Chapter 81
5:38 p.m. Crap. Heather had said she would be back by now. The tardiness worried Jennifer. It filled her mind with strange imaginings that left her knees shaky and made her wish she hadn’t just eaten half a bag of potato chips. What was going on?
Could Heather have been hit by a car on the way home? What if she was in the hospital? Or worse yet, what if she was hurt and no one even knew to go look for her?
It was all silly. No doubt Jennifer’s imagination was just inventing things because of the thought of Heather going to the prom with that creepy Raul. And yes, he was creepy. Him and that bunch of losers he hung around with. That didn’t apply to Heather, of course. But the others were some seriously odd birds.
Jennifer glanced at her watch again. 5:39 p.m. Damn it. One thing was for sure: she couldn’t just stand around letting worry drive her crazy. Besides, it wouldn’t hurt anything to bike over to Raul’s house and meet Heather. It would actually be fun to ride back with her.
Jennifer stuck her head into the kitchen. “Mom, I’m going for a short bike ride to link up with Heather.”
“Okay. You two don’t be too long, though. You know the big grill celebration is set for seven o’clock, right?”
“Mom, we’ll be here. Don’t worry.”
“Then have fun.”
With a quick heave, Jennifer lifted her bike off the ceiling hooks in the garage and set it down next to their experiment bench. She was just about to press the button to open the garage door when she glanced at the bench. Her heart froze.
The QT microchip was gone. Glancing up, she saw that Mark’s bike was also gone. She couldn’t believe it. Her idiot brother had taken the chip and gone to the Johnson house to implement that crazy scheme of his.
Jennifer opened the garage door, set her bike outside, and then returned to the button. With one more press, she darted back to the lowering door, stepped over the electric eye beam, mounted her bike, and pedaled off. She could only hope that Mark wouldn’t do something really stupid.