Free Hostage by Willo Davis Roberts Page B

slammed the double doors shut and secured them with a bar, then walked up to the side of the truck to where Buddy was almost finished with replacing the flat tire.
    I could see the license plate quite clearly. VCT 7258. I wondered if I could memorize it, and then remembered that I wasn’t going to be around long enough to relay it to the police.
    Whatever had fallen out of an outer pocket of the backpack and rolled under me was hard,unyielding. I tried to shift my position again to get off from it, and saw a pencil. A nice new number 2 yellow pencil, with a sharpened point.
    It would write the truck’s license number, I thought, heart quickening. If the men stayed away long enough. If I could find anything to write on quickly enough.
    There was nothing but a smooth, freshly painted white wall beside me.
    Pain shot through my arms when I pushed into a sitting position and scrabbled behind me for the pencil. I had to ignore pain, I told myself. This was life or death, and I didn’t have to remind myself whose death it would be, or how quickly it might come.
    Cal was still talking to his cohort beside the truck, neither of them looking toward me. My heart pounding, my breath coming in gasps, I maneuvered around so my back was to the wall, the pencil awkwardly gripped in my right hand even though my elbow was still throbbing.
    I tried to figure out how to write so it would be right side up, and couldn’t. My mind wasracing so hard, it was a miracle I could think with any logic at all. Okay, write it upside down. If anyone saw it, they’d be able to make sense of it, anyway. I hoped.
    Behind me I felt the sharp point break off the pencil lead. I was pushing too hard. I was suffocating, as if someone had put a bag over my head and cut off my air. I tried again to write, hoping that not all the lead had snapped.
    â€œTake your hands off me, you ruffian!”
    The screeching female voice made me jerk on the last number. I’d probably left a trailing mark up the wall; I couldn’t see it without squirming into a different position, and with the men outside in plain sight, I didn’t dare try. I couldn’t do anything about it, anyhow.
    Mrs. Banducci, her hair wildly disarranged, came into view with Bo propelling her. She was kicking backward, and she connected with one of his shins, so that he yelped and called her an unprintable name. “Cut it out before I have to really hurt you,” he told her, giving her a shake that knocked her glasses askew.
    â€œWhat do you want me to do with her?” he demanded in exasperation. “Stick her in theback of the truck, or do we have to dispose of her, too?”
    I didn’t miss that “too.” I pushed the pencil behind me up against the baseboard, afraid that it would show up, bright yellow against white, when I had to be moved. There was nothing else I could do about that.
    â€œYeah,” Cal said. “And stay back there with her.”
    Bo scowled. “Hey, why do I have to be in the back where I can’t see what’s going on?”
    â€œBecause,” Cal said, angry at being challenged, “there’s only room for three of us in the front.”
    â€œSo since when am I not one of the three of us?” Bo was getting mad, too.
    â€œSince we need to keep the kid up front,” Cal told him. “She’s no use as a hostage if we can’t get at her if the cops stop us. Come on, the tire’s fixed, let’s get on the road.”
    He was so furious that when he reentered the house and jerked me to my feet, he didn’t see the pencil against the baseboard, or the message I’d written on the wall above it.
    He dragged me out the front door, shut itbehind us, and hauled me up into the front of the truck. Buddy got into the driver’s seat, Cal squeezed himself against my right side, and Buddy turned on the ignition.
    Hostage.
    The word echoed in my mind as the truck began to move.
    I was a