Read Online Pod by Stephen Wallenfels - Free Book Online Page A

“You see all this crap? Comic books, a pile of clothes, looks like a sleeping bag on the floor?”
    “Man, I boosted so many cars I don’t remember.”
    “What do you remember?”
    “A kitten in a cage.”
    “A what?”
    “A kitten in back. Scrawny little thing. Smelled like pee.”
    “You left it?”
    “I’m allergic to cats.”
    Richie says, “That’s gen-u-ine sick, my friend. And you say I’m the mean one?”
    The door slams shut. More footsteps. Now Richie says, “There’s a cage but no kitten. If I didn’t know better I’d say someone has built a little nest.”
    Richie grunts. I figure he’s squeezing through the space between the SUV and the car it smashed into. Footsteps on my side of the car now. They move all the way to the driver’s door and stop.
    There’s another sound. A voice yelling in the distance.
    Richie says, “What’s he want?”
    “He says the water’s off.”
    “How’s that my problem?”
    “Don’t know. But he wants us
now
.”
    Richie says, “Yeah, well, I’m busy.”
    The driver’s door opens. The SUV drops an inch. My heart pounds so hard my head hurts. My lungs are screaming for air, which makes me wonder about Cassie. If I canbarely breathe, what about her? I want to poke her with my toe, but I don’t. Richie, his voice at floor level, says, “Bingo!” The SUV shakes. Shakes again, harder. Richie swears. He yells, “It’s locked!”
    “Can you take the safe?”
    “No. It’s welded to the floor.” A pause. I hear the click of his knife. Just that one sound makes my stomach clench like a fist. He says, “You going to stand there like an idiot, or help me find a key?”
    The passenger door opens. They start tossing things around. The noise is like a hurricane. CD cases snapping, carpet ripping, coins dumped to the floor.
    Then Hacker says, “Hey! What the—”
    There’s a thud. He groans. I think he hit ground.
    A new voice, deep, like rumbling thunder, says, “Go back to the hotel.”
    That can be only one person.
    Black Beard.
    The SUV rises. Richie says, “What’s got your panties all in a bunch?”
    Black Beard says, “Mr. Hendricks wants the men and women separated.”
    “That a fact? Who goes where?”
    “Men go to the tenth floor.”
    Richie says, “Divide and conquer. So much for one big happy family.”
    Silence.
    “Do I get to super-vise the ladies?”
    Silence.
    “I’m sorry. Does this bother you?” I hear the click of his knife. “There, you feel better now?”
    Silence.
    Richie says, “You know, my friend, you should work on your attitude. Try to com-
mu
-nicate more. You’ll never be voted Security Guard of the Month the way you’re going.”
    Silence.
    Richie says, under his breath, “Always one damn crisis after another.” The door slams. Footsteps walk fast around the SUV. They fade into the distance.
    I count two minutes. That’s all I can take. I jab my head out of the sleeping bag and take great gulps of sweet, cool air. I listen. Nothing but the buzz of the security light. I climb onto the seat, reach down to the bottom of the bag. There’s a warm ball of fur. It moves, then mews softly.
    “Cassie!” I whisper, lifting her out and holding her to my chest. Her purring engine is already starting to fire. “That was a close one. We should be more careful.”
    I don’t know how long they’ll be gone, so it’s time to act fast. I need to find that key. I’ve never fired a gun, but Zack let me hold his a couple of times. I think I can figure it out. Cassie curls up on the seat. I crawl up front and start looking.
    It’s worse up here than it sounded. The window visors are snapped off and cut to shreds. The roof liner is slashed, and the radio is hanging by a wire. Even the door panels are pulled away from the frame. They did all this in less than a minute. I try to think of places they didn’t look, butit’s hard to imagine where. I use the flashlight pen to look behind and under things, but it feels like a waste