Well, except when we’d been racing down that alley to get away from Clay.
But let me tell you, when we pulled into the parking lot of that McDonald’s, I could tell Rob was plenty relieved.
And when we stepped into the icy air-conditioning,
I
was relieved. I was sweating like a pig. I don’t mind the crime-fighting stuff so much. It’s the humidity that bugs me.
Anyway, once we were inside, and Keely was enjoying her Happy Meal while I thirstily sucked down a Coke, Rob explained how he’d been listening attentively to Mrs. Herzberg’s description of her television-viewing habits, when her boyfriend appeared as if from nowhere, preemptively ending their little interview with a fist against the door frame. Sensing trouble, Rob hastily excused himself—though he did fork over the promised ten-dollar bill—and came looking for me.
Thank God he had, too, or I’d be the one with a footprint across my face, as opposed to Clay.
I tried to pay him back the ten he’d given to Mrs. Herzberg. He wouldn’t take my money though. Also, he insisted on paying for Keely’s Happy Meal and my giant Coke. I let him, thinking if I were lucky, he might expect me to put out for it.
Ha. I wish.
Then, once we’d compared notes on our adventures with Clay, I left Rob sitting with Keely while I got on the pay phone and dialed Jonathan Herzberg’s office.
A woman answered. She said Mr. Herzberg couldn’t come to the phone right now, on account of being in a meeting.
I said, “Well, tell him to get out of it. I have his kid here, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with her.”
I didn’t realize until after the woman had put me on hold that I’d probably sounded like a kidnapper, or something. I wondered if she was running around the office, telling the other secretaries to call the police and have the call traced or something.
But I doubt she had time. Mr. Herzberg picked up again almost right away.
“Hey,” I said. “It’s me, Jess. I’m at a McDonald’s—” I gave him the address. “I have Keely here. Can you come pick her up? I’d bring her to you, but we’re on a motorcycle.”
“Fifteen m-minutes.” Mr. Herzberg was stammering with excitement.
“Good.” I started to hang up, but I heard him say something else. I brought the phone back to my ear. “What was that?”
“God bless you,” Mr. Herzberg said. He sounded kind of choked up.
“Uh,” I said. “Yeah. Okay. Just hurry.”
I hung up. I guess that’s the only good part about this whole thing. You know, that sometimes, I can reunite kids with the parents who love them.
Still, I wish they didn’t have to get so mushy about it.
It was after I’d hung up and felt around in the change dispenser to see if anybody had left anything behind—hey, you never know—that I noticed the van.
I walked over to where Rob and Keely were sitting.
“Hey,” I said. “We got visitors.”
Rob looked around the restaurant. “Oh, yeah?”
“Outside,” I said. “The white van. Don’t look. I’ll take care of it. You stay here with Keely.”
Rob shrugged, and dipped a fry into some ketchup. “No problem,” he said.
To Keely, I said, “Your dad’s on his way.”
Keely grinned happily and sucked on the straw in her milk shake.
I went up to the counter and ordered two cheeseburger meals to go. Then I took the two bags and the little cardboard drink holder and went out the door opposite the one where the van was sitting. Then I walked all the way around the outside of the restaurant, past the drive-through window and the Dumpsters out back, until I came up behind the van.
Then I opened the side door and climbed on in.
“Ooh,” I said appreciatively. “Nice air you got in here. But you’ll wear out the battery if you sit here and idle for too long.”
Special Agents Johnson and Smith turned around and looked at me. They both had sunglasses on. Special Agent Smith lifted hers up and looked at me with her pretty blue eyes.
“Hi, Jessica,” she said, in a resigned sort of way.
“Hi,” I said. “I figured you guys might be getting hungry, so I brought you this.” I passed her the drinks and the bags with the cheeseburgers and fries in them. “I super-sized it for you.”
Special Agent Smith opened her bag and looked inside it. “Thanks, Jess,” she said, sounding pleasantly surprised. “That was very thoughtful.”
“Yes,” Special Agent Johnson said. “Thank you, Jessica.”
But he said it in this certain way that you could just tell he was kind of, you know. Unhappy.
“So how long have you guys been following me?” I asked.
Special Agent Johnson—who hadn’t even touched his food—said, “Since shortly after you left the camp.”
“Really?” I thought about this. “All the way from there? I didn’t notice you.”
“We
are
professionals,” Special Agent Smith pointed out, nibbling on a fry.
“We’re
supposed
to be, anyway,” Special Agent Johnson said, in this meaningful way that made his partner put down the fry she was eating and look guilty. “How’d you know we were here, anyway?” he asked me.
“Come on,” I said. “There’s been a white van sitting on my street back home for months now. You think I wouldn’t notice?”
“Ah,” Special Agent Johnson said.
We sat there, all three of us, basking in the air-conditioning and inhaling the delicious scent of fries. There was a lot of stuff in the back of the van, stuff with blinking red and green buttons. It looked like surveillance equipment to me, but I could have been wrong. Nice to know the government wasn’t wasting the taxpayers’ money on frivolous things like the monitoring of teen psychics.
Finally, the luscious odor of Mickey D’s proved too much for Special Agent Smith. She reached into her bag again and this time pulled out one of the cheeseburgers, then began unwrapping it. When she noticed Special Agent Johnson glaring at her disapprovingly, she went, “Well, it’s just going to get cold, Allan,” and took a big bite.
“So,” I said. “How you two been?”
“Fine,” Special Agent Smith said, with her mouth full.
“We’re doing all right,” Special Agent Johnson said. “We’d like to talk to you, though.”
“If you wanted to talk to me,” I said, “you could have just stopped by. I mean, you obviously know where to find me.”
“Who’s the little girl?” Special Agent Johnson said, nodding toward the window, where Rob and Keely were sitting.
“Oh, her?” I leaned forward and, since he obviously didn’t want them, dug my hand into Special Agent Johnson’s fries and pulled out a bunch for myself. “She’s my cousin,” I said.
“You don’t have any cousins that age,” Special Agent Smith said, after taking a sip from the soda I’d bought her.
“I don’t?”
“No,” she said. “You don’t.”
“Well,” I said. “She’s Rob’s cousin, then.”
“Really?” Special Agent Johnson took out a notepad and a pen. “And what’s Rob’s last name?”
“Ha,” I said, with my mouth full of fry. “Like I’d tell you.”
“He’s kind of cute,” Special Agent Smith observed.
“I know,” I said, with a sigh.
The sigh must have been telling, since Special Agent Smith went, “Is he your boyfriend?”
“Not yet,” I said. “But he will be.”
“Really? When?”
“When I turn eighteen. Or when he is no longer able to resist the overwhelming attraction he feels for me and jumps my bones. Whichever comes first.”
Special Agent Smith burst out laughing. Her partner didn’t look so amused though.
“Jessica,” he said. “Would you like to tell us about Taylor Monroe?”
I cocked my head innocently to one side. “Who?”
“Taylor Monroe,” Special Agent Johnson said. “Disappeared two years ago. An anonymous call was placed yesterday to 1-800-WHERE-R-YOU, giving an address in Gainesville, Florida, where the boy could be found.”
“Oh, yeah?” I picked at a loose thread on my jeans. “And was he there?”
“He was.” Special Agent Johnson’s gaze, reflected in the rearview mirror, did not waver from mine. “You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you, Jess?”
“Me?” I screwed up my face. “No way. That’s great, though. His parents must be pretty happy, huh?”
“They’re ecstatic,” Special Agent Smith said, taking a sip from her Coke. “The couple who took him—they apparently couldn’t have children of their own—are in jail, and Taylor’s already been returned to his folks. You never saw a more joyous reunion.”
“Aw,” I said, genuinely pleased. “That’s sweet.”
Special Agent Johnson adjusted the rearview mirror so he could see my reflection more clearly. “Very nicely done,” he said drily. “I almost believed you had nothing to do with it.”
“Well,” I said. “I didn’t.”
“Jessica.” Special Agent Johnson shook his head. “When are you finally going to admit that you lied to us last spring?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe when you admit that you made a big mistake marrying Mrs. Johnson and that your heart really belongs to Jill here.”
Special Agent Smith choked on a mouthful of cheeseburger. Special Agent Johnson had to ram her on the back a couple of times before she could breathe again.
“Oh,” I said. “That go down the wrong pipe? I hate when that happens.”
“Jessica.” Special Agent Johnson spun around in his seat—well, as much as he could with the steering wheel in the way—and eyed me wrathfully. Really.
Wrathful
is about the only way I can describe it. Hey, I took the PSATs. I know what I’m talking about.
“You may think you got away with something last spring,” he growled, “with that whole going-to-the-press thing. But I am warning you, missy. We are on to you. We know what you’ve been up to. And it’s just a matter of time—”
Over Special Agent Johnson’s shoulder, I saw a Passat come barreling through the intersection. Brakes squealing, it pulled into the McDonald’s parking lot and came to a stop a few spaces down from the van. Jonathan Herzberg popped out from the driver’s seat, so anxious to see his daughter he forgot to take off his seat belt. It strangled him, and he had to sit back down and unsnap it before he could get up again.
“—before Jill or I or someone catches you at it, and—”
“And what?” I asked. “What are you going to do to me, Allan? Put me in jail? For what? I haven’t done anything illegal. Just because I won’t help you find your little murderers and your drug lords and your escaped convicts, you think I’m doing something wrong? Well, excuse me for not wanting to do your job for you.”
Special Agent Smith laid a hand on her partner’s shoulder. “Allan,” she said, in a warning voice.
Special Agent Johnson just kept glaring at me. He’d been so upset, he’d knocked over his fries, and now they lay all over the floor beneath his feet. He had already squashed one into the blue carpeting beneath the gas pedal. Behind him, Jonathan Herzberg was hurrying into the restaurant, having already spotted his daughter through the window.
“One thing you can do for me, though,” I said, amiably enough. “You can tell me who tipped you off that I’d left the campgrounds.”
I saw them exchange glances.
“Tipped us off?” Special Agent Smith ran her fingertips through her light brown hair, which was cut into a stylish—but not too stylish—bob. “What are you talking about, Jess?”
“Oh, what?” I rolled my eyes. “You expect me to believe the two of you have been sitting in this van outside of Camp Wawasee for the past nine days, waiting to see when I’d leave? I don’t think so. For one thing, there aren’t nearly enough food wrappers on the floor.”
“Jessica,” Special Agent Smith said, “we haven’t been spying on you.”
“No,” I said. “You’ve just been paying somebody else to do it.”
“Jess—”
“Don’t bother to deny it. How else would you have known I was leaving the camp?” I shook my head. “Who is it, anyway? Pamela? That secretary who looks like John Wayne? Oh, wait, I know.” I snapped my fingers. “It’s Karen Sue Hanky, isn’t it? No, wait, she’s too much of a crybaby to be a narc.”
“You,” Special Agent Johnson said, “are being ridiculous.”
Ridiculous. Yeah. That’s right.
I watched through the plate glass window as Jonathan Herzberg snatched up his daughter and gave her a hug that came close to strangling her. She didn’t seem to mind, though. Her grin was broader than I’d ever seen it—way bigger than it had been over the Happy Meal.
Another joyous reunion, brought about by me.
And I was missing it.
Ridiculous. They were the ones going around spying on a sixteen-year-old girl. And they said
I
was being ridiculous.
“Well,” I said. “It’s been fun, you guys, but I gotta motor. Bye.”
I got out of the van. Behind me, I heard Special Agent Johnson call my name.
But I didn’t bother turning around.
I don’t like being called missy any more than I liked being called girlie. I was proud that I’d at least managed to restrain myself from slamming my foot into Special Agent Johnson’s face.
Mr. Goodhart was really going to be pleased by the progress I’d made so far this summer.
C H A P T E R
12
“S
o Rob said. “Was it worth it?”
“I don’t know,” I said with a shrug. “I mean, her mom didn’t seem that bad. She might have gotten out on her own, eventually.”
“Yeah,” Rob said. “After enough stitches.”
I didn’t say anything. Rob was the one who came from the broken home, not me. I figured he knew what he was talking about.
“She claims her favorite TV show is
Masterpiece Theater
,” Rob informed me.
“Well,” I said. “That doesn’t prove anything. Except, you know, that she wanted to impress us.”
“Impress Ginger and Nate,” he said, with one raised eyebrow, “from Chicago Central High? Yeah, that’s important.”
“Well,” I said. I rested my elbows on my knees. We were sitting on a picnic table, gazing out over Lake Wawasee. Well, the edge of Lake Wawasee, anyway. We were about two miles from the actual camp. Somehow, I just couldn’t bring myself to go back there. Maybe it was the fact that when I set foot through those gates, I was going to be fired.
Then again, maybe it was because when I set foot through those gates, I’d have to say good-bye to Rob.