The Secret of Rover (10 page)

Katie lifted her face and gazed into his. She was very calm. “So what now?” she asked simply. “What do we do?”

David did not reply, so she continued. “The way I figure,” she said, “there are two things. I mean, two things we have to do. For starters—”

“Katie.”

“What?”

“Stop a minute—OK? I have to say something, and I only want to say it once. So you have to promise that after I do say it, we never talk about it again—all right?”

She was silent, curious.

“You have to promise or I won't—”

“OK! I promise.”

David took a deep breath and his heart began to race. “I'm sorry,” he said, trying to control his voice. “I'm sorry I got us into this. I know you didn't want them—you didn't want Mom and Dad to go.”

For a moment she simply absorbed this. “OK,” she said. “That's OK. David? I was trying to tell you, there are two things we have to do.”

She didn't even seem to mind! Maybe he hadn't needed to apologize.

“The first thing,” she was saying, “is that we have to get out of here, and before tonight.”

Amen to that, thought David, remembering the rats.

“We can't sleep here,” Katie continued, “and we don't want to be here tomorrow either. What if they come back? I never want to see Trixie again,” she added feelingly. “So that's one. Two is that after we get out, we have to tell.”

“But what about Mom and Dad, Kat? If we tell, they'll—”

“They'll what?” she demanded. “And what'll they do if we
don't
tell? If we don't tell, are they going to let them go?”

This had not occurred to him.

“Not telling—that's
their
idea. Those are
their
rules.”

“Right,” he said slowly, getting it. “We have to make our own rules, for us. But who do we tell? Because whoever it is, they have to handle this just right. As soon as we tell them they have to move fast. They have to get the Katkajanians before the Katkajanians can get Mom and Dad.”

“Exactly. And even before that they have to believe us, and that means we have to tell the right person. I mean, if we tell the police, the first thing they'll do is go talk to Trixie. She actually is our nanny, remember? She has papers from the agency! And she'll laugh it off and say we just ran away, and they'll believe her. They always believe
adults! And then they'll give us back to her and when the police are gone—”

“I get it,” said David. “No police.”

“We can't tell any strangers at all,” continued Katie. “In fact, the way I see it, there's only one person we can tell.”

“And that person is . . . ?”

“Uncle Alex.”

David's jaw dropped. “Uncle
Alex
? Hermit Uncle Alex? Uncle Alex who we've never
met
?”

“Think, David! What's this all about, this kidnapping? Millions of people adopt babies—why take Mom and Dad? This is about Rover! They want Mom and Dad because of Rover! And who else in the world—besides Mom and Dad, I mean—knows about that?”

“But isn't there something you're overlooking, Katie? We don't know where Uncle Alex lives!”

“That's not true! We know exactly where he lives. Mom and Dad have been telling us for years.” She began reciting. “He lives on a mountain north of Melville, Vermont, just below the border with Canada. There's only one road that crosses Melville, and you take it straight through. You go half a mile past the first bridge out of town, then turn north into the woods by the big rock that was split by lightning.”

“You climb, always going north,” said David, taking over. Katie was right. They did know; they'd been hearing these directions all their lives.

He continued. “There are mountains ahead, and you keep the two big peaks in front of you, as if you were heading straight between them. But before you get there—”

“
Way
before you get there—”

“You come to the creek. And you follow it upstream, to the left. You just keep following the water and following the water—”

“And then you're there.”

Both children were silent.

At length David spoke again, this time quite off topic. “If we found Uncle Alex, do you think he'd tell us what Rover is?”

“David, we have bigger problems than that!”

“Yeah, well, this one's always bugged me.” And it had, too. And now that he was tired and depressed it was bugging him again. David sighed. “Just a thought,” he said, moving on. “And you're right—we do have bigger problems. Like, how do we get ourselves nearly to Canada? Have you figured out that part, Kat? I mean, seeing as how we don't have any money.”

Katie overlooked his sarcasm. “No,” she admitted. “I don't know how we do that. Maybe we'll hitchhike or something.”

“Great! We'd be very inconspicuous, a couple of twelve-year-olds with our thumbs out. The police would pick us up before we left the neighborhood.”

“OK, so we won't hitchhike. We'll figure out something else. You can't expect me to think of everything.”

“Anyway, we have a bigger problem,” David continued gloomily. “We have to get out of here. And we're locked in, Kat.”

“Probably,” she admitted. “But I guess we should check anyway. Just in case.”

Neither of them wanted to explore the house. Neither of them wanted to move an inch from where they had been put. Although they used to live there, the place now struck them as intensely creepy. It wasn't just the dust and the cobwebs and the silence; it was the darkness, too. Whoever had nailed the boards over the windows had done a much better job in the rest of the house than they had in the living room. There were almost no cracks between the pieces of wood in the other rooms, so beyond where they sat the place was nearly pitch-black.

But reluctantly they rose to their feet and rattled every door. With their bare hands they tried fruitlessly to turn the heavy screws that fastened the bars to every window.

It was hopeless. There was no way out.

Despondently they returned to the living room to wait out the long, miserable day.

They did not want to eat the Katkajanians' food. But they both felt the importance of saving the chocolate with which their pockets were stuffed, and at length hunger drove them to open the battered brown bag. It contained a
dozen more of the same acrid sandwiches they had eaten the night before.

“Twelve of them!” Katie cried in dismay. “How long are they leaving us here?”

She had not wanted the Katkajanians to return, but now she feared they never would.

They each ate two sandwiches, telling themselves they'd better save the rest. Then they braced themselves for the long day and the coming night. The plan was that Katie was to sleep now, so that she could be up through the dark hours to scare away any rats that might emerge. After all, as she explained to David, she didn't like rats, but they both knew they bothered David worse than they bothered her.

It wasn't a great plan, but it was the best they could come up with. And as it turned out, the plan failed.

David had meant to stay awake. Certainly—certainly—he wanted Katie awake at night. But his body ached with weariness from his short night on the furnace room floor. And the light was very dim in this old house, and his mind and heart were heavy.

Weighed down by tedium and sorrow and worry, both children sank to the dusty floor and fell fast asleep.

Again David dreamed. He was in jail, in a lonely cell in a great stone prison. He wanted to get out but knew he could not.

Trixie was in the cell next door and she had a shovel. How he knew this he could not have said, but he could hear her digging. He heard the
skritch, skritch
of the shovel scraping through dirt and stone. He heard the rustle of the rubble she tossed aside.

She was digging a tunnel so that she could escape.

David didn't want Trixie to succeed. Through his dream confusion he felt the injustice of his being stuck while she got away. He called for the guard. The guard must stop her and take her terrible shovel.

Skritch, rustle. Skritch, rustle
. Where was the guard? Why didn't he come?

He woke with a start to a resounding thud and a sharp squeal. “What!” David sat bolt upright on the floor of the old house. It was black as tar and he was terrified.

“Rats,” said Katie's voice beside him in the dark. “It's rats.”

“What was that noise?”

“My shoe—I threw my shoe at one.”

“Katie, I can't see a thing!”

“Yeah, it's dark. I'm throwing at the sound. You can't sleep; we both need to stay awake. We need to make noise or we won't keep them away.”

David leaped to his feet. Had there been a table he'd have leaped onto that. He was trapped in a lightless room with rats.

Katie had been crouching, removing her other shoe.
But now she stood beside him and began stamping her feet.

“David, make noise! We're bigger than they are.”

But David was frozen with fear.

Katie stamped again, and now she jumped. She tried to shout, but her shouts felt puny in the dark and she could not get them out of her throat.

There was a long, bold skitter as something ran clean across the floor not three feet from where they stood.

David gasped. He felt panic rising in fumes around him, clouding his mind. Stay cool, he told himself. Stay cool. Don't give in to fear. He relaxed his clenched fists and drew in a deep breath, hoping it would calm him.

But he released that breath in a scream. There was something else in the room and it wasn't a rat.

The skittering to and fro had been replaced by bedlam. Another rat had raced across the floor even closer to them than the first, and this one had just been attacked. They could see nothing but they heard the thud that landed in the path of the darting rodent and the battle that was raging inches from their feet.

An anguished, half-strangled squeal mingled with David's scream and the besieged rat streaked from the room. Racing after it went something that yowled a high-pitched yowl.

A high-pitched and very familiar yowl.
Slank
.

“David, he's here!”

“It's got to be him!”

And sure enough, within seconds the soft, comfortable meow they knew so well came toward them across the blackened room and the sleek body of their cat was curling about their ankles. They scooped him into their arms, squeezing him tight and burying their faces in his warm, silky fur.

“He's come to save us,” cried Katie, “to save us from the rats!”

“They sure are gone for now,” answered David, as Slank's meows dropped a register into a deep, rumbling purr. He massaged the back of the cat's neck, rubbing him just the way he liked best.

“Oh, Slanky, you didn't get hit by a car!” David couldn't see Katie, but he could tell she was crying. “It took you days, but you came right back to your own house and you came inside and you saved us.”

David's hand, which had continued to rub the cat, stopped short.

“Katie.”

“What?” She was still nuzzling Slank's neck.

“Katie. He came
inside
.”

“Right, David. That's where we are; maybe you noticed.” She was not too upset to be sarcastic.

“Kat, think! He came
in
. He has no key, Kat!”

“Oh . . .
Oh!
”

“And how did he come in, Katie? Because however he
came
in
, he could go
out
the same way. And however
he
goes out—”

“The cat door! David, how did we miss that? How did we forget the cat door?”

“The only question is, will we fit?” David's voice was bright with excitement for the first time in days. “Wait!” he added.

But Katie had already dropped Slank and begun feeling her way toward the kitchen door where their father had cut a special hole for the cat, years and years ago.

It was strange how boldly they moved through the inky house, now that they knew where they were going. By the time David caught up with Katie, she was already there. She had sprawled across the filthy floor and was trying to slide through the little door headfirst.

“Wow,” she said. “It's going to be really tight. And I'm smaller than you are.”

“Take off the frame.”

Both children began prying at the metal rim that was nailed around the edges of the opening, and to which a rubber flap was attached. Without it the hole would be at least two inches bigger, and that might make the difference.

They easily tore away the rubber and a faint, useful light came through the opening. But the metal was murderously difficult to remove in the total darkness of the kitchen, and with no tools.

“We need something to wedge under it; that's the problem,” said David, shaking his now-bleeding fingertips.