Free Hostage by Willo Davis Roberts

her?”
    I’d been gasping for breath. Now I stopped breathing at all.
    â€œStarting a fire’s the quickest way to get somebody here in a hurry. There may not be anyone left in the subdivision, but there are plenty of people only a few blocks away who would report smoke.”
    â€œSo what do we do, then? Strangle her with our bare hands? You want me to do it?”
    I forgot my wrists were hurting. How quickly could Mrs. Banducci locate a phone? Would she be in time? And all the time I was thinking, she didn’t even see me.
    My chest was burning, and I finally thought to take a gulp of air before my lungs burst. They were here now, two of them, staring at me as if I were a pig they were about to butcher, and with no more emotion than if that were the case.
    â€œWe’d better ask Cal,” Buddy said, and now I knew all their names, or at least their nicknames.For all the good it was going to do me. They weren’t planning to give me a chance to tell anybody.
    â€œWhere’d he go?” Bo asked, turning to look behind him.
    â€œI don’t know. He was right behind us.” Buddy was studying me in a way that made my skin crawl.
    â€œWell, we’ve already been here longer than we expected to be. If we want to get this stuff unloaded and get back to another house yet today, we’ve gotta move.”
    The one called Buddy wiped his arm across his mouth. “This place may be full of good houses, but it’s beginning to spook me. We weren’t supposed to run into anybody during the day, and I don’t like it. Cal said there wouldn’t be anybody in the whole subdivision.” He continued to glare at me as if I’d deliberately upset their plans and deserved to be punished for it.
    Far off in the distance, we all heard the sudden wail of a siren.
    Hope leaped in my chest. Had Mrs. Banducci managed to get to a phone after all? Were the police on the way?
    Hope wasn’twhat I saw on Buddy’s and Bo’s faces. Consternation instantly turned them from tough guys to cowards.
    â€œLet’s get out of here!” Buddy said. “Before it’s too late!”
    I prayed with all my heart that it was already too late, and then I realized that the siren wasn’t getting any louder. It wasn’t coming any closer.
    Buddy realized it, too. “It’s not for us,” he said. “It’s going away.”
    At once they turned mean again. For a moment I thought I was going to be stabbed when the knife came out; instead, Bo cut me loose from the chair, with my hands still tied behind me. He jerked me to my feet, wrenching my shoulder so that I cried out involuntarily.
    â€œShut up,” he told me gruffly, and shoved me ahead of him toward the front of the house.
    â€œCal, where you been? What’re we gonna do with this kid?”
    Cal looked as if somebody had just stomped on his big toe. “We gotta fix a flat before we can get out of here.”
    Shock was etched on the other two faces. “It was okay when I drove in here,” Buddy asserted. “You sure?”
    Cal practically snarled, “You think I can’t tell when a tire goes flat? You’re the idiots who stole the truck, you get out there and fix it while I finish up in here.”
    â€œThere is a spare, right?” Bo asked. “And a jack? Okay, we’ll get it fixed. I don’t know about you guys, but I want out of this place. I’m not sure I even want to come back for the next house, after finding this kid in here. There might be somebody home in the other places, too. You gonna take care of her?”
    Bo headed out the front door, but Buddy still stood there, glowering. “We gonna have to kill her? I didn’t sign up for no murder, you know. Stealing’s something else. They don’t put you in prison for life or execute you for taking a truckload of furniture. They probably wouldn’t even catch us for that. But killing a kid