What if the woman who had kidnapped Bob was still there? Or the guy who’d searched my car—or both? And what if they were armed and saw us and started shooting? What if he hadn’t just been searching the car but had planted a bomb? Or they had filled the house with poison gas and when we went in we were all killed? What if they really were space aliens and all this was taking place on another planet where they had whisked us in our sleep so they could observe how humans react under pressure?
“What if you stop making up stupid scenarios and catch up with Kay and Bob,” I muttered out loud.
Kay was nearly out of sight. I picked up my pace until I was nearly trotting, which is no more comfortable on foot than on the back of a horse. I didn’t see the large stick in the path in front of me, and my foot came down squarely on it. It rolled, throwing me off balance. I lurched and walked into an enormous spider web stretched between two bushes. Fortunately it was untenanted, but its sticky tendrils clung to my face. I shuddered as I batted it off, making involuntary ugh noises.
By the time I caught up, the others were at the edge of the woods overlooking Bob’s house. Kay crouched behind some bushes, and Bob lurked behind a big tree a few feet away. I knelt beside Kay, hoping the shrubbery was big enough to provide cover for us both. “What’s going on?” I hissed.
“We’re waiting to see if the coast is clear,” Kay whispered back.
“Well, we can’t see that from down here,” I said, and pushed myself back to my feet. I hunched over so I could see through the screen of branches but not be seen from the house. I hoped. The underbrush rustled, and Jack came snuffling towards me. “Jack, down,” I hissed sternly. He looked surprised but dropped to his belly.
From here I could see the back and one side of Bob’s house. Beyond that my car still sat between the house and the garage. The only sounds were the breeze making its way through the underbrush, a couple of blue jays squabbling over something, and a rushing sound I thought was the nearby river, but might have been traffic on the road. Under other circumstances it would have been wonderfully peaceful, but I was so tense the scene seemed like a horror movie, just before something jumps out and devours some of the characters.
Kay scrambled to her feet and looked back and forth between Bob and the house. I decided the place was deserted and straightened up to ease the kink in my back. A single loud bang had Jack on his feet and surprised a loud squeak out of one of us. Me, I think. My first mental image was of large shotguns, before I remembered that Bob’s screen door made exactly that sound when it slammed shut. A hurrying form appeared from the front of the house, her back to us. The woman in red. Though she was now dressed in jeans and a red plaid shirt. She went straight to my car., She peered through the driver’s side window, shading her eyes with one hand. Then she opened the door and slid in behind the wheel. I heard the engine start. The blonde pulled the car door shut, backed around until she was headed for the road, gunned the engine, and drove away.
“My car! She’s stolen my car!” I yelped, heedless of being overheard.
“Louisa, did you leave your keys in the car?” Bob asked.
I grimaced and gave a nod. “I thought I'd only be in your house for a few minutes.”
Beside me Kay scrabbled in her purse. She pulled out her tiny phone and dialed. “Police? Oh, Kerry Sue, it's you. This is Kay. Yeah, I'm okay, but…No, I didn’t call for Ed. No, I need to report a stolen car…Of course I'm not kidding… No, it's not my car, it belongs to my…Yes, but…Listen, this car is being stolen right now, I mean this very minute. I'm watching it being driven…If you put out a call right now someone could—”
She listened to the chirps that were Kerry Sue, sighed, folded the phone and looked at us. “Well, it’s business as usual down at the cop shop. That was Kerry Sue Maddock, undoubtedly the stupidest person in town, so naturally they gave her the job of dispatcher. She said they’re kind of busy right now and told me to call back in ten minutes.”
Chapter Eighteen
Bob straightened to his full height and gave Kay a puzzled look. His expression was that of a man trying to translate words into a language he understood. “The police told you to call back?”
“Not exactly,” she said. “Kerry Sue told me to call back. Well, okay, yes, she does work for the police, but she’s not of the police, if you know what I mean.”
His furrowed brow indicated that he did not.
“Bob,” I said, “have you lived in a small town before?”
“No. Not as small as Willow Falls, anyway. Just when I was in college.”
“College doesn’t count,” I told him. “A lot of things happen in small towns because of who you are. Kerry Sue being the police dispatcher is one of them. I can give you her genealogy later.”
“Okay, if you say so,” he replied. “Anyway, let’s go down to the house and—”
“No!” Kay and I barked the word in unison. We looked at each other. I let her continue.
“It’s not safe,” she said. “You’re mixed up in something, and the other side knows where you live.”
“True,” he agreed. “So what do you suggest?”
“Would they have any reason to connect you to me?”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “Unless they’ve been following me for a while. But merely following me is probably not their agenda.”
“The phone message,” I said. Kay and Bob looked at me. I hurried on. “I came here last night to get Jack, and someone had left a message on your phone—you’d been spotted and should be careful.”
“I think I know who was. Did they leave a name?”
I shook my head. “They started talking before the recording began.”
“Well, at least let me go listen to that,” Bob said.
“Um, you can’t,” I told him. “It—it got erased.”
Sudden amusement sprang to his eyes but he didn’t say anything.
“Anyway,” Kay jumped back in, “they know where you live, and they probably don’t know where I live, and I have fresh bagels and cream cheese and the last of the summer tomatoes in my fridge.”
“Food?” said Bob. He suddenly looked exhausted.
“Food,” Kay assured him. And with one more glance at Bob’s house, we turned to retrace our steps to Kay’s car.
Emily Ann flowed off the couch and over to Bob. She placed her front paws on his shoulders and touched his cheek delicately with her nose.
“Thank you, Emily Ann,” he said quietly. She gazed into his eyes before settling back onto the floor.
Kay walked straight into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and started hauling out the promised victuals. “I don’t know about you all,” she threw over her shoulder, “but having adventures always makes me ravenous. And Louisa ate my cookies in the car.”
“We both ate them. And I didn’t have any breakfast.”
“Let’s get some food and after that, Bob has major explaining to do.”
We had postponed his explanations until now. He’d set a quick pace back through the woods, and it was hard to carry on conversation between the front and back seats in the car. While she drove, Kay had continued trying to report my stolen vehicle. First the phone had rung and rung until she clicked it off, shaking her head. The next attempt was answered, but Kerry Sue must have stepped away from the phone. After an initial “Hello?” I heard Kay’s voice take on a frosty tone.
“Ah, Ed…yes, this is Kay…” She checked her mirrors, pulled the car over to the curb and killed the engine. “Well, in spite of what that idiot Kerry Sue Maddock might have said, I am most definitely not calling to see how you are. I know how you are, remember? Which I why you and I are no longer seeing each other…Yes, of course you do, I’d never argue with that…yes, my cousin has everything to do with the fact that I'm calling you—” She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel and hunched her shoulders. The atmosphere in the car began to feel close and I tried to roll down my window, but with the engine turned off the electric button wouldn’t work. I thought longingly of the simple hand cranks in my own car.