It was Jeff.
Only thirty minutes earlier, Aunt Flo had been standing in the middle of the driveway, out front of her house, fists on her hips, when Jeff arrived back into the camp from the dump. She looked like laser beams were about to come out of her eyes.
Jeff had a choice of hitting the brakes or running her down. He decided, with some reluctance, to slam on the brakes for the second time that day. The truck slid to a stop on the gravel. Aunt Flo’s face was quickly at his open window, and she was angry.
“Where have you been? You’ve been gone nearly two hours! It doesn’t take two hours to get to the dump and back! Where were you? What in blazes have you been up to?”
“I got held up,” Jeff said, hands gripped around the wheel.
“Held up? Held up? What’s that supposed to mean? By bandits? Stagecoach robbers? There’s all kinds of things that need doing around here and they’re not getting done when you’re goofing off.”
Jeff killed the ignition and slowly pushed open the door, giving his aunt time to back out of the way. He walked right past her and headed for the house.
“I’m talking to you!” she said.
“Aunt Flo, there’s something I really have to deal with right now,” Jeff said. “I’m sorry.”
He walked briskly and Aunt Flo struggled to keep up with him.
“What do you have to deal with that’s more important than making sure my business runs efficiently?”
Jeff stopped and turned. “I don’t care about your business. I don’t care about your stupid camp or your stupid cabins or your stupid boats and most of all I don’t care about you!”
That stopped her dead in her tracks. Her mouth opened but nothing came out. Jeff was as stunned as she was. He couldn’t believe he’d said those things, and instantly regretted them.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean that. I mean, I did mean it, but I didn’t mean to say it like that.”
Aunt Flo found her voice, and said, “After all the wonderful things I have done for you.”
“Excuse me?”
“Taking you in, giving you a home after what happened to your mother and father. You think my life has been easy since you showed up?”
Her lip quivered. Jeff thought she looked like she might actually cry. He’d never believed, up until now, that she had the capacity to produce tears.
“It’s not just about you, you know! Do you have any idea how much I loved your father? He was my baby brother, and I adored him! And maybe I didn’t always get along with your mother, but I loved her, too. I know it was a hundred times worse for you, losing your parents, but I thought the world of them!”
Jeff didn’t know what to say.
“You think I’m tough on you? Well, maybe I am,” she admitted. “Do you think I do it just to be mean? You think I like yelling at you all the time?”
Jeff shrugged. “Kinda.”
“Well, I don’t!”
“You’re yelling at me right now,” Jeff said.
She seemed to deflate, like a tire losing some air. More quietly, she continued.
“Maybe I am. But you have to be strong. You’re going out into the world without a mother or father to guide you, and if you’re not tough, you’ll get eaten alive.”
A tear emerged from her right eye and ran down her cheek. Jeff gazed upon it as if it were a flying cat. Not the kind of thing one saw every day.
“Okay, maybe I never wanted to be responsible for looking after you, but now I’ve got you, and you’ve got me, and we’re stuck with each other.”
Jeff noticed, watching from a distance from behind the screen door of his cabin, his friend Harry Green.
“I never…I never understood,” Jeff said. “But I still hate it here.”
That actually made Flo laugh. She did something Jeff couldn’t remember her doing since he’d come to live with her. She held her arms out to him.
Really? She wanted to give him a hug?
Jeff stood frozen for a moment, then closed the distance between them and let her take him into her arms. Tentatively, he wrapped his arms around her in return. After three seconds, Aunt Flo disengaged herself.
“So, okay then,” she said, looking down at the grass as though embarrassed by her openness.
“Yeah, well,” Jeff said.
“Now, could you tell me why you were gone so long?” she asked, regaining her composure.
“No.”
“What?”
Jeff rested his hands on her shoulders. “Aunt Flo, there’s something I have to do right now that’s very, very important, and I can’t tell you, at least right now, what it’s about. You just have to trust me. I will be back as soon as I can.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’m just running in to grab my phone, and then I have to take off for a little while. I promise I won’t be super long. If I run into a problem, I’ll call you.”
“But—”
“No,” Jeff said firmly. “There’s something I have to do and I can’t really explain what it is. You have to believe me.”
“But—”
Jeff gave her shoulders a squeeze. “Please.”
Aunt Flo took a deep breath. “Fine. But will you be here for dinner?”
“I don’t know. Just save me something.”
She lowered her head slightly in an admission of defeat. Jeff gave her a quick kiss on the cheek, turned and ran into the house. He flew up the stairs in less than a second and dashed into his bedroom. He had left his cell phone charging on the bedside table. He detached it from the cord and shoved it down in the front pocket of his jeans.
He was just turning to his bedroom door when he heard a car—what sounded like a big car—barreling down the driveway into the camp. He went to the window and stared in disbelief.
It was a big, black SUV.
The SUV came to a stop directly behind the Flo’s Cabins pickup truck. Flo, who was still standing out front of the house, walked with a spring in her step towards it. She had several empty cabins—all cleaned and ready for guests—so she put on her most welcoming smile.
With the engine still running, Daggert stepped out of the SUV. Seconds later, two other doors opened and Bailey and Crawford exited. They stood next to the vehicle, one on either side, while Daggert came up alongside the pickup, stopping to look at the door that featured the camp’s name.
“How are you folks today?” Flo asked.
Daggert made a fist and pointed a thumb at the door. “Are you Flo?”
“That I am,” she said, coming to within six feet of the man. “You folks don’t exactly look like you’re dressed to go fishing, but if you’re looking for a cabin, you’re in luck! I just had a cancellation!”
She did not, after all, want to look desperate for business. Let these folks think that they were lucky to find a vacancy.
Daggert eyed her from behind his shades. “Where’s the boy that was driving this truck?”
Flo blinked. “Uh, is there some kind of problem?”
“I said, where’s the boy that was driving this truck? You’re his aunt, right?”
“Uh, yeah, I am. How did you know that?”
“Where is he?”
“Well, you can see that he’s not in the truck, that much is for sure.”
Daggert took a step towards her. She tried to see his eyes behind the glasses, but couldn’t make them out.
“Your nephew’s in a heap of trouble,” Daggert said. “You’re going to be, too, if you don’t tell me where he is.”
“If you could just tell me what this is about and who you people are, maybe I could help you with whatever your problem is.”
“Where’s the dog?” Daggert asked.
“The—what?”
“The dog. He’s got the dog. Where is it?”
Flo shook her head and chuckled. “Mister, if there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s that Jeff—”
“His name is Jeff, is it?”
“That’s wha
t I said. And I’m telling you, that if there’s one thing I know, it’s that Jeff does not have a dog. That’s because I can’t stand dogs.”
“That’s what he told me,” Daggert said.
“So you’ve already talked?”
“We’ve met. Just because you don’t think he’s got a dog doesn’t mean he doesn’t.”
Flo crossed her arms and sized up Daggert, his two associates and their fancy car. “You know, I get it now. You guys are the county’s new dog-tag enforcement unit. I gotta say, you’re the coolest-looking bunch of canine control officers I’ve ever laid eyes on.” Daggert glanced back at his aides, raised a hand into the air and snapped his fingers. They began to move.
“Hey, listen, I’m just kidding,” Flo said. “I’m gonna tell you something and you better listen. My nephew’s a good kid. Whatever you think he did, I’m sure he didn’t mean it, or else he had a good reason to do whatever he did. If you guys can’t even tell me who you are, then I don’t see any reason why I have to answer your questions.”
“Search,” Daggert said to Bailey and Crawford.
Flo, without realizing it, glanced at the house, then back to Daggert.
“Start there,” Daggert said, pointing.
“No, wait, stop!” Flo said. “He went into town! Jeff borrowed my other car and drove into Canfield to get us some takeout for dinner! Honest! There’s a great fish and chips place!”
Bailey and Crawford strode past her. Flo grabbed Bailey by the arm in a bid to slow her down but Bailey quickly shook her off.
“Stop,” Daggert told her as he reached into his jacket pocket.
“No! No! You stop! You’ve got no right! You can’t go in that house! You—you need a warrant! I’m ordering you off my property! You get out of here! If you think you can search my house you better have a warrant in your hand!”
“Do I look like someone who worries about paperwork?” said Daggert, who was holding something that looked like a gun, but not quite. “What the heck is that thing?” Flo asked.
“Allow me to demonstrate,” Daggert said, and jammed it into her side.
There was a sound like when a light bulb pops.
Flo went down.
She landed on the gravel driveway on her back, her right leg getting stuck behind her thigh, her left poking out at an odd angle.
She did not move.
Daggert knelt down beside her, touched two fingers to her neck, just under the jaw.
“Was worried I might have set it too high,” he said to himself. “Sweet dreams, Flo.”
He left the woman there on the driveway and followed his two agents into the house.
When Jeff saw Aunt Flo drop to the ground, he had to put a hand over his mouth to stifle a scream.
A huge NOOOOOOOO! was about to burst from his throat as he stood at the second floor window of his aunt’s house, but he managed to hold it in as he jumped back from the window.
Jeff had had a funny feeling about that guy the moment he saw him at the dump. When he asked whether Jeff had seen a dog, he just knew. Chipper had been telling them the truth. He really was on the run, and there really were people looking for him.
Bad, bad people.
Jeff had overheard some of the conversation between his aunt and the man—enough to know they were looking for him and the dog.
He wondered how he’d given himself away. Was it written all over his face, when he’d been asked if he’d seen a dog around the dump? Was he that poor a liar? Or had they been tipped off some other way that the dog—
Whoa, wait a minute.
Chipper’s eyes.
Just before Emily said she had killed the video link, there was this tiny spark in one of Chipper’s eyes. Was it possible? Could the dog’s eyes be cameras? Could they be a kind of window that those people, the ones who’d turned him into a weird hybrid thing, could see through?
If that was true, Jeff believed there was a good chance those people at The Institute had seen him.
Emily, too!
Given what had just happened to Aunt Flo, he knew these people would stop at nothing to get the dog back.
Call the police! a voice inside his head shouted.
Jeff got his thumb in position to hit 9-1-1 on the phone in his hand, then remembered Chipper’s warning about telling Emily’s ex-cop father.
No police. They will know!
These bad guys might be monitoring calls to the police! What had Chipper called them? The White Coats? These guys in the SUV were wearing dark suits, but it wasn’t hard to imagine that they were all working together.
If calling the police wasn’t safe, then what was Jeff going to—
They were heading for the house!
He bolted from his bedroom and was about to run down the stairs and sneak out the back door, but then he heard the front door opening. The stairs led right down to them.
“Crawford, Bailey, you check upstairs,” Jeff heard the lead guy say. “I’ll check down here.”
“Got it, Daggert.”
Daggert.
Jeff slipped across the hall and into Aunt Flo’s bedroom. Her window opened onto a roofed porch. Once on the roof, he could grab one of the tall branches of an overhanging tree, and shimmy down to the ground.
He went to the window, grabbed it by the handles, and tried to lift it up.
It wouldn’t budge.
He could hear two sets of footsteps on the stairs.
He pulled harder, but the window was stuck.
“You take those rooms, Crawford, I’ll take these,” Jeff heard the woman—she had to be Bailey—say. He could tell they were at the top of the stairs.
That was when Jeff noticed the latch on the top of the window was still in the locked position. Idiot! He unlocked it, but there was no time now to open the window and slip out onto the roof without being seen.
Jeff dropped silently to the floor and rolled under his aunt’s bed.
Someone came into the room.
Jeff turned his head towards the door and saw a dirty pair of women’s shoes moving briskly down one side of the bed, then over to the window.
Please don’t look under the bed. Please don’t look under the bed.
The shoes didn’t move for several seconds.
“Nothing over here!” Crawford shouted. It sounded like he was in Jeff’s room across the hall.
“See if there’s a way up into an attic or anything,” Bailey said.
Footsteps back in the hallway. Then, “Yeah! There’s a hatch in the hallway ceiling here!”
The woman moved hurriedly out of the room. That hatch was at the end of the hall, which meant Jeff had time to try the window again without being seen.
Crab-like, he moved out from under the bed, his front covered in matted balls of dust. For a second, he thought that it would only be a matter of time before Aunt Flo ordered him to vacuum under her bed.
Then he thought, Not if she’s dead.
He went to the window and slid it open as far as it would go. He put his left leg out first onto the rooftop, ducked his head under and pulled the rest of his body outside. Stepping as noiselessly as possible—for all he knew, Daggert was standing right below him on the covered porch—he made his way to the corner of the roof, where the branch of a tall oak was within easy reach.
Jeff grabbed it, swung off the roof, legs dangling, and edged his way the six to eight feet to the trunk.
Inside the house, Bailey called out, “Was this window open before?”
Idiot! Jeff cursed himself again. But he had to keep moving.
He reached the trunk and scrambled down to a lower branch below the roofline. There was no outcropping to place his feet on, so he gently swung there.
The woman, louder this time—suggesting to Jeff she had her head sticking out the window—said, “I could have sworn it was closed.” He was glad the leaves on the tree were so thick that they hid him from view.
Muffled, from inside the house, “Are you gonna help me get into
this attic or not?”
“Hang on,” she said.
Bailey could just as easily have been saying that to Jeff. He looked down, hoping to find a perch for his feet, but there was nothing there. So he dropped the rest of the way. It was only about eight feet, but real life isn’t like the movies, where spies and superheroes jump off the top of buildings and do a little tuck and roll when they hit the ground and walk away like they’d just stepped off a curb.
When his feet hit the ground he felt the shock go all the way up to his neck, as though his whole body had compressed a couple of inches. He scurried around the other side of the thick-trunked tree and held his breath, thinking that if anyone had seen him, he’d know in two seconds.
When no one came rushing out of the house, he figured they were all still in there. Bailey and Crawford were exploring the attic, and Daggert was probably skulking around the basement, expecting Jeff to be hiding behind the furnace. He moved from one tree to another, tiptoeing along like some cartoon character, then dashed for cover behind a row of shrubs, until he was back to his aunt’s truck.
Only a few steps from Aunt Flo herself.
He was desperate to check on her, see if she was really dead, and get help for her if she wasn’t—maybe the bad guys weren’t monitoring calls for ambulances—but he’d be out in the open if he approached her. He couldn’t risk it.
He crouched behind the passenger side of the truck where he could not be seen from the house, and peered in through the window. The keys were still in the ignition.
But hold on.
The black SUV nosed up behind it was making a lot of noise. Daggert had left it with the engine running.
Jeff quietly opened the passenger door on the pickup, leaned across the seat to the steering wheel, and took the key from the ignition. Then he moved back to the SUV, opened its passenger door, and got inside.
The windows were heavily tinted, so there was little risk that anyone would see him. There was a huge console between the two front seats that he had to climb over to get behind the wheel.
Jeff had only driven two motorized vehicles in his life: Aunt Flo’s truck and her lawn tractor. No, wait. One time, his father had taken him to a go-kart track. But those experiences did not prepare him for this.