A different kind of dog!
“What do you mean?” Jeff asked. “You look like a dog. Are you a computer?”
Part computer, part dog!
“What did you mean when you said you wanted us to help you?”
They are chasing me.
“Who’s chasing you?”
White Coats! They want to end me.
“You mean... kill you?” Jeff said. Emily, who’d been rolling her eyes a few moments ago, was now giving Chipper her full attention.
Yes!
“Why would these guys in white coats want to kill you?”
I got away. I hid on a bus. I found you!
“You mean, more like I found you,” Jeff said. “I nearly killed you with the truck! You really, really scared me.”
I am okay. There are things you have to do. Fast!
“Like what?” Jeff said.
Turn things off.
“What things? What things have to be turned off?”
Emily said, “He must be talking about these settings. There’s all these icons and stuff across the top of the screen.”
“So, you don’t think it’s a joke anymore?”
“I don’t know what to think. But I can tell you I’ve got a pretty bad feeling about all this. I think I should tell my dad.”
“Your dad?”
“He used to be a cop.”
No!
“What do you mean, no?” Jeff said to the dog.
No police. They will know!
“He’s not a cop now,” Emily said. She shook her head. “I can’t believe I’m arguing with a dog.”
Jeff said to her, “You’re way smarter than I am with computers. Study that thing. Turn off anything that looks like it connects to these white coat dudes he’s talking about.”
Yes! Do that!
Emily studied the screen, did some clicking. “Okay, I think I know what to do here.”
To Chipper, Jeff said, “Okay, let me try to figure this out. Who are the white coat guys?”
They run The Institute.
“The Institute? What’s The Institute? Is that, like, a community college or something?”
Secret place.
“Like a government agency or something?”
Chipper nodded his head several times.
“This is where they turned you into some kind of computer dog? And you escaped because they were going to kill you? And now they’re looking for you?”
Very good! That is it!
“Do they know where you are?”
They know I am in this area.
“Holy crap,” Jeff said.
Emily said, “Okay, I found the GPS thingamabob, and I’ve turned it off. It didn’t look like it was working, but now it’s not going to come back on. And there’s this thing called ‘video link’ that’s kind of flashing on and off like it’s trying to work.”
Jeff leaned in close to Chipper, nose to nose. “It’s going to be okay,” he said, looking into his eyes. “We’re going to protect you.”
Chipper wasn’t so sure, but he did not want to tell them that. At that moment, he felt his right eye do something. He knew, immediately, what was happening. He wanted to close his eye, to close off the view, but his internal workings wouldn’t allow it. But he was pretty sure Emily could do it if she just clicked the right things.
To Jeff, the eye seemed to twinkle. There was a spark, and then it was gone. He stepped back and looked again at the screen to see what Emily was up to.
“Okay,” Emily said, “I just killed the video link. Now there’s something here labelled ‘base connect.’ Let me just see... ”
Turn off!
“Chipper says turn that off,” Jeff said.
“I can see the screen, Jeff.”
“Oh, yeah, sorry.”
“I think all the things that connect him to anybody else have been disengaged,” Emily said.
Jeff breathed a sigh of relief. “I want to try to do something here,” Emily said. “I can’t haul a laptop everywhere, but we want to know what he’s saying. I think I can configure this so what he says will show up on my phone, and I won’t need a wire.”
Great idea!
“And I’ve got a phone back at the camp, too,” Jeff said. “Can we set up mine, too?”
Emily nodded. “I think so.”
“What I figure I should do,” Jeff said, “is get that trash out of the truck, go back and come up with some kind of story for my aunt, then get my phone and get back here.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Emily said.
To Chipper, he said, “I guess you heard all that. So I’ll be back as soon as I can. But I have a question for you.”
Chipper looked at the boy expectantly.
“If these white coat guys who are looking for you — if they find you, and they find you with me and Emily, will we be in a lot of trouble?”
Chipper took a moment.
Not for long.
Twenty-Four
The big, black shiny SUV with deeply tinted windows came tearing up the gravel road that led into the dumpsite. It looked more like something that would be used for chauffeuring celebrities or government officials, not hauling bags of broken eggshells and dirty diapers and coffee grounds.
And, in fact, it was not hauling anything like that.
The SUV came to a stop, stirring up dust, and the driver’s door opened. Daggert got out. Even with the sunglasses on, he made a visor of his hand to scan his surroundings.
He was looking for movement. Maybe a tail sticking up from behind a bag of trash.
Daggert wasn’t about to get his own hands dirty. Or his beautifully polished black shoes, for that matter. So he looked into the SUV and shouted, “Let’s go!”
He had no problem sending Bailey and Crawford to traipse through the garbage looking for that dog. For now, this was still the best lead he had. Watkins or Wilkins or whatever his name was had detected the dog in this area, and there’d been no new information since to lead Daggert anywhere else.
Bailey and Crawford got out of the vehicle and approached their boss. “Yes?” said Crawford.
Daggert pointed directly at the heaps of smelly, disgusting garbage. “Start looking.”
“In there?” Bailey asked.
Daggert gave her a look that did not invite further objection. His two assistants reluctantly waded into the garbage, tiptoeing, even though they were wearing shoes, as if that would somehow protect them.
Daggert stood by the SUV, driver door open, his cell phone resting on the top of the dash by the steering wheel. After five minutes he called out, “Anything?”
Bailey’s blond head appeared from behind a mountain of trash. She looked like she might throw up. “A rat just tried to run up my pant leg,” she said.
Crawford, about forty feet away, stepping delicately around green bags that had been ripped open by seagulls, turned Daggert’s way and shouted, “I don’t see any dog around here at all.”
“It’s a big dump,” Daggert said. “If he’s here, and has seen us, he might be hiding. Start looking under some of that stuff.”
Bailey and Crawford stared at Daggert with a mix of disgust and disbelief. When they’d signed on to do the kind of nasty work that secret organizations demanded, they hadn’t imagined they’d have to pick through stinky, gooey, disgusting garbage.
Daggert heard a vehicle approach and turned around.
A pickup truck was coming down the dirt road that led in from the gravel one. The truck was, not surprisingly, loaded down with trash cans. It drove up close to the pit, spun around, then backed up to it, all about twenty feet away from the black SUV. Daggert noticed some writing on the door.