Free Framed by Gordon Korman Page B

just quieting Luthor. “Nice work, you guys.”
    “You wouldn’t have thought it was nice if it happened to you!” panted Ben.
    Pitch nodded vigorously, too breathless to comment.
    “Don’t worry, it’s all going perfectly,” came Griffin’s voice through the laptop. “What next?”
    “We keep watch,” Savannah replied.
    And they did — through little Anthony’s bath time, through Lindsay’s French horn practice, and through an hour-long documentary on cheese making on the Discovery Channel.
    “This is really boring,” Logan complained. “When are they going to take out the ring?”
    That, they were coming to realize, was the whole problem with stakeouts. Setting up the surveillance was the easy part. The real challenge was waiting for something important to happen.
    And there was no guarantee that it ever would.

14
    G ym class at the JFK Alternative Education Center consisted of only one activity — dodgeball. Not once had Griffin made it through an entire day without being involved in at least one match.
    “They can’t trust us with sticks or bats,” was Sheldon Brickhaus’s explanation. “But they still want us to work out our aggression. So they buy a bunch of floppy rubber balls from Babies“R”Us and turn us loose on the floor.”
    Shank had reason to know. He was the greatest dodgeball player in the history of the sport. He could take a ball designed for a toddler and turn it into a weapon of mass destruction. It wasn’t enough for him to hit you with the ball. He had an eye for finding you unbalanced or hyperextended. Then he’d nail you in the ear, or the side of theknee, or the neck with such surgical precision that it would knock you flat. Even the high schoolers with criminal records were afraid of him on the dodgeball court.
    As Shank’s “friend,” Griffin was targeted without mercy. The only escape was to hurl himself in front of someone else’s normal throw in order to be eliminated from the game.
    Today, though, Griffin’s mind was so awhirl with the details of Operation Stakeout that there was no room for survival skills. Soon, he found himself standing like a deer in headlights as the dodgeball master lined him up for the kill.
    “Say your prayers, Justice! This one’s going down your throat!”
    Even then, with the guided missile seconds away, Griffin was miles from the gym, in the Drysdales’ attic, where Melissa’s surveillance gear was on automatic, filming and recording the Egan house. Was there any chance of catching a glimpse of the ring while Dr. Evil was at school all day? Not likely. For all Griffin knew, Mrs. Egan worked, too, and they were recording eight hours of nothing.
    When the shot came, it wasn’t the hammer blow designed to lay him out. Shank bounced the ballsoftly off his shoulder. Then, in an eerily quiet voice, he said, “You’re hit. Get out of my face.”
    Griffin was grateful to leave the court and give Operation Stakeout his full attention. Not that he could ever be anything more than a spectator watching the whole thing from his room.
    He wasn’t sure what was worse — house arrest, or missing out on a plan. Either way, it was horrible to be powerless to affect your own fate.
    He struggled to stay positive. His friends had come up with a great plan, every bit as good as any idea of his. But, face it, a stakeout was a passive thing. You couldn’t go and get the truth; it had to come to you. What if it never did?
    An
oof
of pain indicated that the game had ended. It was time to head to the locker room to endure Shank’s other athletic talent — towel snapping. But when the burly boy sat down beside Griffin on the bench, he was unarmed.
    “You know, Justice, you really get on my nerves.”
    Griffin was amazed. “What did
I
do?”
    “Is my life such a party that I can pass up a chance to put a dodgeball through your skull? I don’t think so.”
    “So who’s stopping you?” Griffin asked.
    “You are! You’re so —
nice
! It takes