News For Dogs (10 page)

When Andi returned to Aunt Alice’s house, which they now all referred to as “Headquarters,” she took the roundabout route that she and Bruce had determined was the only way to come and go undetected by the Gordon boys. She entered through the kitchen and immediately went upstairs. Bruce, Tim, and Debbie were gathered in Aunt Alice’s office, glued to what was going on beneath the window.

When Andi joined them, she said, “Let me see, too!”

“So, you’re finally back!” Bruce said. “What took you so long? Aunt Alice and Lola are probably burned to a crisp, sunblock or not.”

“I couldn’t get back sooner,” Andi said. “The Bernsteins had to pay a third ransom, and now they don’t have enough money to pay their bills. So of course, I had to listen to them and comfort them. I
promised them we’d get Bully back for them today.
Now
can I look out the window?”

“There’s not much to see,” Debbie said, stepping back to make room for her. “Your aunt Alice is digging up weeds, and Lola is sitting under the umbrella, sweating.”

“Dogs don’t sweat,” Andi said. “The drip comes out through their tongues.”

“Well, she looks like she’s sweating,” Debbie said, and, when Andi looked out the window, she had to agree. Lola’s little body was glistening. Andi hoped it was the sunscreen.

“Here’s the Bernsteins’ cell phone,” she told Debbie, handing it over. “I’ll use Aunt Alice’s now to call her home number. But —” Suddenly she realized there was a glaring hole in the scene that she was gazing down at. “Connor’s car isn’t in the Gordons’ driveway!”

“He parked it at the end of the street,” Bruce said. “See it there at the corner? He moved it ten minutes ago.”

“Why would he do that?” Andi asked as she spotted the car, parked about three houses down.

“Mrs. Gordon can see the driveway from their kitchen window,” Tim said. “Connor and Jerry
can’t risk her watching them take off. What if she started calling, ‘Where are you going? Please stop at the store and pick up a loaf of bread’? What if Aunt Alice came back from taking her phone call and saw their car tear out of the driveway next door? They’ve got to have that car positioned somewhere else.”

“Then they’re really going to do this!” Andi said. “It’s not just something we’ve dreamed up, like a chapter in my novel. This is
real!”

“This is real,” Bruce agreed. “Are you ready to start things rolling?”

“I’m dialing right now,” Andi told him.

A few seconds later, Aunt Alice’s home phone began ringing. The ringer was turned up so high that Andi jumped when she heard it. From the window they could see Aunt Alice rising slowly and rather stiffly from her kneeling position at the edge of the flower bed.

She cupped her ear and asked Lola, “Was that the phone?”

The phone rang again, and Andi felt sure that neighbors blocks away must have heard it.

“I believe that’s my phone,” Aunt Alice told Lola loudly. “I’m expecting a call from my nephew and
his wife in Europe. I’m going to have to leave you out here alone, dear, so be sure to stay under the umbrella. Auntie Alice loves you and doesn’t want you to get sunburned. Auntie Alice will be right back, as soon as she can get those bothersome relatives off the line.”

Aunt Alice turned and went into the house. She picked up the living room phone and commanded, “Everyone to your post! Tim at the computer! Debbie next to him with the Bernsteins’ cell phone! Andi and Bruce to the car with my cell phone and Bruce’s camera!”

“Get away from the window,” Bruce told them. “I’m going to try to get a picture of the dognapping.”

He barely had time to step into place before it happened. One moment Lola was lolling on a beach towel in the shade of a striped umbrella, and an instant later she was gone.

“I got it!” Bruce cried. “I caught the dognappers in the act!” But when he brought the image up on the screen on the back of his camera, he moaned with disappointment. “All you can see are two guys in black T-shirts and baseball caps. Their heads are turned so their faces don’t show.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Tim said. “You’ll get pictures of them later. Look — we can already start tracking Lola on the monitor!
Blip — blip — blip
— now the dot has stopped and is holding steady — they must be putting her into Connor’s car. Now the dot’s moving again — he must be pulling away.”

“He is!” Debbie cried, pushing in beside Bruce to get a better look. “He’s whipping around the corner and heading north!” An instant later she said, “I’ve lost sight of them.”

“But I haven’t! I can see them fine!” Tim was bursting with excitement. “There they go — they’re on Locust Street, zipping along. You guys better get a move on. This is so cool! It’s like a computer game, except the bad guys are real!”

When Andi and Bruce reached the driveway, Aunt Alice was already revving up the engine of her car.

“Hurry and get in,” she cried. “Andi, I’ll need you in the passenger’s seat since you’ll be the navigator. Could Tim tell which direction they were headed?”

“They turned north on Locust,” Bruce said, leaping into the backseat. “But maybe they’re trying to throw us off.”

“I doubt that,” said Aunt Alice. “There’s no way they can know they’re being followed. They just want to leave the scene of the crime as fast as possible.”

The cell phone rang and Andi quickly punched the
TALK
button.

“They’re headed for the freeway,” Debbie told her. “They haven’t reached the ramp yet, so Tim doesn’t know if they’re going to head east or west. He says hold back for a minute until he can tell you. You don’t want to get yourself trapped going the wrong direction.” She was silent a moment and then said, “They’re approaching the ramp. Now they’re on the freeway. Tim says they’re headed east at sixty-five miles an hour.”

“East on the freeway,” Andi cried, and Aunt Alice pulled onto the eastbound ramp.

“Can’t you go any faster?” Bruce asked frantically.

“There’s no reason to,” Aunt Alice said. “We’re not trying to keep them in sight, and there’s no way I want to risk getting stopped by a state trooper.”

They continued on down the freeway for fifteen minutes. Then Debbie told Andi, “Tim says
they’re turning left onto an exit ramp that leads to River Road.”

“That’s about a mile ahead of us,” Aunt Alice said when Andi conveyed that information. “If we turn west on that road, we’ll end up at the Black Rock River, but I don’t know what we’ll find in the other direction.”

“Oh, not a
river!”
Andi gasped, her mind filled with visions of helpless dogs being dropped off a bridge into churning rapids.

“Do you think they’re drowning the dogs?!” Bruce asked in horror, his own mind following the same thought process. They could be doing exactly that. Since they weren’t returning the dogs, why wouldn’t they drown them so they wouldn’t have to feed and take care of them?

“They would never do that,” Aunt Alice said reassuringly. “There would be too much publicity when the bodies washed up on the shore.”

“Not if they weighed them down with sandbags,” Andi said.

“Connor’s car is too small to carry sandbags,” Aunt Alice said. “Believe me, children, those dogs are
not
in the river.”

Debbie’s voice spoke so suddenly into Andi’s ear that she almost jumped out of her seat. “They’ve turned east on River Road!”

“They’re going
east
!” Andi shouted ecstatically, and Bruce sighed with relief. No matter what lay to the east, it wouldn’t be the river.

A sign saying
RIVER ROAD EXIT
appeared up ahead of them.

Aunt Alice pulled into the exit lane, and a moment later they were down the ramp and on a two-lane road that ran parallel to the freeway.

“They’ve turned north onto Valley Road,” Debbie said. “They’ve slowed down to forty miles an hour. It’s like they’re getting ready to —”

Her voice broke off, and there was silence.

“Oh, no!” Andi exclaimed. “The battery’s gone dead!”

“It can’t have,” Aunt Alice said. “I recharged it last night.”

“Then the problem must be with the Bernsteins’ phone,” Andi said. “They’ve been so worried about Bully that the last thing on their minds was recharging their cell phone.”

“Well, the phone got us this far anyway,” Aunt Alice said. “I’m glad I got gas, because we
are
in the
next county. Judging by where we were when Tim said they left the freeway, we’re approximately a mile behind them.”

She had followed Tim’s last instructions and turned north onto a winding country road that was flanked with the lushness of summer. If it hadn’t been for the seriousness of their situation, the drive would have been delightful. Fields of alfalfa and clover, sprinkled with tiny purple blossoms, were interspersed with wheat fields. Picturesque barns and silos dotted the horizon, and the slanted afternoon sunlight cast a golden haze over everything. An occasional dirt lane or unpaved driveway ran between the fields, curving back behind them in the direction of a barn or farmhouse.

“You’d better floor it,” Bruce told Aunt Alice. “The only way we can find them now is to catch up with them. Debbie said they reduced their speed.”

“That’s what concerns me,” Aunt Alice said. “Why would they suddenly do that? Tell me again, Andi — what exactly did Debbie say to you?”

“She said, ‘They’ve slowed down to forty miles an hour,’ “Andi said, trying to recall Debbie’s precise wording. “Then she said, ‘It’s like they’re getting ready to,’ and that’s when we were cut off.”

“They’re ‘getting ready to’ do what?” Bruce said. “There’s nothing out here to get ready for. Nothing except —” He paused and then said slowly, “Nothing except to turn off onto one of those side lanes. But those don’t appear to go anywhere except into farmland.”

“Where there are barns and silos and toolsheds,” Andi said. “Places that they could stash dogs.”

“You’re right,” Aunt Alice said, bringing the car to a stop at the side of the road. “It’s possible I may have come too far. Where were we when Debbie’s call ended?”

“On River Road,” Bruce said. “Then we turned onto Valley Road, which is what we’re on now. If Connor was a mile ahead of us and was preparing to turn into a driveway, we did come too far. Now we’ll never find them!”

“We’ll find them,” Aunt Alice promised, starting up her car again and making a U-turn. “We’ll backtrack to River Road and start all over again.”

They retraced the route they had just covered until the frontage road loomed ahead and they could hear the sound of cars on the freeway. Then, Aunt Alice made another U-turn, glanced at her
mileage gauge, and began to drive slowly back down Valley Road.

“It’s going to be about a mile to the spot where Connor slowed down,” she said. “Keep an eye out for lanes and driveways they might have turned onto. There can’t be many out here in the middle of nowhere.”

But a mile down the road they discovered that there were more options than they had anticipated. Several lanes intersected on either side of the road, each of them shielded by wheat fields, so there was no way to tell where they went. Some might lead to farmhouses, others to outbuildings, and others might end at locked gates.

“What do we do now?” Andi asked miserably. The situation was unbearable. They knew the dogs were out here someplace, but where? Whichever lane they turned down stood a good chance of being the wrong one.

“Now is the time we must use the Blue Sense,” Aunt Alice said. “Bruce, get out of the car and walk a short way down each of those lanes and see how you feel. You have a strong bond with Red Rover. Shut your eyes and call out to him with your mind.
Tell him you’re trying to find him and ask him where he is.”

“That’s crazy,” Bruce said, but even as he said it he was reaching for the door handle. Because this was their only option. If this didn’t work, Red might be lost to him forever.

“Take as much time as you need,” Aunt Alice told him. “If you don’t feel anything on one lane, then walk down another. Whatever is going to happen is going to happen.”

Bruce got out of the car and walked along the edge of the road to the spot where the lanes intersected. He stepped into the entrance of the nearest lane and closed his eyes. He stood there for a long time, mentally calling out to his dog, but he felt nothing.
This isn’t going to work,
he told himself, but he kept on standing there, feeling foolish and ineffectual, calling silently,
Red! Red! Red!
Finally he became so frustrated, he went back to the car.

“You can’t give up yet,” Aunt Alice told him.

“Let Andi give it a try,” Bruce said. “She has a relationship with Lola. Maybe the Blue Sense will work for her.”

“You’re more bonded to Red than I am to Lola,” Andi said. “I was close to her when she was Friday, but her personality’s changed. I don’t know her at all as Lola. Please, Bruce, try that lane over there. You’re our only hope now.”

So Bruce crossed the road and entered a winding lane that led back into wheat fields. Again he closed his eyes and reached out to Red Rover with his mind, and again he felt nothing. But he stood there anyway, feeling the tension flow out of him as he allowed the peace and tranquility of his surroundings to encompass him. The sun was warm on his arms and on the back of his neck. The mesmerizing scents of summer were all around him, and suddenly the world that had seemed so silent was alive with sound. He was aware of the buzzing of bees and chanting of crickets. Birds were chirping and trilling, and somewhere in the distance he could hear the sound of a tractor.

He heard the lowing of a cow who wanted to be milked.

He heard the wail of a baby in some nearby farmhouse.

And then he heard a dog.

He heard the bark of a dog, and he knew that voice — it was as familiar to him as the voices of his parents and sister.
It was the voice of Red Rover!

Bruce opened his eyes and the other sounds went away, because all he could concentrate on now was the voice of his dog. There were other dog voices in the background, but they were overshadowed by the voice he loved so well. That voice was coming from the left branch of the lane, and it was loud enough so he knew it was not far off.