Finders Keepers (11 page)

           
“What happened after that?”
 
The hurt in Sky’s eyes when he’d mentioned his father was fresh in her mind.
 
It was the same hurt she could see in a very angry green-eyed child.
 
Her chest tightened.
 

           
Flora shrugged her hunched shoulders.
 
“We are here.
 
We will stay here in this fallen, broken city, and crumble into dust and die just as it does.
 
At one point our city had electricity and running water and a few modern conveniences.”

Maybe “stole” was a better word.
 
“Almost everything the goblins have is taken from above ground,” Flora told her.
 

“When I was a child, the city was almost self-sufficient, but when the last goblin prince died, so did the leadership, and with the leadership went our unity.
 
The electricity failed, about ten years ago and was never fixed.”

Ellie followed Flora around the house as she did small household chores, fascinated by everything she was being told.
 
Flora seemed to enjoy the company and continued giving Ellie bits and pieces of her history.
 
They stood in front of a small fish tank as Flora dropped fish flakes into the water.
 
The zippy little
tetris
fish darted to the surface to gobble up the pieces.

 
“Goblins are smart, but self-interested.
 
To fix the electricity problem, someone would have to actually find the problem.
 
That has never happened.
 
The trouble is, their interest in comfort is far outweighed by their laziness.”

“You talk about ‘they’ as if you’re not one of them.”

The sad look returned to Flora’s eyes.
 
“I’m not, dear.
 
I am one of the few left who still is holding out hope for a new existence.
 
‘They’ are the ones who are content to die.”
 
The lid on the fish food snapped shut.
 
“I believe I am keeping you up very late.
 
Days and nights are switched for us here.
 
You’ll find I can keep going on and on and on.”

“But,” Ellie said.
 
“I’m not tired and…I can’t stay.”

The woman stretched out a lily white arm and laid it on Ellie’s shoulder.
 
“Let me show you something.”
 
She guided Ellie into the kitchen and over toward the kitchen sink.
 
Above the sink was a small window.
 
She pulled back the faded yellow curtain and handed Ellie a small red flashlight.
 
Ellie had to stand on tiptoe to see out.
 
She flipped the switch and pointed the beam out.
 
The light caught the eyes instantly and two golden orbs flashed back at her.
 
She yanked back from the window.

“There’s another at the front.
 
Even if they weren’t there, I would warn you that the raiding has already started.
 
That means the streets will be unsafe until the sun rises again aboveground.
 
I don’t think you really have a choice.”

Ellie returned to Sky’s room, but not to sleep.
 
It wasn’t as if she could just lie down and forget she’d been abducted, no matter what one, or to be technically correct two, kisses, may have done to her.
 
Being around Gibbs clouded her judgment.
 
Now that she was alone she could think clearly.
 
Hadn’t Flora told her goblins were self-interested?
 
After several minutes of debating with herself, she made a decision.
 
She couldn’t stay down here, and that was final.

Probably the first thing she should have done, but hadn’t thought of until now was to try her phone.
 
Frankly, she didn’t have much hope.
 
She moved around the room holding it just above eye level.
 
The mattress sagged and creaked when she climbed onto it.
 
She held her phone up to the small window.
 
One bars.
 
Two bars.
 
“Unbelievable,” she said out loud and then jumped and down on the bed laughing.
 
Her phone beeped.
 
16 missed calls and 1 new text message.
 

A knock sounded on the door.
 
“Ellie?”

Ellie bum-dropped onto the bed.
 

“Do you need anything?”

She slid the phone under her thigh.
 
“Uh, no thanks.”

“You remember what we talked about?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Okay then, I am going to take some of the groceries to my neighbor.
 
Try and get some rest.”

As soon as she could no longer hear Flora moving around, Ellie pulled herself up to the window again.
 
The speed of her actions increased.
 
Her thumb skipped over the voicemails and went straight to the message.
 
She didn’t recognize the number.

Are you all right?
 
Where are you?
 
Sky

Her fingers dialed back his number.
 
Please.
 
Please.
 
Please.

“Ellie?”
 

Her breath came out all in a whoosh.
 
Then she punched her fist into the empty air.
 
Take that Verizon!
 
“Sky, what is going on?
 
Why am I really here?
 
This could not possibly be about a bird.
 
And goblins?
 
Did you forget to mention I was being targeted by goblins?
 
That
you
are a goblin?
 
I feel ridiculous even saying that.”

“Calm down Ellie.
 
I’m going to come to you.
 
Do you know where you are?”

Her eyes glanced around the room.
 
Her cheeks warmed.
 
“At your mother’s house.”
 
He didn’t need to know she was literally in his bed.
 
“I’m being guarded.
 
There’s at least two.”

“Don’t worry, hold tight.
 
I’m coming.”

The way he said it all she could think about was Sky breaking down the door to get to her.
 
He was the white knight in this fairy tale.
 
She tugged on her ear.
 
“Why do you care?
 
Why do you keep protecting me?”

For a second she thought she heard the call drop, then she heard him breathing.
 
“Ellie, it’s complicated.
 
I’m about an hour away.
 
Just stay put.”

“But I don’t have an hour, just a few minutes.”
 
There was no way to know if he heard.
 
There was silence and when she pulled the phone away from her ear, she saw the call had ended.

She shoved the phone into her pocket and bounded off the bed.
 
Time was running out, but she couldn’t just rush out the front door empty-handed.
 
First she attacked the drawers.
 
All of them were empty except for the bottom left.
 
In it were a couple extra t-shirts, a pair of jeans, and other odds and ends like socks.
 
She didn’t remember Flora mentioning it, but it appeared as though Sky hadn’t been here in quite some time.
 

“If I were Sky, would I take everything with me when I left, or would I stow some stuff away just in case?”
 
Dropping to her knees, she searched under the bed, then she lifted the mattress.
 
To be thorough she lugged the dresser away from the wall a couple of inches.
 
Closing her eyes her hand slipped through and felt around the back of the dresser, and then the wall.
 
Her fingers touched a crudely cut hole in the wall.
 
Using her shoulder this time, Ellie drove her body into the dresser.
 
It scraped across the floor another six inches.
 

What she found in the hole was a treasure box of sorts.
 
It was a small cardboard box, like a shoebox, except smaller, and it was chock full of odds and ends—tiny electrical parts and wires, old cell phones, and a large pocket knife.
 
She cheered silently and pulled the knife out.
 
Her fingers continued to sift through the box and stopped when she found a photo.

There she was, Ellie Brown, smiling proudly back.
 
A large black crow rested on her shoulder.
 
The camera captured that particular moment in time only two months ago.
 
Two weeks before the picture was taken, Pinstripe was healed just enough to be out of the makeshift cage her dad made for him.
 
After he was let out, it’d been two more weeks before he’d really trusted her, and he demonstrated it by hopping onto her shoulder.
 
Her mom took the picture for her so she could show her dad.
   

A wet spot appeared on the picture.
 
She wiped the picture on her jeans and then dragged her hand across her eyes.
 
The box was shoved back into the wall minus the knife and picture.
 
The photo slipped into her back pocket.
 
The knife stayed clasped in her palm.
     

One thing was for sure.
 
She wasn’t waiting for Sky.
 
If her instincts were correct, he hadn’t been here in a while.
 
So how and when had he come by the picture?
 
Ellie shoved her questions to the back of her mind.
 
She needed to concentrate on her escape.

She didn’t have much hope that she’d be able to sneak out undetected.
 
Her plan involved getting out and using her slightly above average track skills to run for her life.
 
Jiggling the lock on the window above Sky’s bed, she finally got it to unlatch.
 
Then she pushed.
 
It groaned open.
    

           
Ellie thought she was small, but the window challenged that assumption.
 
Squeezing through she held her breath as the edge of the frame skimmed the back of her t-shirt and the stitches underneath.

           
Yo
Lola, did you hear something?”

           
Ellie braced herself against the outside of the house and wiggled her body the rest of the way out.
 
The fall to the ground was much less muffled and considerably more painful than she would have hoped.
 
A hulking shape lumbered around from the front of the house.
 
Resting the knife against her thigh, she flipped the blade out, and then took off in the other direction.
 
Another shape, this one long and leggy and definitively female appeared and blocked her way out.
 

           
“We’re not going to hurt you,” the girl said.

           
“Much.”
 
The hulk finished for her.
 

           
“Shut up, Dodge.”
 
She put her hands up as if to calm Ellie down.
 
“Let me take you back into the house.
 
If you go right back in, we won’t call Gibbs.”