Baby-Sitting Is a Dangerous Job (14 page)

It took a while. Jeremy was very helpful; he rummaged through the trunks in the attic and came up with a rug, two ragged old sleeping bags, and a couple more blankets. They smelled funny, but I figured that was the least of our problems.

We made beds on the floor of the cupola room, then decided what else we needed. We took the box of books up, because we didn't know how long we'd be there. And water. We'd need water. We had trouble finding something to carry it in, and finally rinsed out some old canning jars and filled them. Then we looked around for something to use when Shana had
to go to the bathroom. It was Jeremy who located that item, too, bringing it to me from a far corner of the attic with a self-satisfied grin. “Look! A potty chair!” he said, and carried it up to our hiding place, smearing dust all over his front as he went.

The dogs watched us with apparent interest, making no objection to our running around, or to my carrying the sleeping girls up to the attic when everything was ready. Shana slept all the way to the top; but I had to wake Melissa up so she could walk the final flight, because there wasn't room enough for me to carry her on those narrow, twisting steps.

I'd have liked to lurk downstairs and listen for the phone to ring—hoping I'd be able to interpret one end of the conversation when Dan answered—or for someone to come with news. Only when I suggested leaving the kids alone, Jeremy turned uncooperative.

“I don't want you to go,” he said, and the quaver was back in his voice.

“Okay,” I agreed. “Come on, we'll try to get some rest so we'll be ready for action when it's time, all right?”

He fell asleep almost as soon as he stretched out on the sleeping bag beside Shana. At least I thought he had. It was a warm night, and I left the windows open. I could hear crickets somewhere, and bullfrogs. Was there a pond nearby? Even if I got to use the phone, I didn't know how to tell them where we were. Maybe if I gave them the phone number, the police could trace that. Yes, that was the thing to do, I decided.

“Darcy?”

I turned toward the small voice. “Yes, Jeremy. I'm here.”

“I hate those men. I hope the police lock them up.”

“I hope so too,” I said, reaching out a hand to touch his. “They probably will.”

There was a minute or so of silence, and then he spoke again, sounding very sleepy, “I wish those bees would sting them and sting them, and then the police would come.”

I squeezed his hand once more, and before long I could tell by his breathing that he'd really fallen asleep this time.

I wanted to sleep, too, but I didn't. I sat
there in the darkness, listening to the frogs and the crickets, wishing I knew what was going on. Mr. Foster might have delivered the ransom money by now. Was there any chance he'd told the police, and they'd been smart enough to watch and follow and catch the kidnappers? Or had the Hazens gotten away with it, and were they headed back here?

I sat there thinking and thinking, and pretty soon another idea had jelled in my head.

It was an idea that gave me goosebumps, but it wouldn't go away. It was Jeremy's idea, really, but now it was mine, too.

I'm afraid of bees or wasps or hornets, or anything else that stings or bites. But I was more afraid of what the kidnappers would do before they headed for Mexico with the ransom money, if the police hadn't been able to stop them.

My mouth got dryer, and I kept thinking about those wasps. After a while, I knew I had to do it, no matter how much it scared me.

Even after I decided I had to do it, I continued to sit there in the dark, thinking about it.

I remembered very clearly the day that Tim had knocked a wasp nest off our garage; the angry creatures had swarmed all over, stinging everyone in sight. I got stung twice, which was less than Tim and Jimmy and Bobby got. One place was on my leg, and that was bad enough, but the second sting was far worse.

There were wasps flying around my head, and I was terrified that they were going to get tangled up in my hair; I ran for the house, waving my arms to chase them away. One of them landed on my thumb, and I yelped and brushed it off with my other hand, but not before it stung me.

I could still remember how much it hurt.
The pain wasn't just in my thumb, either; it traveled all the way up my arm to my shoulder, and it ached so bad I couldn't sleep that night. It was a couple of days before it stopped hurting, no matter what Mom put on the sting to draw the poison out. Dad said the stinger must have gone into a nerve and followed it up, and that was why it made my whole arm and shoulder hurt. Tim said that wasps and bees had the same poison as rattlesnakes, and that's why they were so painful. I didn't know if that was true or not, but I hoped never to get bitten by a rattler.

I hadn't had anything to do with knocking that nest down. In fact, I'd yelled at Tim to leave it alone.

And now I was thinking about taking down another one, because it was the only weapon I could think of that I could use to protect us from a trio of kidnappers.

I wasn't sure how I could manage to use it against the Hazens and still protect the kids and myself, yet there wasn't anything else.

Nothing at all.

Pretty soon I got up and went over to the
window. With the little flashlight I could see the papery nest, like an out-of-shape balloon, right there under the eaves. It would be easy to get to, just by putting one foot through the window opening, straddling the frame, and reaching up for it. It wasn't high or hard to reach.

Tim told me that bees and wasps don't move around at night. They're inside their nest, and quiet. I get a lot of my information from Tim, and most of it's accurate, though not all of it. I hoped he was right about night being the safest time to try to do something with wasps.

I couldn't just tear the nest down and leave it sitting around until I found the right use for it, of course. I had a nasty suspicion that the wasps would wake up and defend themselves the minute the nest pulled away from the eaves; for all I knew, there would be a hole in the top of it when it came loose, so the whole swarm could fly out at once.

I ducked my head out the window, and I could hear them, buzzing ever so faintly. So they weren't even asleep, or maybe they made, that noise all the time.

I couldn't tear the nest down, I thought. It
would practically be suicide, unless I had something to put it in to make sure the wasps didn't start stinging until I wanted them to, and I didn't have anything like that.

In the trash downstairs, left over from our fast food chicken dinner, there was a plastic bag the rolls had come in. It was quite a big bag; obviously Dan had bought enough rolls to feed them as well as us.

Was it big enough to put over the wasp nest before I tore it loose from the eaves?

I sighed very softly. I'd have to find out.

The kids were sleeping peacefully. I took the little flashlight and started down the stairway, stooping at the bottom to crawl through the small doorway, which was even more cramped now that the mattress was leaned over it again.

I went through the attic, down the other flight of stairs, and opened the door at the bottom. The light was still on, the dogs were still lying at the top of the stairs. They lifted their heads and thumped their tails hopefully.

“Sorry, fellas, I don't have anything this time,” I said, but I paused to scratch behind
their ears, just to keep them remembering that they'd changed sides and were friends of mine now.

The trash was where we'd left it. The plastic bag was wadded up with napkins in it, which I emptied out into the cardboard chicken bucket. I thought it looked big enough.

There was a lump growing in my throat. I folded up the plastic bag, and then I heard the car coming.

It was quite a way off, but the only car I'd heard since we were brought here was the one the Hazens were driving. I felt paralyzed, suffocating. The night was suddenly not warm but hot.

I stood by the window that overlooked the side yard, listening. The car came closer, and then it stopped—someone was opening the gate—and after a minute the headlights came through the trees, and the car rolled to a halt below me.

The screen door slammed, and Dan called out hoarsely. “That you, Henry? Pa?”

“Who else you think it would be, you idiot?” Henry said with his usual foul humor. They had
turned off only the engine, not the headlights. The two of them got out, and when Pa Hazen came around the front of the car I saw that he was carrying a briefcase or small suitcase.

“You get it?” Dan asked eagerly, and again he was snarled at.

“We got it, we got it, now let's get out of here. I told your ma we was all going fishing over the weekend, so she won't start looking for us before Sunday night. We can get a long way off by then.”

“Is it all there? As much as we asked for?” Dan demanded.

“Far as we can tell. We didn't stop to count it,” his brother replied sarcastically.

“Aren't we gonna leave any of it for Ma and the girls?”

“Sure, so the minute she spends it suspicion points at us?” The sarcasm was even heavier. “You can bet they marked the bills, even if we did tell 'em not to. Can't you get it through your head that we gotta be careful until we're out of the country?”

Pa Hazen cut through Henry's voice. “Go on, get in the car. I'll go take care of the kids.”

Dan had sounded jubilant. Now he sounded uneasy. “What do you mean, take care of them? You're going to give them back to their folks, aren't you? Now that they paid the ransom?”

“Don't worry about that, get your stuff and get in the car. I'll be back in a few minutes,” Pa Hazen said.

Though the breeze drifting through the open window was warm, goosebumps rose on my arms.

I was certain—
absolutely certain
—that Pa Hazen didn't intend to take us all home, maybe not even the kids.

The screen door slammed again, and Dan swore. “Listen, I told you both, I wasn't getting mixed up in anything more than just holding the kids for ransom. You said we'd take 'em home as soon as we had the money—”

I turned away from the window, only now realizing that if I'd been downstairs when Dan went out, I'd have had time to call the police while there was no one in the kitchen. If only that had occurred to me earlier—

It hadn't, and in a minute Pa Hazen would be coming, and I had to be gone.

I'd no more than closed the door at the foot of the attic stairs when I heard him coming. I heard the dogs growl, and he cursed them, and then he bellowed in rage. I thought he was yelling out the window at his sons below, but I heard his words, all right.

My mom would have washed anybody's mouth out with soap for using the kind of words he was yelling. The gist of it was that we were gone, and the dogs had let us go. Miss Jacobson would have flunked him in grammar, but he knew more cuss words than I'd ever heard before.

I cowered there on the stairs, torn between fleeing to the cupola and fear that I'd be overheard if I moved.

And then there was a
thunk
that I figured out a little later must have been Pa Hazen kicking one of the dogs.

It was a mistake.

The racket on the other side of the door from me was incredible. Snarling, growling, barking—and Pa Hazen yelling bloody murder, sounding as if he were really hurt.

“Good dogs,” I muttered; and under cover of
all the fury behind me, I started up the stairs to the attic. I heard running feet, and Dan yelling at the dogs; and then things quieted down somewhat, though Pa Hazen continued to swear. I paused at the top of the climb to catch my breath and heard Dan say, “You shouldn't of messed with the dogs, Pa! You must of been crazy to
kick
one of 'em when you knew they didn't like you in the first place!”

“I need a doctor! Look what he done to my leg! It needs to be sewed up before I bleed to death!”

Henry had come at the sound of trouble, too. “We can't take you to a doctor, Pa, not here in town. I'm pretty sure they have to report dog bites to the cops, and they might put two and two together before we've had time to get out of the country. The old man's got a medicine chest downstairs; we'll put disinfectant on it and fix you up with tape and bandages, at least until we get to some other town far enough away so the local cops won't hear about it. What happened to the kids?”

There was more profanity. “—Dogs nearly took my leg off, but they didn't stop the kids!
Where are they? You were supposed to be watching 'em!”

“I couldn't watch every minute, could I? They must be here somewhere; they couldn't of got by me in the kitchen, and that was the only way out,” Dan said aggrievedly.

“Well, you tell me where they went,” Pa Hazen said. “Help me down them stairs, I'm bleedin' like a stuck pig.”

“Dan can take you. I'll find the kids,” Henry said, and his tone made my blood run even colder than it already was.

I couldn't stay there any longer. He'd check the other bedrooms first, and then he'd investigate the attic. I had to be up in that cupola before he came.

I was grateful for the little flashlight Jeremy had found; I'd have broken my neck getting across the attic and advertised my whereabouts to Henry, now that his father had gone downstairs to continue his yelling.

I crawled behind the mattress, eased open the door, and immediately I heard Jeremy's frightened voice.

“Darcy?”

“Yes, it's me. Stay there.” I shined the light upward and caught his scared face.

“What's happening? I heard the dogs and woke up, and you were gone, and I thought—”

I reached him and gave him a reassuring hug. “No, it wasn't me they bit, it was Pa Hazen. Listen, remember what you said about that wasp nest? About wishing the wasps would sting the kidnappers? Well, I went down and got a plastic bag; and if you'll help me maybe we can get the nest into it. If they come near us, maybe we can throw it at them and run for it. Or something.”