Katherine rolled her eyes.
The note was Jonah’s attempt at caution. They’d told Mom and Dad only that they were riding their bikes to the library. But in his desk drawer, Jonah had left a detailed note—a letter, really—explaining that they were meeting a woman named Angela DuPre (or possibly Monique Waters) and if for some reason they didn’t come back, someone should track her down. All the information about possible kidnappers would be on Chip Winston’s computer.
Katherine and Chip thought he was crazy for being so careful.
Katherine sighed, blowing the air out in a way that ruffled the hair on her forehead.
“Wish Mom could have driven us,” she said. “Nobody rides bikes anymore.”
“I do,” Jonah said.
“Girls, I mean,” Katherine said. “All my friends think bikes are babyish. No one had better see me.”
She looked around anxiously. The street was deserted.
Riding bikes versus being driven had caused a huge debate. Chip thought if they had a parent drive them, they’d have to explain why they had to be at the library exactly at three o’clock, rather than after their moms got through at the grocery store, or before their dads started watching the football game. And Jonah thought that if they had to make a quick getaway, it’d be ridiculous to stand there in the library lobby calling a parent, “Uh, yeah, I’m ready to be picked up. Do you mind not waiting until halftime? There’s kind of a murderous psychopath chasing me….”
“What do you really think is going to happen?” Katherine asked.
Jonah shrugged. She’d been asking him that question for two days. And he’d never been able to explain that, exactly, even to himself. He didn’t truly believe that they were about to face a murderous psychopath. He just had a horrible feeling in the pit of his stomach that wouldn’t go away.
The garage door of Chip’s house began rising, revealing Chip and his bike. Chip was grinning.
“Time for some answers!” he proclaimed. Jonah thought maybe Chip was trying to sound like the donkey from Shrek—carefree, glib, and full of wisecracks even in the face of danger. But it wasn’t a very good imitation, because his voice cracked.
“First we’ve got to ride all the way over there,” Katherine complained. “What is it—two miles? Three?”
“We don’t have to go,” Jonah said.
“Of course we do,” Chip said, pushing off and sailing out into the street.
Jonah let Katherine follow Chip, and then he sighed and brought up the rear. It was weird how responsible he felt for the other two: plaintive, pitiful, confused Chip; na?ve, gung-ho, enthusiastic Katherine. He and Chip were both equally tall and gangly—it wasn’t like Jonah had any extra muscles for fighting off attackers.
There’s strength in numbers, he told himself, peddling hard to catch up.
They passed the BP station where the high-school band boosters were having a car-wash fund-raiser; the grocery store where Mom was right now buying peanut butter and milk and bread, like it was any Saturday afternoon; the neighborhood that, according to a quick Google search they’d done, contained the Robin’s Egg Lane where Daniella McCarthy’s family would soon be moving. They got to the library by two thirty.
Chip was looking at his watch before he even slipped off his bike.
“I’ve still got to wait another half hour?” he said. “I thought the ride would take longer than that.”
“This will give us a chance to case the joint,” Katherine said. Jonah knew she’d gotten that line from a movie. “And enough time to man our stations.”
Deciding how many of them should be in conference room B at three o’clock had sparked their longest and bitterest debate. They’d eventually reached a compromise: Chip would be the only one actually in the conference room. But he’d secretly have his cell phone set on speaker phone in his lap, and he’d call Katherine, who’d be hiding out in the magazine section. She’d hold the cell phone up to both her ear and a walkie-talkie, broadcasting to the other walkie-talkie in Jonah’s hand. Jonah would be in the nonfiction section, near the conference room. He’d be pretending to read, facing away from the conference room, but he’d secretly have a mirror hidden in his book, directed over his shoulder, so he could see what was happening to Chip every single minute. The walkie-talkie–phone combo would let him hear everything that was going on in the conference room. So at the first hint of danger, he’d be able to storm in and save Chip.
They’d planned everything. None of them, even once, had said, “This is ridiculous! Walkie-talkies? Mirrors hidden in books? We’ll look like fools!” Jonah thought maybe that was proof that, underneath it all, the other two were every bit as scared as he was.
They leaned their bikes against the bike rack and tiptoed into the library. They peeked into conference room B—no one was there—and tested out the cell phone–walkie-talkie setup.
“Spy One to Spy Two,” Katherine said, giggling into the walkie-talkie. “Over.”
Jonah switched the walkie-talkie function to SEND.
“Katherine, it works, but, so help me, you’ve got to remember—you’re not supposed to do any of the talking!”
At two fifty-five, Jonah flipped the hood of his sweatshirt up so it covered the walkie-talkie pressed against his ear. He pulled a book off a nonfiction shelf at random—it was something about tax codes. He positioned Katherine’s makeup mirror in the book, angled it just so…yep, there was Chip’s face, anxious and pale on the other side of the conference room’s glass wall. Jonah moved the mirror up and down and side to side, scanning the whole room. He switched the walkie-talkie to SEND again.