Free The Twisted Window by Lois Duncan

hallway."
     
    "A horse?" It was Brad's turn now to try to work his way into a better position at the window.
     
    "Move over this way, and you can see it better," said Tracy. "It's one of those big plastic toys on springs that kids bounce on. Back in New York, I used to baby-sit for a lady in the apartment across the hall from ours. Her little boy had a horse like that."
     
    "People don't cart a toy that size around with them," said Brad. "If it's here at the Carvers', that must mean this is where Mindy's staying. Her aunt must be taking care of her on a full-time basis."
     
    Drawing back from the window, he turned and began to work his way farther along the side of the house, stumbling once and almost falling as his feet became tangled in a stray loop of garden hose. When he reached the second lighted window he came to a halt. Through it he could see a kitchen in which four people were gathered around a table, eating dinner. Standing well back in the shelter of darkness provided by the hedgerow, Brad drew in a sudden sharp breath.
     
    "That's her!" he whispered. "That's Mindy!"
     
    She was seated in a youth chair at the end of the table. Brad was taken aback at how much she had matured since he had seen her last. Her hair was pulled back and tied with a ribbon in an unfamiliar, young-ladyish style, and her face seemed to have lost much of its babyish roundness. Still, there was not a doubt in his mind that this was Mindy, four months older and lovelier even than he remembered her. The blue pajamas she was wearing accentuated the sky blue shade of her eyes, and her left cheek flashed its dimple as she smiled at her aunt.
     
    "That's Mindy," Brad repeated softly, hardly able to believe it. It was all he could do to keep from rapping on the glass to capture the child's attention.
     
    "Is the man with his back to us Gavin?" Tracy asked him.
     
    "Yes," Brad told her without hesitation. He could not see the man's face, but the thick blond hair, the set of the shoulders, and the green and gold sports shirt his mother had given her new husband the first Christmas after they were married were all too familiar.
     
    There was only one woman at the table, and she sat opposite the window. She seemed to be carrying on most of the conversation. She was slender and blond, and Brad had an excellent view of her face as she chatted along in an animated manner, directing her remarks to first one dinner companion and then another.
     
    Gavin seemed to be the only one responding. The heavyset man who sat to the woman's left was concentrating on his food—fried chicken, Brad saw, and potatoes, and the type of mushed up green vegetable that Mindy had always hated, although tonight she seemed to be eating it with gusto.
     
    "So what happens now?" asked Tracy. "Are you going to go in and get her?"
     
    "You mean just go to the door and ring the bell? A lot of good that would do! There's no way they would ever let me walk in and take her. When it comes to muscle power, it would be two big guys against one small one. Gavin's brother-in-law is built like the Incredible Hulk."
     
    "Why don't we go find a phone and call the police?"
     
    "You've got to be kidding. And have them laugh in my face? After the way Lieutenant Souter sat back and did nothing for all those months, there's no way I'd trust the police to do anything to help me. Like I told you, they don't regard this as a kidnapping. If the person who runs off with the kid is one of the parents, they call it 'child-snatching,' and they don't take it seriously."
     
    "What are you going to do then?" Tracy asked him.
     
    "I don't know." He could not tear his eyes away from the sight of his sister, gnawing away on a drumstick and looking... contented. For some reason, he had not expected to find her happy. He had thought she would be suffering as he and their mother had been suffering, weeping herself to sleep at night, longing for her own bed in her own home—not complacently adjusting