Meg Cabot - Code Name Cassandra

These were, of course, the unavoidable consequences of being kicked in the face. I couldn't really hold the contusions against him, fashion-wise. It was the razor stubble and the halitosis that he really could have done something about.

"Look," I said, stepping in front of Shane. "Mr. Larsson, I can appreciate that you might be upset with me."

It might interest you to know that, at this point, my heart wasn't beating fast or anything. I mean, I guess I was scared, but usually, in situations like this, I don't tend to realize it until the whole thing is over. Then, if I'm still conscious, I usually throw up, or whatever.

"But you have to understand"—as I spoke, I was backing up, pushing Shane slowly toward one of the other tunnels that branched out from the cavern we were in—"I was only doing my job. I mean, you have a job, right?"

Looking at him, of course, I couldn't think what kind of moron might have hired him for any job. I mean, who would willingly employ anybody who gave so little thought to his personal grooming and hygiene? Look at his shirt, for Pete's sake: it was stained. Stained with what I really hoped was chili or barbecue sauce. It was certainly red, whatever it was.

But whatever: Clearly, a complete lack of adequate forethought had gone into Clay's ensemble, and I, for one, considered it a crying shame, since he was not, technically, an unattractive man. Maybe not a Hottie, but certainly Do-able, if you got him cleaned up.

"I mean, people call me up," I said, continuing to back up, "and they say their kid is missing or whatever, and I, well, what am I supposed to do? I mean, I have to go and get the kid. That's my job. What happened today was, I was just doing my job. You're not really going to hold that against me now, are you?"

He was moving slowly toward me, the beam from his flashlight trained on my face. This made it kind of hard for me to see what he was doing, other than inexorably coming at me. I had to shield my eyes with one hand, while, with the other, I kept pushing Shane back.

"You made Darla cry," Clay Larsson said in his deep, really quite menacing voice.

Darla? Who the heck was Darla?

Then it hit me.

"Yes," I said. "Well, I'm sure Mrs. Herzberg was quite upset." I wanted to point out to him that I had it on pretty good authority that he, in fact, had probably made Keely's mother cry a lot more often than I had—throwing bottles at people tends to do that—but I felt at this juncture in our conversation, it might not be the wisest thing to bring up.

"But the fact is," I said instead, "you two shouldn't have taken Keely away from her father. The court awarded him custody for a reason, and you didn't have any right to—"

"And"—Clay didn't seem to have heard my pretty speech—"you broke my nose."

"Well," I said. "Yes. I did do that. And you know, I'm really sorry about it. But you did have hold of my leg, remember? And you wouldn't let go of it, and I guess, well, I got scared. You aren't going to hold a grudge against me for that, are you?"

Evidently, he had every intention of doing so, since he said, "When I'm through with you, girlie, you're gonna have a new definition for scared."

Definition. Wow. A four-syllable word. I was impressed.

"Now, Mr. Larsson," I said. "Let's not do anything you might regret. I think you should know, this place is crawling with Feds. . . ."

"I saw 'em." I couldn't see his expression because of the light shining in my eyes, but I could hear his tone. It was mildly ironic. "Runnin' toward that burning van. Right before I saw you and your friends outside." He seemed to be grinning. "I was glad when I saw you were the one who went in."

"Oh, yeah?" I didn't know what else to say. Keep him talking, was all I could think to do. Maybe Ruth or one of the boys would hear him, and run for help. . . .

That is, if we weren't too deep underground for them to hear us.

"I like caves," Clay Larsson informed me. "This is a real nice one. Lots of different ways in. But only one way out … for you, anyway."

I did not like the sound of that.

"Now, Mr. Larsson," I said. "Let's talk this over, okay? I—"

"Couldn't have picked a better place for what I got planned if you'd tried," Clay Larsson finished for me.

"Oh," I said, gulping. My throat, which had been having a tendency lately, I noticed, to run a little on the dry side, felt like the Sahara. Oh, yeah, and remember how I said my heart wasn't beating fast?

Well, it was. Fast and hard.

"Um," I said. "Okay." I tried to remember what I'd learned in counselor training about conflict resolution. "So what I hear you saying, Mr. Larsson, is that you are unhappy with the way I took Keely from you—"

"And kicked me in the face."

"Right, and kicked you in the face. I hear you saying that you are somewhat dissatisfied with this turn of events—"

"You hear that correctly," Clay Larsson assured me.

"And what I would like to say to you"—I tried to keep my voice pleasant, like they'd said to in counselor training, but it was hard on account of how hard I was shaking—"is that this disagreement seems to be between you and me. Shane here really had nothing to do with it. So if it's all right with you, maybe Shane could just slip on out—"

"And run for those Fed friends of yours?" Clay Larsson's tone was as disgusted as mine had been pleasant. "Yeah. Right. No witnesses."

I swallowed hard. Behind me, I could feel Shane's breath, hot and fast, on the back of my arm. He was clinging to the belt loops of my jeans, strangely silent, for him. I wouldn't have minded a reassuring belch, but none seemed forthcoming. Under the circumstances, I regretted the crack I'd made about his hair.

Could I stall long enough to get Shane into a position so he could make it through one of those tunnels and escape? The opening I'd followed him through was way too narrow for Clay Larsson to fit into. If I could just distract him long enough …

"This isn't," I pointed out, "the way to go about ensuring that Mrs. Herzberg gets visitation rights, you know. I mean, a court of law would probably look askance at her sharing a household with a guy who had, um, attempted murder."

Clay Larsson asked, "Who said anything about attempted?"

And suddenly, the light that had been in my eyes danced crazily against the ceiling as Clay Larsson lifted the flashlight, with the intention, I supposed, of bringing it down on my head.

I screamed, "Run!" to Shane, who wasted no time doing so. He popped through the narrow tunnel behind us quicker than anybody in Alice in Wonderland had ever plunged down a rabbit hole. One minute he was there, and the next he was gone.

It seemed to me like following him would be pretty smart. . . .

But first I had to deal with this heavy flashlight coming at me.

Being small has its compensations. One of them is that I'm fast. Also, I can compress myself into spaces otherwise unfit for human occupation. In this case, I ducked behind this stalactite/stalagmite combo that had made a sort of calcite pillar to one side of the hole Shane had slipped through. As a result, Clay Larsson's flashlight connected solidly with the rock formation, instead of with my head.

There was an explosion of stone shards, and Clay Larsson said a very bad word. The calcite formation split in half, the stalactite plunging from the ceiling like an icicle off the gutter. It fell to the floor with a clatter.

As for me, well, I kept going.

Only along the way, somehow, I dropped my flashlight.

Considering what happened next, this might have been for the best. Clay, seeing the bright white beam, swung his own flashlight—with enough force for it to make a whistling noise as it sailed through the air—in the direction he thought I was standing. There was another loud clatter, this one from his heavy metal flashlight as it connected with the cavern wall.