A/N:  The chase scene was just obligatory.  Carrie and Mike meet.  Heidi and Reid look at each other and share that strange expression a few times again… Chapter Twenty Eight

            I turned and looked at him in the faint light from the living room.  It was the first time that I had seen him in days.  He was still the same person.  Same face, same hair, too.  His big green eyes were alive.  But there was fear in them.  Something I’d never seen before.  And it scared me. 

            “We’ve got to find some way of making them leave the room,”  I said.  “Any ideas?”

            “None whatsoever,”  Mike replied. 

            “Great,”  I said.  “The least you could have done is watch for anything useful.”

            “Hey, I have been finding useful things,”  he countered. 

            “Oh, like what?”

            “Like-oh man!”

            “What, Mike?”  I asked him. 

            “Like the fact that you can take the sound-maker thingamajig out of that smoke detector up there.”  He pointed up at a smoke detector that I had not noticed. 

            “So?”  I asked, not getting at the significance of what he was saying.  How would a sound-maker whatever—

            “The sound-maker thingamajig, not the smoke-detecting thingy.  And the smoke detectors in the house are all connected by a network or something.  Your uncle is like a computer freak,”  he told me.  “I know because he tested the smoke detectors while I was here.  This one went off, too.”  He pointed upwards again.

            “So…so we make it go off?”  I asked.  “Good plan, but we’ll need to do it fast.”

            “Right, he told me, and stood up.  He stood on his chair, and looked closely at the thing.  “Screwdriver, please.”

            “Where  is it?”  I asked. 

            “On the table right next to you,”  he told me.  I picked it up and handed it to him.  After a few minutes, he handed me a small thing that must have been the noise-maker thingamajig.  I put it down on the table.    

            “Good work.  Now, how are we going to make it go off?”  I asked Mike. 

            “Simple.  You see that pen on the table?”

            “No, I do not see it.”

            “Feel for it, whatever.  Just give it to me, please.”

            “Okay.”  I handed it to him. 

            “Actually, on second thought, keep it,”  he told me.  “You can do this better.  Now, the pen is empty.  Hollow, I mean.  I would pass time by pushing dust into little piles on the table.  One is at the end here.  Push the dust into the end of the pen, so that it doesn’t fall out the other end.”

            “Okay, done,”  I said a minute later. 

            Out in the living room, I heard my uncle say,  “Where is that girl?”

            I hurried over to Mike.  “I don’t think I can hand it to you without spilling the dust,”  I said.  He got down.

            “Okay, you  can get up,” he said, indicating the chair, which I could just barely see in the dim glow from the outside. 

            “Okay, so, what, I just blow it at the smoke detector?”  I asked once I had climbed up.

            “Yep,”  he said. 

            “Very simple plan,”  I said facetiously.

            “Elementary, my dear Carrie,”  he told me in his best Sherlock Holmes voice.

            “Yeah, Whatever,”  I replied.  “Okay.  Here goes.”

            I blew the dust out the other end of the pen, right into the smoke detector.  All of a sudden, I heard a beeping sound from every other smoke detector in the house.  We had done it!

            I saw my parents and uncle jump up in the living room.  They looked like they were arguing for a minute, then they headed for the door.  My Mom stayed behind, and my uncle indicated the back door, which (oops!) I had left partially open.  He must have been telling her that I was outside, I was alright.  Once they had all left the house,  I turned to Mike. 

            “Well, we have a few minutes, but scratch the “he never knew we left” thing,”  I said. 

            “So,”  he asked me.  “How do we get out?”

            “What?  We just unlock the door, of course, and slip out the back door.”

            “But the lock’s not on this side,”  he said.  My heart skipped a beat.

            “What?”  I asked him.

            “You mean, you didn’t see it on the outside?  All that’s in here is a keyhole.”

            I relaxed.  “Then don’t worry, I brought a key.  Don’t scare me like that.  Let’s get moving.”

I opened the door for us, and we slipped out.  We went out the back door, following the plan.  When we were safely in the yard, I looked out toward the fields.         

            “Mike!”  Melonie whisper-shouted.  “Thank goodness.”

            We joined up and went through the neighbor’s yard.  Reid had parked his Le Baron further down the street. 

            Mike looked at Reid and Heidi.  “Who are you?”  he asked.  He looked at me questioningly. 

            “Friends,”  I answered. 

            It was great.  It was fantastic.  We had gotten Mike out.  He was free.  We were awesome!

            Unfortunately, we had forgotten one thing:  my uncle.

“What?!?!?!?” a voice out of nowhere.

            We spun around.  There, in the night, was Uncle Sean. 

            “Uh-oh,”  I said.  We dashed back into the fields, but I could hear him right behind us.  Did he have a gun?  Was this dogged pursuer really my uncle Sean?

            “Just how far is it to this car?”  Mike gasped, as we ran.  “I’m wiped out.”

            “Just a.. little-farther,”  Reid managed to get out.

            We ran for all we were worth.  In a few seconds, the others turned onto a different path.  We were headed towards the road.  I could see Reid’s car, like a beacon of hope.  We hauled, and

BANG!

            A gunshot!

            FLIT!  The bullet went whisking harmlessly over our heads.  But I wasn’t fool enough to count on that happening from now on.  We reached the car.   People piled in. 

            BANG!

            FLIT!

            The car pulled away from the curb.

            We were safely in…

            Except for Heidi.

            And Mike.

            And me!

Chapter Twenty Nine

            “Back!”  Heidi shouted.  “To the fields.”

            We turned, because Sean was on the road.  He was reloading.  We knew that wouldn’t last.  It was breezy that night, so the swishing of our passage was swallowed up in the whispering grasses, and we didn’t talk.  I guess we thought that would make it harder for him to find us. 

BANG!

FLIT!

            So much for that idea!  We ran on in the weeds, never pausing.  We saw the car with the others in it on the road.  It stopped.  Window rolled down.

            Tim stuck his head out.

            “Hey, idiot!”  he yelled.  Our pursuer turned to him for a second, and we used that time to double our speed. 

Don’t be an idiot, Tim! I wanted to shout.  Don’t draw his attention to yourself.  We shot over a hill, and into a little ravine at the far end.  Behind us, we heard the sounds of Mike’s kidnapper preparing another round of ammo. 

            Suddenly, Heidi pulled us both down.  We dropped, almost noiseless, as the breezes intensified.  She pulled us into a little hollow she’d found next to a spring.  The spring gurgled and got my shirt wet, but Uncle Sean ran on past us. 

BANG!

            We didn’t hear anymore, as he ran in the direction he’d seen us going.  We breathed.  I looked around.  The little valley between hills we were in lead right to a house’s backyard.  We got up and carefully ran down to the road. 

            “Where do we go now?”  I asked.

            “I don’t-“ Heidi began.

            At that point a car pulled up beside us.  A very familiar car.

            My mom rolled down the passenger’s side window in my dad’s car. 

            “Well, get in, hurry,”  she told us. 

            We got in.  My dad drove the car about twenty miles and hour over the speed limit out of that neighborhood.  It took us about two minutes.  At the place where it joins the main road, he stopped.  I wondered what he was stopping for. 

My mom turned to us in the back seat. 

“I heard that little phone call you made, Carrie,”  she told me.  “And thank goodness.”

  Reid pulled up in his old Le Baron, glad to see us.

            “Sorry I took off before you could get in back there,” Reid told us.  “I hope you’re okay?”

            “Fine,”  I said.  “Now, why don’t we leave?”

            “Good idea,”  Mike told me. 

            And we did.

Chapter Thirty

            Well,  I doubt you’d believe me if I told you that Uncle Sean was never seen again, and we all lived happily ever after.  He was seen again, the very next day.  He walked into the police station for work the next morning, and found himself in handcuffs.  We didn’t hear anything about a certain date for the trial at that point, and I hope I don’t ever have to go testify.  But what are the odds of that?

            Anyway, we got Mike home, where his and Melonie’s parents had just gotten back too as well, and found an empty house.  Needless to say, they were overjoyed to see both Melonie and Mike home, safe and sound.  Turns out, the police had been questioning them because they thought they had something to do with Mike’s disappearance.  They changed their opinion when we told them our story. 

            We took Tim to his friend Shane’s house, where he was staying until his parents could come back to town. 

            Finally, we went home.  I climbed the stairs to the second floor, ready to collapse into bed.  Mom beat me to my room door. 

            “Hi,”  I said stupidly.

            “Hello, young lady,”  my mom answered.  Uh-oh.

            “Thanks for helping us tonight.  We needed it,”  I told her.

            “Yes, you did,”  she said.  She looked like she was going to say more, but then she saw that I was really, really tired, I guess, so she let me into my bedroom.  And I collapsed into bed, finally.

*   *   *

            The next day, Mike took a break from school.  Friday, however, he was back, and the same guy again.  Everyone crowded around him, wanting to know what it was like and if he was okay.  He handled his new celebrity with the ease of a movie star, and by the end of the day had risen to the rank of Most Popular Person In School.  Melonie, Tim, and I watched with amusement.  Good old Mike was at it again.

            Our parents were so glad to have Mike back that mine totally forgot to ground me.  Cool, eh?  

            That Saturday, after we had finished mowing and raking and fertilizing Heidi’s lawn (which Mike helped with), we went to the mall.  All of us, all together.  We decided to see a movie at the cinema, but the line had about a million people in it.  We waited thirty minutes, then when the line had cleared out, got tickets for a movie that had started about twenty minutes ago.  Fortunately, we had all seen it before. 

            I think Reid and Heidi were kind of treating this like a date, even with all of us kids tagging along, because they kept stealing these little glances at each other. 

            As we moved to the front of the popcorn line, I met Mike’s eyes.  I smiled.

            “Hey, Mike?” I asked him.

            “What?”

            “Try not to get kidnapped again anytime soon,” I told him.

            He laughed, with a smile in his large green eyes.

            “I’ll try,” he told me, flipping his hair back.  “I will try.”

A/N:  Okay, that was the only mystery story I have ever written in my life.  Please review; should I write more?