Don't Tell Anyone (2 page)

“One of them is pregnant. She looks as if her kittens will arrive at any second.”

“They aren't your cats,” Mrs. Perk said.

“But what if the mother cat needs help? What if there's a problem when the kittens are born?”

“Wild animals know how to take care of themselves, and those cats are definitely wild animals.”

“I'll be careful,” Megan promised. “Since that first day, all I do is set the food and water down, and then I climb a tree and watch the cats eat. I don't try to touch them.”

The phone in Mrs. Perk's office rang. She hurried to answer it. Megan's mother worked for a stock brokerage firm. She had her home computer networked to the office and did much of her work from home.

Her reason for working this way was that, as a divorced
mother, she wanted to be at home to supervise her daughters. In truth, however, even though Mrs. Perk was there physically, she rarely had time during the week to pay close attention to what Megan or Kylie were doing. Megan often wished she and Mom could finish a conversation without being interrupted by one of Mom's clients.

Because of the time difference between the West Coast, where the Perks lived, and New York, where the Stock Exchange is located, Mrs. Perk was on the telephone by six-thirty every morning. Megan usually fixed breakfast for herself and Kylie, made sure Kylie got on the kindergarten bus, and then rode her bike to school.

After school Mrs. Perk took calls from clients, worked on their portfolios, and researched companies to determine if their stock was likely to go up in value. She supervised Kylie's after-school play, but Megan was allowed to come and go, as long as she left a note or told her mother where she was.

Weekends were better. On Saturday afternoons, Mrs. Perk took her daughters hiking or swimming or bowling. Sometimes Megan and Kylie each got to invite a friend to go along.

Megan waited a long time for her mother to get off the phone. While she waited, she remembered her mother's instructions. “Maybe you had better stay away from that field.” Her mother had not told her she had to stay away. She had said
maybe.

The cats did need the food and water, especially Mommacat,
whose sides now pushed out so far she looked like a bubble that was ready to burst. The phone conversation went on; Megan gave up waiting.

The next morning Megan wanted to stay home from school and go to the field to wait for the kittens to be born. But she knew what her mother would say to that request, so she didn't bother to ask.

Instead she carried the cat food and her jar of water to school in her backpack. After school, Megan rushed for her bike, removed the padlock, and pedaled as fast as she could toward the field.

She hoped she wasn't too late. She wanted to be there when the kittens were born.

About a block before she got to the field, something white caught her attention. Oh no, Megan thought, as she saw that a large white sign had been erected on the edge of the field. Filled with anxiety, she rode toward it.

Megan had seen such signs before. They went up on vacant lots as a way to announce to the neighborhood that the lot would not be vacant for long.

The woods where Megan and Kylie used to play had been cut down last year, soon after such a sign was erected. Dozens of new houses now stood where the woods used to be, and the first thing each of the new owners did after they moved in was plant some trees.

She stopped her bike next to the sign.

Megan's heart sank. Someone was going to build apartments on this field. But what about the cats? Megan wondered. What will happen to them?

She remembered the enormous rumbling bulldozers that had flattened the woods in such a brief time. She imagined the panic of the cats as they ran to escape the huge, noisy machines. Where would they go? Onto the freeway?

I have to help them, Megan thought. I have to find a way to catch the cats and tame them and find homes for them before the field gets leveled.

I have to keep the apartment complex from being built until the cats are safe.

But how?

Tuesday night, Shane Turner unlocked the office of Colby Construction Company, stepped inside, and locked the door behind him. He did not switch on any lights; there was no point calling attention to the fact that the building was occupied so late at night. What if Brice Colby, Shane's brother-in-law, happened to drive past? If Brice saw a light, he'd be in there in a flash, asking Shane what he was doing, and then what would Shane say?

Brice did not know that Shane had a key to the office. It had been easy to get; Shane simply pretended to have trouble
with his truck one morning. He borrowed his sister's car for the day, then made duplicate keys of everything on Ruthann Colby's key ring before he returned the car.

The office windows faced the parking lot. Shane looked out. His blue pickup was the only vehicle parked there.

Colorful hammers and wrenches floated on the computer's screen-saver program. Shane walked to the glowing screen.

He uncovered the keyboard, then punched in the commands for Colby Construction's bookkeeping program. The first time he had done this, two weeks earlier, it had taken him three tries to correctly guess the password. He had tried Brice's birthday first, and then Ruthann's birthday. When those didn't work, he tried their wedding anniversary, November 23, and the Colby accounts appeared on the screen.

When the system asked for the password this time, Shane typed in 1123. Next he clicked on
Accounts Payable.

While he waited for the information to appear, he wiped his sweaty hands on his jeans. The blue screen gave an eerie glow to that corner of the dark office.

Shane typed in
Bradburn Cement Company
, a nonexistent business. He typed
Amount due for work completed on Bayview Place
, a furniture store that Colby Construction was presently building.

He made the check payable to William Bradburn. One of Shane's driver's licenses was in that name; he would use it for identification when he cashed the check.

Shane could type in the amount of money that Colby Construction “owed” William Bradburn and print out a check, and no one would know. He had done it once before, and neither Brice nor the bookkeeper had caught on.

Although Shane knew he was alone, his heart raced as he typed the numbers: $15,104.23. He made the amount uneven so that it would look more like a real billing from the fictitious cement company.

Shane pressed
Print Check.
The machine that printed checks warmed up; the pale green paper slid forward, and the finished check emerged from the other side.

Shane held it toward the glow from the computer screen, making sure that it was made out properly. If the check didn't match Shane's fake driver's license, he'd never be able to cash it.

The check was perfect. Shane forged Brice's signature on the bottom of the check. He had practiced it so many times, he could do it without even looking at Brice's real signature.

Shane put the check in his wallet, then exited the bookkeeping program. The dancing hammers and wrenches returned to the screen.

A band of light flashed across the wall as a car drove into the parking lot. Shane's heart pounded. He hurried to the window and looked out, keeping to the side of the glass where he could not be seen. He did not recognize the car.

The car made a U-turn, went out the same driveway it had come in, and drove off.

This is the last time I'll do this, Shane promised himself.
It was too risky. If Brice ever found out, Shane knew he would lose not only his job, but his freedom.

When Shane had been released from prison six months earlier, his sister, Ruthann, had pleaded with Brice to give her brother a job. No one else was willing to take a chance on an ex-con with a record of armed robbery and forgery.

Brice had not wanted to take a chance, either. He made it clear when he hired Shane that Shane was on trial and that if he made one wrong move, he would never work for Colby Construction again. Brice also made it clear that he would prosecute any illegal activity.

“You're here because you're my wife's brother,” Brice had said on the first day of Shane's employment. “You've lied to her for years and gotten away with it, but lies won't work with me. If you do the job right, keep your temper under control, and stay out of trouble, you can work for me as long as you want to. But there won't be any second chance if you slip up. Is that clear?”

It was clear, all right. It was clear to Shane that Brice would always be the boss, that Brice would always make more money than Shane did, and that Brice thought he was doing Shane a huge favor.

Well, Shane didn't want any more favors. He was sick of pounding nails in unheated buildings. He was tired of getting his boots muddy and of having his back ache at the end of the day. He was ready to move on, but he knew he couldn't just up and leave. He needed a plan, and he needed money.

He'd had the plan for almost a month, ever since Brice
had reluctantly agreed to let Shane pilot the hot-air balloon that Colby Construction was sponsoring in the town's annual balloon festival.

Now Shane had the money to carry out his plan.

Brice had never found out about the first forged check, for seven hundred dollars, that Shane had printed and cashed. He would never know about this one, either. Even if the bookkeeper discovered the fictitious Bradburn account, it would take awhile before anyone suspected Shane.

Brice and Ruthann didn't even know that Shane could use the computer. Shane had learned how in prison, as part of a training program that was supposed to prepare him to get a job. But he had kept that skill to himself. When Ruthann talked about all the information she found on the Internet, Shane pretended ignorance, as if using a computer was completely beyond his ability.

He had spent the stolen seven hundred dollars to buy an old clunker car, which he registered under the name William Bradburn. The car was already parked at Shane's getaway spot, the remote meadow on the other side of Desolation Hill, where Shane planned to land the Colby Construction hot-air balloon and set it afire to make it look as if he had crashed.

Ruthann would be devastated to think Shane had died in the crash; Brice would probably be relieved to be rid of him.

Shane was positive he would not get caught. He would
not be charged with theft, and he would never, ever, return to prison. The eighteen months he had spent behind bars were the worst months of his life. He did not intend to repeat them.

Friday night, Shane would be out of this town. He had better things to do with his life than accept favors from his brother-in-law.

Shane knew that as long as all the Colby Construction projects moved forward as scheduled, there was little chance that the missing funds would be noticed. Brice's business was booming, which meant that large amounts of money flowed into the account, and large amounts were paid out for supplies and labor.

Colby Construction had an office building nearly completed, and Shane knew the company would break ground next week on a big apartment complex. That alone would put so much money into the account that a mere fifteen thousand would never be missed.

The only thing that could mess up Shane's plan would be if Brice's next job got delayed, so that the big money did not arrive as expected. If that happened, a shortage in the account might be discovered.

Nothing was going to delay the apartment complex. No neighbors would complain about a building that was erected right next to a freeway on-ramp. The apartment would not cause an environmental problem, and the impact on traffic would not matter in that location.

The building permit was expected on Thursday, and
Brice was ready to start construction. Shane had arranged to have the field cleared on Friday, to make sure the project was under way before he left. By Friday night, Shane would be gone.

Shane slipped outside, locked the office door behind him, and headed for his truck. The night air was warm; summer was almost here. Perfect weather to build an apartment complex, Shane thought. Nothing, not even rainy weather, would hold up Brice's big project–and nothing would keep Shane from using his cash to get out of this crummy town.

Shane knew exactly where he would go: New Mexico. There was a hot-air balloon festival in Albuquerque every year, and Shane planned to fly his own balloon in the next one.

Before he was sent to prison, Shane had gotten a license to be a hot-air balloon pilot. He had taken the required ten hours of instruction, passed a written and a verbal test, and then passed the flight exam. The license had cost him nearly fifteen hundred dollars, but it had been worth it.

Ever since he got his pilot's license he had wanted his own balloon business. Now
there
was a job worth having! The trouble was, it took money to buy the balloon and the basket. Even used balloons cost several thousand dollars.