Free Guard Dog? by Phoebe Matthews Page A

and chains was, uh, hot. And I was sixteen. Which I hope explains why I thought he was hot.
      He was a couple years older than me. That made him a big man, plus he was into motorcycles, and really, really, really wanted to be a bad boy but had no special skills. Magic has its late bloomers, and at that time, neither Rock nor anyone else knew that in a year or two he would be a smash wizard.
      He can smash, all right, but even now, years later, he hasn’t learned   to control his strength. Be just like him to break a door by accident and then stamp in frustration and blow a hole right through the floor. That would explain the explosion noise.
      It also might explain why he wasn’t answering. Was he lying under a pile of rubble in the basement? Not wanting to join him in a crash to the center of the earth, I didn’t go dashing in, but I did walk in slowly, looking all around for weakened floor boards before putting a foot down.
      “Rock? You in here?”
      Dead silence. I glanced around   the room I’d entered. At one end was a large desk. The rest of the space was filled up with file cabinets. Nothing on the walls. Some sort of office but there weren’t diplomas on the walls or anything like that, so I couldn’t figure it out. And that’s when I noticed several little red lights flashing on a metal panel about the size of a circuit breaker box by the door.
      “Uh, Rock?” I’d seen those things in enough TV shows to suspect I recognized them. “Hey, Rock?”
      “Doll?” He poked his head around a doorway on the other side of   the room.   “You shouldn’t be here.”
      “Neither should you,” I said, because I had this sinking feeling that things were not going well. “You’ve set off a burglar alarm.”
      When he came into the room, he had a canvas bag in his hand, the kind used for bank deposits. Rock has dark hair and olive skin, an arched nose and eyes the color of copper pennies. Those eyes were tracking from side to side. Something had him in a sweat. I guess I don't have to say that he was wearing black jeans and shirt, because that's all Rock ever wears.
      “I don’t hear anything.”
      “That’s because it’s not going off here. It’s going off in some security company’s office or maybe at the police station.”
      About that time the phone on the desk rang and Rock nearly went straight up through the ceiling.
      “Are you expecting a call?” I asked.
      Okay, I was playing him. Sometimes I can’t resist. From the look on his face, I knew that deposit bag in his hand wasn’t his. What I didn’t know was the how or why. Oh right, the why was simple. The guy’s a thief.
      “You think I should answer?”
      “Only if you know the password,” I told him.
      “What password?”
      “Rock, there’s an alarm going off. And a phone ringing. That means the alarm is hooked to a security company and somebody in an office across town is calling to ask for a password. If you don’t know the password, they send out the cops.”
      “What happens if we don’t answer?”
      “Same thing that happens if you don’t know the password. I think I’ll be gone when they get here.”
      And that’s what I did, turned around and left with Rock right on my heels.
      “Hey, doll, I’ve got my brother’s car. Come on, I’ll give you a ride.”
      “You mean you’ve got your brother,” I said as we hurried out the back door to the alley.
      It was hard to imagine sleek and slippery Darryl Decko playing getaway driver. Didn’t care. He wasn’t someone I wanted to run into. I started to turn back toward the other end of the alley figuring I’d circle the block and wait for the bus.
      “No, I don’t. Darryl isn’t with me.”
      “Well, there’s somebody in the car,” I said.
      He gave me a funny grin and caught my elbow. “Yeah, there is. Come on. You’ll like her.”
      Her? Okay, I didn’t hear any sirens. It would take a few minutes from