Jeff was right behind him.
Thirty-Two
“What the heck was that?” Jeff asked Chipper as the two fled from the train station. “How did you make that sound?”
Chipper didn’t want to take the time to explain. He knew that the deafening noise would only put Daggert and his crew out of commission for a few minutes. The priority was to get away.
“Hang on,” Jeff said, running to Harry Green’s van to see whether the keys had been left in it. A quick look through the window told him they were not. Daggert wasn’t about to make that mistake twice. And with no way to start the SUV, Jeff didn’t see that they had much choice but to keep running.
The question was: Head back to the main road, Flo’s Cabins, or Shady Acres?
It seemed to him the only option left was to go back to his or Emily’s camp and try to get help. They might have been able to give this bunch the slip for now, but they were going to be hard to lose, and for all Jeff knew, they had more people they could bring in to help.
Despite Chipper’s warnings, Jeff thought it was finally time to call the police.
“Chipper,” Jeff said, pointing in the general direction of Shady Acres, “we’re going this way. We might be able to get help there.”
That seemed as good an idea as any to Chipper right now.
They ran through the woods, the knee-deep weeds and grasses brushing up against Jeff’s jeans and Chipper’s furry tummy. The dog had regained much of his strength, bounding almost happily through the foliage, his nose up, taking it all in.
Charging through the woods side by side, Jeff felt an incredible bond with this animal that he had known for only a few hours. Events had somehow brought them together — according to Emily, it was not some random thing — and now the two were shoulder to shoulder, fighting for their lives.
At this moment, there was no one Jeff depended on more than Chipper. His parents were gone, Emily had made a run for it. And even if Aunt Flo was alive, as Daggert suggested, Jeff couldn’t count on her for help.
What Jeff did not know was that Chipper felt the same way. He had found the boy, and now he needed the boy’s help to stay alive. He was going to do everything he could to make sure the boy stayed safe.
Unless, of course, he became distracted.
They were running together, side by side, when Chipper suddenly veered left. He was like one of those cycles in that old Tron movie, making a ninety-degree turn at a hundred miles per hour.
Jeff stopped dead. What had Chipper noticed that he had not? Were the bad guys right in front of them? Were they already at Shady Acres? And if running straight ahead was no longer a safe strategy, why hadn’t the dog given him some kind of signal that they had to go a different way?
He didn’t have to send him a message on his phone. A simple bark would have done the trick.
Jeff stopped and called out Chipper’s name at the same time as he brought out his phone, just in case there was a message.
Nothing.
So Jeff started running after him. “What is it, boy? What’s going on?”
He’d lost sight of him. Chipper had dashed off so quickly, the tall grasses had swallowed him up. Where the heck was he?
Jeff heard rustling to his left, then half a second later, darting right past him, inches from his shoe, was a rabbit.
And a millisecond after that, Chipper flew past like a bullet.
“Chipper!” Jeff shouted.
About thirty feet away, the dog’s head poked up above the grass, looked back at Jeff.
“What the heck are you doing?”
Words appeared on the screen.
I saw a rabbit.
“Is that rabbit trying to kill us?” Jeff asked, unable to hide his frustration. “Did he have a gun?”
As Chipper came trotting back, he expressed his regrets.
Sorry. It happens sometimes.
“Sorry? You take off after a bunny and that’s all you have to say?”
Do you want to terminate me too?
The words were like a knife to the heart. Jeff dropped to his knees and held out his arms. The dog walked into them and Jeff squeezed his neck. “I would never, never, ever want to terminate you,” he said.
Good to know.
Still squeezing, Jeff said, “I think you’d be a great dog without any of your computer stuff. I’d love to hang out here and watch you chase rabbits and squirrels, but right now, we kind of have more important things to deal with.”
That is true. I lost it for a minute.
“Come on.”
They picked up their pace once again, and in five more minutes they were walking — more like sneaking — onto the Shady Acres property. The place was pretty quiet, but Jeff knew there was a chance Daggert and his team might somehow have gotten here before them, once they’d recovered from that sonic boom that came out of the dog’s mouth. Emily’s dad’s truck was over by the house, but Jeff didn’t see either of them around.
Jeff had an idea.
“Chipper, instead of trying to steal another car — if we could borrow a boat, get across to the other side of the lake, they’d have no idea where we were. That would buy us some time, give us a chance to figure out what to do next.”
Chipper studied him, then slowly nodded.
That might work.
“Let’s head down to the water.”
Jeff made his way across the camp carefully, sneaking around cabins, skulking behind bushes, much like when he was getting out of Aunt Flo’s house. He wanted to be out in the open as little as possible.
His back pressed up against a cabin’s wall, Chipper leaning into his leg, he could see the waterfront, no more than forty feet away. There were three fishing boats tied up to the docks. All aluminum, about fourteen feet long. The outboard motors bolted to the back of them weren’t very powerful — no more than ten to fifteen horsepower — and wouldn’t get them across the lake in a hurry, but they would have to do. Jeff noticed that Emily’s boat was missing.
But then, about a hundred feet offshore, a powerboat appeared. Long and sleek — at least twenty feet, Jeff figured — with a black hull and an oversize outboard motor on the back. Eighty horsepower at least.
There was only one person in the boat, behind the wheel. A man, probably in his thirties or forties. Pretty old, anyway.
Jeff thought if they could flag him down, maybe he’d take them across the lake. They’d be there in minutes.
“Let’s go, Chipper,” Jeff said.
Jeff charged out from his hiding spot next to the cabin and ran out to the end of the dock, waving both hands in the air, the way you might try to get a pilot’s attention if you were stranded on a desert island.
Chipper ran to catch up to the boy and looked eagerly at the speedboat. Even this far away, he caught the scent of exhaust fumes spewing from the engine. He wagged his tail and let out an encouraging bark.
The boat had been heading straight past, but when the driver saw them he cut the throttle and steered in. As he nosed in to the dock, the motor dropping from a roar to a soft put-put-put, the man said, “Everything okay?”
Jeff had to think of something fast.
“My dad just took off across the lake and forgot his phone!” Jeff said, holding up his own. “He needs it in case he gets a call from the hospital!”
“The hospital?”
“He’s a brain surgeon,” Jeff said. “He’s always on call in case someone needs to have their brain fixed.”
Chipper looked up at Jeff as if to say, Seriously? Brain fixed? “Whoa, okay, then you better come aboard,” the man said. “I can have you over there in a couple of minutes.”