Muck and Mr. Dillinger were so wrapped up in the tour of the White House that neither was aware that a Screech Owl had gone missing.
Travis felt sick to his stomach. Normally, if one of the players was missing, there would be an instant alert and they would all go off and try to find the straggler. But this wasn’t normal. This was Nish, and he was with the President’s son. They were in the White House, Chase Jordan’s own home. So it was hardly as if Nish was lost.
Maybe Nish had just gone to the bathroom or something. That would be perfectly normal: Chase taking Nish off to a washroom in another part of the White House.
But he didn’t believe it. And he knew, as captain, he should let Muck or Mr. Dillinger know if something was wrong.
They spent about fifteen minutes in the spectacular Oval Office. They saw the chair where President Kennedy had sat. They were told that here was where the critical decisions had been made for every war America had fought – including both world wars and the Vietnam War – and here was where the famous tapes had been made that caught President Nixon in a lie and led to his resignation in disgrace.
The tour of the Oval Office over, they headed out through a corridor towards the garden, where the President held so many of his press conferences. Just as Travis decided now was the time to tell Muck and Mr. Dillinger, a door swung open and Nish and Chase Jordan spilled through.
Both looked like they’d seen a ghost.
“Where were you guys?” Fahd asked.
“Nowhere,” Nish said quickly.
“Washroom,” Chase Jordan said. “Nish isn’t feeling well.”
That explains Nish’s look, Travis thought. But what about Chase? He looked just as shocked. They couldn’t both have been ill, could they?
“Something’s happened,” Sarah whispered to Travis.
Nish was uncommonly quiet on the bus ride back to the hotel. No farting noises, no burping or belching or screaming at the top of his lungs. No irritating tap-tap … tap-tap-tap … tap-tap on the window. Just Nish sitting quietly near the front of the bus, his hands folded in his lap as he stared out like an elderly tourist interested in the architecture of downtown Washington.
Something had happened. Travis just wasn’t sure he wanted to know what.