Shadows of Sherwood (22 page)

“I can't let that happen,” Robyn insisted. “We have to get her out.”
Her . . . and my backpack
, she thought. She needed the hologram back, so she could fix it. The rest of Dad's message had to be important.

“Out of jail?” Key said, skeptical.

“We broke out once,” Robyn said, glancing at Laurel. “How hard could it be to break back in?”

“You want to break back
into
the jail?” Laurel's eyes bugged wide.

“Um, I'm thinking NO,” Key said.

“Even if we could get inside, I don't think we'd ever get the warden away from her desk,” Laurel said. “She just sits there, reading those magazines.” She pantomimed page turning and affected a glassy-eyed stare.

Robyn laughed. “Yeah. I think it would take a drastic act of fashion to get her to budge.”

Laurel cracked up. Key didn't get the joke. He just lounged there, watching them ham around. Robyn reached over and grabbed the shoe catalog out of his back pocket. She smacked him lightly on the hip with it, then held it up.

“Hey, Laurel.” Robyn grinned. “What size do you think the warden takes?”

 

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Special Delivery for the Warden

“This is definitely a bad idea,” Key muttered as he and Robyn approached the door of the Sherwood Jail. “Why did I agree to this crazy scheme?”

“This genius scheme, you mean?” Robyn grunted with effort. The warehouse dolly was proving harder to maneuver than she had expected. “What are you complaining about? At least we have a plan this time.”

Half an hour ago, they had made a rather large withdrawal from the braid shop's storeroom. Now they pushed the wide load slowly along the sidewalk, each controlling one handle.

Of considerably more concern to Robyn was the fact that her MP uniform pants were falling down. The rope she was using as a belt, though hidden beneath her shirt hem, didn't seem to be doing its job effectively.

Obviously the pants were meant for a grown adult man, so they'd had to be altered. Key knew how to sew, so he had
hemmed the camouflage pants. His tailoring skills did not extend to taking in waistlines. Robyn knew which end of the needle the thread went in, but that was about it. And if she got pantsed walking through the door of the jailhouse, the jig would definitely be up.

The third uniform had been hopelessly large, so Laurel remained outside, near the back door, ready to cause a distraction if the plan failed as miserably as Robyn feared it might.

“Ready?” Key said to Robyn. The jailhouse loomed in sight. At the very least, Robyn knew, their actions were being captured on some surveillance camera or other.

“Ready as I'll ever be,” she answered. She stepped in front of the dolly and marched confidently in through the door of the jail. She held it open as Key attempted to roll the box through the door. The warden didn't look up from her desk.

The guard beside her, Burle, said, “Hey, what's going on?”

Robyn had been hoping someone else would be on duty today. Someone less likely to recognize her.

As planned, the box was just slightly too wide to fit through the jailhouse door. “Burle, can you give me a hand here?” Key called loudly, jamming the box against the door frame. “Warden, did you enter some kind of sweepstakes?”

They had decided to create a commotion right away and not give the guard much time to recognize them.

Burle came to the door. “There's a box out there,” he announced.

Way to illuminate the situation, Burle
, Robyn thought.

“Sweepstakes?” the warden said. “Wait, what's this?”

“It's addressed to you, Warden,” Key said. “Return address is some kind of fashion surplus?”

The warden heaved her bulk off the high stool and lumbered toward the door.
The good news
, Robyn thought,
was if that was her top speed
,
they could definitely outrun her
. She had feared the warden might turn out to be secretly fast, like her dad's friend Bill, who was the size of a refrigerator but moved like lightning.

Keeping her face lowered beneath the camouflage cap, while Key kept Burle and the warden distracted, Robyn hurried to the warden's desk. She punched the door-release button and raced across to the room with the cubbyholes. One quick scan of the wall—her backpack was still there! She grabbed it and slung it over her shoulder.

Next she ran back to the warden's desk. Clear, except for the usual magazine. Robyn's heart skipped. She yanked open the top drawer, hoping . . .
Whew!
The massive ring of keys was right there. Robyn breathed, relieved.

The second drawer contained routine office supplies. Robyn grabbed for the biggest, firmest object—a desk stapler. As she lifted it, her gaze fell upon the warden's computer screen. It was open to an interdepartmental memo titled “Pending Prisoner Transfers: Black Farms Ridge to Centurion Gate.” The header was followed by a long list of people's Tag numbers.

Robyn gasped aloud, causing Key to look over his shoulder at her. Robyn stared, frozen, at the screen.

She knew her mother's Tag number just about as well as her own. It was right there, in bold black type on the warden's list.

She punched down on the screen, but that was all there was. No more information. Robyn wanted to try harder—a database search for prisoner records? There was a search field right on top of the screen. Robyn's fingers itched to try it. From the doorway, Key glared daggers at her. He jerked his head, as if to say, “Get on with it!”

Clutching the key ring, Robyn raced to the panel that controlled the cell block hallway door and buzzed herself in. She wedged the stapler in the gap to keep the door ajar. She would not be able to buzz herself back out again. If the exit plan failed, Robyn needed an escape option other than the vent.

Robyn slid into the hallway. The prisoners shied away as she passed. To them, she must have looked like a real MP trainee, not like a friend. She found the family in the last cell, the same street-rat cell Robyn and Laurel had occupied.

“It's you,” the mom whispered. “You're . . .” she took in the uniform, obviously confused. Robyn placed a finger to her lips and motioned the three out into the hall. They stood patiently while Robyn ran down the row, unlocking the other cells. As long as she was here, she wouldn't just save one family. She wanted to let them all out.

Robyn led the prisoners through the hallways to the alarm-laden back door. The one she and Laurel had stumbled upon in their own escape. The hinges, positioned
outside the door, had been awfully easy to remove this morning.

The area was under heavy surveillance. Laurel had stood on Key's shoulders and held a tree branch down over the nearest camera's eye. Meanwhile, Robyn had pulled the bolts from the hinges using the wrench in Dad's pocketknife and plenty of elbow grease. A low-tech solution to a high-tech problem. A literal back door.

Assuming Robyn had done the job well enough, the door should come open backward. They hadn't tried it, for fear of setting off an alarm too early.

Now came the moment of truth. Robyn stood at the head of the pack of escapees and lifted her foot. She ignored the electronic keypad, and the wires, and the push bar. She kicked forward at the hinge side as hard as she could. Shocks ricocheted up her leg. Three kicks later, the door lurched open. Not wide enough. Robyn slammed her shoulder against it for a final push. Ow.

No alarm went off. The electronic-lock side of the door remained intact enough that the door wasn't registering it was opened! The wires stretched taut, but there was enough slack in the lines to allow a gap.
Bad, bad security
, Robyn thought.
But great for escaping.

“Go,” Robyn urged everyone. They bent beneath the wires and squeezed one by one through the slim opening and raced off down the block. Robyn was supposed to follow. That had been the plan—but they were expecting an alarm. Instead, she waited. The prisoners ducked by her one by one.
Many whispered thanks. Some shed tears. Others pressed at her hands and her shoulders, and their eyes spoke what their tongues could not.

“Who are you?” some wondered.

“I'm Robyn,” she whispered. “You're fugitives now. Good luck.”

Robyn waited until the last man had slid through. She jammed her backpack through the gap, where Laurel could see it and pick it up. Then she ran back toward the front of the building.

She nearly collided with two figures approaching from the opposite direction. The pair came hurrying out of the hallway leading from one of the blocks of solitary cells.

One of them was a gaunt teenage girl with golden skin and black spiky hair tipped with red. She grabbed the arm of the young MP walking beside her.

Robyn drew herself up, prepared to act the part of a real MP trainee and bluster her way through the encounter. But she recognized the other person. It was the same MP trainee who had arrested her in Sherwood Forest!

His eyes widened in recognition, too. The jig was up!

 

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Familiar Faces

Robyn and the young MP stared at each other for a long tense second. Robyn was sure that at any moment he would sound the alarm and take her back into custody.
Run!
Robyn's mind screamed. But she felt locked in place.

Instead his gaze flicked away, over Robyn's shoulder.

“The door's already open,” he said, puzzled. He lightly shoved the spiky-haired girl's shoulder. “Go. GO!”

The girl darted past Robyn, swirling a slight wind as she passed.

“This never happened.” The young MP vanished down the hall he had come from, leaving Robyn alone and confused. Was he letting her go?

No time to dwell on the mystery—Robyn raced back to the front of the jail. She pulled the stapler and returned to the computer on the desk.

“What are you doing?” Key whispered, meeting her in the center of the lobby. “Didn't you get them out?”

Past him, the warden squeezed into the doorway, ripping through the large box to examine each and every pair of shoes. A confused-looking Burle juggled an armful of shoe-box lids.