Wanted! Read Online Free PDF Page B

on the wheel. The horrible sick feeling in her stomach threatened to leap up and fill her throat and mouth.
    She braked at the same time she gave it gas, goosing the car in a jerky, incompetent sort of way. People who owned Corvettes were terrific drivers who loved driving, and now in this hideous cellar for cars she would end up burying her father’s beloved Corvette.
    Could it be true? Would Dad never sit behind this wheel again, never play footsie with the state cop radar, never pride himself on how he drove way above the speed limit without getting caught?
    There.
    Two spaces next to each other.
    Alice measured the space with her eye, trying to match it against the long front end of the Vette. Prayed. Turned. Braked.
    Halfway into the slot, a cement pylon pressed up against the front bumper. The perspective must be confusing her. Other cars fit, and hers was not in fact six feet longer. It just felt that way. A mistake would smash up Dad’s car. She must not make a mistake.
    Confession, she thought dimly. What confession? E-mail. What E-mail?
    Alice inched forward until it seemed the cement pylon must be in the front seat with her. Finally she was even with the car on her left and surely that was good enough. She yanked up the parking brake. She turned off the ignition. Lifted her tired right foot from the gas. Rested her feet flat on the floor, folded her arms on the wheel as if on a pillow, and put her cheek on her arms.
    The car sat silent and dark.
    Alice did E-mail her parents constantly. It was easier for them at work than the telephone, and it was fun. She could comment on the dumbest or most profound parts of her day and her thoughts; she could slip into the school library at lunch and say Hi; she could be at the other parent’s house, and call in. She loved E-mail.
    Today she had not sent a message to either parent.
    Alice struggled to focus.
    Okay, she could make no sense of the reference to E-mail. But the disk Dad had so urgently required must have something to do with his work. Dad had access to all kinds of classified information at major corporations. That was his job—getting it back for them, or protecting it in the first place. Had Dad uncovered something he shouldn’t know? Had he found out something about a person or a company they didn’t want found out?
    But why bring the disk home? Surely he would just show it to Mr. Austin or Mr. Scote, who owned the company, and it would be their problem.
    A freak for neatness, the man’s voice had said. Drives everybody crazy with it.
    So this voice must work with Dad. Must have been driven crazy. And Alice had almost known the voice, so it was a person she almost knew, too. Alice had met few of her father’s colleagues, and Mr. Scote and Mr. Austin only a handful of times.
    If Dad had actually been killed, which was impossible, Alice would not accept this idea, but if he had, that voice had done it. Done it where? At that phone number? The one on the Caller ID display? Or in the condo? While Alice lay beneath the Corvette?
    This, too, was impossible.
    Alice massaged her arms and wrists, trying to press down the tremors that assaulted her.
    Okay, the Corvette was parked, she’d lost the cop; now what? She had to phone her mother again. Finish that conversation. Everything had gone wrong in that crazy sobbing minute over the phone. This time Alice would ask the right questions and state the right facts.
    A car slid silently into the space next to her. It was spooky and awful, the way its engine was so quiet.
    It was a van.
    Her heart slammed. Her fingers iced.
    No. It was not that van, which had been navy blue. This was a Windstar, in one of the crayon colors popular this year, driven by a very large woman who was finishing her cigarette as she heaved herself from the van. She reached back in to grind out the cigarette and then gathered an immense purse and a shopping bag from Macy’s department store.
    Alice thought: She’s returning something and