On the Run Read online

  “Who . . . who are you?” Dad demanded.

  “Oh, I think you know who we are, mate. Now come on.”

  “You just can’t grab us in the middle of traffic!”

  “Of course I can. That is if you want to see your children alive again.”

  Mom froze. “Our children? What have you done with the children?!”

  “There’s only one way to find out.” He turned and walked away from the car.

  Mom twirled to her husband. “What do we do?”

  He frowned.

  “Maybe it’s a bluff,” she said. “Maybe the kids are safe.”

  “Maybe . . .” Dad let out a heavy sigh. “But is that a risk we’re willing to take?”

  She looked at him a moment then shook her head. Then they both reached for the door handles and exited the car.

  “Elijah . . .” Piper looked down into her little brother’s suitcase. “You can’t take all this stuff ! The lid won’t close.”

  He crossed his arms and scowled.

  “Sorry, buddy.”

  She began pulling things out. First went the photos.

  Not just those from his room, but also from the hallway, the mantle, next to Mom’s bed, and on Dad’s dresser.

  “Didn’t you pack any clothes?” she asked.

  He scowled harder and pointed at the shirt, pants, and shoes he was wearing.

  “You have to pack more than those.”

  He lifted up his shirt to show his underwear.

  Piper smiled and reached back into the suitcase. The next thing she pulled out was a heavy book — the family Bible. He loved that thing. And even though he couldn’t read, he’d stare at the printed pages for hours. He especially liked the last section, the book of Revelation.

  Piper continued to dig.

  This was their fourth move in six years. And, like the others, it was always last minute with no explanation. When they tried to get their parents to tell them why, the answer was always the same: “When you’re older we’ll explain. Right now, the less you know the better it will be.”

  Piper blew the hair out of her eyes. It wasn’t anything illegal, she knew that. The family always went out of their way to do the right thing. So what could it be?

  She looked back into the suitcase and pulled out Zach’s baseball card collection. Next she felt warm fur and pulled out her koala bear — the one she’d slept with since she was a baby. She’d wanted to pack it in her own suitcase but didn’t have room.

  “Oh, Eli,” she said softly. “That is so sweet. But you have to pack something for your — ”

  She was interrupted by Zach shouting from downstairs. “Looks like we’ve got company!”

  She moved to the window with Elijah. Sure enough, a green van had pulled up and the door now slid open. The first person to step out was a skinny man with a funny nose . . . and a gun.

  That’s all Piper needed to see.

  “Come on, Eli,” she whispered. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “The back door!” Zach called. “Let’s sneak out and head across old lady Hagen’s yard!”

  Monica was surprised to see the front door unlocked. Instead of breaking it down (or allowing Silas to shoot it) she simply pushed it open, and they walked inside.

  She turned to the men. “Bruno, check the back door. Silas, look upstairs.”

  They nodded and went to work, just as Monica’s cell phone rang. She flipped it open and answered, “Hello.”

  “We have the parentsss,” the voice hissed through the phone. “You were correct. The children are not with them.”

  Monica nodded as she moved through the kitchen. “It doesn’t look like they’re here, either.”

  “You have lossst them?” the voice hissed, sounding even darker than before.

  Monica spotted a note on the counter and silently read it:

  No time to explain. Meet us at Aunt Myrna’s tonight. Take everything you need in case we can’t come back.

  “Lo, I am with you always . . .” — Matthew 28:20

  At the bottom was an address.

  “No, sir, I haven’t lost them.” Monica’s thin lips curled into what was a cross between a snarl and a smile. “In fact, I know right where they’re going.”

  Chapter Three

  A Close Call

  Zach lugged Eli’s suitcase and his own down the sidewalk.

  Piper pulled hers on little attached wheels. When she’d picked it out with Mom, she’d known the wheels were a good, efficient feature.

  Piper had a thing about being “efficient.”

  “I wish Dad would’ve left us some money for a cab,” she said with a sigh. “The bus will take forever.”

  “Actually,” Zach explained, “he probably figured we had enough.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “He gave me a bunch of money for football equipment and stuff , but I . . .” Zach came to a stop.

  Piper turned to him. “But you what?”

  “But I, well, um . . .” He fumbled, looking for a way out. Finally, he shrugged. “All right, so I bought lunch for a few of my friends. Big deal.”

  “You bought lunch for a few of your friends?!”

  “All right, for a lot of my friends.”

  Piper groaned. “Zach . . .”

  “Don’t sweat it.” He reached into his pocket. “We’ve still got almost three bucks left.”

  “Great. We get to walk a thousand miles to the bus stop, then ride the smelly thing all the way across town just so you could be B.M.O.C.”

  “Big Man on Campus?” Zach asked.

  Piper shook her head. “Big Moron on Campus.”

  Elijah began tugging on Zach’s sleeve.

  “What is it, little buddy?”

  Elijah pointed at a sign that read Hospital, with an arrow pointing down the street.

  “You want to go to the hospital?” Zach said.

  “Are you feeling sick?” Piper asked in sudden concern.

  Elijah shook his head.

  “Sorry, pal,” Zach said. “No field trips today. We gotta keep moving. Hey, there’s the bus now.”

  “Yeah,” Piper agreed. “I can smell it from here.”

  Piper didn’t dislike riding buses, per say. It was more like a deep hatred, a powerful loathing. In short, she despised it with every bone in her body.

  It wasn’t just the smelly exhaust, the sticky seats, or the sweet old ladies that always wound up sitting next to her and talking her ears off . The loathing went deeper, and it had started a long time ago. When she was seven, to be exact. That’s when little Billy Hutton thought it would be great fun to sit behind her on the school bus and play “flick the girl’s ears.”

  Yes, sir, lots of fun . . . at least for the first couple days. But after a week or two it got a little boring — and painful. So, after asking him to stop for the hundredth time and complaining to the bus driver for the hundredth and one time, little Piper took matters into her own hands.

  Translation: She leaped over the seat and beat the tar out of him.

  Billy didn’t laugh much after that. It’s too embarrassing to laugh when you’ve been beaten up by a girl. (Even more embarrassing to laugh when you no longer have front teeth because of it.)

  Of course, Mom and Dad weren’t fond of paying for the dental bills. And Piper was even less fond of them taking it out of her allowance for the next thousand years. But Billy never showed interest in her again.

  Unfortunately, neither did any of the other boys.

  Ever.

  Monica sat in the passenger seat of the green van looking for any sign of the kids.

  “They can’t be too far,” she grumbled. “They’re on foot.”

  Silas nodded from behind the wheel and turned the van up another street. A block later they came to a stoplight.

  “There they are!” Bruno shouted from the backseat.

  “Where?” Monica demanded.

  “Across the street! At the bus stop!”

  “Great.
” Silas grinned.

  “And there’s the bus!” Monica pointed.

  Silas looked up the street and saw the approaching bus. It was half a block away. “No problem,” he said. “We’ve got plenty of time to get over there and grab them before it gets here.”

  The light changed, and he started to make a U-turn to cross the street when, suddenly, a homeless man appeared in front of them.

  Silas slammed on the brakes. “Hey!”

  The man didn’t move.

  Silas blasted the horn. “HEY!”

  The homeless man looked up and smiled.

  Silas blew the horn again. “Get out of the way!”

  The man raised a hand to his ear as if he couldn’t hear.

  “The bus is coming!” Monica yelled.

  “Come on, pal!” Silas shouted, motioning for him to move.

  “Hurry!” Monica cried.

  “What can I do?!” He hit the horn again.

  The bus entered the intersection and pulled to a stop in front of the kids.

  “They’re getting on!” Monica yelled.

  Silas continued honking. The man continued smiling.

  “Run over him!” she shrieked.

  With a belch of black smoke, the bus began to pull off.

  “They’re getting away!” Monica banged on the dashboard. “They’re getting away!”

  Silas turned back to the homeless man . . . only to discover he was no longer there. “Where’d he go?”

  “Who cares?” Monica screamed. “Follow that bus!”

  Silas resumed the U-turn, only to have another car pull out in front of him. Again he slammed on the brakes, and again he blasted the horn.

  But the car wouldn’t move. Actually, it couldn’t move. The homeless man had crossed the street and now blocked the traffic coming from the opposite direction.

  “Unbelievable,” Silas said with a sigh as he watched the bus head off down the road.

  “Now what do we, uh, do?” Bruno called from the backseat.

  “We meet them at their aunt’s,” Monica said. She pulled out the note she’d picked up from the counter.

  “If we can’t grab them here, we’ll grab them there.”

  Silas nodded. When the traffic finally cleared, he hit the gas. He drove like a madman to make sure they arrived before the kids.

  Thirty minutes later, they pulled up in front of the aunt’s house.

  “You guys wait here,” Monica said as she opened the van’s door.

  “Don’t you want us to go with you?” Silas asked.

  “Yeah, you might need, like, a protector or somethin’,” Bruno said.

  Monica looked at him for a long moment. For weeks she figured Bruno had been getting a crush on her. And now, by the way he tried to suck in his gut, grin, and smooth down his hair all at the same time, she was sure of it.

  Finally she spoke. “I don’t want any trouble here.”

  “Gotcha.” Bruno grinned. Both he and Silas reached for their doors.

  “No, listen to me,” Monica said. First she pointed at Silas. “Too creepy looking.” Then she pointed at Bruno.

  “Too stupid.”

  They both stared.

  “Understand?”

  The big guy looked down and nodded. He seemed to wilt before her very eyes.

  She continued. “Just wait here for me.”

  Neither answered.

  With a heavy sigh, she stepped out of the van and closed the door behind her.

  Quickly, she hurried up the walk. As she arrived at the door, she took a compact from her purse and checked her face in the mirror. She tried smiling to soften her hardness. But no matter how she smiled, her face always looked as strained as a tortoise with a migraine.

  She finally gave up and rang the bell.

  A kind, older woman with silver hair opened the door. “Yes?”

  Monica tried her best to look pleasant. “Are you . . .

  Myrna?” she asked, suddenly realizing she didn’t know Aunt Myrna’s last name.

  But Myrna saved her. “Dawkins. Yes, I am.”

  Monica tried smiling again. Her attempt to smile caused her physical pain. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but your brother’s family was in a car accident up north. They’re at Bellevue Hospital in Ventura.”

  “Oh no!” Aunt Myrna cried. “Are they all right?”

  “It’s too early to tell. I’m friends with your sister-in-law. She wanted me to ask you to come to the hospital right away.”

  Aunt Myrna nodded. “Thank you, thank you.” She turned and called up the stairs to her husband. “Tom! We’ve got to go to Ventura right now! Mike’s family has been in an accident!”

  Thanking Monica once again, she shut the door.

  Monica sneered in contentment as she headed back to the van.

  “Any luck?” Silas called from the window.

  She nodded and climbed inside. “Park down the block, in a place where we can watch the house without being spotted.”

  Silas dropped the car into gear. But as they pulled away, Bruno let out a forlorn sigh with a couple sniffles.

  Monica turned and asked, “What’s the matter with you?”

  Silas explained. “He’s upset because you said he was stupid.”

  Monica turned back to Bruno and said in her most comforting and understanding voice, “Bruno . . . dear, dear Bruno?”

  He looked up, hopefully. “Ye . . . yes?” he answered between sniffles.

  “Knock it off !”

  After three bus transfers (and more than a little complaining from Piper), the kids finally approached their destination. Or so they hoped.

  “You sure you remember how to get there?” Piper asked Zach for the hundredth time.

  And for the hundredth time, Zach sighed. “Sure I’m sure. Their house is just down the street from that park.”

  “Which park is that?”

  Zach shrugged. “You know, the park.”

  Piper looked at him.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Can I see the note please?”

  “What note?”

  “The one with the address.”

  “Oh, that note.” Zach reached into his shirt pocket, but only found a flyer for some concert. He checked his back pocket. It was his history assignment. He tried his left pocket and found . . . two one-dollar bills . . . and forty cents in change.

  Piper looked at him in disbelief.

  He tried his right pocket and found two pieces of gum and half an eraser.

  Piper rolled her eyes.

  “What?” he repeated.

  “You lost the note?”

  “What do I need a stupid note for? Her place is on Jasmine Drive, just down from the park.”

  “Which park?” she repeated.

  “How should I know? I mean, how many parks can there be in the city?”

  Just then, the bus slowed as the driver called out, “Rutherford Park. Next stop, Cantrell Park, followed by Gelford Park.”

  If looks could kill, Zach would be making funeral arrangements for himself.

  Suddenly, Eli leaped to his feet and pointed out the window toward a large statue of a horse.

  “This is it!” Zach cried. “The park with the horse!”

  “Are you sure?” Piper asked.

  “Sure I’m sure!”

  Seconds later, all three piled out of the bus and headed down the street toward Aunt Myrna’s.

  “I’m starved,” Zach said. “I hope she’s got dinner for us.”

  Piper gave another one of her world-famous sighs.

  “I’d just settle for a hug. Do you think we’ll go back home tonight?”

  Zach shrugged. “I doubt it. Remember the last time we had to move?”

  “How could I forget? It was in the middle of the night.”