Hostage, Page 5

That didn’t mean the strangers wouldn’t come back and get it, even if it was hard to move, because it was very valuable. And thinking of valuable, I tried to recall if the new big-screen TV had still been in the corner of the living room.

  I hadn’t noticed. We hadn’t had it very long. Would it be included on our old home owners’ insurance, or would Dad have had to especially put it on the policy?

  In spite of what Mom had said about how economically feasible this new house was, I knew the family budget had been strained by our move. The money from the sale of the old place had provided the down payment and paid for the new living room set after they decided to put the old one in the family room. But they’d stretched things to cover the big TV and a few other things. Losing anything we owned would be a serious matter. I knew we didn’t have the money to replace any of it.

  So, what would Dad want me to do?

  Suddenly, downstairs, there were voices. Men’s voices.

  I jumped away from the window, which offered me nothing in the way of help, and tried to think. My parents always told all of us that we were intelligent and capable. If that was the case, why had my brain gone numb? I eased out into the hallway so I could hear better.

  “They sure got a million books in this place,” somebody muttered. “They’re in just about every room. We gonna take any of those?”

  “Nah. Books aren’t worth anything. Get that set of candlesticks off the mantle. I think maybe they’re silver.”

  “We gonna take that picture of the mountain?” one of the men asked clearly.

  I knew the picture they were talking about. It was of Mount Baker, in northern Washington, where Mom and Dad had met years ago on a hiking trip. It had been Mom’s first climb, and Dad had rescued her when she’d fallen into a snow-filled gully.

  “It was love at first sight,” Dad had told us. “There she was, floundering around helplessly in a snowbank, with only a bright red knitted cap sticking out.”

  “And he had enough muscle to pull me out, one-handed, and he shared a Thermos of hot coffee,” Mom always added when they told the story.

  Mom had bought him the picture as a birthday present, and I knew he really liked it.

  I felt a sudden rush of rage at the way these strangers had invaded our home and were helping themselves to our belongings.

  How could I stop them, without access to a telephone?

  Was there a way to get out of the house without being detected? I could run to a neighbor’s house to call the police before they got away. Well, Mrs. Banducci’s house was undoubtedly the only one where there was anyone home, but she’d call in a minute, I was sure.

  The trouble was, I was on the second floor, and the only stairway down would take me to where the thieves were. Dad had talked about getting one of those emergency ladders to hang out a window—in fact, he’d even ordered one, but it hadn’t come yet. I was way too high up to risk jumping; I’d break bones for sure.

  There was no roof to crawl out on, and the idea made me queasy, anyway. Jodie, with her dance training, wasn’t afraid to balance on anything a couple of inches wide. Me, I was the family klutz. I could fall off a sidewalk.

  I moved as silently as I could around to all the rooms on the top floor, checking to make sure I wasn’t overlooking any means of escape. There was nothing, and in the meantime I was hearing voices from downstairs and the scrape of something heavy across a bare wood floor.

  In the end I had to give up on getting out of the house from the second floor. I hesitated in the upper hallway, out of sight of anyone from below, listening.

  “Hey, look! In this cabinet here. You think this would be worth anything?”

  “A chess set? I dunno. It’s just wood, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah. But I think it’s hand carved, and old. Maybe an antique.”

  Grandpa’s chess set, I thought, the outrage flooding through me anew. The one Dad’s grandfather had made from some kind of rare wood, many years ago. It was one of my father’s prized possessions. I remembered how upset he’d gotten when he’d come home one day and found Wally and one of his friends playing with it on the floor. It would be a lot worse if these thieves took it.

  “It’s probably one of a kind. Might be too easy to trace,” the deeper of the two voices answered. “Maybe we’d better forget that. What do you think about that piano, though?”

  For a few seconds I didn’t hear what they said next. I saw red as my vision blurred.

  Not Jeff’s piano! He’d be heartbroken if he lost his piano, even if it was insured! It would be like losing his child. No amount of money could compensate for losing this one, no matter what replaced it.

  I had to find a way to stop them.

  “It’s gonna be the devil to load,” the higher voice grumbled. “I don’t care if it is worth thousands. And we’d have to be careful. Nobody’s gonna pay big money for a piano if it’s scratched, so we’d have to wrap it in blankets or something. . . .”

  “Plenty of bedding upstairs. Let’s take it. It could bring more than all the rest of it put together.”

  “Let’s quit yapping and get moving. We ain’t got all day. Buddy’ll be back with the truck in a few minutes, and who knows how long that nosy old biddy will be busy with her flooded garage? Let’s go.”

  Not with Jeff’s piano, I thought. I’d have to sneak past them, somehow, and out the back door, maybe. I couldn’t just hide up here until they went away. Not if they were stealing Dad’s mountain picture and the piano. No amount of insurance would make up for their loss, not to Dad or Jeff.

  There hadn’t been a truck in sight to haul things in when I’d entered the house. I was confused and frantic; I had to calm down enough to be logical, somehow.

  They couldn’t haul away anything like the piano unless they had a good-sized vehicle. I tried to remember what I’d heard them saying to each other. There had been a truck. Hadn’t Mrs. Banducci said there was a delivery truck earlier? Yes, she’d wanted to know what we were having delivered, and I’d said I didn’t know.

  Of course they hadn’t been delivering anything, except maybe those empty cardboard boxes. And then, for some reason, one of them had left with the truck. And . . . I dredged it up through my frightened memory. One of them had said, “Buddy’ll be back with the truck in a few minutes.”

  How long did I have? They’d mentioned Mrs. Banducci, too, I supposed. They’d called her a “nosy old biddy,” and who else could that be? Somehow they’d managed to flood her garage, and she was presumably next door cleaning up a mess, a project to keep her and her curiosity out of the way while they did what they’d come to do.

  There was no time to waste. I had to get out of the house, run next door, and call 911, and then my dad, before it was too late. There was only one main street coming into Lofty Cedars Estates. If the police could get to the entrance to this subdivision, they could cut them off; there was no other way to escape.

  Sometimes when I get overexcited, Dad will tell me, “Calm down, Kaci. Stand still and take a couple of deep breaths. It’ll make your brain work better.”

  I tried it. It felt like drawing in deep breaths was making a terrible cramp in my chest, but after a moment I had settled down to just mild tremors.

  I edged closer to the top of the stairs. I could hear their voices—two of them, I decided, and hoped I was right—somewhere in the back of the house. Well, then, I’d run out the front door if I could get to it.

  I started to creep down the stairs, glad they were carpeted, so I didn’t make any noise. I was halfway down when I heard the engine as a truck pulled into the driveway.

  For a few seconds I regressed into total panic. Should I run back upstairs? Hide again? What?

  “Hey, I think I hear Buddy.” The voice was almost below me, and I swallowed hard and dropped to my hands and knees so they wouldn’t see me through the railing if they looked up. I had no choice but to retrace my steps, crawling as fast as I could.

  “What took you so long?” the dee
per voice said as the front door opened.

  If the truck driver had looked up instead of straight ahead, he’d have seen me for sure. I reached the landing and went flat, praying hard that they wouldn’t notice me. I remembered I was still wearing that bright red backpack and I squirmed forward on my stomach, working my way around the corner. I was sweating and I felt the trickle of moisture working its way down my face.

  “I’m only ten minutes later than I said I’d be,” Buddy stated. “You guys get those boxes filled up so we can start moving them out of here. We ought to get out of this place before anybody comes home and catches us.”

  “Except for the old witch next door, the whole neighborhood is empty.” That was the one who thought the piano was too heavy to move. “I hope she didn’t have sense enough to call a plumber.”

  “I told you, I cut her phone wire. She can’t call anybody. It’s not likely she’s got a cell phone, old broad like her.”

  Cell phone. I swallowed hard. Dad and Mom had a cell phone they carried when they were out late at night, or other times when they thought they might need it. When it wasn’t in use, it was left on the desk in the study.

  My hope died quickly, though. The thieves had probably already been in there and cleaned out everything of any value. If they’d taken all the other phones, they’d probably swept that one up, too.

  Knowing that I couldn’t call from next door was a bummer. What was the next best thing to do? Would I be in terrible trouble if I ran to one of the other houses and smashed a window to get in to reach a phone that was still working?

  I wondered if that was how the men had gotten into our house. Around in back, maybe, where they’d be out of sight if anyone came along, had they broken a window and then opened up the front door from inside?

  It didn’t matter. What mattered was that I had to get out of there as soon as possible. But I couldn’t do anything as long as the three men were in the lower hallway.

  They were wrangling now about the piano. Buddy, too, thought it was too heavy to move. The deep-voiced one, who seemed to be the leader, was emphatic. “I’m telling you guys, those things are worth a lot of money. It’ll be worth the effort. We all work together, we can move it. That’s why we got a truck with a lift on it.”

  “Well, whatever we’re gonna do, let’s get at it. I don’t like working in a cul-de-sac like this place. If you want the confounded piano, let’s get it loaded. It’s gonna be hard to hide until we can unload it, though.”

  “We gotta wrap it up, remember? So it won’t get scratched. Nobody’s gonna pay big bucks for one that has scratches on it.”

  “So get some blankets or something,” the deep, surly voice responded.

  Blankets. All the bedrooms were up here. I was around the corner from them, so I quickly stood up and headed for the nearest open doorway. No, not a bedroom, this was where they’d come. Unless I hid in a closet.

  I ducked into Mom and Dad’s room, running across the carpet and sliding open the mirrored doors. They made a little sound as I squeezed inside and closed them behind me, praying again. Please, God. Please, don’t let them catch me, or hear me. I was wheezing as if I’d been running hard.

  I wouldn’t even have been able to hear the thief enter the room if he hadn’t been grumbling about being the one sent to fetch the blankets.

  I waited after the grumbling stopped, wondering if it was safe to come out yet. Finally, very slowly, I slid open the door and emerged. The man had stripped the spread off the bed and the blanket that had been under it, leaving sheets trailing on the floor.

  Forcing myself to breathe slowly and as normally as possible, I made my way out into the hall.

  I turned toward the stairs, hoping they’d all go outside at the same time to load things, so I could run for the kitchen door into the backyard.

  The voice behind me was unexpected, as was the rough hand that slammed me against a wall, bruising my arm.

  “Hey, guys,” the voice said, “we got a little problem up here.”

  Chapter Six

  He was big. Over six feet, and thick through the chest and neck. The hand that gripped my arm was huge and rough. His dark hair was longish and didn’t look as if he’d washed it recently, and there was a smell about him of sweat and tobacco.

  He yelled to his conspirators downstairs. “Hey, guys! Come up here! We got a problem!” he informed them again.

  “So take care of it,” the leader shouted back.

  For a few seconds I stared into those dark eyes, wondering if I’d faint in terror at what I saw there. I started to sag, and he slammed me against the wall for the second time.

  “You want me to kill her, or what?” my captor demanded loudly.

  There was a startled silence, and then both of the other men appeared at the bottom of the stairs. “Her?” one of them echoed. “What the . . . ?”

  I’d never heard some of the words that came out of their mouths, but I didn’t have any difficulty interpreting them as profanity.

  They stared at me in disbelief.

  “There wasn’t supposed to be anybody here,” the leader said. “What are you doing here, kid?”

  It was a wonder I could speak, my mouth was so dry. “I . . . I live here,” I stammered.

  I could see them evaluating that, and the expressions on their faces were unnerving, to say the least. “You want me to kill her, or what?” Had he been serious when he’d asked that?

  “How long you been here?” the leader demanded.

  I swallowed hard, and my throat worked, but I couldn’t speak as cold terror worked its way down my body, making me weak all over. I didn’t even know the answer to his question. Had I been home for an hour, ten minutes, what? I couldn’t tell.

  The one holding my arm gave me a shake, his big fingers pressing painfully into my arm. “How long?” he asked harshly.

  My lips trembled, but nothing came out of them. I’d prayed only a few minutes ago, but now I was too numb even to do that.

  “She couldn’t have called the cops. The phones are all gone. I put ’em in a box with the other little junk that I carried away in the first load.”

  “So who knows you’re here?” the deeper-voiced leader asked. He was standing a few steps below me, now, and his eyes, a very pale blue, were boring into mine. Blue eyes ought to have been friendly, but these weren’t. They were icy, mean.

  I tried once more to speak. What would they do if they thought someone else knew and would rescue me very soon?

  “My school nurse knows,” I managed to croak desperately. “And my mom. She’s . . . supposed to pick me up in a few minutes. . . .”

  They were communicating something with their eyes. I couldn’t read them for sure, but I didn’t think they believed me.

  “She’s lying,” my closest tormentor said. “Nobody’s coming to get her.”

  The leader licked his lips, glaring as if he really was ready to strangle me with his bare hands, right there in the upstairs hall. “Well, we don’t want to take any chances. Let’s get the rest of the stuff loaded and get out of here.”

  “What are we gonna do with her, then?”

  “Tie her up. It’ll take all three of us to load that piano. The rest of the stuff won’t take long, but let’s move it. Just in case somebody does show up.”

  I wasn’t prepared to be shoved suddenly forward onto the stairs. I went down on one knee and was jerked upward as if my captor didn’t care how much he hurt me getting me where he wanted me to go. “Buddy, get me some of that clothesline we’re gonna use to keep the blankets on the piano.” He was propelling me down the stairs, and it took all the effort I had to stay on my feet. If I fell he’d probably drag me or walk on me, and I was already hurting from the pressure of his hand. He was strong enough to make me do anything he wanted; there was no point in struggling and getting hurt even worse.

  “Where’ll I tie her? We’re taking all the chairs out of here,” he said as we reached the main floor.

 
Our dining room set was as old as I was, and I didn’t think it would be worth much if they sold it, but it was the only one we had. I was sagging again, but the man held me up with one hand, as if it were no effort at all.

  “We’re not taking the kitchen chairs,” the leader said. “They’re just junk.”

  Under other circumstances I’d have been insulted to hear our possessions described as junk. Right this minute I was too scared to care.

  “Hurry up, Bo,” Buddy said, and the one called Bo thrust me ahead of him along the hallway to the back of the house, banging me against the walls as we went.

  “It won’t do you any good to resist,” he told me angrily as he used one foot to pull a chair out from the table and forced me to sit on it. “If you don’t behave, don’t think I won’t hurt you.”

  I had no doubt about that at all. I collapsed into the chair, glad to sit down, because I wasn’t going to be able to stand, anyway. The backpack was a bulky weight between me and the chair, but he didn’t take it off.

  “Put your hands behind the back of the chair,” he ordered. I obeyed, feeling him looping the rope around the crossbars so that even if I stood up I wouldn’t be able to free myself of the chair. I wondered frantically if they’d just take our goods and go, leaving me behind. I’d have to sit here until someone came home and found me, and by then they’d be miles away. It no longer seemed to matter so much if they took Dad’s picture and Jeff’s piano. What mattered was still being alive when my parents came home.

  He pulled a wicked-looking knife out of a scabbard on his belt and cut off a length of clothesline. I yelped when he tightened the rope around my wrists. “It hurts!” I protested, but he didn’t loosen it.

  “Tough,” he said. “Get used to it.”

  He was close enough to me so I could smell him more than before, an acrid, sour smell of nervous sweat.

  “Come on, Bo!” one of the others shouted, and he gave me a threatening look as he wound the rest of the rope around a table leg so it and the chair and I were secured together.

  “Don’t try anything or you’ll get hurt,” he threatened before he left me there.