Girl Fights Back (Go No Sen) (Emily Kane Adventures) by Jacques Antoine

he could do was start a fire
in the woodshed. That would be hot enough to obscure their identities for a
while. He also half hoped Emily would see the fire and come back early. When he
returned to the main house, Yuki stood in the doorway as he approached
glowering at him.
    “Where is she?” she demanded.
George looked at his shoes and took a step a backward, as if afraid she would
strike him.
    “She’s out there,” he said nodding
to the woods.
    “What were you thinking, leaving
her out there at a time like this?!”
    “She’s on her way back,” he said
defensively, trying to sound confident. “She’ll be here soon.”
    “If anything happens to that
girl...,” Yuki snarled turning back into the house.
    Michael loaded Yuki’s things into
the cab of an old pickup truck and motioned to George to bring her out.
“There’s not much time. We gotta go now!”
    Yuki was reluctant to leave without
at least seeing Emily. Anyone could read the anxiety written across her face.
George’s attempts to reassure her did not rise to the level of persuasion, nor
did Michael’s supportive facial expressions. In the end, Yuki understood the
necessity of leaving right away. She knew Michael had made arrangements to keep
them all safe, and they depended on decisive action. She got in the truck,
rolled down the window, looked George in the eye and growled: “Find her. Keep
her safe.” He felt the full force of her anger and frustration.
    “I will,” he said.
    Michael drove off with Yuki,
leaving George watching after them in the driveway. He followed them as long as
he could still see their tail lights. They passed through the main gate, turned
right and disappeared behind the front hedge. They would head over to Route 64
and then go west through West Virginia and Kentucky, changing vehicles several
times along the way.
    George went into the garage and
rolled out an old dirt bike. He concealed it in the woods behind the main
house. His plan was to put Emily on the back and ride out along some old
logging trails through the forest, slip into the Monongahela Forest in West
Virginia, switch to a car he had already stashed in Mill Creek, a little town
on the edge of the park. Now he just had to find her.
    The sky was just beginning to get
light. It was probably approaching five am. He began to worry he would not be
able to find Emily in time. Yuki was right. He had blundered, sending her out
into the woods by herself. But he hadn’t known what else to do. He couldn’t
risk having her go with Michael and Yuki. That is, he was afraid to put
everything that mattered to him in one car. He knew she’d be safe in the woods,
no one would find her out there. If he had not been able to return from the
meeting with Porter, he needed to know she’d be safe, at least for a little
while. But after that, she’d be on her own. He had imagined the worst
contingency and tried to prepare for that. But now things were looking to be
not quite so dire, he realized the inadequacy of his plan. If he only had more
time, several hours perhaps, he could track her, maybe find her, though with
every weekend spent in the woods she was getting harder to track. As it was, he
wasn’t sure he had even ten minutes.
    George went into the main house and
set fire to the curtains in the living room. He spread gasoline from a large
gas can. He hoped if Emily saw the fire, she would know something was wrong and
come back from the woods. It was a desperate move, he had no other way of
getting her attention. But the fire did not spread fast enough.
    He went back out to the driveway to
keep a lookout for Emily. He scanned the tree line at the edge of the north
lawn for any sign of her. Out of the corner of his eye he spotted movement in
the hedges to the left of the main gate. There was no way that could be her. Meacham’s
tactical team was already here!
    George ducked behind the garage. If
only they hadn’t seen him, he might be able to seize some slight