The Secret of Rover

by Rachel Wildavsky

  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.”

  “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 th
e 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 we
re 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.”

  The truth of this was instantly obvious. Their prey had slipped through their hands. They’d had Trixie, and they had lost her.

  It was very hard to bear. Katie seldom cried, but now David saw with surprise that her eyes were filling.

  “We tried,” he said. “Stuff happens.”

  “But why does it happen to us?” Katie asked in a thick voice as the tears began to roll down. “It’s always us—and why? First our parents—What are you looking at?”

  The light beside them had turned red. Everybody had braked and a line of idling cars was stacking up, waiting for the green.

  David’s eyes were fixed on these cars. Katie’s gaze followed his. The second car in line was a black SUV. Its front fender was missing. Where the fender ought to be was a deep dent.

  Both of them lifted their eyes to the windshield. Hair was behind the wheel. Nose was in the passenger seat. The back of the car was shrouded in tinted privacy glass, but that did not matter. They did not need to see to know who was inside.

  “They must have gotten turned around and circled the block,” said David in a low voice. “But it’s OK—just walk. Walk back toward the house. They won’t notice we’re here.”