Onwards to chapter nine!

And…I bring tidings of great joy: Disney has begun talks for National Treasure 3…and possibly 4!!! (dances around the room in a goofy uncoordinated fashion) But…numero tres isn't coming out until December of 2010 at the earliest. (boo.)

Disclaimer: No, I don't own them. Disney owns them. Why would I even want to own them when Disney's making more sequels? Go ahead, Disney! Have fun! I'll be at the midnight premier!

Chapter 9

Abigail—yet again—made her German pot roast, with its not-distinctly-German flavor. And I've noticed something: pot roast seems to be the universal thing for dinner whenever anyone's upset. Being comforted after a dramatic moment? Let's go eat some pot roast! I mean, really. What makes pot roast so special? I can think of about ten other foods that could be more comforting and take less time to cook. But no. It's got to be pot roast.

And in case you haven't noticed, I rant about nothing when I'm anxious. Nothing could make me more so than I am right at this very moment.

Because Riley is standing before us, getting ready to explain.

I guess we could have done this whole arrangement differently to not make him so nervous—Abigail, Caroline and I are squished onto the couch in the living room, looking like we're ready for some big presentation. "Riley," I say, pointing to a chair. "You can—"

"Thanks." He pulls the chair over, turns it so the back is facing us, and sits in it so he too is facing us, his legs poking out on either side. "So," he sighs.

"So," Caroline repeats, throwing her hand into the air.

"I would appreciate it if you would refrain from interrupting me."

After a quick glare, she sticks her tongue out, Riley returning it.

"OK," Abigail says. "We're all adults here—"

"Wow! You are Riley?" Caroline exclaims sarcastically.

"Shut up, Caroline."

"HEY!" There—silence. And all I had to do was shout. That wasn't so difficult. "Let him talk. Go ahead."

I was wrong before when I said breaking him out was the "moment of truth"—this is, quite literally. After all this time, all this worry and doubt, we will finally understand what we should have known from day one of this whole ordeal.

"All right," he sighs, readjusting his glasses. "Where to begin?" For a moment he rests his chin on the back of the chair; his eyes flick up at each of us in turn, staying on Caroline a bit longer than Abigail or myself. "Well." His posture immediately straightens. "Here it is.

"As you probably already discovered, Ben and Abigail, when I was going to Georgetown, I was planning on majoring in computer science and Arabic. I had figured that if I wanted to work for the government, that would be a pretty useful language to know. In my junior year, I decided to study abroad in Saudi Arabia. So I, in my happy-go-lucky, twenty-year-old self, merrily skipped off to the Middle East.

"Everything was fine for the first few months, really. The other students at the university were pretty amazed at what I could do with a computer and often hounded me to hack into a game and get all the cheats for them. However, word of my ability got out…and that's where the trouble started.

"On the night of December 8, 2002, members of some secret foreign terrorist organization broke into my dorm room and kidnapped me. I'll spare you the gory details," he says, grimacing and looking down briefly.

At this point, one question is going through my head—why has this never been publicly revealed?

"So," he continues. "I was taken to their headquarters back in their country, with laptop and all. They weren't all that friendly, y'know…being terrorists and all. Basically, I had a gun put to my head and was told that if I didn't go steal security secrets from the CIA and NSA, then they'd kill me. In addition to me keeping my life, they said we were to sell this information to the country's ruler—I still had no clue where I was—and I was to get half the money and return to the States immediately. My involvement in the scandal, they assured me, would be kept secret.

"Well, I came back with the intent of donating every last penny of the money to some charitable cause and to get on with my life and at least try to act like it never happened, despite my horrendous guilt. Unfortunately, those guys were a bunch of pathological liars. An agent of theirs within the US leaked the whole thing to every government agency that he could contact. Don't you guys remember? His code name was 'Deep Esophagus'—"

"Really original," Caroline mutters, nodding.

"I know!" Riley agrees. "So suddenly I was a very wanted man. I went into hiding in Cuba for a year until the frenzy to find me died down, and then I came back to DC, and got a job with Mr. Hebrews. The rest is history."

After a tense five seconds of shocked silence, Abigail (being completely not herself) bounces up and rushes over to him, pulling him into a bear hug. "Oh my god, Riley. I had no idea! And I always give you so much grief for everything!" She continues on in this manner, and all I can do is watch as he becomes more and more uncomfortable.

Eyes wide with panic, he mouths, "What is wrong with her?" Eventually Abigail senses his rigidity and backs off, flustered.

"Ben," Riley continues. "I still stand by what I said before. We shouldn't have met."

"What?" I thought we resolved this last night—or, to be technical, this morning.

"We shouldn't have met…because I should have refused to do what they wanted and died for the sake of my country instead of selling it out like that. What kind of person does what I did? Who knows how many people have been hurt or even died because of the information I leaked?" His hands begin to shake slightly as they try to grip the edges of the chair's back.

"Riley…" Abigail and Caroline are at a loss, so I guess I have to speak up. "You are not the only one who would have made that choice; it's a normal human reaction. I probably would have—"

"No you wouldn't." He's shaking his head and smiling—why is he smiling? "You're no 'normal' human in that respect. Ben, you have this…eerie…ability to offer yourself up for death without batting an eyelash—your view of how things are is so…so idealistic! You are convicted to what you know is right and never have to flip-flop on decisions or worry if you did the right thing and I envy you so much…because you can do that. You're not like everyone else."

Whoa—Abigail was right: he does talk about me like he thinks I can walk on water. And I thought that was an exaggeration. How come I've never noticed it before? Now my guilt for taking him for granted is skyrocketing—especially since now I know how much he's been hiding, been holding inside for so long. Everything in his eyes now, however, is screaming admiration beside the frustration with himself.

"Riley," I say. "I, too, still stand by what I said to you last night, despite whatever you may believe yourself." Thankfully, he understands what I'm talking about. "What's done is done, as much as I hate to say it. Now, we just have to fix it." Before he can stop himself, a lopsided grin flashes across his face.

In the distance, cutting across the pause, are some police sirens.

Sirens…

Wait a minute…

"Abigail? What time is it?"

"Um…" she says, looking down at her watch. "It's quarter 'til six."

Silence—then chaos explodes.

"We were supposed to be out of here fifteen minutes ago!" Caroline shouts out of panic, jumping up.

"We were?" Riley stares at us in alarmed confusion; apparently we forgot to tell him. As usual.

"Don't just sit there, Riley!" Abigail cries as she runs toward the door after Caroline, who has already grabbed her laptop and car keys.

Instantly he looks up at me; I've been standing here stupidly again, angry at myself for not filling him in. I told myself it would be a random-midyear resolution to be better about that. It's already broken…there must be something cursed about the word "resolution" because they always break. "Yeah, go get whatever you need and meet us in the car."

Hoping that he listened, I jog out to Caroline's minivan. It's just one thing after another, isn't it? We just cannot get a break, even when we succeed at breaking him out. Of course, it's not as if I didn't expect the FBI to immediately think of me; after all, they've got Sadusky on their side, and he'd automatically think of me whenever anything outrageously illegal happens. This would definitely fall under that broad category.

"Where are you…?" Caroline says to herself in a sing-song voice, tapping the steering wheel.

"Stop talking!" Riley calls as he stumbles into the car, arms overflowing with electronics and bottles of hair dye. "Start the van!"

"The van is started," Caroline sighs, pointing to the engine. "In case you didn't notice…men…" Before can even slam the door, she steps on the gas and leaves gravel flying up into the air behind us. "Where are we going?"

"Head to Dulles Airport," I tell her. "We need to get out of the country."

"And fast," Riley adds with a look over his shoulder. If I'm not mistaken (and I hope I am), blue and red lights are reflecting off the trees around the corner.

As much as everyone is concerned, I still have to bite back a laugh at the severe déja-vu from Riley and Caroline's mini argument. I wonder if he's made the connection yet…

"Shouldn't we call and reserve tickets, Ben?" Abigail asks nervously. "Or at least check on a flight schedule? We can't just march in and demand four tickets on the first available overseas flight."

"Bubble burster," Riley mutters.

"Thank you! See, Abigail?" I say. "Someone else thinks so too."

In silence we sit, the speedometer slowly approaching eighty miles per hour as we pass car after car in the dusk light. It's nice having a high-speed car chase that's not much of an actual chase.

But I think I spoke too soon.

Ahead of us is a herd of cop cars lined up on either side of the road. Caroline hits the brakes as we pass them and gets down to the speed limit. "No one knows I'm working with you, right, Ben?" she says timidly.

"Yeah, I even used a fake name with Mr. Hebrews. Don't worry." DWEEOOO! Curse that infernal alarm sound! "OK, maybe now you should want to start worrying." One by one, each of the trooper cars starts up and begins to follow our path in a very fast and threatening manner.

"Oh my god—what do I do?"

"Just step on it!" Riley shouts, positioning himself in between the driver and passenger seats.

"Riley, this isn't your Ferrari! It's a ten-year-old minivan! There's only so much old Carlos can do!"

"Well, it's all we've got, so it's as good as!"

Thankfully, every other car in the left lane is clearing out, seeing as…well…probably fifteen sets of fluorescent light bars are after us. But none of this makes any sense—Caroline should not be linked to us at all.

"Riley," I say while pulling him into the back seat. "Put your seat belt on. If we crash, the last thing any of us wants is to see you being catapulted out the front windshield."

"Yeah, as I just fixed it a month ago," Caroline mutters. Ouch.

"What? Did you park under the 'beware of falling hickory nuts' sign again?"

"That happened once, thank you very much. And could you shut your face for like two-tenths of a second? I'm kind of busy." Right on cue, she revs the engine a little and pushes the needle past a hundred.

It's different being on a highway car chase—there's nowhere to run, much less hide, unless…unless there's an exit. Aha…a wonderful little green sign tells me that the Dulles Airport exit is quickly approaching. "Caroline, there's the exit we need," I say as I point ahead and to the right…across three lanes of traffic.

"I'm on it." Taking advantage of a temporary break in the multitude of vehicles, she slams the gas so hard I hear it thunk against the floor. We make it onto the exit ramp just in time; it sounds like the army of police cars just got themselves totaled. "Alrighty…alrighty…that wasn't too impossible…"

I lose track of her mutterings as Riley starts to rifle through the pile of stuff he brought. "Did you ever think to bring a bag?" I ask, though it goes ignored.

"Aha!" Triumphantly, he holds up what looks like an oversized walkie-talkie, complete with an eight-inch antenna, fifty different buttons and knobs, and a small screen. "Do you know what this is, Ben?" I shake my head. "It's a police scanner."

"Oh, geez, Riley!" Caroline sighs from the driver's seat as she looks at him via the rear-view mirror. "You're one of those people?"

"No, I just collect electronics." Briefly, he glances at me before messing with the scanner's settings. "Let's see what's going on…"

The volume on the thing isn't very loud; he has to press it to his ear to hear what's being said over the static. And according to his expression, it must be very amusing.

"False alarm," he laughs. "Apparently they think this van is full of illegal drugs from Peru."

"That's your idea of a false alarm?" Abigail says incredulously.

"They're not after us for breaking me out of prison, now are they? Unless…" He raises his eyebrows. "Unless Caroline's got something stashed up in that glove compartment."

"You're pushing your luck," she mutters, pulling into the parking lot.

"Well," he sighs as he follows me out of the van. "I'm just glad I still have some luck to push."

"C'mon," Abigail says. "We have to hurry."

She's right—we don't know how many officers would be chasing our van based on circumstantial evidence. We'll worry about that later; all that we need now are some tickets out of here.

Luckily, and most unusually, there are no long lines at the luggage check-in counters.

"Hi—oh dear, sir. Would you like a bag?" The friendly receptionist eyes Riley's towering pile of things in his arms warily.

"That'd be wonderful…" he says, teetering precariously. In no time, all of his belongings are dumped unceremoniously into a large plastic bag.

"Listen," I say. We don't have enough time to be wasting any of it. "We need tickets for the first available overseas flight."

She stares at me suspiciously before turning to her computer. "Let's see…the 5:50 to Berlin just left, and you already missed one to Abu Dhabi…does it matter where?"

"No, we're not really picky when it comes to where we go on vacation," Riley says with a smile.

"Uh-huh…well then." Her eyes snap back up at us without any of their former warmth. "There's one leaving for Rome in fifteen minutes. If you run—"

"Here." Slamming my hand down on the table, I present her with our entire stash of emergency money—a couple thousand dollars. "This enough?"

"Names? And don't give me any false ones, OK? You're still going to have to present your passports anyways." As she picks up the bills and begins to count them, her expression becomes more suspicious and slightly fed-up.

"Ben Gates, Abigail Chase, Riley Poole and Caroline Essex," Abigail rattles off, and soon the tickets are in her hands. Though she looks relieved, Riley is giving me that "dude, we're on the grid" look. "Thanks."

Wonderful—everyone seems to be so suspicious of us. Just what we need. At any rate, we begin to halfway jog over to security, which is also miraculously abandoned.

"What have you done now, Ben Gates?" the woman calls to our retreating backs. "And what treasure will you find to get yourself out of it this time?"

XXX

Yay for knowing what happened to Riley! Boo sketchy airport people! (ahem) Anybody who's ever been to Dulles Airport knows it's a real miracle to find that place deserted. And I'm not knocking police scanner people—one of my friends is "one of them." Just thought I'd clear that up.

Just a bit of news on updates from this point forward: they're going to be much longer, I'm afraid. Before, I've been just typing them up since I was way ahead in the writing than the posting, but now they're equal. Once I finish writing chapter 10 and have enough time to get it up, it will be. Sorry! (sweatdrop)

Please review. It'll definitely help me move faster.