CHAPTER FOUR

It was your typical commercial-building ceiling. Tiles were arranged on criss-cross metal slats, hiding the pipes and wires above.

The tiles were fake marble, as opposed to the cheap foam-board type. Mr. Rafferty had gone for a high-end look. High-end – and, for my purposes, strong. This type of tile would support my weight.

Heck’s yells grew fainter. I guessed he was stomping around different departments, searching for Gina. This bought me some time before he barged into the office.

I just hoped Gina had bought herself some time with a good hiding place.

I shoved the blueprints in a back pocket. Rummaging in the desk, I brought out a long ruler. I climbed up on the desk. Then I raised the ruler and pushed against the tile directly above me. I tipped the tile up till it slid diagonally off the ruler, on to the next tile.

The resulting hole was about twenty by twenty inches. A cinch to get through – if I could just hoist myself.

I scrubbed my sweaty palms dry against my jeans.

I jumped, grabbed for the edges of the square hole, held on. This was not as easy as it looks in the movies. Blood rushed to my face as I tried to pull myself up and through the hole. I ground my teeth together, scrunched my eyelids shut and swore.

Maybe not the standard bodybuilders’ technique, but it got one of my elbows over the rim. Then the other. I paused, gasping and swearing some more.

Outside, Heck’s yells gained volume again. For now, he’d given up on finding Gina.

“TO THE OFFICE, RAFFERTY. NOW!”

And that got me up and over the rim. With all the grace of a whale getting beached, sure. But, in the circumstances, I wasn’t worried about losing marks for presentation.

I pulled the dislodged tile back over its metal slats just as, below, a key grated in the office door’s lock.

Jon’s puzzled voice floated up past the tiles. “I don’t get it. He was here. I locked him in. Jelly has to be here.”

“ ‘Jelly’?” Heck jeered. “Maybe you’d like some ice cream and candy, too, rich boy.”

Heck resumed his off-key humming. Whatever the tune was, the writer should sue him for mangling it.

I was sprawled over the tiles – but also over a light pod set in the ceiling. If the light had been on, it would’ve blazed too bright for me to see through. Being off, the light pod was like a rain-drenched window: the three people showed through, if somewhat blurrily.

If they looked up, they’d see me. I edged my body sideways, off the light pod.

“He has to be there.” Jon was whining, like a kid who’d come down on Christmas morning sure he’d find a particular toy under the tree. Only the toy wasn’t there.

“I’ve had enough outta you,” Heck warned, and Jon fell silent.

Heck ordered Mr. Rafferty to open the safe. The storeowner sank down beside the safe. He spun the dial. I heard him whimpering.

My gut twisted for Mr. Rafferty. Too bad his son wasn’t being a bit more supportive.

Jon was busy scowling around the office. He just couldn’t accept that I wasn’t there. I had a feeling Jon was used to things going pretty much the way he wanted at all times.

Brushing past Heck, Jon marched over to the door to check the lock. Seeing if it had been jimmied, I bet.

I wondered how long it would take Jon’s wee brain to compute that I’d escaped upward. I decided not to wait around for this to happen. I’d seen enough to know what Heck’s standard response would be. Aim upward and fire.

Raising myself on all fours, I crawled away from the office, and out over the store.

I was heading for the opposite wall, which would be the front of the store. But it was not a direct route. I was in a maze. A huge silver air duct wound all over the ceiling like an overfed snake. I had to crawl a long way around one of its loops just to get back to the same spot on the other side. Black plumbing pipes jutted just over my head. Beneath me, clumps of black wires sprouted like vines. Every few feet they were bound with duct tape.

The only light I had was the dim, silvery glow from the light pods. I had to be careful with every move. All I had to do was trip over the wires, and I’d thunk down on the tiles. I was still pretty close to the office. If they heard, Jon and Heck would be on me like ants on a picnic cake.

Jon and Heck.

I’d put their names together in my mind like they were a unit. Like they were working together.

But they were on opposite sides. Heck was holding both Raffertys at gunpoint. He’d just killed their custodian.

Jon might not be Mr. Charm School, but he wasn’t the heavy in this situation. Heck was. If an opportunity came up to outsmart or overpower Heck, Jon and I would be on the same side. I had to remember that.

I just hoped Jon would.

I stopped crawling and lay down. Not because I was tired. In thinking about Jon and Heck – there I went again, linking the two of them – I’d forgotten to concentrate on where I was going.

I was totally disoriented. In a jungle of pipes and wires, I had no idea which way was which.

Then, from all sides at once, sirens screamed.

The police!

I pried a tile loose. The store’s gray light yawned up at me, dashed with whirling specks of red from the police cars outside.

I bent my head and got an upside-down view of Heck storming out of the office. “How’d the cops get here?”

In the office, Mr. Rafferty paused in filling the pillowcase with bills from the safe.

Beside his dad, Jon protested, “It wasn’t me. It had to be Jelly. Jelly called the cops.”

Except it wasn’t, much as I’d wanted to. Gina, I thought. She’d got to a cell phone somehow.

“You saw me throw down my phone,” Jon called to Heck. “It couldn’t have been me, right? It was Jelly.”

Heck just glared around, then strode back into the office.

I tried to gauge how far I was from the front of the store.

Rafferty’s took up a whole block. I was about a third of the way to the entrance. My ceiling route, jammed with pipes and wires, wasn’t exactly the fastest method of overland travel.

Behind me, I heard a skittering noise, like the scraping of claws. A mouse? If I was a mouse, I wouldn’t waste my time up here. I’d hightail it to the wide-open, unstaffed deli department.

Directly below me was a green-and-white change table, with stuffed bears grinning on top, and diaper packages and heart-decorated flannel blankets cramming the lower shelves. I was right in the oh-so-cute heart of Rafferty’s baby department.

Ahead lay kitchenware, with electronics to the right and major appliances to the le–

Wait. Rewind.

Electronics.

That’s how Gina had got to a cellphone. That’s where she was hiding. Just one section over.

I had to get to her. We could both escape.

I could jump down and land on the change table – if Heck and Jon didn’t see.

I had to take that chance.

I was about to lower myself when the front doors rattled loudly. Followed by pounding.

At the centre front door, police officers were bashing their fists against the glass.

My spirits lifted. Maybe they’d barge through. Maybe it was over.

Then, with a piercing hiss, a rifle bullet sailed right below me to the front of the store. It splintered the centre front door into a gigantic cobweb of white cracks.

The officers fell back. They ducked behind the battalion of police cars lining the curb.

Not over, I thought. Not over by – literally – a long shot.

I’d started sweating again, this time like a waterslide, without even realizing it. I was the audience for a horror movie that I badly didn’t want to watch anymore. But I had no choice.

I looked back toward the office.

Heck had grabbed Mr. Rafferty’s shirt collar. He twisted the collar into a corkscrew. Oxygen intake minimized, the storeowner turned a bright red and started gasping.

The gunman dragged Mr. Rafferty through cosmetics toward the front. He kept the point of his rifle jammed into the older man’s jowly chin. Meanwhile, he was making Mr. Rafferty carry the money-stuffed pillowcase for him.

At the end of the cosmetics aisle, Heck paused at a display of some kind. Still with his rifle on Mr. Rafferty, he grabbed a slim, square package off the display.

Holding one end of the package between his teeth, he ripped the other end open, and pulled out a pair of nylons.

Huh?

Pulling one nylon leg over his face, Heck shoved Mr. Rafferty forward again, all the way to the centre front door. He could see the police through the glass. But, with nylon distorting his features, the police wouldn’t get any kind of visual fix on him.

But where was Jon? Wouldn’t Heck want to keep Jon in his view, too?

I looked back toward the office. No Jon.

At the centre front door, Heck removed his rifle from under the storeowner’s jowly chin. He smashed the rifle butt through the splintered glass, creating a jagged hole. Through it he yelled:

“Stay clear of me, coppers. Old man Rafferty’s a bullet away from eternity.”

Heck had problems controlling his temper, to put it mildly. He’d exploded in rage when Gina snuck off.

So how come he wasn’t frazzled about Jon’s disappearance?

Jon and Heck. Their names drummed in my mind as they had before. Together, as in a unit.

Jon-and-Heck.

JonandHeck.

Maybe they were a unit, I thought. That would explain how Heck knew about Friday being the ideal day to pull a robbery. About the cash supply Mr. Rafferty built up in the safe all week.

If I was right, not only had Jon betrayed his dad; he’d put the old guy’s life at risk.

If I was right.

There was one thing that didn’t fit my theory, though.

Jon had tackled Heck, trying to overpower him. Granted, Jon had ended up slamming into the custodian by mistake, getting the guy killed in the process – but you had to give it to Jon. He had tried to resist Heck.

At least, it had looked that way.

At the moment, though, I had other things to think about. Like mice.

That skittering sound I’d heard somewhere behind me. I’d assumed it was a mouse. I’d thought: if I was a mouse, I’d be in the deli, not up here.

And that was just it.

A mouse would be in the deli.

That was no mouse I’d heard.

More like a rat.