Part 4 (2/2)

”Hey!” I shouted, taking off after him. ”Wait a second!”

About twenty feet from the truck, the figure veered sharply to the right, and I saw him clearly for the first time. He ran awkwardly, dragging one leg behind him, and the shock of recognition brought me to an abrupt halt. I shook off my surprise and started running again, but my hesitation had given the man a large lead.

Maybe I should have gone back for the car, but Brody and Caleb were in there, and I didn't want to put them in danger. Kicking myself into high gear, I ran flat out. After only a few yards, my lungs burned, and my legs felt like rubber. While I was still at least forty yards away, the limping man jumped into a dark-colored SUV that had been idling at the curb, and the car shot away from the curb. I tried to get a look at the license plate, but I wasn't close enough. By the time I reached the street, the only thing left to see were their taillights.

Chapter 9.

”Aunt Abby!” Brody's voice cut through the wind and pulled my gaze away from the tail end of the car. Still fighting to catch my breath, I whipped around to see why Brody sounded so close. In spite of my warnings to stay where he was, he'd left the Jetta and Caleb. He stood about thirty feet behind me, looking like a kid who'd just seen Santa Claus.

A gust of cold November wind swept around me, and I s.h.i.+vered. The shock of seeing Brody standing there in the dark brought me back to earth in a rush. Brody and Caleb were my responsibility at the moment, and I'd just been hideously irresponsible by leaving them in the car alone. Sure, we were in Paradise, where the crime rate still hasn't risen to match the rest of the country, but still . . . bad things happened to good people every day.

Trying to look stern, I started across the pavement. ”What are you doing out of the car? I thought I told you to stay put.”

Brody wore only a light T-s.h.i.+rt and a pair of jeans. Even from a distance, I could see his bottom lip quivering from the cold, and his breath formed wispy clouds above his head. ”That was the guy, wasn't it?”

His question startled the stern right out of me. ”What guy?”

He craned to see around me. ”The guy. The one with the limp. That was him, right?”

Praying that he wouldn't catch cold and earn me a black mark in his mother's book, I put my hand on his shoulder and turned him toward the car. ”What do you know about the guy with the limp?”

”I heard you telling Mom and Dad about him.” He twisted away from me so he could see the road. ”That's the guy who got shot, right?”

”n.o.body got shot,” I said firmly. By now, that was obvious even to me.

”Uh-huh. Remember? Last night when you came back to get my dad.”

Brody was obviously too excited to listen. I caught him by the shoulders and made him look at me. ”n.o.body got shot,” I said again.

”But you said he did.”

”You shouldn't have been listening to our conversation,” I said, sounding so much like my mother, I winced. ”Did Caleb hear what we said last night?”

Brody nodded, and his chin quivered in the cold. ”Yeah, but don't worry, he's okay. And I wasn't eavesdropping. You were in the kitchen, and that's right under our bedroom. We can hear anything anybody says through the heat vent.”

My skin tingled, but I couldn't tell whether it was from irritation with myself or from the weather. I knew how those old farmhouses were built. I should have known the kids would hear us.

Still trying to look like someone Brody should pay attention to, I pointed toward the car and snarled, ”Back. Right now. If you're not inside that car with your seat belt done up by the count of three, I'm quitting the team.”

Brody stared up at me for half a second, judging my sincerity, then spun away and raced back to the car. I joined him there, checked to make sure Caleb really was all right, and started the car again.

I turned up the heat and s.h.i.+fted in my seat so I could look at both of them. ”Do your mom and dad know that you heard us talking?”

Brody shook his head quickly. ”Are you kidding? Dad would be all right, but Mom would have a fit.”

”Well, then listen to me,” I said, ”and listen good. n.o.body got shot last night. Whoever it was, they were just pretending.”

Caleb leaned forward as far as his seat belt would allow. ”Pretending to get shot?”

”That's right. Pretending to get shot.”

”He's getting away,” Brody pointed out with a worried frown. ”We should go after him before he can hide.”

I looked him square in the eye, hoping to make some kind of contact with his excited little-boy brain. ”We're not going after him.”

”But he's getting away!”

”He's already gone,” I said. ”And even if he weren't, I'm not putting you two in danger just to chase some creep with a limp who was trying to steal my car.”

”He wanted to steal your car?” Caleb asked.

Brody shot an exasperated look into the backseat. ”They do it all the time, Caleb. Don't you ever watch TV?”

”I watch it all the time,” Caleb protested. ”But why would they want this car? It's old.”

Brody sighed heavily and shook his head. ”You just don't get it, do you? For the parts.”

He seemed so sure of himself, I didn't have the heart to tell him Caleb was probably right. The Jetta wouldn't be worth much, even stripped. Whatever the man with the limp wanted, it hadn't been my car.

”Was he trying to steal Coach's truck tonight?” Caleb asked.

I put the Jetta in gear and shook my head. ”I have no idea what he was doing.” But that didn't mean I couldn't take a look.

Detouring on my way across the parking lot, I pulled up next to b.u.t.thead's truck a few seconds later. He'd parked beneath a light, so it was easy to see the scratches in the paint as soon as we got close enough. I couldn't be absolutely certain the man with the limp had put them there, but it seemed like a pretty good bet that he had.

The only question was, why? It didn't make any sense.

”Ooooh, look at that,” Caleb breathed from the backseat.

Brody's face puckered into a frown that made him look like his father. ”Coach is gonna be p.i.s.s-” he caught himself, shot a guilty look at me, ”-really ticked off when he sees that.”

Trying to keep her sons from using language like my brother is just one of the lost causes my sister-in-law has undertaken. My mother tried for years to keep Wyatt from talking like Daddy, and she'd failed miserably. Knowing how the boys looked up to their dad, I thought Elizabeth would have better luck beating her head against the wall.

”Speaking of Coach,” I said with a glance toward the recreation center's doors, ”I wonder what he's doing inside for so long.”

”He always stays late,” Brody said. ”I think he works out in the weight room or something.”

That made me think about the clang of metal as the limping man ran away, so I backed the Jetta up a foot or two and scoured the pavement for something he might have dropped. After a few minutes I saw a long piece of metal with an odd hook at the end lying a few feet from the truck.

With a stern glance at the boys, I slipped out of the car and picked it up by the ends, being careful not to smudge any fingerprints that might be on it.

I propped one end against my leg and pushed the b.u.t.ton on the dash to open the hatch. When it popped up, I carried the metal piece to the back of the car and found a safe place for it. I slid behind the steering wheel and finally managed to get the Jetta all the way out of the parking lot-just as the door to the recreation center opened and Kerry Hendrix came outside.

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