Secret of Rover , livre ebook

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194 pages

English

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The Secret of Rover follows the clever and resourceful twins Katie and David as they race across the country in their attempt to outwit an international team of insurgents who hold their parents and baby sister captive in a foreign land. Held hostage because they invented a spy technology called Rover that can locate anyone in the world, Katie and David's parents are in grave danger. Now, it's up to Katie and David to rescue them. But first they must find their reclusive uncle, whom they have never metthe only person they know who can help them. This page-turning story from a debut author with insider knowledge of Washington is fun, suspenseful, and convincingly real.

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Publié par	ABRAMS BOOKS
Date de parution	01 mars 2011
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781613120910
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	2 Mo

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PUBLISHER S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wildavsky, Rachel. The secret of Rover / Rachel Wildavsky. p. cm. Summary: Twelve-year-old twins Katie and David Bowden evade foreign militants and make their way from Washington, D.C., to their uncle s Vermont home, hoping he can help rescue their parents, who were kidnapped because of their secret invention, Rover. ISBN 978-0-8109-9710-3 (alk. paper) [1. Kidnapping-Fiction. 2. Brothers and sisters-Fiction. 3. Twins-Fiction. 4. Uncles-Fiction. 5. Voyages and travels-Fiction. 6. Inventions-Fiction. 7. Washington (D.C.)-Fiction.] I. Title. PZ7.W64578Sec 2011 [Fic]-dc22 2010023450
Text copyright 2011 Rachel Wildavsky
You Are My Sunshine by Jimmie Davis. Copyright 1940 by Peer International Corporation. Copyright renewed. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
Book design by Maria T. Middleton
Published in 2011 by Amulet Books, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher. Amulet Books and Amulet Paperbacks are registered trademarks of Harry N. Abrams, Inc.
Amulet Books are available at special discounts when purchased in quantity for premiums and promotions as well as fundraising or educational use. Special editions can also be created to specification. For details, contact specialmarkets@abramsbooks.com or the address below.
www.abramsbooks.com
This book is for my parents, Arnold and Nancy Flick.
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
1 THEO
2 TRIXIE
3 YOU ARE MY SUNSHINE
4 INVADED
5 BANISHED
6 STOWAWAYS
7 THE NET
8 LIES
9 NORTH
10 LIKE AN ECHO FOR THE EYES
11 IN THE DARK
12 TRAVELIN MAN
13 RUN LIKE HECK
14 WHAT S THE MATTER WITH UNCLE ALEX?
15 THE PREDATOR BECOMES THE PREY
16 SOON
17 ROVER
18 HURRY, HURRY
19 HUNTING DOG
20 WHERE ARE THEY?
21 ALL AT ONCE
AUTHOR S NOTE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
The guns seemed out of place in a country as beautiful as Katkajan. There was the village nestled beneath the snowcapped mountains; there were the sweet and spicy blossoms and the towering pines. And then there was the small band of men and women with guns, passing by on the dirt road. They scanned the fields as if searching for something, or someone.
The villagers heard the people with the guns before they saw them. They heard the clanking of their ammunition belts. They heard the stomping of their boots and their loud, laughing voices. Not again, thought the villagers as they heard these sounds. Not again.
The villagers thought this, but they did not say it. The women looked up from their work in the fields. They saw the guns, and they looked away. The men stopped briefly to stare and to lay their hands protectively on their children s heads. Then they, too, turned away.
There is nothing you can say to a man or a woman with a gun.

Farther down the dirt road and outside the village was a cottage, separate from the rest. The young husband and wife who had built this cottage were happy together. They needed no one but each other-each other, and the baby who would soon be born to them.
But that morning, catastrophe had struck this couple.
Inside her small home, the young wife had felt the first of the labor pains that meant their child was on its way. Her husband, who was outside tending their crops, heard her calling. He ran to her across the field. In his haste he did not see the deadly snake that lay in his path. The snake struck. The man fell. Within minutes he was dead.
His wife never knew why her husband did not answer her call. She faced her own mortal struggle, alone. It was a difficult birth, and no doctor or midwife was near to help. A few short hours after her husband collapsed in the field, the young mother delivered her baby. As the little girl drew her first breath and let it out in a piercing newborn cry, the mother drew her last.
Inside the cottage the mother lay dead with her baby by her side. And now the small band of armed men and women came up the road. They saw the father s body, dead in the field. And they heard the wail of the orphaned child.
The strangers stopped and looked at one another. They shared a quick, low conversation, and then-in a slow-moving pack-they approached the house.
They crowded inside, and their voices rose in glee. They had been looking for a baby.
One of the women gave her gun to her companions. She wrapped the baby in the soft cloths that the mother had prepared for the child she was expecting, and slung the little girl next to her body.
The armed strangers continued down the path, moving faster than before. Now that they had the baby, they would have to hurry. They were headed to an orphanage in Taq, the capital city, and it was very far away. They carried the little girl carefully. It was a piece of luck that they had found her so easily. They had plans for this baby-important plans. Nothing must happen to her.
Lulled by the motion of the woman who carried her, the baby slept. She had no idea how much drama she had already experienced, at just one hour old. And she had no inkling of the vast global adventure that lay in store for her.
Baby Theo s luggage lay open in the hall outside her room. The plane was taking off at sunup the next day, but there were just a few last items that needed to be packed, and David and Katie could not seem to make them fit.
Their parents luggage wasn t ready either. Each had an enormous blue duffel, not yet zipped but already stuffed. These lined the wall like bulging blue sausages, spilling rain gear and papers, pills and sweaters.
That was their problem. But David and Katie were packing for Theo. Her things were to go in a pair of trunks, each hard and square and the size of a coffee table. Nonetheless, it was not at all clear that the baby s many belongings would fit inside.
How come the littlest person has the most stuff? Katie fretted while struggling to wedge a camera between the back wheel of Theo s new stroller and the edge of her collapsible cradle.
David did not look up from the other trunk, where he was trying to balance a small pink giraffe on top of a tottering stack of tiny pajamas. Concluding at last that it would not stay put, he toppled the tower, stuck the neck of the giraffe into a baby bottle, and slammed the trunk decisively shut. Whatever, he announced cheerfully. It works.
Katie glanced at David s trunk, annoyed. They were twins so he wasn t older or anything-they were both twelve-but David often finished things first. That was because she was careful and he was not, she reflected. She could be done too if she did it like that .
Their parents were in their room and Katie could hear them laughing. Peeking around the corner she could see them both: her mother s dark oval face with its high forehead and deep eyes, and her father s fair face, ruddy, round, and softened by a golden beard.
Both faces shone with pure happiness. Sandra and Alan Bowden had just adopted a baby from the faraway country of Katkajan, and the next day-Monday morning-they were flying off to get her. When they returned one week later, Theo would be with them.
Katie felt a pang of unease when she thought about the week to come. An ocean would lie between herself and two members of her small family-no, three, she corrected herself. She and David would be with a stranger, a new nanny who was coming to dinner that night.
But Theo was worth it. Life had been good lately-very, very good. But with Theo, life would be perfect.

Things hadn t always been good for the Bowdens. Before Katie and David s parents and their uncle Alex invented Rover, the present had always been bleak and the future had always been uncertain.
The family had been poor-just poor. There had never been enough of anything. Their house in Washington DC had been small. That was OK, but the rats that infested it had not been-not for anyone but the cat, Slank, who had roamed in and out through his private cat door, feasting. And because of neighborhood thieves there had been bars on their windows. They had needed the bars, but what had kept the thieves out had usually kept the family in, and alone.
The Bowden parents had been busy with Rover all the time, and their work was totally private-secret, even. Even the name of their invention, Rover, was a code name. That was because Rover was for spying. When dangerous people started trouble far away, Rover was supposed to discover it and stop it.
Rover was important, and David and Katie were proud of it. But it was hard to know so little about it. Although they often asked exactly what Rover did, their parents never answered. Though they often asked how it got its strange name, they were never told.
Rover had meant other things for their family, as well. Though all four Bowdens liked people, there could be no guests, so there were few friends, sadly. Nor did the family ever go anywhere, not even to see their uncle Alex. Alex was their mom s brother, and he was a hermit who lived on a mountain far to the north in Vermont. Alex had taken to his mountain after a mysterious quarrel with a girlfriend long ago, and he had never left it. In the busy days when Rover was nearing completion it seemed as if one parent or the other was constantly heading off to meet with him.
David and Katie had heard about this long journey north so many times that they felt they knew the way by heart. But their uncle Alex was a riddle. Ever since that quarrel he had been shy-very shy; and private-very private. He was a scientist, but he lived a si