The Secret of Rover (28 page)

She looked down the street. There was the mailman. Soon he would be at their house—not that they ever got
mail here. And across the street and one house down, a cute dog was out in his yard. Despite their recent experiences with Chester and that dog in Melville, Katie actually liked dogs and wouldn't mind meeting this one. That would never happen either.

The dog had started barking, though. A woman was walking up the sidewalk, approaching the house across the street from Katie's window. Katie was pretty sure those people weren't home, but the woman was fishing in her enormous bag for a key. Probably she worked there, as a cleaner or something.

Katie could not see this woman's face, but she was short and squat with a heavy, thudding footfall. It was not Trixie. This woman's hair was brown with blond streaks, and very curly. Nonetheless, she looked enough like Trixie that Katie felt slightly sick, even just seeing her walk.

Would she be like this for the rest of her life? Was she doomed to get a stomachache every time she saw a short, squat woman? Well, she would overcome it. She would make herself watch.

The stranger's bag was deep and wide, but she had found her key. She opened the gate and stomped—
thud, thud
—up the front walk. As she turned to fit the key into the lock, something glittery on the back of her hand flashed in a shaft of the bright morning sunshine.

Whoa. That was a heck of a flash. Katie had caught the gleam even from the second story of the house across the
street. She wondered why this woman was wearing that kind of ring to clean the house.

The woman dropped the key back in her bag and put her hand on the doorknob.
Flash
—there it was again. But as her hand turned, the ring stopped reflecting and for a split second Katie saw the color beneath the sparkle. It was a brilliant purple.

With a gasp that seemed to tear itself from her chest, Katie threw herself onto the floor. Was she too late? Had she been seen through the window?

For a second or two she lay there with her heart pounding. Then a terrible thought occurred to her. David. Where was he? Was he sitting in a window somewhere?

She had to find him. She rose to a crouch and—staying low—crawled to her door. The moment she reached the hallway she leaped to her feet and broke into a run.

The daytime security guard was a youngish, round-faced guy named Curtis. Curtis was in the kitchen, sipping a cup of coffee, munching on a doughnut, and tapping at his laptop, and he did not so much as look up as Katie sprinted through. Not the sharpest tool in the box, she thought, passing him by.

David was sprawled on the sofa in the basement, watching extreme skateboarding on TV. Katie burst in. He only had to see her face to know that whatever it was, it was bad. He, too, leaped to his feet.

“Mom and Dad—are they—”

She cut him off. “No, it's Trixie! David . . .” Katie was panting so hard that she could scarcely speak. “David,” she repeated, clutching at her chest. “She's
across the street
.”

He went pale. “How do you know?”

This was too infuriating in her current state of mind. “I saw her, stupid!” The skateboarding program switched to an ad for some kind of power drink and the sound of it blared over their voices. “Would you turn that thing off?” she cried.

David fumbled for the remote and pushed the button as Katie struggled to catch her breath.

Gripping the back of the sofa for support, she continued. “Trixie,” she said. “She walked right into that house—that yellow one there. Right in through the front door—she let herself in with a key! She must be pretending to be a cleaning lady or something. At first I didn't recognize her. I mean, I
did
recognize her, right away, but she's wearing a wig so I thought it wasn't her. I was so
dumb
! But then I saw that ring!”

“What ring?”

“That big purple one—the one she stole from Mom. She's wearing it, David! It's her!”

At the mention of the ring, David sank back onto the sofa. “Oh,” he breathed. “Oh, man.” He thumped the sofa with his fist. “What an
incredible
coincidence.”

“David, get
real
! It's not a coincidence! She's there on
purpose! She knows we're here. She must have gotten some kind of job there, as a cleaning lady or something. She's pretending to work there so she can watch us.”

“Oh. Right,” he said, recovering quickly. “You're probably right!”

“Of course I'm right!” Katie dropped into an overstuffed chair but instantly realized that she was too agitated to sit. She rose and began to pace.

For a moment her footsteps were the only sound as both of them pondered this development. Then a smile crept across David's face.

“It's fantastic,” he said.

Katie stopped her restless pacing and stared at him, stupefied. “You're kidding. What on earth is so fantastic, David? This safe house is terrible! We've been stuck here for weeks, just so we could have this protection that's supposed to be so great, and Trixie found us anyway! It's a good thing we didn't get kidnapped. Or shot! We know she has a gun!”

“Katie,” David said patiently, “you're missing the point. She didn't find us. I mean, she did, of course; that's true. But we also found her,
and she doesn't know
! We know where she is, but
she doesn't know that we do
. She's a sitting duck! All we have to do is tell Curtis, he'll get some reinforcements, and they'll pop across the street and grab her.”

“
Them
, David. We need to grab
them
.”

David was silent. She continued. “Nose and Hair? If our guys surround that house, the first thing she does is pick up her cell and tell them to run.”

“Oh.” This problem took David only a moment. “That's not a problem, Kat,” he said decisively. “That's just a matter of following her. It means instead of grabbing her right here, our guys just have to follow her when she leaves.”

Katie thought intently about this. “You figure they're all living together somewhere,” she said. “So when Trixie goes home—wherever home is right now—Nose and Hair will be there.”

“Right.”

“Well, that makes sense.”

“Sometimes I do,” he retorted sarcastically. But David wasn't really mad. He was too excited. It was so incredibly beautiful that Trixie was right across the street. “Which house?” he said. “Is it the one with the dog?”

“No, the one next door. The yellow one.”

David looked blank.

“You can see from my window,” Katie said. “David, let's go call Alicia and Alex.”

“I want to see the house first,” he said. “After we tell, they're going to lock us in a closet or something, and I won't get to see anything.”

Katie sighed. “C'mon,” she said. “But you have to stay low.” And leading the way, she headed for the basement stairs.

Curtis did not even seem to notice their stooped posture as they shot past him toward the foyer and the stairs that led to the second story.

“Observant guy,” muttered David, crouching as he took the stairs two at a time.

Katie was already in her room, skittering across the floor toward the window. She collapsed on the rug beneath it, with her back to the wall.

“There,” she said, panting as David shot to a stop beside her. “It's that one right there, straight across.”

He turned and rose on his knees to peer over the windowsill.

“Stay
low
!” she barked, seizing the back of his shirt and pulling hard.

“Katie,” he said patiently. “Relax.”

“There's a wide-open line of sight between the front of that house and this window,” she retorted. “Just take my word for it, OK? Trixie's in there.”

“I'm looking. She's not going to notice the top of my head!” And gripping the edge of the windowsill, he rose until he could just see the house.

“Oh, that one!”

“Like I said. You don't have to see this, David.”

“Which direction did she come from?” he asked. “I mean, where exactly was she when you first noticed her?”

Katie sighed. She guessed it was OK. Only a tiny bit of David's head was showing, and Trixie would not notice
that from inside the other house. Still crouching, she joined him at the windowsill.

A quick glance across the street revealed that the coast was clear. Good. “She was coming right there, see?” said Katie, pointing up the street. “And the dog was out and it started to bark, so I looked that way.” She hitched her body a little higher so she could point.

“Is that her car?” asked David, also rising a bit so he could point too.

“No, she was walking. She must have come by bus.”

“I don't see a bus stop.”

“So maybe it's on that big street. Down that way, see?” But to see where the big street was they had to crane their necks.

They both hitched just a tiny bit higher to do so.

Both of them saw the quick whoosh of the shade at exactly the same instant. Both of their heads whipped around when someone in the second-story window of the yellow house suddenly snapped the shade open. Only then did they realize that they were no longer crouching but were fully visible in Katie's window.

She still had that freaky wig, but it didn't matter. At that moment, they felt that they would have known her with a mask on. The street was very narrow, so the two houses were actually quite close, and they were staring straight into Trixie's eyes.

They threw themselves onto the floor, but it was too late. Katie turned on David in a fury.

“You had to see!” cried Katie. “You had to—” Unable to express her rage in words, she shoved him.

“Hey!” For once he was just as upset as she was, so he shoved her back. “We both got seen! You were standing there too.”

“Oh, it doesn't matter,” Katie wailed. “We've ruined everything. We had this fantastic advantage and we've trashed it!”

“No, we haven't,” David said, scrambling to recover. “We haven't trashed it. We just have to hurry—that's all.”

“She's going to run, David! She's going to leave in, like, a
second
.”

“So why are we sitting here? And why”—he suddenly realized—“why are we hiding?” He leaped to his feet.

“So we don't get shot?” she said, lunging for his knees.

“In broad daylight? With a guard right here, who'd hear it happen?” And he kicked himself clear of her and sprinted for the door.

“Watch the house,” he barked. “I'll get Curtis. Make sure she doesn't go anywhere!”

His last words flew back to her from the stairs. He was already gone.

For a moment Katie remained in her crouch, still
thinking about Trixie's gun. But David was right and she knew it. Now that Trixie knew she'd been found, she was sure to flee. They must monitor the yellow house. Mastering her fear, Katie turned and raised her head once again over the windowsill. The second-story shade was still up, but the window was empty.

Had she already left? Katie scanned the street, but it was empty. Good. Maybe they were not too late.

In the meantime, David had reached the kitchen. Curtis looked up, blinking, as he burst in.

“Trixie,” said David. “The lady who's been after us. She's across the street.”

Curtis put down his coffee cup. “What?” he said. “Who?”

David did not have time for this. He took a deep breath and spoke as patiently as he could. “Trixie,” he repeated. “This is an emergency, so we're going to have to move fast, OK? You are guarding us from a woman named Trixie, and two other people who help her. My sister and I have just seen Trixie across the street. And Trixie knows we've seen her, so she's going to run, any second. You need to catch her before she does.”

That was pretty clear, he thought.

At this Curtis rose and looked around. Then he sat back down. “OK,” he said, as if he were thinking. “OK. I'd better take a report on this.” He gave David a nervous look. “Now, don't you panic,” he said. “Everything's under control.”

“I'm not panicking!” David said, though at Curtis's
useless words panic did, in fact, start to bubble up within him. “And we don't have time for a report!”

“I'm going to take a report,” repeated Curtis firmly. “Gonna have to call Manny, too.”

Manny was the guard who patrolled the outside of the house. Curtis pushed a button on the two-way radio that hung from his belt, and the familiar staticky sound came out.

“Officer two-six-one; this is officer two-six-nine,” Curtis said into the static. “Would you step into the kitchen please, two-six-one?”

“Roger, two-six-nine,” said a crackly voice.

Curtis shut down the radio and drew his laptop toward him. “OK,” he said, tapping a few keys and frowning. “You hold on just one second while I get to the right page, here.”