Capture the Flag by Kate Messner

Author:Kate Messner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2012-08-19T16:00:00+00:00

Anna flattened herself on top of the black suitcase and took a deep breath. She felt the cold zipper of the little side pocket against her cheek and hung on tight as the belt climbed higher.

Now, way up by the steel-beamed ceiling, Anna could peer over the edge. Conveyor belts hummed and squeaked through the room below, twisting and looping, climbing and plunging over and around one another.

Anna tried to trace the path her BTV suitcase would take. Her eyes followed the belt up ahead, around a hairpin curve, then back alongside the same belt for a while before it took a steep climb and looped off toward the other side of the room where they’d first come in. Big plastic carts were stacked on one of the belts over there, and she couldn’t see past them.

Where were the boys? She was looking over her shoulder and nearly fell off the belt when the suitcase made that hairpin turn. When she regained her balance, she thought she heard the echo of a voice on the far side of the room. Maybe Henry and José were coming. She closed her eyes, trying to tune out the drone of the conveyor belt motors and find the voice again, but it was gone.

Anna felt herself sliding backward as the suitcase started up a big slope. She held on and was all the way to the top before she realized that this hill dropped off into another steep plunge. She would have screamed if she’d had time.

But she didn’t.

Still clutching the handle of the suitcase, she landed flat on her stomach at the bottom of the ramp, then tumbled another three feet onto a pile of bags that had slid off the belt after the plunge. The BTV suitcase landed on top of her. “Oomph!”

“What was that?” A man’s voice — it wasn’t Henry or José — drifted over the top of a huge plastic cart filled with suitcases. Anna held her breath. Something in the duffel bag underneath her poked into her ribs, but she didn’t dare move.

“What was what?” Another voice. Lower than the first. Was it Snake-Arm? She tried to remember his voice from the restaurant, but she couldn’t be sure.

“I thought I heard somebody.”

Anna couldn’t make out what they said next. She closed her eyes, trying to sort out words from the humming of the motors. “… middle of the night. I told you, the handlers are all off duty. Just a suitcase falling off the belt or something. We’ll probably hear more coming through now that the system’s turned back on.”

The voice had a familiar tone to it, but Anna still couldn’t hear clearly enough to say for sure it was Snake-Arm. There was a faint clinking sound, too, like someone juggling change in a pocket. Then more clunking. More thumping of tossed bags.

Another duffel bag barreled down the ramp — “Oof!” — and pinned Anna down.

“See? That’s what I heard before!”

“I’m telling you, it’s the bags. Now get moving.

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