Read Online Signal by Cynthia DeFelice - Free Book Online Page A

sleeping bags. I take one. Then, thinking it could be a cold, wet night, I take the other as well, along with an old newspaper and a book of matches. I put everything into a big garbage bag and tie the top tight.
    I notice that it’s already after six o’clock. There’s a chance Dad will be back before I am, so I scribble a quick note, saying I might be home late and he should eat without me.
    Josie watches my every move, as always, and when I put on my rain slicker, she runs to the door, her tail wagging. I don’t really feel like heading back outside, but Josie isn’t about to let a little wet weather stop her.
    “You sure you want to come, Josie?” I tease.
    She barks and scrabbles her front paws on the floor in eagerness to get going.
    “Okay,” I say, laughing, and we step outside. I strap the stuffed garbage bag on my bike, and we head down the drive toward the highway. The wind has stopped, but the rain has settled into a steady downpour.
    I pedal along, head bowed to keep the water out of my eyes, with Josie trotting alongside. As we near Mr. Powers’s store, I remember seeing yellow rain ponchosfor sale on a shelf by the door. I check the parking lot for Ray’s car, and when I see no sign of it, I decide to get one for Cam, at the risk of arousing the old man’s curiosity even more. I pull in and park my bike under the roof over the gas pump, and Josie and I go inside.
    Mr. Powers looks up from his stool behind the register and turns down the police scanner, which is blaring as usual. He says, “It appears you don’t know enough to stay in out of the rain, son.”
    “I’m in now,” I say.
    “So you are,” he observes. As usual, he reaches into the jar of Slim Jims, peels one for Josie, and feeds it to her, calling her a “good little hound dog.” He rolls a jawbreaker across the counter to me and says, “People are always complaining about kids today, how they don’t do nothin’ but sit in front of the TV or the computer screen. Far as I can tell, though,
you
don’t hardly ever sit still. Back and forth, back and forth, a couple times every day. Got your bike all loaded up when you go
thataway”
—he jerks his thumb toward the trailhead— “but it’s empty when you come
thisaway”
—he points to the highway heading toward my house. “I ask myself, what’s that boy
doin’?”
    When I don’t answer, he shrugs and says, “None of my business, of course.”
    He’s right, but I don’t think that’s going to stop him, and it doesn’t. He goes right on to say, “I got a lot of time on my hands between customers, you know, so I sit here all day listening to the scanner. A while back thesheriff got a report that somebody was in the house on the old Davie place, might be living in there.”
    He’s not asking a question, so I don’t answer, but he just keeps looking at me, and as the silence grows between us, I start to feel desperate to break it. “The old Davie place?” I repeat. To my annoyance, my voice comes out sounding squeaky. “Where’s that?”
    He grins, and I feel like I’m the mouse in a game of cat and mouse. “Right off that trail you head for every day,” he says. “Walt Christensen’s farming the place since old man Davie died and his wife went into the home.”
    I don’t know any of the people he’s talking about, and I say so.
    “But you know the place?” he persists. “Old farmhouse, up that way.” He pauses, then adds, “I expect you can’t see it from down there on the trail.”
    I shake my head, playing dumb.
    “Well, see, here’s what got me thinking,” Mr. Powers goes on. “I watch you going up that way all the time. And that big-neck fella keeps coming in, asking about a missing girl. He came back again today—”
    “What?”
I’m too freaked by this news to pretend to act cool.
“He came back?”
    Mr. Powers nods, looking pleased at my reaction. “Yessir. About a half hour ago. In that car of his, the one looks like it got shot but