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have it warm, with ice cream.”
    “I’ll have the same,” Mrs. Stenson said.

Chapter Five
    One hundred miles east of Pine Ridge, in a service station near the freeway, Mr. and Mrs. Crowley, T.J.’s neighbors, listened while a mechanic explained what was wrong with their car.
    “How long will it take you to fix it?” Mr. Crowley asked.
    “Not long. An hour or two.”
    “Good. We’ll go get a bite to eat and come back.”
    “Better not come until after breakfast tomorrow,” the mechanic said. “It won’t take me long to fix it, but I can’t get the part I need until morning.”
    Mr. Crowley looked at his wife and sighed. “We’d better find a motel,” he said.
    “I’ll have to call T.J. again,” Mrs. Crowley said. “He’ll need to feed the animals tomorrow morning, too.” She putthe call on her credit card and let it ring a long time before she hung up.
    “We can try again after we eat,” Mr. Crowley said.

    T.J. rode in silence, hoping to hear sirens at any moment. By now, he thought, Mom and Dad are home. Maybe the Crowleys are home, too. They’ve found Grandma Ruth and called the police and every cop in the state is searching for me.
    Soon a squad car will pull us over. Soon Brody will see blue lights flashing in his rearview mirror and hear the shrill scream of the highway patrol car’s siren. Soon this nightmarish ride will end.
    He listened and listened but he heard only the rattling of the old blue truck.

    Grandma Ruth sang “Holy, Holy, Holy” three times. She sang “The Old Rugged Cross” twice. She sang “Nearer My God To Thee.”
    She was going to sing “Holy, Holy, Holy” again but her throat was getting scratchy. She needed a cup of tea or a drink of water.
    She looked around the empty barn. She wondered why David didn’t come. Or had he been here and left? Was he waiting for her at home? She couldn’t remember.
    Putting her hat on the floor, she lay down on the hay to rest. Before long, she shivered. It was cold in this church and she couldn’t think why she was here. The preacher had left long ago. She decided to go home and fix herself a bowl ofnice, hot vegetable soup. That would take the chill from her bones.
    Grandma Ruth stood, stretched, and walked to the door of the barn. She had to use both hands and push with all her strength to make the door slide open. She stepped outside, surprised to see that it was dark out. She had better hurry. Edward would be home from work and wondering why there was no dinner on the table. Her husband was a patient man, but he did like his meals served on time. She closed the door carefully behind her and set off down the road.

    Pound, pound, pound.
    T.J. heard a dull, steady noise.
    The truck was idling again. Another red light, no doubt. T.J. moved his neck from side to side, trying to work the kinks out.
    Pound, pound, pound. He strained his ears, trying to figure out what the throbbing sound was. Pound, pound.
    A stereo! The pounding noise was the bass notes of a stereo. Every nerve in T.J.’s body was instantly alert, as if he had just been plugged into an energy socket. If there was music nearby, there had to be people. Kids, probably, walking along with a boom box. Or another car, with the radio volume turned up so high that the bass notes carried right through the closed windows of the truck.
    The noise seemed to come from his left. T.J. sat up, looking quickly in that direction. Through the window on the driver’s side, he saw the source of the music. A minivan was stopped beside the truck, waiting to make a left turn. The driver of theminivan nodded his head and snapped his fingers in time to the music. He didn’t look toward T.J. and the truck.
    “Get back down,” Brody said.
    T.J. ducked down again. His mind sped faster than a downhill skier in the Olympic Games. He could jump out. He could hitchhike to a telephone and call the police.
    But what if Brody whipped the gun out of his pocket the second T.J. opened the door?