Hostage by Willo Davis Roberts Page A

I was sure.
    The trouble was, I was on the second floor, and the only stairway down would take me to where the thieves were. Dad had talked about getting one of those emergency ladders to hang out a window—in fact, he’d even ordered one, but it hadn’t come yet. I was way too high up to risk jumping; I’d break bones for sure.
    There was no roof to crawl out on, and the idea made me queasy, anyway. Jodie, with her dance training, wasn’t afraid to balance on anything a couple of inches wide. Me, I was the family klutz. I could fall off a sidewalk.
    I moved as silently as I could around to all the rooms on the top floor, checking to make sure I wasn’t overlooking any means of escape. There was nothing, and in the meantime I was hearing voices from downstairs and the scrape of something heavy across a bare wood floor.
    In the end I had to give up on getting out of the house from the second floor. I hesitated inthe upper hallway, out of sight of anyone from below, listening.
    â€œHey, look! In this cabinet here. You think this would be worth anything?”
    â€œA chess set? I dunno. It’s just wood, isn’t it?”
    â€œYeah. But I think it’s hand carved, and old. Maybe an antique.”
    Grandpa’s chess set, I thought, the outrage flooding through me anew. The one Dad’s grandfather had made from some kind of rare wood, many years ago. It was one of my father’s prized possessions. I remembered how upset he’d gotten when he’d come home one day and found Wally and one of his friends playing with it on the floor. It would be a lot worse if these thieves took it.
    â€œIt’s probably one of a kind. Might be too easy to trace,” the deeper of the two voices answered. “Maybe we’d better forget that. What do you think about that piano, though?”
    For a few seconds I didn’t hear what they said next. I saw red as my vision blurred.
    Not Jeff’s piano! He’d be heartbroken if he lost his piano, even if it was insured! It would be like losing his child. No amount of moneycould compensate for losing this one, no matter what replaced it.
    I had to find a way to stop them.
    â€œIt’s gonna be the devil to load,” the higher voice grumbled. “I don’t care if it is worth thousands. And we’d have to be careful. Nobody’s gonna pay big money for a piano if it’s scratched, so we’d have to wrap it in blankets or something. . . .”
    â€œPlenty of bedding upstairs. Let’s take it. It could bring more than all the rest of it put together.”
    â€œLet’s quit yapping and get moving. We ain’t got all day. Buddy’ll be back with the truck in a few minutes, and who knows how long that nosy old biddy will be busy with her flooded garage? Let’s go.”
    Not with Jeff’s piano, I thought. I’d have to sneak past them, somehow, and out the back door, maybe. I couldn’t just hide up here until they went away. Not if they were stealing Dad’s mountain picture and the piano. No amount of insurance would make up for their loss, not to Dad or Jeff.
    There hadn’t been a truck in sight to haulthings in when I’d entered the house. I was confused and frantic; I had to calm down enough to be logical, somehow.
    They couldn’t haul away anything like the piano unless they had a good-sized vehicle. I tried to remember what I’d heard them saying to each other. There had been a truck. Hadn’t Mrs. Banducci said there was a delivery truck earlier? Yes, she’d wanted to know what we were having delivered, and I’d said I didn’t know.
    Of course they hadn’t been delivering anything, except maybe those empty cardboard boxes. And then, for some reason, one of them had left with the truck. And . . . I dredged it up through my frightened memory. One of them had said, “Buddy’ll be back with the truck in a few