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around, she was nowhere in sight. Strolling along the front of the store, I looked down every aisle but still didn’t spot her. I began to wonder if maybe I’d been wrong about seeing her in the parking lot, but a quick glance out through the floor-to-ceiling windows on the front of the store showed her ugly eyesore of a car still there. She was here somewhere, and I’d find her if I had to take over the intercom and yell out for her. I laughed at, thinking she’d be as embarrassed as Ronnie was that time we took off for the gaming section in Wal -mart, and his brother’d had someone call for him that way. You’d have thought we were three instead of thirteen at the time. I ribbed him about it for a week until he found a way to get me back.
     
    While I stood there near the registers with people moving past me to get to the shortest lines, I started getting this funny feeling, like someone was watching me. Considering where I was, I dismissed it and started back along the aisles, but the feeling refused to go away.
     
    Trying to be nonchalant, I scanned the area around me and began thinking maybe Mrs. Knowles had seen me following her in here, and she was hiding while watching me look for her. I mean the woman was strange after all. That steel wool-like bluish hair, frumpy clothes, and penchant for ignoring knocks on her door, didn’t put her in the normal category, in my book.
     
    At last I found her. She was at the other end of the crackers and cookies aisle, gesturing and moving her lips like she was talking to someone. Grateful that there were a couple people in the aisle, I made it half way down, staying out of sight. When I came within hearing distance of Mrs. Knowles, I stopped beside a cardboard display with the latest double chocolate fudge wafers on sale. For a minute, I was distracted, mentally counting up the amount of money I had in my purse to see if I could snag a package, but then I shook my head to focus on what Mrs. Knowles was saying.
     
    If only I had that freakish super hearing thing going on that I had that one night, it would be easy. I strained harder, forcing myself to concentrate, to block out all other sounds around me except for Mrs. Knowles’ voice.
     
    “She’s awakening more and more every day,” Mrs. Knowles was saying. My chest tightened for no reason as I wondered who she was talking about...and to whom. The other person must have said something, but I couldn’t even pick up a whisper.
     
    I opened my eyes which had drifted closed when I concentrated. The closer I inched to the her , the more Mrs. Knowles and whoever it was repositioned so that I couldn’t see the other person. Not even a hand or a piece of clothing.
     
    Did she know I was there? Did she want me to hear her?
     
    Mrs. Knowles continued. “She’s valuable. You know that. She can be used. The others won’t stop until they get her. If they know for sure that—”
     
    Someone bumped me, and I almost went flying over the display I’d been crouched behind pretending to tie my shoe. I glanced up in irritation, ready to tell whoever it was off, but no one was there. I searched up and down the aisle. All the customers that had been there before were gone. Swinging around to where Mrs. Knowles was, I growled under my breath to find her and the person she’d been talking to gone.
     
    “Of all the stupidest—” I bolted to the end of the aisle and looked up and down. Almost running, I searched the store, but Mrs. Knowles was nowhere in sight. Checking my watch, I realized that the bus I’d been waiting on outside, had most likely left. I’d be standing out in the heat of the sun for another twenty minutes for the next one. I could so cuss my head off right about then.
     
    While I thought about whether to call it a day or look for Mrs. Knowles one more time, if nothing else than to see who she had been talking to—the old woman had never been sociable and never had visitors to her house that I knew