Read Online Baby-Sitting Is a Dangerous Job by Willo Davis Roberts - Free Book Online Page A

knowing who was here. She’s just a kid.”
    Inside my head all kinds of alarms were going off. I hadn’t figured it out yet, but I knew it was bad. It wasn’t a game, it was real, and it was scary.
    I jerked hard to one side, and the hand slid off my mouth. “Who are you? What’re you doing?” I demanded.
    Shana pushed against the chest of the man who held her. “Put me down!” she demanded.
    The man ignored her. “Come on, let’s get out of here,” he said. “This place makes me nervous. The cops were here before, they could come back.”
    The older man gave him a quelling look. “If you two hadn’t been so stupid, they’d never have come in the first place.”
    The man behind me, the one I hadn’t yet seen and who still had my arms pinned so I couldn’t get away, put in his own comment. “We were smart enough to figure out a way in here, and it worked better than your way, Pa. What are we going to do with this one?”
    My mind was racing. I knew I ought to be memorizing descriptions of them; instead I was so scared I could hardly think straight.
    I tried to make myself calm down, but it was impossible. The man carrying Shana came on out into the hallway, and there was something about him that was sort of familiar. Frizzy reddish brown hair and pale blue eyes . . .
    All of a sudden I knew who he was, who they all were, and I blurted it out as thoughtlessly as Jeremy would have done.
    â€œYou’re Diana’s brother!” I said, and then went cold as the silence, unbroken except for Shana’s whimpering, grew around me.
    The older man swore. “All right, you smart alecks,” he said, sounding so angry I cringed away from him. “Now see what you went and done. Now we gotta get rid of the baby-sitter!”
    For a minute I thought I was going to faint. On TV, when they say things like that, they mean they’re going to drop someone in the lake, tied to a stone, or something else just as bad. We don’t have any lake near us, but there’s a river that I supposed would be just as fatal.
    The one carrying Shana—I’d finally remembered his name, he was Dan—took on anexpression that made me think I was right: they intended to dispose of me permanently.
    â€œHey, I agreed to the rest of this, but I’m not going to be up on any murder charge—”
    â€œDon’t be a sap,” the brother behind me said. “Kidnapping’s a federal offense, and you can’t get any worse than that. But we don’t need to do anything drastic. We’ll just take her along. Might be handy, to look after the kids, save us the trouble.”
    â€œAnd what’re we going to do later?” Diana’s father demanded. “She’s not only seen us, she knows who we are.” I remembered what Mr. Hazen did to Diana, the bruises he’d left on her, and I felt cold all over. If he’d hurt his own kid, he wouldn’t hesitate to hurt us.
    â€œWe’re gonna leave this part of the country anyway, aren’t we? As soon as they pay the ransom? We’ll leave her tied up or something so she can’t notify the police until we’ve had time to get out of the state. Once we’ve got money, we shouldn’t have to worry about keeping away from them. Come on, let’s get out of here.”
    He shoved me forward, and when I tried totwist free (which only hurt, and didn’t do any good) I got a look at him. Yes, it was Henry Hazen, Diana’s older brother; he and Dan looked a lot alike, except that Henry didn’t have as many freckles and he was probably five years older.
    Why had I blurted out my recognition? If they hadn’t known I’d recognized them, they’d have left me here. Tied up, maybe, but unharmed. Mrs. Murphy would have found me when she came home, and then I could have given the police their descriptions so they could go rescue the