Chapter 5:

Author's Note: Posting this chapter late last night was a bad idea. There's at least one obvious discontinuity that I've found now: in Chapter 3 I had Ron say that Gressie, the dog (and yes, you'll find out why she's got such a weird name) had stayed inside after lunch; in this chapter it turns out to be crucial that Gressie was actually outside. (I KNEW there was a reason why I always used to finish a story before I began to post. . . .)

So, I've gone back and changed that line in Chapter 3. I have a feeling there are other discontinuities lurking in this story, just waiting to embarrass me. I'll deal with them the same way as I find them. My apologies for making mistakes and correcting them as I go like this. Posting before I'd finished was an experiment I thought might be fun, but I don't think I'll try to write on the fly like this again.

I've gathered from private messages that some people have found the timeline and the security arrangements confusing. I'll try to find a way to go back and make them clearer in the text, but for now, let me explain: The agents don't go into the house themselves, just as they don't go into the parts of the White House where the family actually lives. So, as far as they were concerned, Noah was secure once he went into the house (or, once they thought he'd gone into the house). They also have surveillance equipment that keeps track of where he and Sally are, but that depends on the children keeping their special watches on, the way they've been told to. The equipment wouldn't make ultra-fine distinctions: Noah's watch has been sending out its signal from the shed, but it could just as easily be in the kitchen, or upstairs in his room.

So, the agents checked Noah and Sally off as "secure" once they went inside at 12:51. Donna was busy wrapping presents, and didn't go looking for them until shortly before 4:00. When she can't find Noah anywhere in the house, she alerts the agents, who immediately notify Ron Butterfield and, of course, start all the alerts and procedures we would expect. (More about that in a later chapter. . . .) The point is that no, I didn't mean to imply that they missed him right away and then waited three hours to notify Ron Butterfield or Josh. The scene between Ron and Josh takes place only minutes after the agents in Maine have first realized they can't locate Noah.

And this next one takes place:

Several hours earlier (December 24, 1:15 p.m. Crabapple Cove, Maine):

Noah was trying to breathe as quietly as possible. He didn't think he could be heard over the Suburban's engine, but he didn't want to take a chance on it.

He was also trying to keep track of the time by counting: "One one-hundred, two one-hundred, three one-hundred. . . ." This was boring, but better than wondering when they were going to get there. At least, that had been the plan. It was only about a ten-minute drive from the lighthouse to the village. By his count, they should have gotten there by now. But the SUV was still rumbling down the highway at the same pace it had been all along.

Noah wished he'd brought a watch, but he didn't have a normal watch anymore, just the one the agents had fixed to keep track of where he was. It would have spoiled everything if he'd brought that along. He'd ditched it in the shed, poking it under the edge of the woodpile, where he'd be able to get it back later. He would have loved to have lost it permanently, but he knew he'd never be able to get away with that.

He wasn't supposed to know that the Service had fixed that watch to keep track of him. There were a lot of things he wasn't supposed to know that he did know. He wondered sometimes why so many grownups just assumed that kids couldn't understand anything except kid stuff.

Daddy wasn't like that, of course, but he was off in Washington. Mommy was the best mother in the world, but Noah had figured out long ago that it was best if she didn't realize just how much he knew.

It worried her when he seemed to understand too much about things she thought he shouldn't know yet: where babies came from, or how to calculate the distance between Earth and Mars while watching the Mars Rover land. (Note the time delay of ten minutes before the signals reach Earth; remember from an article in the kids' version of National Geographic that light can travel around the Earth seven times a second; work out the circumference of the Earth using the map of the world over your bed; do the math.)

Her eyes would get wide, and then her forehead would scrunch up, and afterwards he'd hear her telling Daddy about it in a worried-sounding voice. He'd asked Daddy why she sounded worried, and he'd explained that she was just afraid that Noah would get into trouble at school if he knew too much.

Of course, Noah was already getting into trouble at school for knowing too much. Daddy understood about that-he told Noah it had been the same for him-but Mommy seemed to be upset by it. Daddy said that was because she loved him so much that she didn't want anything to hurt him or make him unhappy. Noah wasn't unhappy, but he didn't want Mommy to be unhappy, either, so he'd decided it was best just to keep what he knew to himself.

Besides, he could get away with more if she didn't know. Like this. If Mommy had known he knew how to re-program the remote key for her old Chevrolet Spark, she wouldn't have given it to him to play with when she got rid of the car. She certainly wouldn't have let him try it out in one of the agents' Suburbans when they were here last summer. And she would have warned the agents not to let him explore the super-secure armored SUV when he asked to.

It was Hobbes he'd asked; she'd said sure. Of course, she'd been right beside him the whole time. She'd even shown him some of the special features the Service had built into it. She was nice, even if she was one of those grown-ups who didn't think Noah could understand anything more than most eight-year-olds. She'd had no idea what he was up to when he kept clicking the locks and turning the ignition key back and forth. She thought he was just fooling around, like any other third-grade boy.

Re-programming the remote by clicking the locks and turning the key like that had been just as easy as they'd said it would be when he'd looked it up online. It was so easy it would hardly have been worth doing, if it hadn't answered the question Noah had been wondering about, whether the remote would work as well on one Chevrolet as another. And if he hadn't suspected that having his own key to the doors of the car Calvin and Hobbes drove him around in might come in useful sometime.

The funny part was that he'd ended up using the key, not to get away from them, the way he'd thought he would, but to get in their car with them without their knowing he was there. It had taken careful planning, but everything had worked out just the way he'd expected.

Their car had been parked with some of the other Suburbans in front of the Secret Service buildings in the little dip behind the crest of the hill. The buildings had been put there so they wouldn't spoil the view from the cottage-which meant that they were out of view of the agents who guarded the cottage as well.

Of course, there wasn't any need for the agents to be able to see them. The buildings were in the middle of a large property with a heavily-guarded outer fenceline. And there were always agents in the buildings, if only the off-duty ones having a sleep.

Noah had noticed that the way security was handled at the lighthouse was similar to the way it was handled at Camp David. Because the property was so secure, Noah and Sally were allowed to go outside without their detail being right beside them all the time. The agents were still there, but they stayed farther away and kept a lower profile than they did when they were taking Noah and Sally to school. Josh and Donna wanted their children to have as normal a childhood as possible, and that meant time to play outside without grownups on their heels every minute.

At the lighthouse, most of the agents' attention was focused on making sure no one broke into the compound. It would never have occurred to them that one of the children might want to break out.

Noah couldn't have done it without Sally and Gressie, of course. Sally's devotion to him was often irritating, but it had its uses; today it had been very useful. He'd told her just what to do, and he was sure she would carry out his instructions to the letter. She always did. Just to make extra-sure, though, he'd promised her that, if she did exactly what he said, he'd take her wish-list to Santa for her. He'd even bring her back some gingerbread from the village bakery.

She'd wanted to come too, of course. But he'd explained why that was impossible, and she'd understood. She still believed in Santa: if she couldn't get to him today herself, then helping Noah get there was the next best and most important thing. She really loved those gingerbread cookies, too.

So Sally had created the distraction he'd needed, jumping wildly around with Gressie after their last ride down the back of the hill, kicking up enough snow that no agent watching from the crest would have noticed Noah sliding under the SUV. Then Sally had pulled her sled up the hill, calling to Gressie to follow her and to Noah to please wait for her, please, please, please!

(Gressie could, in fact, be counted on to follow Sally anywhere, just as Sally could be counted on to follow Noah.)

Noah had left his sled under the crest at the top of the hill. On it was the bundle he'd made back in his room and smuggled outside and up the hill that morning, hidden on his sled under a couple of blankets. He and Sally had used one of the blankets to play with for a while, making a sort of tent out of it and crawling in and out with Gressie. Noah thought that would allay any suspicions the agents might have had about the other blanket he'd left draped over his sled while he rode down the back slope with Sally on hers the final time. The tent-blanket he brought with him. It was black, and he had a use for it.

The bundle consisted of three sweaters stuffed one inside the other, with his favorite hat pinned on top and a scarf wrapped around where the face should be. At the last minute, lying in the snow while Sally played noisily and distractingly with Gressie, Noah had slipped his winter jacket off and stuffed the dummy into it. He'd been playing so hard that he would have wanted to take it off anyway, even if he hadn't been wearing three more sweaters underneath.

The top one was red, like the jacket. It was good to have finally found a use for all those sweaters his grandmothers kept making for him. They both liked to knit, and they didn't seem to understand that boys who wore wool sweaters to school instead of fleeces or hoodies wouldn't find anyone wanting to play with them at recess.

Noah watched from under the SUV while Sally retrieved his sled from under the blanket, plopped herself down on top of the dummy, and pushed herself off to make the final run down the hill to the house. He could hear Gressie barking, and Sally shrieking, "Faster, Noah! Faster!" all the way down. She was doing better with this than he'd expected. But of course, he'd taught her a lot over the years. And she was motivated: she really did believe in Santa still.

The reprogrammed Chevy key did its trick. The door didn't shut quite as softly as Noah was hoping, but it didn't seem to attract any attention. Neither did the "click" as he relocked the car.

He curled himself up on the floor between the second and third row of seats, pulled the black blanket over him, and waited. Just once a feeling of panic shot through him, but he reached under the outer layers of sweaters to the kangaroo-pocket of the fleece he was wearing underneath, felt inside it, and relaxed.

A few minutes later the agents Noah called Calvin and Hobbes emerged from the Secret Service building and got into the car. Noah could hear them talking to each other as it started up, and then the rumble of the engine and the crunch of the tires as they drove away. There was a pause as they waited for the gate to be opened, and Calvin talked with the agent there for a moment. Then they pulled out onto the road, and picked up speed.

Noah settled back and began counting. Just ten more minutes and he'd be there. Everything was going beautifully.