Trouble in Paradise (7 page)

“Let’s go,” Jack said.

As he started to move into the alley, I grabbed his arm. “You said we were going to be careful,” I hissed.

“We are. We’re going to move
carefully
down the alley. Be quiet and stay behind me.”

He brushed off my hand and began creeping forward. Against my better judgment, I followed.

It was definitely darker and we couldn’t move very quickly. That was good. Slow was quiet. Slow meant that the guy we were following was getting farther ahead. Losing him was a problem, but catching up to him would
have been a bigger one. As we walked, I kept my hand against the wall as a guide.

The alley ended, opening up to a courtyard. Beyond that was the ocean. With no overhang from the buildings, the courtyard seemed almost bright. The stars provided enough illumination so I could see the entire area. There were buildings on two sides … was one of them a stable? There were a couple of carriages and some farm equipment … some rowboats on their sides by the water … but no people.

“Jack, do you—?”

He put a hand on my mouth to silence me, and gestured to the far end of the courtyard. There, in the shadows, I saw movement. It was a man— Was it the man we were following? He was pressed against the side of the building, and it looked as though he was trying to peer through a window. Was that where the old man had gone? Was he in that building?

Almost in answer to my questions, the door opened and the old man appeared. He walked slowly, and he no longer carried the satchel. Had he left it in the building? What if he wanted to come back this way? We were right in the alley—there was no way he could pass without seeing us.

“Hands up!” yelled a voice.

Suddenly men rushed out of that building and ran across the courtyard, flashlights flaring, the beams converging on
the man we’d been following who was hiding by the side of the building. With one hand he shielded his eyes—and a gun was in his other hand! There was a flash from the gun and a shot rang out … and then there was gunfire from everywhere. The man was hit repeatedly and sprawled forward, collapsing to the ground, the whole show captured in the beams of the flashlights!

CHAPTER EIGHT

I GASPED
and went weak in the knees. My legs almost buckled under me. Jack grabbed my arm to steady me, and then I staggered forward as he half-dragged me down the alley. We slipped into the darkness, Jack still holding on to me and—

“Stop right there!” a voice called out. “You in the alley, stop! Now!”

I hesitated slightly but Jack’s strong hand kept pulling me forward, and then beams of light came bouncing up the alleyway, hitting the walls and ground!

“Run!” Jack screamed. I didn’t need any encouragement. I was keeping up with him, step for step and— Lights appeared at the end of the alley. We skidded to a stop. Two dark figures holding flashlights were blocking our way out! The beams of their lights came toward us. Behind us were loud footsteps, echoing off the walls, filling my ears. We were trapped!

“Stay where you are. Hands up, or we’ll shoot!” shouted a voice from behind.

I started to raise my hands but Jack grabbed me by the arm and nearly pulled me off my feet. “This way!”

I stumbled forward and a bullet whizzed past our heads! I jumped in shock and then staggered sideways, falling to my knees, but Jack’s grip hauled me back to my feet and we almost fell into a little walkway running off the alley. Jack was still dragging me along as we ran down the passage.

“In here,” Jack said, and we tripped through a doorway, landing on the wooden floor.

“Go over there,” Jack whispered. “Hide in the corner.”

I crawled until I banged into a wall, then turned. Jack had run to a door at the other side of the building. He threw it open. He was leaving me! Wait, he couldn’t leave me here … for them! Then he ran back across the room and practically threw himself on top of me, pinning me to the ground. I let out a tiny gasp.

“Shut up!” he whispered. “Not a sound.”

No sooner were the words out of his mouth than the door we’d entered through was kicked in with a thunderous smash and the sound of splintering wood. Flashlight beams preceded the men—two, then another and another and another—and they were all holding guns.

“They’ve gone out this way!” one of the men screamed.

The men rushed to the other door, beams of light bouncing and their bodies bumping together as they scrambled out.

That
was why Jack had opened the door! That was genius!

“Jack, that was—”

He put a hand over my mouth. So much for my compliments.

Two more flashlight beams entered through the first door, then another. One of the beams played around the room, searching. If it fell on us, we’d be caught.

“The door. They’ve all gone that way!”

Three more lights followed by three more men went out the second door, leaving us alone again.

“We have to get out of here,” Jack said. He started to get up, but I held him back.

“No. We have to stay still. They didn’t see us.”

“They didn’t see us the
first
time, but when they can’t find us out there, they’ll double back and really search.”

Unfortunately, what he said made sense. They would be coming back.

“Maybe we can hide better,” I suggested.

“That won’t work. As soon as they realize that they last saw us running in here, they’ll tear this place apart … and us, too, once they find us.”

Again, that made sense. We had to leave.

Jack got up and started for the door through which they had all just left. I grabbed him again, and he knocked my grip from his sweater.

“We have no choice,” he hissed. “We have to leave.”

“I know, but we can’t leave through the door they went out,” I said. “If they do double back, we’ll walk right into them. We have to double back as well. We have to use the door we came in through.”

Jack didn’t answer, but he headed straight for it and I fell in behind him. He stopped at the darkened door, smashed and hanging ajar. Too bad there wasn’t more light because then we could have seen if anybody was … no, wait … if anybody was out there, we’d see their flashlights. Those beams of light could help them see us, but it worked both ways.

Jack was still standing at the door, cautiously trying to look out, when I brushed past him and stepped into the alley. He was right on my heels. He tapped me on the shoulder and pointed back the way we’d originally walked, away from where most of the men had gathered, away from where the shooting had taken place. I didn’t need to be told twice which way to go.

We moved silently up the alley, retracing our steps. I tried to look ahead and listen behind, straining for traces of footfalls, voices, beams of light or a bullet being fired. I heard nothing except the very, very quiet sound of our sneakers against the cobblestones.

We reached the end of the alley, but instead of being safer, we were suddenly in even more danger. By stepping out of the shadows cast by the buildings to where there was more light, we were more visible. Jack took off to the left, away from downtown in the opposite direction from which we had come, and from which those men had exited the building.

We crossed the road and the sound of our shoes on the gravel seemed deafening. Soon enough, though, we hit the grass and soil on the other side and then ran headlong into a stand of trees. We kept moving at a good clip, and with each step the canopy of the trees produced more cover, more shadow, until I could hardly make out Jack a few feet in front of me.

Jack slowed down a bit, and then a bit more until he finally came to a stop. He slumped on the ground, his back against a tree, and I took a seat almost on top of him.

“Do you think—?”

“Shut up,” he hissed. “Just listen.”

I turned my head, aiming one ear back the way we’d come. Nothing. Slowly I rotated my head, trying to pick up any sounds. Except for the singing of the tree frogs, there was nothing—well, nothing except the sound of our own heavy breathing. And the pounding of my heart pulsing in my ears, but I knew that couldn’t be heard by anybody else.

“Do you think we lost—?”

“Keep your voice down,” he whispered.

“Sorry. Do you think we lost them?”

“I hope so.”

“Then maybe we should get going, get farther away.”

“Just sit … catch your breath … if we don’t make noise and don’t move, they won’t be able to find us.”

“But we can’t sit here all night.”

“We can sit here for another hour or so,” he whispered.

“But what will Mom say if she gets home and we’re not there?” I asked.

“I think she’d rather we be late than dead.” He chuckled. “I can’t believe you’re more afraid of Mom than some men with guns.”

“I can’t believe you
aren’t
.”

Jack almost laughed but stopped himself.

We stayed where we were and I worked hard at trying to slow down my heartbeat, control my breathing. I knew it would be better to be calm and rested if we needed to run again. I tried not to think about what had just happened … what
had
happened? No, I couldn’t think of that yet, so I tried to just listen to the tree frogs and concentrate on slowing my heart and my breathing.

I looked up through the canopy of branches. Twinkling stars were still visible among the leaves. Suddenly I felt
tired, very tired. If I closed my eyes, I could almost drift off, right here and now.

“Time to go,” Jack said. He started off through the trees, and I quickly fell in behind him.

“Where are we going?”

“Home, of course.”

“But … but … isn’t home that way?” I asked, pointing in a direction almost opposite to the way we were heading.

“It is, but we’re not going straight there. We’ll make a big circle and come around to it from the far side.”

“We can do that? You know where you’re going?”

“I can try. Besides, it’s a little island. How lost could I get?”

I wasn’t going to argue, even though we both knew it wasn’t really that small an island and we could get lost really easily. It was still a good idea. Silently we moved through the stand of trees and came out to a narrow dirt path. I thought we were going to follow it, but Jack cut right across, leading us up the driveway of a small house.

“Do you know who lives here?” I asked.

“We’re not visiting. I just want to stay in the brush and off the paths.”

There was no light coming from the house. Either they weren’t home, or they’d gone to bed or they had incredibly tight blackout screens. We passed by, not hearing any sounds, not making any sounds. Behind the house were
more trees and then a slight hill leading down to a dry creek bed. With no trees overtop, the stars were bright enough to guide our way.

“What do you think happened back there?” I asked.

“Seems pretty simple. Somebody was shot and killed … weren’t you watching?”

“I know somebody was shot. That isn’t what I meant. Why was he shot? Who shot him, and what do we do about it?”

“In answer to your three questions—I don’t know, and I don’t know, and I guess I don’t know.”

“But we have to
do
something.”

“We
are
doing something,” he said. “We’re trying to get away.”

“I mean after that. We have to tell somebody,” I said.

We broke through some bushes and found ourselves in a field, looking up at the lighthouse. I had no idea we’d travelled this far, but at least we now knew where we were and how to get back home—though we had a long way to go yet.

“So you still haven’t answered my question. Who are we going to tell?” I asked again.

“I wish we could tell Bill or Little Bill.”

“Me too. They’d know exactly what to do,” I agreed. “But we don’t even know how to get in touch with them, and they’re thousands of miles away.”

“Then I guess we’re going to have to tell Mom,” Jack replied.

I didn’t like that, but what other choice did we have?

“Besides, we’re going to have to tell her something when we walk in and she asks us where we’ve been,” Jack said.

“Oh, yeah … I’d sort of forgotten about that.”

All this time I’d thought that getting home would mean that we’d be safe. Now I wasn’t so sure.

My feet were sore, my legs were tired and my hands and face were burning from branches that had whacked against me. But I felt good. There was our house—and better yet, I couldn’t see any traces of light leaking out from behind the blackout screens. Mom wasn’t home yet.

“We did it. Mom hasn’t gotten home,” I said.

“Unless she’s home and asleep,” Jack suggested.

“There’s no way if she found the house empty that she’d just go to sleep.”

“What if she thought we were in bed and already asleep so she went to bed herself?” Jack asked.

“Well … well … let’s go in through the back door,” I suggested. “Really quietly.”

We circled around the house. There was no hint of light and no sounds. Jack put his hand on the doorknob and turned it. The door opened silently.

“We’re good,” Jack said.

“Ssshhhhh!”

“She’s not home.”

“How can you be so—?”

“The door is unlocked. If she was home, she would have locked the door, right?”

He was right. She locked down everything before heading to bed.

Jack turned on the kitchen light. “What time is it?” he asked.

I looked at my watch. “Twelve-thirty. We’d better get to bed … Mom won’t be that much longer.”

“Yeah, right,” Jack agreed.

We walked into the living room and—

“Good evening, gentlemen.”

I skidded to a stop, shocked. There was someone sitting in the wingback chair, the glow of a cigarette lighting his shadowy figure.

CHAPTER NINE

“
WHO … WHO ARE YOU
?” Jack said, his voice breaking over the last word.

“Who
I
am is not important,” he said. “Where you are going is much more important.”

“We’re not going anywhere,” Jack said, a defiant tone coming into his voice.

“There is an important difference between brave words and foolish actions,” the man said. He spoke with an accent, but it wasn’t German … was it? “And do not even think about trying to escape,” he added.