As the Falcon Flies by Franklin W. Dixon

Author:Franklin W. Dixon [Dixon, Franklin W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aladdin
Published: 2022-01-04T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

It was after midnight when we trudged into the house, smelling of smoke. We were all exhausted, and yet, when I settled into bed, I could hardly shut my eyes. How was I supposed to relax? If I could stay up a little longer, maybe someone would come looking for Kate’s mythical bird. Who knew? We’d laid it on pretty thick back at the meet-up. The bait had to have been tempting for someone there. If the culprit had been there at all.

This case had become so personal somewhere along the line.

Frank was out cold, snoring away, but there I was staring out the window at two a.m., up with the wolves. As the minutes ticked by, my certainty that I’d nab the culprit shifted to doubt and then disappointment. No one was coming. If they had, I sure hadn’t seen them. I knew staying up wasn’t doing any good, but now I was too tense to fall asleep.

I slipped out of our room and padded into the kitchen. Maybe the whole sick-of-cocoa thing had been a very temporary phase, because I was desperate for some.

“Oh!” I said, jumping.

“Joe? It’s a little early for you, isn’t it?” Dad was sitting at the kitchen table, a mug of coffee in front of him.

“I could say that for both of us.”

He chuckled. “I couldn’t sleep. The wolves woke me, and your mom is a terrible snorer.”

I smirked and glanced down the hall. He was right—it sounded like a small bear was hibernating back there.

“What’s got you up?” Dad asked. “Kate’s bird?”

I opened the pantry door and scrounged around for some cocoa. Happily, the Adenshaws were total chocolate connoisseurs and had, like, twenty packets of the stuff. “Yeah,” I said. “I just feel like we’re missing something big. And it’s not like we have forever, Dad. We might need to leave without figuring this out, and Kate could never see this bird again.”

“You care about her,” Dad said.

I sighed and waited for the microwave to beep. “Yeah,” I finally said.

I avoided looking at him when I sat down at the table, taking a gulp before the cocoa had cooled off. Burn number two for the day.

“Well,” said Dad, his voice clear and confident. He did investigate for a living, and Frank and I were pretty well and truly stuck. “I think you need to consider a new angle.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“Sometimes a person can get a little too close to a case,” he continued. “You’ve been to that falconry club. You’ve been all around town. You’ve been in and out of that shed. There’s something you’re missing, and I’ll bet you the contents of my wallet that it’s right there in front of your face.”

What Dad said made sense. The right answer was almost always the simplest.

“Who have you written off?” he asked. “Who’s so wrapped up behind something else that you haven’t thought of them in the context of taking Kate’s bird?

I didn’t have the answers, not tonight. But when I finished the cocoa and went back to bed, those were the questions that chased me into sleep.

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