Free Elementary, My Dear Watkins by Mindy Starns Clark Page B

miss her.
    Now, she made it to her bedroom without incident and then pushed open the door, stepped inside, and then closed it behind her, exhaling slowly. She had done it.
    Alexa locked the door behind her and then she set about finding a hiding place for the map, one that wouldn’t be discovered by the maids if they decided to change her sheets or gather up her dirty laundry. It was nice having people to clean up after her, but in a way it was one more invasion of her privacy.
    Alexa quickly scanned the bedroom and the closet, finally spotting a jacket that hung near the back with its tags still on, the uncool one with the stupid removable liner the old lady had given her for her birthday. She grabbed it from the rack, carried it out to the bed, and unzipped one side. Carefully, she slid the folded paper between the nylon of the jacket and the fleece of the liner. Then she zipped it shut again.
    Perfect.
    She hung the jacket back in the closet and left, making her way through the house, out the back door, and across the beautiful lawn to the studio. It was going to be a long evening, she knew, trying to keep her very intuitive art teacher, Nicole, from sensing her excitement, and then killing time until she could get a taste of freedom tonight.
    Alexa couldn’t wait to escape and make her way back to the Grave Cave.

    “Water?”
    Jo snapped up to see a policewoman holding out a bottle of water. It was dripping with condensation, and suddenly Jo was thirstier than she’d ever been in her life. She took it and drank a long sip. When she was finished, she tried to find her voice.
    “Thank you,” she croaked.
    “No problem. Do you feel up to answering a few questions?”
    Jo shook her head, trying to get her bearings. Where was Bradford? Why had they taken him away?
    “Is Bradford okay?” she asked, not wanting to hear the answer.
    “The fellow that got hit by the train? He’s hurt pretty bad,” the cop replied, pulling a notebook from her pocket, “but he’s hanging in there. They’re taking him to the hospital on Lexington. You can go there once you’re finished here.”
    “Okay,” Jo whispered, standing. “Sure.”
    The woman began her questions starting with the basic facts: names, next of kin, what time she and Bradford got there, where they had been standing. Once they got through that, she asked Jo to describe what happened.
    Closing her eyes, Jo tried to walk back through the whole incident as best she could. She described the press of the crowd, the hand on her back, the push that propelled her forward. When Jo opened her eyes, she was surprised to see the cop looking at her skeptically.
    “You’re trying to tell me that someone intentionally pushed you onto the tracks of an oncoming train?”
    “That’s exactly what I’m saying. Somebody tried to kill me.”
    Jo told how she had started to fall when Bradford seemed to sense her movements and did what he could to pull her back to safety.
    “This station gets busy at rush hour,” the cop replied, closing her notepad and tucking it into a pocket. “A lot of tourists might feel all those folks pressing in on them and think they were pushed. Doesn’t mean somebody was trying to kill you.”
    “But they were. And I’m not a tourist. I grew up in this city.”
    That wasn’t exactly true. Jo had grown up in different places all over the world, dragged along on each new business assignment of her father’s. But throughout her childhood her family had maintained an apartment in Manhattan, and she had lived there, on and off, for months at a time. Not counting her grandparents’ house in Mulberry Glen, New York City was as much “home” as anywhere else had been.
    “Well, if you grew up here, then you know what it’s like. We got a lot of people all stuffed together on this one little island. Accidents happen.”
    Jo studied the woman’s face, wondering why she was being so skeptical. Then the woman closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of