Free Wanted! by Caroline B. Cooney Page A

taking this disk, entering information on it, possibly dying for it.
    She let herself slide into a daydream in which Daddy had met her for ice cream after all, and he said to her, “I’m so proud! You drove all this way without any problems? In the toughest car on earth to drive? Not a scratch on it? Wonderland, you’ve saved my life.”
    But I didn’t save his life, she thought, falling out of the dream.
    He’s not going to kiss me eleven times on the hair, and he’s not going to play caveman and yank my hair and pretend to drag me over for ice cream.
    Daddy called her Wonderland because he said Alice had made his life a Wonderland, and he was the luckiest guy on earth; must have been magic and Cheshire cats that gave him such a perfect daughter.
    She was pretty sure that your college ID number was your social security number, and if you didn’t type that in, you couldn’t boot up. Even if she knew her social security number by heart, which she didn’t, she wasn’t enrolled here and her number wouldn’t accomplish anything. She scanned the busy room, waiting for somebody to get up and forget to shut down the computer.
    The room was divided among PCs, Macs, and a dedicated row for Internet use only. The Internet.
    She thought: I know the passwords. I can read my mother’s E-mail. I can read what I supposedly sent: the message in which I supposedly confessed to killing my own father.

Chapter 6
    M OM I DON’T KNOW WHAT happened. We got into an argument and we yelled and you know how much i hate yelling and he was asying bad things about you and you know i cant stand when you 2 say bad things sabout ech other and i kept saying stop sotp stop and he didn’t and the fight went on and i hit him. mom its awful it really happenede i hit him and i hit him again and i know i have to call 911 but i hid uhndr the car ihstead but i couldn’t get away from the blood mommy come get me please come get me ally
    Of course she believed it, thought Alice. I believe it. It’s perfect. Who wrote that? I don’t use capital letters when I write E-mail, I don’t start with Dear and I don’t end with Love, and I say Mom, except when I’m really upset or angry and then I say Mommy. She’s the only person who ever called me Ally. I’m an Alice, sort of prim and careful.
    Well, she knew now how her father died. He’d been hit. Over and over. There was a lot of blood.
    Alice shuddered, and when she fought off the tears, she was not sure whether they’d have been for Daddy or herself. Or even her mother.
    How did they think little Alice had done this to her very big father?
    There must have been a frenzy in it, a rage, and they must have assumed her father wasn’t ready, or had his back turned, or didn’t take it seriously.
    And they would be right. Only frenzy would make the killer say, “I killed him good,” so that Alice could hear. And Dad had not taken it seriously, or wasn’t ready, or had his back turned.
    Suppose Mom read that the moment it came in. This was likely, because Alice and Mom usually E-mailed if they weren’t going to see each other that night, and Alice was staying at Dad’s. Once she read that, of course she’d have called the police! “Go rescue my daughter! Get there fast! And save Marc.”
    Mom would have wanted sirens and speed. Mom would have said to herself, it can’t be that bad! It can’t be!
    Mom would have left work, too, rushing, taking left turns on red, never mind right, using her horn like a private siren—the way Dad would have loved to drive but Mom would have never dreamed of driving.
    The police had been on the way while Alice was bolting in the Corvette; they must have been racing in the front door just as she was racing through the city.
    No.
    They didn’t race in.
    Because Alice had thrown the dead-bolt from the inside and closed the garage door. Mom didn’t have keys. Who had let them in? Or had they broken down the door?
    Dad would have loved that. He had always wanted drama