Hideout by Watt Key

Author:Watt Key
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)

26

The next morning I slept in. There didn’t seem to be any reason to get out of bed. About ten o’clock Mom came into my room carrying the handset to the cordless phone.

“Sam, the Middletons’ housekeeper called. She wanted to know if Grover was here. She says she hasn’t seen him since early this morning. Have you heard from him at all?”

I sat up in bed and rubbed my eyes.

“No, ma’am,” I said.

“He hasn’t messaged you on the Xbox?”

I shook my head. “I haven’t been playing it.”

“She says his boat is gone.”

“His boat?”

“That’s right,” she said.

“He doesn’t even know how to drive it.”

A concerned look came over Mom’s face. She lifted the handset and began dialing. “Let me call her back,” she said.

“Where’s his dad?” I said.

Mom held up her hand for me to be quiet. I got out of bed and pulled on my shorts and slipped on a T-shirt.

“Hello, Natalia,” Mom said over the phone. “Sam hasn’t seen him … Okay … Okay … Yes, try to contact Dr. Middleton at the hospital, and I’ll call Roger and get some help … I’m sure it will all be okay … Yes, I’ll let you know.”

Mom hung up the phone and looked at me. “Get your father’s boat ready. I’ll call and tell him to come home.”

I untied the mooring lines on Dad’s boat, walked it out of the slip, and secured it to the end of the dock. I was in the stern priming the fuel bulb when I saw him hurrying around the side of the house carrying his handheld radio.

Dad stepped into the boat without a word, took off his cap, and hung it on the throttle stick. Then he started the engine as I cast us off.

“So you don’t know anything about this?” he said.

“No, sir,” I said. “He’s never even talked about his boat before.”

“The housekeeper said he was upset about something last night. When she checked on him this morning he was gone.”

“It doesn’t make any sense that he would take the boat,” I said.

“I called Jim Stockton. He’s coming up from the south end of the river, and we should be able to search this end.”

Dad shoved down on the throttle. The flats boat surged forward and leveled out, and we were soon racing down the bayou. I kept my eyes trained ahead of us, searching for any sign of Grover’s Boston Whaler. It wasn’t long before we passed his dock and I saw the cables to his lift dangling empty.

“He must have gone out on the river,” I said back to Dad.

Dad nodded and swung the boat into Bluff Creek and pointed it toward the Pascagoula. When we got to the river he slowed the boat again and studied the waterway in both directions.

“I don’t think he would have gone north,” I said.

Dad frowned. “I hope not. If he did, it’s not going to be easy to find him if he’s lost.”

Just then a voice came across Dad’s radio.

“Roger, you read me?”

Dad unclipped the handheld from his waist and brought it to his mouth.

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