Baby-Sitting Is a Dangerous Job by Willo Davis Roberts

Author:Willo Davis Roberts
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aladdin

Chapter Ten

I couldn’t sleep. I sat on the edge of that old mattress, listening to the quiet breathing of the kids beside me, and I could see the place where the Dobermans had been at the top of the stairs, before Dan took them out for a run.

He hadn’t brought them back yet. It was fully dark now, except for that one small bulb on the second floor landing. Irene, Irene, I thought, tell Clancy or somebody about the black car and its license number. Get us out of here.

Downstairs, a telephone rang.

I came bolt upright. It sounded very far away, as if it was behind closed doors, but I was sure it was a telephone. It rang three times before it stopped.

If I could get to a telephone and call the police, or my dad, or anybody—

They would take care that I didn’t reach the phone, of course. Still . . .

I got up quietly and stepped into the hallway. The stairs went down into darkness, and after a moment’s hesitation, I began to ease down the steps, clinging to the railing.

I expected the stairs would creak, but they didn’t. They were very high compared to the ones at home, and it took me a long time to reach the bottom.

It wasn’t as totally dark down there as I’d expected, for a faint light filtered through to the entry hall from a room far at the back of the house.

The front door was right there, and I was glad I was wearing running shoes with rubber soles that didn’t make any noise as I moved toward it. If anybody had come up behind me as I reached for the knob, I wouldn’t have heard them, my heart was pounding so hard.

The door was locked, of course. I’d known it would be, yet disappointment almost made me sick to my stomach. A window, then?

There were two windows, one on each side of the door, that opened onto the veranda. I tried each of them, but they’d been painted shut years ago. I might have broken the glass if I’d had anything heavy to hit it with, but the men in the back of the house would have heard that and caught up with me before I got down the porch steps. Even if they couldn’t see me, those dogs would find me before I ran down to the gate, and probably that had been relocked by now, anyway.

No way out here, I thought. I could have gone back up to that almost-empty bedroom upstairs, but instead I began to move slowly and cautiously toward the source of light at the rear of the house.

I turned a corner and saw a slice of brightly lighted kitchen. It was old-fashioned looking, with worn linoleum on the floor and wooden chairs at a big table with a green and white plastic tablecloth over it.

When a door opened and closed, I froze against the wall, not daring to go either forward or backward. Henry’s voice sounded so near that the hair stood up on the back of my neck.

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