Free Vanished by Kristi Holl Page B

As she passed the clock tower, it began to strike nine. She picked up her pace. Nobody was in the barn with the horses this morning, and Jeri was glad. She bet Houston was helping search again.
    Jeri saddled up Star quickly, hung the food and drink over the saddle horn, and headed out. Soon she took the entrance to the main trail through the woods, listening closely for reckless snowmobilers. But today all was hushed, even serene, with lightly falling snow. She searched farther up the trail this time, but found nothing.
    Leaning back in the saddle, she let Star rest.
Now what, Lord?
She hated this helpless feeling. Would she ever see Rosa again? Would Mrs. Reeves live with gossip and terrible sadness for the rest of her life?
    Not if she had anything to say about it.
    Scanning the area slowly, Jeri peered into the shadows cast by the brush and scrubby trees. The walnut and buckeye trees–she remembered them from science class–were too thin to hide the van. Massive evergreens much farther up the slope, however, swept low and touched the ground. A cluster of them could hide the van easily, but could anyone actually drive it up there? She didn’t know how they could, but puzzling out the clues helped her focus on something besides how much Rosa must be suffering.
    She thought about how Jake had gotten her interested in investigative reporting. She didn’t like how Jake dramatized the news, but she
did
like putting odd bits of information together, discovering things, solving problems, and helping people.
    Star pawed the ground while Jeri reflected on what to do next. Flurries thickened and turned to clumps of flakes. She found herself squinting through swirling snow kicked up by intermittent gusts of wind. She felt cut off, as if she were inside the unreal world of a snow globe. As she stared, the trees to her left moved, shifted. She blinked the flakes off her eyelashes and then looked again, her eyes finally seeing the shifting shapes.
    Staring at her from the underbrush were three full-grown deer. They stood like statues; their backs looked as if they’d been dusted with powdered sugar. How perfectly they blended in for their own protection. Even now, their antlers seemed made of twigs and branches.
    She hadn’t seen them a moment ago. Yet they’d been there, right in front of her!
    What else was right in front of her that she wasn’t seeing? Was there something obvious about the missing van that she’d overlooked? The police assumed the van was in the lake or had been driven away by a kidnapper. Jeri herself wondered if Heather had knocked Mr. Reeves out and stolen the van.
    But what if they were all overlooking something else right in front of them?
    Like … what if the van hadn’t actually gone
anywhere?
What if–like the deer–it had blended into its surroundings?
    She slipped from the saddle, wincing as she landed on her foot with the sore ankle. She petted Star’s nose and pulled an apple from her pocket. Star crunched the whole thing in one bite, then nibbled up the pieces that fell to the snowy ground. Jeri was startled to realize that a new inch of snow had already accumulated. She ran a hand down Star’s neck and chest, and her fingers felt the rippledscar. As a foal he’d been snagged by barbed-wire fence. She’d noticed it the day she went with Houston to pick up the horse.
    Last fall they’d gone to a farm nearby to get a dozen horses for the school, donated by a woman whose husband had died. She had wanted to move to Arizona. When no one bought her farm or the horses, she decided to give away the animals and move anyway.
    Jeri wondered. Was the farm still abandoned? It was just three miles down the paved road. An idea grabbed her, and she breathed rapidly. Was it possible that the van was hidden in an empty barn there? If so, that would explain why the roadblocks hadn’t turned up anything. Maybe the kidnappers hadn’t gone any farther than down the road from the school!
    Jeri hurled herself