The Secret of Rover (29 page)

“Never mind,” said David abruptly.

The guard looked up, confused.

“Never mind,” he repeated. This was not going to work. He would call Uncle Alex and Alicia instead. But first he had to get rid of Curtis. “Maybe it's not an emergency,” he said hastily. “We'll wait and see. Thanks anyway!” And he fled.

Phone, thought David. Private phone. There was one in Alex's room, where he could speak without Curtis overhearing. But on the stairs going up he met Katie coming down. One look at her face told him everything he needed to know. She said it anyway.

“She's leaving!” cried Katie. “Go get Curtis—she's leaving right now!”

“Forget Curtis,” said David tightly. And grabbing Katie's arm, he pulled her off the bottom step and yanked her across the foyer toward the front door.

They were under strict orders not to leave the house. Were they actually locked in? Slowly—Curtis must not hear—David tried the knob that opened the deadbolt. It turned. Their captors had obviously assumed they would not
want
to leave.

Because we're so safe here, David thought sarcastically.

While he was trying the door, Katie was peeking from behind the edge of a curtained window. “I see her,” she hissed. “She's headed down the street. She's moving
fast
.”

“Is she looking?”

“No. You're clear—go
now
.”

David slipped out. Behind her Katie heard the back door opening and Manny's footsteps heading to the kitchen. There was no time to lose. Without further delay, she followed David and gently closed the door behind her.

Once outside both of them hesitated. They had emerged onto the top of a flight of stairs that led to the ground. Trixie might look over her shoulder at any moment, and these stairs were highly visible from anywhere on the street. Turning to the side, David swung under the railing and dropped down to the dirt below. Katie followed.

They scooted across the lawn toward a hedge that
ran the length of the front yard along the sidewalk. In the shelter of this shrubbery they began pursuing Trixie down the block.

Back in the safe-house kitchen, Curtis told Manny it was a false alarm.

Manny rolled his eyes. Kids. It was good to be in the kitchen, though. Curtis had the easy job, indoors and all. “Mind?” he asked, gesturing toward the coffee pot. “Since I'm here?”

“Mugs are by the sink,” said Curtis. “Get a load of this.” And he twisted his screen around so Manny could see. It was open to YouTube, where there was this dog who knew how to ride a surfboard.

David crept behind their front hedge, peering down the street and swiftly assessing the situation. How could they manage to follow Trixie without being seen?

The street was lined with sleepy houses and neat front yards. Some of these yards were bordered with bushes or fences—good—but others were not. To add to their difficulties, it was fall. Many of the neighborhood shrubs had lost their leaves and now offered no cover at all.

David slipped across to the neighbors' yard, where a stone wall along the bottom of the lawn offered useful protection. Fortunately, he thought, it was windy. All these dead leaves blowing around might—might—mask their
noise. But the wind would not mask the sight of them as they passed houses like the next one, where the grass ran straight down to the sidewalk and there was nothing to hide behind at all.

For one brief moment he and Katie hovered, thinking. What they were doing wasn't going to work. Their only hope of successfully shadowing Trixie was to creep behind the parked cars that lined the road. This wasn't a perfect solution. It meant dashing across open space to get to the curb, and there were spaces between the cars as well. But they had no choice and no time.

While these thoughts raced through David's mind, Katie slipped under his arm, glided across the sidewalk, and landed in a crouch behind a battered station wagon. So he guessed she'd figured out the same thing. He followed.

They had only hesitated for a moment before leaving the yards for the cars, but even that brief delay had cost them. When they looked up, Trixie was farther ahead.

“Hurry!” whispered Katie, still crouching. Staying low, she checked to see that the coast was clear and then scooted along the sidewalk side of the parked car. When she reached the end of it, she darted to the next one.

And so they slipped into a rhythm: darting from car to car; checking that they had not been seen; and darting again. Dart. Check. Dart.

The wind whooshed and in the swirl and noise of
blowing leaves, Katie whispered to David. “Trixie—look at her hair!”

Her hair? David was too busy making sure Trixie wasn't looking backward. “What about it?”

“She took off the wig,” hissed Katie.

He glanced up quickly. So she had. And . . . ?

“She's afraid,” said Katie.

“Huh? Why do you—” But David did not finish his question. Suddenly he got it.

That wig had been Trixie's disguise. They blew her disguise when they caught her wearing it. Now she was hiding in her own hair, hoping her pursuers would look for brown and blond curls.

What this meant was huge, and David had almost missed it. He'd almost missed it because he was scared. It had been very scary when they met Trixie's eyes in the window. They were scared now, just thinking that she might turn around and see them. By now, David was so used to being scared that he had almost overlooked what had just happened.

David glanced again at the woman they were following. She was calm—chillingly calm. She was not rushing or calling attention to herself in any way. But she was
moving
. She was trying to get away. And every so often—just casually, as if she were looking around—she seemed to be scanning the street for someone who might be after her.

Someone like them.

They were still in danger, and David knew it. Trixie had a gun. She would probably prefer not to use it in such a public place, but she had it. And she had friends—Nose and Hair and the others. She had probably told her friends that she'd been seen. They might be coming to her rescue right now.

But it did not matter. David's heart still soared. Katie was right. Trixie was afraid, and with good reason. For the first time, she was not chasing them. They were chasing her.

The tables had been turned. The game had been flipped. The predator had become the prey.

Trixie stopped. She stopped at a corner where their street crossed a busy boulevard. There was a traffic light beside her. Was she waiting for the light to change? Was she uncertain where to go?

Katie and David stopped too, taking shelter behind a red minivan and fearing to move until they knew what Trixie would do next.

Yet they needed to move. Though they had managed to shadow Trixie from their house to the traffic light without losing sight of her or being seen themselves, they had fallen very far behind. That was because their progress had been stop-and-start, while Trixie had walked at a brisk pace with no pauses. Now that she had paused, they needed to gain some ground.

David assessed the situation. Trixie had looked from side to side as she walked, but she had not once turned around. Probably it was safe. Slowly, tentatively, he eased his head out from behind the minivan.

The instant he did so, she pivoted.

He would never have believed that such a lead-footed person could spin so fast, especially with her hand in her pocket. That would be her right hand in her right pocket—the pocket where she probably kept her gun.

David yanked his head back, his heart drumming in his chest. He closed his eyes tight. She hadn't seen him, but man, that had been close. Venturing out, gaining ground—this was a bad idea: bad, bad, bad.

He opened his eyes. To his horror, Katie was slowly inching forward. He pulled her back. “She's looking!” he cried in a hoarse whisper. Thank goodness for the wind that would carry away his voice. “
She has a gun
.”

Katie turned on him in a fury. “She'll get away! Did you see that corner, David—where she is? It's totally blind! If she turns it, she's gone!”

He had seen it, and what Katie said was true. The people who lived there had planted a thick wall of tall bushes around the edge of their front yard. This enormous bank of shrubbery made it completely impossible to see what might be happening on the other side of the corner. If Trixie headed to her right, they would not be able to watch where she went.

But at just this moment, David could not have cared less. “First priority?” he said. “Don't get shot.”

Katie did not listen. She jerked her arm free of his grip, half rose, and peered out. When she looked back at David there was panic on her face. “She
is
turning—she's turning the corner now! Go!” And she took off.

David followed. He had no choice. And instantly, he saw what Katie had meant. Trixie had slipped completely out of sight.

There was no darting and checking now. Forgetting all danger they ran, desperate to reach the corner.

But they were too late. On the other side of it they found nothing. Katie peered down the boulevard, searching desperately for the short, aggressive stance and the glossy black hair.

“She's probably there,” Katie said tensely, pointing toward a shopping center that lay ahead on the left. “At that little mall. Let's go.” And she started.

“Katie,
wait
.” Again David jerked at her arm, stopping her.

“We have to
hurry
.” Again she tried to free her arm, but this time her brother held tight. He dragged her under the bank of shrubbery that hung over the corner.

“Katie, get real! She can't be all the way over there. She didn't have time to get that far! She'd still be walking, and we'd see her. We don't.”

“She didn't just vanish!”

“No, she got picked up. She probably called 'em as soon as she saw us in the window—that nose guy, and the weird-hair lady,” said David. “They met her right here—I'm sure they did. That's why she waited when she got to the light. Then she got in the car and now they're gone.”