Лори Касс - Booking The Crook

Piece of cake.

“Keep going,” I said, and forced myself to smile at my own inside joke. Not that it was funny, but poking fun at Stewart made me feel a little better, and at this point, that was enough.

I hunched down low enough to be fairly sure the top of my head was out of sight of the bookmobile’s side mirror and crab-walked across the road to the bookmobile’s rear bumper. If I tried to get in the side door, the door we used ninety-nine percent of the time, odds were good that the motion of opening the door would catch Stewart’s attention, which was pretty much the last thing I wanted to do since he was bigger, stronger, and almost certainly still had that gun.

That left the door in the rear of the bookmobile, the door that provided access to the handicapped lift. Most people didn’t even know it was there, and I prayed Stewart was one of them.

I reached up with shaking fingers and flipped open the tiny door, revealing the keypad, and also revealing my complete inadequacy as a human being. Because I couldn’t remember the code. Couldn’t remember the last time I’d used the code. Couldn’t remember when I’d last used this entrance. I couldn’t remember anything, I was going to freeze to death out here, Eddie was going to freeze and—

“Stop that,” I whispered.

And then remembered the four-digit code. It was the day I’d started working at the library, June 14, better known to the keypad as 0614. How could I have forgotten? I tapped out the numbers and waited for the quiet chunk of an unlocking door.

Nothing happened.

“Don’t do this,” I muttered and tapped the numbers again.

Still nothing.

On my third time through, it occurred to me that my fingers were too freaking cold to make the thing work. It seemed like I was pushing hard enough, but I’d lost most of the feeling in my fingers long ago and it was hard to tell. I considered and discarded the idea that the cold was a problem for the mechanism, because I had no way around that. But if it was just me . . .

Still hunched down, I inched backward into the dark. When I was convinced that Stewart wouldn’t be able to catch my movements through any of the mirrors, I skittered across the ditch and into the cedar trees, where fallen branches were strewn across the snow.

I picked up a stick that was a half inch in diameter, stepped on it to break off a foot-long length, and hurried back to the bookmobile. With one end of the stick positioned against my shoulder, I aimed the other end at the keypad and pushed 0.

A glorious beep filled my ears. This was going to work; it was really going to work! Grinning, I punched the rest of the code and heard the sweet sound of the lock unsnicking. “I’m coming, Eddie,” I breathed softly. “Just hang on.”

My fingers still weren’t working for beans, so I pushed at the door handle with the side of my palm, lifting it up. It clicked open so noisily that I crouched down even smaller.

All I heard was a string of curse words coming from the front, words that sounded a lot like what had gone through my head when I’d found Stewart’s SUV locked. His dealt more with the uselessness of snow tires and the weight of books, but the gist was the same.

He shifted the transmission back and forth, back and forth, but there was nothing for the tires to grip except icy snow, a substance notorious for being gripless.

I slowly cracked open the back door, waited until he was in the middle of a shift, and slithered inside, or with as close to a slither as I could do being nowhere near the skinniness of a snake and half frozen to boot.

The mechanism of the wheelchair lift provided some visual shelter from Stewart’s view, but as soon as all of me was on board, I clicked the door shut and scurried behind the rear desk. For a moment I hunched back there, panting as quietly as I could while a semblance of warmth crept back into my limbs. It wasn’t exactly toasty back there, but at least it was out of the wind. I tried to flex my hands and was cheered to see my fingers obey my mental command by moving all of an inch.

Excellent. Though it would take more time for my fingers and toes to warm up than I had to spare, at least I had some control.

“Mrr?”

I heard the double thump of Eddie’s feet as he jumped up onto the desk and looked up to see him looking down at me. With an index finger that I couldn’t completely straighten, I made the universal Shhh! gesture. Of course, since I was making it to a cat, there was a large chance the gesture wasn’t nearly as universal as I’d like, but there wasn’t much else I could do.

“Mrr,” Eddie said softly.

We’ll get out of this, I promised him silently. Don’t know how exactly, but we’ll be fine.

Up front, Stewart was still focused on shifting back and forth. I tried not to think about the damage he could be doing to the transmission and unhooked the bungee cord that held the desk chair in place. The warmer I got, the more my brain was starting to work. If I was lucky, soon I’d be able to do simple addition. And since that was the only kind of addition at which I was competent, that would clearly mean my mental ability was at full capacity.

Two plus two is four , I thought to myself. Four plus four is eight . A plan was starting to gel, but what if it was a horrible plan conjured up by a panicking librarian? If I waited a little longer, would I come up with a better plan?

Eddie oozed down to the floor. His mouth opened in a silent “Mrr” as he whacked my ankle with the side of his head.

I let my hand rest on his back for a short moment, thinking how sorry I was to have gotten him into this mess, but at the same time I was grateful for his presence. His warmth seeped into my palm, and my fingers started to tingle with what would be a painful coming-back-to-life process.

But there was no time to think about that. At some point Stewart would abandon his pointless efforts, and when he turned, he would see me. I had to make my move and I had to make it now.

Taking a deep breath, I rolled the chair in front of me and, on my knees, started the long journey forward.

Since Stewart was taller than I was, I couldn’t be sure what he could see in the rearview mirror. Would he see more floor or more ceiling? If it was ceiling, I was fine. If it was floor . . . well, if he glanced up, it would take him a moment to register why the chair was there and why it was moving, and I’d have to take advantage of that pause.

I tried to work out the mirror angles in my head but didn’t like the conclusion, so I stopped thinking about it.

Inch by slow inch, I moved ahead, around all the fallen items, past the children’s books and puppets, past the magazines and DVDs, past the young adult books, and into the nonfiction and adult fiction. The plastic runner we put down on the carpet in winter was blessedly quiet under my knees and I moved as fast as I could.

Questions kept popping into my head, questions for which I desperately wanted answers but had no way of getting:

Where was the gun?

What was Eddie doing?

How long was Stewart going to keep trying to rock the bookmobile?

What would he do next?

And back to, Where was the gun?

The bookmobile lurched backward. “Hah!” Stewart shouted. “I knew I’d get it!”

My mouth went dry. This was not part of the plan. The plan could not be carried out if the bookmobile was moving. If that happened, I’d have to come up with another idea and this one was already on the outside edge of possible. What could—

There was another lurch. The bookmobile rolled back to where it had been and settled in for a long winter’s nap.

Stewart cursed a long colorful streak, then growled out, “If I did it once, I can do it again,” and dropped the transmission into Drive.