Chapter 20
Smiling, about as happy as he’d ever been, Rico strolled along between his Memo and Papa on the sidewalk of a big outdoor mall. They were all holding hands, both of his grandparents, one on each side of him. He was a little old for them to be hanging on to him like he was a little kid or something, but he didn’t say anything. He still couldn’t believe they had showed up, just like that. When Nick and Claire couldn’t find them no matter how hard they looked―and they were really good at finding people―Rico had given up on ever seeing his grandparents again. He’d got to thinking that they’d been murdered like his mom and dad.
But here they were, and just because they’d seen those pictures of Claire that Black didn’t like so much. They were right here with him and he was so excited about it that it was hard to stop grinning. Sometimes, though, he’d think about it and feel sort of bad, too, especially if he had to leave the lake and all his friends. The more he thought about leaving Cedar Bend, the more upset he became. He didn’t know what to do about it, either.
Memo and Papa were just so happy to see him. He could see that, for sure, how pleased they were. They looked older than they had before, but it had been a long time since Rico and his parents left California to go hide in that witness protection program on that island. Memo told him that her hair turned white when they thought Rico was lost somewhere and they would never find him. He wasn’t so sure about that, though. It wasn’t all the way white, anyway. It still had lots of brown in it.
So far tonight they’d gone into lots of different stores, especially toy stores and department stores, anywhere that he wanted to go, really. All he had to do was ask, and they’d do it. That’s how glad they were to see him. They’d bought him lots of stuff, too, just about anything he said he liked. That was awesome, and then they’d taken him to eat at McDonald’s when he’d wanted a Big Mac meal. Memo sat close beside him in the booth, and Papa sat across from them, smiling the entire time. They just kept up that smiling and smiling, and laughing some, and Rico did, too, but now, inside his head, he was feeling awfully worried about things. Now he didn’t know what to do or what he really wanted.
If he left the lake to live with his grandparents, which is pretty much what they wanted him to do, then they were going to take him back to Canada and live in some big city called Toronto. But what about Claire and Nick? He’d never get to see them. Canada was up north, a whole different country. Thinking about that made him feel pretty bad. He loved Claire and Nick. He loved living with them. But he loved his Memo and Papa, too. He loved them all the same: a lot.
After they left McDonald’s, Memo decided they should stop one last time at a different mall and buy Claire and Nick a gift for taking such good care of him all this time. Rico had been telling them how good they’d treated him since they’d been together, but he couldn’t really think of anything to buy them because Claire and Black already had a whole lot of neat stuff. Just about everything anybody could want, really. Especially Nick. They were pretty darn rich, he guessed.
“They like pictures,” he finally suggested as they browsed around Macy’s. “You know, pictures of me, and of them, and of the places we go together. When we lived out there on that island called Kauai for a while, Nick took lots of pictures of us. Even Harve got to go with us. He’s real nice. I helped him decorate his tree.”
“Really? Tell us about Harve,” said Papa.
“He’s lots of fun. He’s got to sit in a wheelchair all the time, you know, to get around and stuff. He used to be a policeman in Los Angeles with Claire. He takes me fishing all the time. That’s his favorite thing to do. He taught me how to use a spinner bait and purple plastic worms when we want to catch bass, and all kinds of stuff like that. It’s always fun when I get to be with him.”
“Well, that’s good. I’m glad you have such a good friend here.”
Rico smiled at his Papa.
“Yes, we saw those pictures of you out in Hawaii in the magazines,” Memo was telling him. “That’s how we found out where you were. We were just so thrilled to see that you were safe and sound. It’s a miracle, isn’t it, sweetheart?”
Rico nodded and followed her down the aisle while she kept looking for more things to buy. She finally decided to get Claire and Black some pretty silver picture frames, and she asked Rico to help her choose which ones they’d like the best. Rico told her it would be good if she added a big package of Snickers to put with those frames because Claire liked those candy bars a lot, and maybe then she could get some yellow legal pads because Nick was always writing stuff down on them. They said of course they would. It was fun, really, being with them again, at least until he remembered that he’d probably have to leave Cedar Bend and the special bedroom that Nick had fixed up with all the Star Wars wallpaper and posters and stuff. He was going to get his own room at Claire’s new cabin, too, as soon as the carpenters were completely done with it. But when he left, he wouldn’t even see them anymore. Not very often, anyway. He felt the burn of tears for a second time that night, but he turned his head away and didn’t let his grandparents see that he was real sad, too, even when he was so happy.
When they were finished shopping in the mall, they stopped outside on the parking lot, where a big winter carnival was in full swing. There were lots of booths with sparkling Christmas lights and people all bundled up in parkas and caps and carolers strolling around and singing to everybody. There was a big Ferris wheel, and a Tilt-a-Whirl, and all kinds of other rides. It was really crowded, lots of shoppers bundled up in the cold, eating at picnic tables. They mingled awhile and watched the rides. It was fun. Papa rode on the swings with him, and Memo rode on the Ferris wheel with him but she said she didn’t like it much. They gave Rico some money to buy cotton candy for all of them, and he ran up to the booth and stood in line for a long time. There were people everywhere.
Once he finally got the cotton candy and had Papa’s change in his hand, he started back toward the table. Halfway there, he stopped in his tracks when a big guy suddenly stepped out from the shadows and grabbed his arm. Rico was shocked; then the man jerked him back into the dark and pressed a big gun against his neck. Then Rico reacted as he’d learned to do when he’d been held captive on the island. He lurched away as hard as he could and let out a yell for help, but then he felt something sharp jab into his neck and everything started getting all woozy and dizzy and he stumbled and fell on his knees. The man caught him before he hit the concrete, and then he only knew that somebody was carrying him through the dark, away from the carnival and his grandparents, and there was nothing he could do about it. Then he fell asleep and couldn’t even worry about it anymore.
When Rico came to later, he couldn’t think straight at first. He was lying on his back in a truck or a van. They were moving fast, and the vehicle was shimmying around and rocking back and forth as it barreled its way down some kind of rocky road. He could hear the gravel crunching and flying up under the wheels and hitting the fenders. There were lots of odors around him, too, motor oil for one thing, and some kind of paint maybe, and some really strong cigarette smoke all mingled together. He lay still once he was able to think straight, and then he slowly tested his arms and legs and found that he wasn’t bound with ropes or tape or anything. That’s when he took a couple of deep breaths and played like he was asleep. Rico had learned to do that the hard way when those mean people had him. The redheaded woman had tied him up and treated him like her pet dog. He wasn’t going to let them tie him up. He was going to get away.
After Claire and Black had rescued him and brought him back to America, Nick spent lots of time talking to him about what he’d gone through, and he always told Rico that he should stay calm and think things through if anything like that ever happened to him again. Nick told him that he was a real smart kid, and very brave, that he had proved it. He said that Rico could deal with anything bad that ever happened to him, because he’d already survived the worst thing anyone could live through.
So Rico pushed away some of the scary feelings ballooning up inside him and moved his hand slowly down to his coat pocket where he kept his cell phone. It was gone. They already took it. That made him panic some, and his heart sped up but he forced himself to lie still. He thought about what he should do next. He tried to figure out what Claire and Black would do, because they were both really brave people and they’d been through a lot of bad stuff, just like him. Then he went over a plan in his head a bunch of times before he worked up the courage to even move an inch. Once he was ready, he opened his eyes just a little bit and tried to see the man who’d grabbed him.
It looked as if they were riding in a van without windows. He could see the front seat and the windshield and the guy driving. Rico could see the man’s face reflected in the rearview mirror. He had on black glasses and had really short dark hair. Rico had never seen him before; he wasn’t the one who kidnapped him.
He was driving hard and fast and causing all the jouncing and bouncing. He had a cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth. The guy who’d caught him at the carnival was in the back of the van, sitting on the floor right across from him. His back was leaning against the opposite wall and he was looking down at the cell phone in his hand, the pale glow of the screen lighting up his face. Maybe that was Rico’s phone. Maybe he could get it back and then he could call Nick. The guy who’d grabbed him was a big guy, sort of, but not near as big and strong as Nick. Not as tall, either. The black ski cap he’d worn at the carnival was now pushed up on top of his head. He wasn’t paying a bit of attention to Rico. Maybe he thought Rico was gonna be asleep for a long time and scared to death when he woke up. But Nick had been right. After those bad people last summer, this didn’t seem as awful as all that. Not yet, anyway. He wasn’t even tied up, and nobody had put a shock collar on him the way the mean lady had done. He hated her so much. Even now that she was dead, he couldn’t stop hating her. He knew it was wrong to hate her so much, but he did. He hated her brother and her father, too, even if they were all dead and could never hurt him again, like Claire always said.
So Rico lay real still and quiet and didn’t move a single muscle, but his mind was busy figuring stuff out. He turned his head a little and searched the back of the van, looking for something he could use as a weapon. Then he saw a heavy tire iron that was rolling back and forth with the sway of the van. If he could reach it―and he was pretty sure he could―he could hit the man with the phone, slide back the door, and get away. Nick had been teaching him how to box and where to hit a bad guy if anybody ever attacked him again. Nick said it was important to be able to defend yourself, no matter how young or small you were. He said that even if Rico was just a little kid, he could take care of himself, that he’d already proved that. He taught him some karate stuff, too, but Rico wasn’t good at that yet. He sure couldn’t take down some big guy. But he could hit him in the head with that tire iron, all right. It looked heavy enough to knock him out. He had to knock him out, too, or he’d just catch him again and be mad about getting hit in the head. So that’s what he had to do: get that tire iron and knock that guy out with it. Then maybe the driver would throw on the brakes and Rico could get out the door before they could stop him. It was a pretty good plan, he had to admit.
Still, he was a little bit afraid to try it, so he lay there some more, trembling with nerves. He was scared to hit the man really hard, but knew he had to. Nick would want him to do that and try to get away, he was pretty sure. Outside the front windshield, he could see that it was dark, so it was still night outside. Snow was coming down and slanting straight into the windshield and making the wipers slap back and forth real hard. He was pretty sure they were out in the country somewhere, still traveling fast down a dark road. There were no streetlights or buildings or houses or anything lit up that would mean that other people were around. His neck stung pretty badly where the needle had gone in, but he tried to ignore all that.
Rico waited some more, wishing he didn’t have to hit anybody with that tire iron, but he couldn’t just lie there and do nothing. He didn’t know where the men were taking him, but he knew they probably were going to hurt him when they got there, so he had to do something. He had to get away right now, and then call Claire and Nick so they could help him. He had to get that phone back. Claire was going to be so mad at these guys. She was going to find them and put them in jail, but he had to get away from them first and let her know where he was so she could come pick him up, and fast.
The van hit a pothole and the whole vehicle lurched violently to one side. That’s when Rico sucked it up and made his move. He rolled over onto his stomach as if he’d been flung there by the swerving van and got hold of the tire iron in his right fist. Grabbing a good, firm grip on it, he looked at the guy in the back with him. He was sitting very close now, telling the driver to quit sliding around and drive slower. Rico jumped up onto his knees, lunged toward his captor, and swung the heavy bar with both hands as hard as he could. It struck the left side of the guy’s head, but the man had seen it coming and managed to lunge sideways enough to fend off the force of the blow. But Rico had managed to get him good enough in the temple to knock him sideways onto his back.
When the driver heard the scuffle going on in back, he stomped the brakes, and Rico and his captor got slammed hard into the back of the front seat. The man groaned, holding his injured head with one hand, but he managed to grab hold of the back of Rico’s parka with his other one. Rico jerked away from him and scrambled to find the phone on the floor. He found it by the glow on the screen, grabbed it, and lunged toward the door.
Rico knew what he had to do, and he didn’t hesitate for one second. He grabbed the door handle and slid the door all the way open. It hit the end of the track with a loud bang, and the driver lurched to a skidding stop. Rico held on for dear life as the van slid on the ice for a few seconds, and then he leaped out into the darkness. He landed in a big snowbank that the snowplows must have left on the side of the road, then he scrambled up over it and down into a ditch on the other side. It was covered with ice and he felt the breath knocked out of him when he hit the hard surface on his stomach. He rolled over onto his back and gasped for air. He’d hurt his knee on the snowbank. The van was still running; he could hear the motor idling. Then he heard the driver yelling―it sounded like he was coming after Rico.
Really scared now, Rico pushed himself onto his belly and scrambled up the other side of the ditch until he could duck under some snowy bushes. An avalanche of icy snow poured down on top of him and got into the neck of his coat and into his mouth and eyes. He was so cold now that he was shivering and shaking all over. He was way out in the middle of nowhere. It was pitch black outside and super cold and deep snow covered everything around him. He could hear the little ice pellets popping on the back of his parka so he knew the snow had turned into sleet. He crawled deeper under the thick brush on his hands and knees.
Breathless and terrified that the men would catch him, he kept stopping and looking behind him. The driver had a flashlight out now. He was shining it under the trees where Rico was, so Rico hit the ground and lay down flat and kept a death grip on the cell phone. The trees around him were close together, with lots of saplings and bushes and rocks and boulders around them, all of it icy and frozen, but there were some patches underneath the bushes where the snow hadn’t fallen through the tangled, dead vegetation. It looked like a deep, dark tunnel that he could maybe crawl through, one that might hide him and his footprints from the bad guys. He could hear them shouting back and forth to each other now. They sounded mad at each other―really mad. They were coming after him now, and moving faster than he was. He had to hurry up and get going!
Panting, his breath pluming out in the frigid air, Rico forced himself to remain calm, just like Nick had taught him. Take a deep breath, calm down, and think about what you have to do. He halted every few minutes and took some more of those deep breaths. He was pretty sure he could hide from the two men if his tracks didn’t give him away, for a little while anyway. He had done that plenty of times on the island when he got loose and hid in the underground tunnels. And he had a phone this time. He could call Nick and Claire and they’d grab their guns and come right out there and get him. And they’d get those bad guys chasing him, too, just like last time.
After a few minutes of rapid combat crawling, he stopped moving and listened. That’s when he heard the van start up out on the road. That shocked him a little bit. Had they given up already? Were they just leaving him out there? He smiled a little, hopeful, but scared, too. Maybe they were afraid and wanted to get away before they got caught. One of them could still be coming after him, right behind him, getting closer and closer in the cold darkness.
Still shivering, he opened the phone. He pulled off his gloves and punched in Claire’s number. Nothing happened. His heart fell―there was no service out this far in the woods. There were no bars at the top of the screen. He started moving along again, keeping under the bushes and trying to call home every few minutes. Nothing happened. He finally stopped, sat up on his knees, and tried to think what he should do next. He had to find somewhere to get warm. He was really, really cold now, and kinda wet. Maybe he could find a house nearby. Maybe there would be people who lived there who might help him and let him use their phone. He had to keep going until he found a house; he’d just have to help himself get there until Claire and Nick could find him. And they would. He knew they would. They were like that. They always knew what to do. Both of them.