Free Finding Hannah by John R. Kess Page B

laughed.
    We used Molly’s fire to heat two cans of beef stew.
    Molly poked at her stew with her spoon. “How mad were your parents when you got home yesterday?”
    “My mom was not happy. We cleared up a few things and she got over it.”
    “So you decided to speak to them again?”
    “I didn’t have a choice. Now we have an understanding. My price of freedom is lugging the phone around with me.” I set my empty can of stew down. “What about you? Was your mom mad at you for being gone?”
    Molly shook her head. “No. My … my mom didn’t even notice I was gone, and Tony was disappointed to see me.” She swallowed hard and looked at the fire. “Drug addicts only care about their next high. They don’t care about anything else.”
    The tension in Molly’s face was clear as she fought her emotions. I touched her shoulder. “I care about you.”
    Her face brightened. “Thank you.” She gave me a quick hug and said, “You’re the first person who’s hugged me since my father died.”
    I opened my mouth, but didn’t know what to say. As her words sunk in, I felt awful. It had been two years since her father died. Two years since she’d had a hug. I felt so bad for Molly. I couldn’t imagine how awful that would be.
    * * *
    Molly and I wore our face paint as we lay next to each other in our black clothes, looking at the rear of the house we’d walked past hours before. We were on a hill looking down at the house, which had a deck with a sliding-glass door. The backyard was surrounded by tight clumps of trees, allowing us to get quite close without being seen.
    The sun had set, and the blue sky was retreating into the distance. I used the spotting scope and Molly used her binoculars to watch a man walking around what appeared to be the kitchen.
    “It looks like he just got done eating,” Molly said.
    A black-haired girl darted behind him.
    “Did you see that?” I asked.
    “No. What did you see?”
    “In the window behind him. It looked like a girl.”
    The man turned to his right and laughed as he appeared to be talking to someone. The man wiped his hands and disappeared.
    “It was a girl with black hair,” I said.
    “Are you sure?” Molly asked.
    “Yes.”
    “If it were Hannah, you wouldn’t think he’d let her walk around like that.”
    The man reappeared in the window for a moment and then was gone.
    A teenage girl appeared at the sliding-glass door with her back to us.
    “Is that her?” Molly asked.
    I strained to look harder. The girl looked like she was putting on tennis shoes. She stood and opened the door. Both Molly and I got a good look at her face.
    “No,” I said. “It’s not her.”
    The girl was holding a baseball glove and a softball. She flipped on a light that lit up the backyard. The man followed her out, holding a catcher’s mitt. The two walked to opposite sides of the lit area.
    “Are you ready?” the girl asked.
    The man crouched and said he was.
    She spun her arm around to loosen it up and then, in an underhand motion, she threw the ball to the man.
    “Take it easy until you’re warmed up,” he said.
    Molly and I looked at each other. We knew we weren’t going to find Hannah here. Even though we were well protected, we were too close to be able to stand up and walk away without being seen or heard. Even crawling away would be risky.
    “Let’s wait it out,” Molly whispered. “It’s getting darker. It shouldn’t be long.”
    I nodded and quietly loaded our binoculars and spotting scope into our backpack. I put the pack on and heard the snap of the softball hitting the catcher’s mitt.
    Molly pointed at the girl. “She’s really good.”
    We watched a few more pitches.
    “Good pitch,” the man said. “Does your arm still feel okay?”
    “Yeah, it’s fine,” the girl said.
    Molly looked at me. She held her hand up toward me as if she were miming me to do the same.
    I held mine out and our palms touched. She turned my hand over and traced it with