Long lost

The man was Petey.

"Go home," I'd told him. After a lifetime of being lost, he'd done exactly that. He'd come back to Woodford. Did he ever drive by the house where we used to live? Did he ever go to the baseball field and remember that afternoon, brooding about how different his life would have been if I hadn't preferred my friends over him and sent him away from that baseball game?

Stop thinking like that! I warned myself. Get control! Guilt and regret weren't going to change the past. They were a weakness. They could get me killed. They could get Kate and Jason killed.

Petey wasn't my brother any longer.

He was my enemy.

My impulse was to crawl from my hiding place, reach the window, wait for him to step into view again, and shoot. But what if I missed? My hand was shaking enough to throw off my aim. Or what if Petey noticed me outside the window before I could pull the trigger? Suppose he ducked out of sight and used Kate and Jason as hostages? Or what if I did manage to shoot him, but Kate and Jason weren't where I suspected they were?

Shoot to wound him? How did I know the wound wouldn't be more serious than I intended? Petey might die before I could question him. I'd have lost the chance to find Kate and Jason.

Stay put. Think it through, I warned myself. If I make a wrong move, it'll be the same thing I was afraid the police would do.

I had to keep watching the house. I needed to get a sense of his patterns. When I phoned the police, it had to be at the right time.

When the situation was in my favor.

Sure. And when the hell will that be? I wondered.

In the darkness, the air was damp and chill, making me pull a woolen shirt from the knapsack and put it on. It didn't warm me. As Petey's indistinct shape prepared food in the kitchen, I told myself that I should eat also, but I didn't have any appetite. Acid burned my stomach.

Eat! I told myself. I forced a chunk of beef jerky into my mouth and reluctantly chewed. The side dish was another handful of nuts and raisins, the dessert dehydrated apples. I had thought about bringing sandwiches, but I'd been worried that they would spoil and make me ill. After all, I had no idea how long I'd have to stay in the woods and watch the house. That was why I'd brought three canteens of water. Determined to conserve it, I took only a few sips to help me swallow the dehydrated apples.

How long would the police have been willing to hide like this? I wondered. They'd have swatted at the mosquitoes buzzing around them. They'd have felt the cold seeping through their clothes, the dampness sticking their pants to their legs. They'd have thought about hot coffee and a warm bed, someone to share it with. They'd soon have lost their patience and stormed the house.

I buttoned the woolen shirt all the way to my neck but still felt a chill. Raising the binoculars again, I stared through a window, through an archway toward the kitchen, which was on the far side of the house. There, Petey continued to prepare food. Eventually, his silhouette disappeared.

My muscles cramped from not having moved in quite a while. My arms and neck ached from keeping the binoculars raised. Minutes passed. I checked the luminous dial on my watch. A quarter of an hour became half an hour. When a full hour had passed, I couldn't ignore the pressure in my bladder. I crawled back from where I was hiding, stopped among trees, and urinated close to the ground, doing my best to make as little noise as possible.

The moment I returned through the bushes, the light went out in the kitchen. I tensed, watching Petey's shadow move from room to room downstairs, turning off the lights. A minute later, one of the upstairs lights went off also. I spent an hour gazing at the remaining upstairs light. Then it, too, went out.

The sky was overcast, hiding the stars. The house remained dark. I hugged myself, trying to keep warm. My eyelids grew heavy. I fought to keep them open, turning from the house toward the murky lawn and garden in back, under which, I was certain, Kate and Jason were imprisoned. So close. Have to get to them. Have to… My eyelids fluttered shut. I sank to the ground and drifted into sleep.

14

A door banged, jolting me from a nightmare of being whipped. My eyes snapped open. I jerked my head up enough to be able to see through low bushes toward the house. The clouds had passed. The sun was behind me, glinting off windows across from me. The reflection stabbed my eyes, aggravating a headache. A breeze from the day before had strengthened, ruffling bushes. The movement of the leaves around me must have been the source of my nightmare about being whipped.

I stared toward the back of the house, where I'd heard the door bang. Petey came into view. He wore a light green shirt, which contrasted with his dark beard. I recognized the shirt. It was one that he'd stolen from me a year earlier. The wind tousled his thick dark hair. He peered around, assessing the woods, then pulled a hose from a hook on the wall and went over to the area behind the house. Watering several bushes, he confirmed my suspicion that something beneath the ground caused shallow roots in need of frequent care. The wind sometimes sprayed the water back at him, eventually a

The sun's reflection off windows prevented me from seeing what he was doing inside. After a half hour, the wind had parched my lips so much that I reached for a canteen, only to stop when I heard another door bang, this one at the front. Petey came onto the porch. He'd changed his spray-soaked green shirt for a gray one. It, too, had belonged to me. He raised his head, almost as if he was sniffing the breeze. That's what my brother had become: an animal assessing if there was danger. Because of me.

Stop thinking that way! I again warned myself.

He came down the porch steps and rounded the house, making my pulse quicken when he got into the truck and fastened his seat belt. The truck was faced in my direction but away from the sun's glare, so that I saw his beard and his stark eyes through the windshield before he made a U-turn. Dust blew as he drove down the lane, the blue of the truck soon vanishing among the windswept trees.

For a moment, I was sure that my mind had played a trick on me. Had I actually seen what I most wanted to see? Was the sound of the truck actually diminishing in the distance? For several long minutes, I didn't move. Perhaps Petey had only gone to check the mailbox at the road and would soon be coming back. Or perhaps he had somehow suspected that someone was watching the house and had driven away in order to lure an intruder into the open. As soon as I started toward the house, would he shoot me from where he'd sneaked back and was watching from the trees?

The sun rose higher. The wind grew stronger, buffeting the bushes I hid among. But it didn't cool me. Instead, the morning seemed unduly warm. Sweat dried immediately on my dust-caked cheeks. Nervous, I checked my watch and saw that fifteen minutes had passed. If Petey had merely gone to the mailbox, he'd have been back by now, I told myself. I sca

I stared toward the bushes behind the house. The police. Use the cell phone, I thought. But as I reached for it, I worried that if Petey was watching from another part of the forest, he'd hear me. Instead of muffling what I said, the wind might carry my voice directly to him.

Or what if Petey wasn't alone? What if someone else was in the house and would hear my voice as I used the phone? To prevent that from happening, I'd have to retreat several hundred yards into the forest before I felt safe using the phone, but that would mean losing sight of the farmhouse, and there was no telling what might happen while I was away.