Baby-Sitting Is a Dangerous Job (11 page)

It probably wouldn't even show from the ground, but from above we could make out a break in the stone wall, with a gate set into it. I wondered if that gate, too, was locked. Or if, because it was hidden in shrubbery on both sides of the wall, it might be possible to open it and escape that way.

For some reason the windows up there weren't painted shut, the way they were in the rest of the house, though I had to shove hard to get one open. We needed the fresh air, because it was hot up at the top of the house. The roofs spread out all around us, and we could have walked on these for they were almost flat; only there was nowhere to go.

I opened a couple more windows. I didn't think it was a good idea to stay up here for long, because I didn't know how the Hazens would feel about it and I didn't want to antagonize them, not while there was a chance I might be
able to outwit them if they weren't expecting me to do it. Yet the kids were being entertained for a little while, and I hated to chase them out of the special room immediately. I'd have liked it myself if I hadn't been a prisoner.

Jeremy was entertaining himself in a way that nearly gave me a heart attack when I saw him.

I turned around from looking out over the grounds and saw him at one of the open windows, a toy arrow in one hand, stretching out to poke at something up under the eaves.

At first all I thought about was that he'd fall out and roll over the edge of the roof below. But then I saw what he was trying to poke with the arrow.

“Jeremy! Stop it!” I cried, and made a grab for him.

He turned to me with a smile of pure, innocent delight. “It's a bee's nest, Darcy. Isn't it?”

“Wasps, I think. Get away from there. They sting, and it hurts something awful. I remember, because my brother knocked a nest off the corner of our garage once, and we all got stung.”

His smile faded, “I never saw a bee's nest.
I just wanted to poke a little hole in it and see what happened.”

I took the arrow out of his hand and dropped it near the bow, which couldn't have been used to shoot because it was broken. “What happens when you poke a hole in the nest is that the wasps all come swarming out and sting everybody in sight. Come on, we'd better get back before they discover we're missing. We don't want to make them mad so they get nasty.”

The only thing I let them take downstairs was a box of old children's books. I carried them back down to the second floor, and we started looking through them, to take our minds off being hungry.

“I want
Greg'ry Gray and the Brave Beast,
” Shana said, and we tried to explain to her that that book wasn't among the ones we had. Instead, we read about a goat named Billy Whiskers and some kittens named Buzz, Fuzz, Suzz, and Agamemnon.

Shana picked up some of the words and sang them softly under her breath. “Happy birthday, mew mew.” She giggled to herself.

After a while Dan came upstairs, carrying
more paper bags. “Breakfast,” he announced.

I was hungry enough to eat just about anything, but Shana stuck out her lower lip at the sight of the hamburgers. “No,” she said when I offered her one. “Go shicken.”

Dan stared at her, exasperated. “I'll get chicken next time. For now, this is all we got.”

“Go
shicken
!” Shana insisted, looking as if she were going to cry.

“I think she means
kitchen
,” Jeremy translated. “She likes cereal for breakfast.”

“Fruit Loops,” Shana stated. “I want Fruit Loops.”

“Me, too,” Melissa agreed. She often took her cue from one of the other kids.

“Why can't we go downstairs and eat?” Jeremy wanted to know. “Maybe there's some cereal down there.”

Dan hesitated. “I'm supposed to keep you up here.”

“Why?” I asked. “You're going to have to let the dogs outdoors for a few minutes, aren't you? So they can't guard us all the time. Shana will be a lot easier to handle if she gets what she wants to eat.”

I was sure his brother would never have let us talk him into it, but Dan finally shrugged. “Okay, Come downstairs to eat. But don't try anything.”

I couldn't think of anything to try that had any chance of working, but I kept watching for an opportunity. We sat around the kitchen table, where Jeremy and I ate hamburgers, and the girls had cereal. There weren't any Fruit Loops, only bite-size shredded wheat, the kind my dad calls “grown-up cereal.” While we were eating, I located the telephone on the wall beside the stove. I just glanced at it, then quickly away, so Dan wouldn't think I was plotting anything.

“When can we go home?” Jeremy asked.

“When your daddy gives us the money tonight,” Dan said. There were dirty dishes in the sink, so he must have already had something to eat. I wondered if they were going to leave them there for the old man called Okie, when he came home from the hospital.

“Did you talk to Daddy?” Jeremy demanded.

“Henry did. He'll get the money this morning. After dark he'll meet us and hand it over,
and then you can go home. You can behave that long, can't you?”

I remembered what he'd said about there being a window in Okie's bedroom that could be opened. The bedroom was beyond the kitchen; through the doorway I saw an unmade bed and guessed that Dan had slept in there last night after they'd called Mr. Foster.

Jeremy wasn't looking toward the bedroom. He'd spotted the television on the counter, and a couple of game cartridges alongside it. “Can we play games? Do you have Donkey Kong?”

“You gotta go back upstairs,” Dan said, but he didn't sound very firm about it. He was probably as bored as we were.

“Let's play Donkey Kong. Or Road Racing.”

Dan hesitated. “Well, I'll have to bring the dogs back in. And when we hear Henry or Pa coming, you high tail it back upstairs.”

The Dobermans came when he whistled at them, looking expectantly at the empty dishes beside the stove. While Dan was scooping dog food out of the bag that stood beside them, Shana reached over and took the crusts from Jeremy's hamburger. She dangled them in the
air, and one of the dogs reached up and took them out of her hand.

There were still two hamburgers in the sack. Dan wasn't looking, so I unwrapped one, then the other, and shoved them toward Shana. Without any change of expression, she dropped them under the table. They only lasted a matter of seconds.

Dan put the scoop back into the dog food bag and stared at the dogs. “Well, what's the matter with you? I thought you were so all-fired hungry a minute ago.”

The dogs, however, only sniffed at the food he'd put out, then dropped flat near Shana's chair, waiting for something else. I thought sure Dan would catch on, but he didn't.

Jeremy and Dan started to play a video game. I could hardly keep my eyes off the telephone; if I could get through to the police, or my folks, we'd soon be out of this place. But though Dan had part of his attention on the game, he didn't turn his back on me. I didn't have a chance to do anything.

Jeremy won two games. Obviously he played a lot. Melissa slid off her chair and put the dish
containing the remains of her cereal on the floor, so the dogs could finish it. Dan, who was getting beaten the third game, too, didn't notice when Shana's bowl was set beside Melissa's.

I wasn't quite as afraid of the dogs as I had been. They watched me move around the kitchen, clearing the table, not trying to stop me. They weren't as hostile toward the kids as they had been, either. That might come in handy if we tried to run, though I supposed I couldn't count on it.

I cleared my throat. “When is Mr. Foster going to bring the money?”

“After dark,” Dan said. “Boy, kid, you must get a lot of practice at this. Let's try Road Racing.”

I could tell by the funny little half-smile on Jeremy's lips that he was pretty good at Road Racing, too. If he kept Dan thinking about video games, was there anything I could do that would help us?

“I hafta go potty,” Shana said.

Dan didn't take his attention off the game, because Jeremy was good enough that Dan had to concentrate to hold his own.

I thought of the bathroom upstairs and figured there had to be another one down here; if the old caretaker had been using the upstairs one, there would have been more supplies in it. “Can I take her down here?” I asked, and Dan nodded, jerking a thumb over his shoulder.

“In there,” he said.

I was going to wear my heart out, making it hammer so hard. I took Shana into the little hallway off the kitchen. Okie's bedroom I'd already seen into. But hidden from the kitchen was the door to a tiny bathroom, just as old-fashioned as the one upstairs. The window was too small for anybody but Shana to fit through. There was no help there. When we came out, however, I saw that Dan and Jeremy were neck and neck with the Road Racing, and I took a chance.

“Wait here,” I whispered to Shana, and I ducked into Okie's bedroom.

The window opened easily. It was big enough for me to go through it, and it was only about six feet off the ground. My chest hurt and I almost forgot to breathe, trying to figure out what to do.

I could get out, all right, but what would I do then? If there had been a close neighbor I might have taken a chance and run, trying that little gate we'd seen from the attic, but the nearest house was a mile or more away. And if they caught me before I got help, we'd be in worse shape than we already were.

I came out of the bedroom and took Shana's hand as we walked back to the kitchen. I felt even worse than I had before, because now I knew it might be possible to get out of the house, at least. Only I didn't know what would happen to the kids if I left them.

Or to me, if I couldn't get through that little gate! If they turned the dogs loose, they'd find me in minutes.

Still, my mind kept racing furiously as I watched Jeremy win another video game, and Dan doggedly begin the fourth one. Dan wasn't terribly smart, and it might yet be possible to outwit him.

If I was smart enough to do it.

It wasn't bad until Henry showed up. He was wearing coveralls that made it look as if he worked in a service station, and when he came in the kitchen door, taking us by surprise, the dogs leaped to their feet and growled.

Henry jumped backward, bellowing something profane about getting rid of them, and Dan yelled, too. “Sit! Stay!”

The Dobermans obediently sank onto their haunches. Melissa had been frightened by them, and she clung to my hand. Shana didn't appear to have been scared at all, regarding the dogs and Henry with an equal amount of interest.

“It's the coveralls,” Dan said. “They're not used to the coveralls.”

Henry glared at the animals, stepping warily
around them to reach the telephone. “Once this is over, I'll never wear coveralls again,” he said, and dialed a number that he read from a scrap of paper.

“Did something go wrong?” Dan asked nervously. He'd just won his first video game, probably because it was one Jeremy had never played before. I wondered if the old man called Okie had had someone to play them with, or if he'd just entertained himself with them all alone.

Henry finished dialing before he answered. “No, I'm just going to check in with Foster; he wants to be sure we actually have the kids before he pays over the ransom. Hello, Mr. Foster? Did you get the money together?”

His grin toward his brother told us what Mr. Foster had said to that. “Good. Good. Now, you want proof we got your kids; I'll let you talk to the little one.”

He bent over and held the phone for Shana. “Talk to your daddy, kid.”

Shana brightened. Obviously she liked to talk on the phone. “Hi,” she said in a very soft voice. “There's big doggies in the shicken.”

Henry jerked the phone away. “That convince you? Here, I'll put the middle one on.”

Melissa's voice trembled when she lifted her hands to steady the phone. “Daddy, I want to go home.”

Again Henry jerked the phone away. “You hear that? She wants to go home. You deliver that suitcase as scheduled, and you'll have them all back within a couple of hours. Now, listen carefully. You got something to write with? You follow my directions exactly, and you'll get your kids back unharmed. What?”

He didn't like being interrupted by Mr. Foster; he scowled, but after a few seconds he handed the phone to me. “He wants to talk to you. Don't tell him anything about where we are, understand?”

I nodded, my mouth suddenly dry. I wouldn't have been surprised if Mr. Foster had been furious with me, letting his kids be kidnapped when I was supposed to be taking care of them, but he sounded nice. Nice, and very worried.

“Darcy?”

“Yes, sir,” I said, almost in a whisper.

“Are you all right? Are the kids all right?”

“Yes, sir,” I repeated.

“They haven't mistreated any of you?”

I thought of the tape on the kids' mouths, and the way their wrists had been tied. “Not really. We just—”

Henry put an end to that by taking back the receiver. “That's plenty. You know we got the kids. Now, you write this down. At exactly ten o'clock tonight you take that suitcase full of money and leave your house in the gray Mercedes. Don't call the police, don't take anybody with you. Understand? You drive east out of town, on the main road—”

But we had driven west out of town, I thought, feeling panicky. He'd never find us here if he went in the opposite direction . . .

Henry's instructions continued, read off from another paper he'd taken from his pocket. “There's a pay phone two miles out of town, on a Union Station lot. You should be there by ten fifteen. Wait there until we call, and then you'll get further directions. We'll be watching you, so do just what we say.”

“I want to go home!” Melissa cried, near tears; and Henry shot an angry look at her.