank.”

  I nodded and crashed forward through a thicket of brambles. Ouch. Thorns dug into my bare arms, drawing blood. But I ignored the pain. Nothing mattered except finding my brother.

  Detective Cole and I had been searching the woods around the campsite for at least an hour. Maybe more. It’s hard to keep track of time when you’re freaking out.

  There was one solution to that, of course.

  I needed to stop freaking out.

  Stopping for a second, I took a few deep breaths. Looked up through the trees at the clear blue morning sky. Tried to focus on my ATAC training. I had to get myself under control, or there wasn’t much chance I’d be able to help my brother.

  “Okay.” I turned toward Rich, who was right behind me. “Let’s go over what happened one more time. Figure out if we’re missing something important.”

  Rich looked a little surprised by my new calm, cool, collected attitude. But he nodded.

  “We know Officer Donnelly wouldn’t have left Frank alone without good reason,” he said. “Someone must have lured him away, then knocked him out with a blow to the head.”

  Donnelly was another cop. He’d been helping Rich guard Frank and me at our camp the night before.

  Why do a couple of highly trained, super-awesome ATAC agents need police protection? Good question. It was because we’d been pretty sure someone was after us. For each of our first three nights at camp, we’d found letters scratched into the dirt. The first night, just an L. The second night, it was LO. Then LOS. Detective Cole had decided we might need some help before it turned into LOST—as in, another addition to the Misty Falls Lost. So he and Officer Donnelly had camped out with us to make sure we didn’t run into any trouble.

  Unfortunately, trouble ran right into us anyway. A big grizzly had crashed the party and taken a swipe at me. It was only a flesh wound, but Rich had insisted on taking me to the hospital anyway. When we got back, Officer Donnelly was out cold and Frank was gone.

  Lost.

  “We’ll have to see if Officer Donnelly remembers anything when he wakes up,” I said. “But we can’t wait around until then.”

  Rich had called the hospital a few minutes earlier for an update. Donnelly was going to be fine, but he’d be sleeping off the drugs for a few more hours.

  “Right,” Rich agreed. “It’s pretty clear we’re not dealing with an animal attack this time.”

  “Check this out, guys!” a new voice said.

  I turned. It was a park ranger, an outdoorsy brunette in her thirties named Bailey Cooper. Rich had called her in to help us search the area. Well, her and every available cop in a hundred-mile radius. Which in rural Idaho, translated to maybe a dozen people.

  We hurried toward Bailey. She was peering at some shrubs.


  “Look.” She pointed to a branch.

  It looked pretty much like every other branch around there. Wild. Prickly.

  “Um, what are we looking at?” I asked.

  She shot me a look. “Oh, right,” she said. “City slicker.”

  Rich chuckled. I rolled my eyes. Yeah, it was pretty obvious she was joking, but the joke was getting a little old. Everyone in Misty Falls seemed to think Frank and I were hopeless just because we hadn’t been raised like mountain men.

  Bailey was a pretty sharp cookie. She seemed to guess what I was thinking and moved on.

  “Looks like someone’s been this way fairly recently,” she said in a brisk, professional voice. “See? These little end branches are all bent over or broken, and the breaks are still green and fresh. And they’re high up—around shoulder height. Might’ve just been a deer or bear passing through, or . . .”

  “Lead the way,” Rich told her. “It’s worth checking out.”

  The two of us followed Bailey down the trail. If you could call it that. It was pretty wild. But Bailey kept pointing out more broken branches and stuff, so we kept at it.

  I didn’t mind the rough going. It distracted me from worrying about Frank. A little, anyway.

  Then I spotted something out of the corner of my eye. It was a little pile of rocks. Not the natural kind either. It was obvious that these rocks had been stacked on purpose.

  “What’s that?” I said, pointing.

  Bailey came back to look. “Hmm, haven’t seen these in this part of the park,” she said. “There are lots of them out in the wilder areas, though.”

  “What are they?”

  “Not sure.” She shrugged. “Some kind of primitive trail marker, maybe. Like the Inukshuk that the Inuit and other native peoples make. We’re not far north enough to be in Inuit country, of course, but I suppose the native tribes in this area might have developed similar types of markers.”

  I stared at the little stack of stones. I’d heard of Inukshuk and stuff like that. But the little pile of stones made me think of something else. Namely, The Blair Witch Project. Like a lot of things about this park, the stone marker seemed to come straight out of that creepy film.

  “Then again, this could just be the work of a young visitor messing around playing wilderness guide or something,” Bailey went on. Then she frowned. “Not that there have been many little kids camping around here lately . . .”