Free Lost Boy by Tim Green Page A

calculation, knowing that if he told the cop about the boys it might entangle him like a web he couldn’t get out of anytime soon. “I’m trying to get some autographs.”
    â€œDitched school? Got here early, huh?” The cop dusted his jacket.
    Ryder nodded. “Someone said the buses come near the parking garage. I’m looking for a Braves player.”
    â€œBraves?” The cop screwed up his thick red face. “This isn’t the right garage. You gotta head down toward the end of the stadium and they come in off of 164th Street, but I don’t know if you’ll get any autographs. You can’t get that close. There’s gates.”
    â€œDo they ever come over to the gates?”
    The cop scratched up under his cap. “Maybe, but the best place is inside. You want to get in there early and hang out just over their dugout. Sometimes they sign.”
    Ryder thought of his empty pockets and the stolen money. “I’ll just try here. Thanks.”
    The cop looked up the street and squinted his eyes, pointing. “I think that’s probably them right there. Better hurry.”
    Ryder turned and saw a big luxury bus rumble around the corner and pull into some gates at the back of the stadium.
    Ryder took off without a word, running faster than he ever knew he could.

Sections of thick metal fencing stood linked together, blocking the way into the loading dock area. Two security guards in yellow jackets swung the gates closed. The bus had already come to rest just outside the stadium’s back entrance. Players in leather jackets wearing headphones stepped down off the bus and made a beeline for the dark opening that would lead them to their lockers. Ryder was more than a hundred feet away. He looked around, panicked, for a way to get closer. He had an urge to throw himself over the fence—it was only about three and a half feet high—but his mother’s training to always obey the rules just wouldn’t let him.
    He could yell, though, and that’s what he did.
    â€œThomas Trent!” Ryder jumped up and down with the note in one hand and the baseball in the other, aware that a cluster of other autograph hounds had also been drawn toward thefence by the sight of the Atlanta Braves players.
    â€œTrent!” Ryder howled, but either none of the players could hear because of their headphones, or they ignored what to them was just some crazy kid.
    â€œEasy, kid, you’ll blow out a lung.” A middle-aged man in a dirty leather jacket with a binder notebook full of playing cards took a step away from him.
    Then Ryder saw Thomas Trent step down off the bus.
    The relief pitcher wasn’t wearing headphones.
    Ryder’s heart hammered against his ribs. The sight of the man who he now knew must be his father choked him so that nothing came out. Thomas Trent turned and headed for the doorway. He had a duffel bag over his shoulder, like the rest. His leather coat was dark brown, smooth and buttery looking, and he wore matching cowboy boots beneath designer jeans. Just as his front foot hit the threshold of the entrance, Ryder erupted.
    â€œTRENT!”
    Thomas Trent stopped and turned, looking right at Ryder from across the lot.

Under the spell of seeing his father, Ryder wasn’t even aware that the guards had swung the gates in again, opening them wide. He heard the rumble of the bus and smelled its foul exhaust, but it meant nothing to him compared to the sight of his father and the bright green eyes looking back from beneath an eave of curly black hair that reminded him of his own.
    â€œI’M YOUR S—”
    When the bus drove between them, the switch went off. The spell was gone and so was his father.
    â€œThomas Trent!” Ryder howled and waved the note in the air, but the moment was broken.
    One of the security guards, an enormous man with a small, round head, began to wander over toward the fence with his eyes on