Chase

Thirty-Four

Jeff wanted to believe they were in the clear, but they still had Bailey and Crawford to worry about.

When Daggert failed to show up in that boat with Chipper and Jeff, his associates would know something had gone wrong. So, even though they were headed back to the relative safety of Shady Acres, it really wasn’t that safe at all. The boy and the dog could not stay there long.

As the three of them approached Shady Acres, they saw two men and a woman standing at the end of the dock: Emily’s father — John Winslow — and Harry Green, from cabin number eight...

And the woman was Aunt Flo!

John grabbed hold of the boat as it reached the dock while Harry secured the front and back lines.

“Aunt Flo!” shouted Jeff, who would have been the first out of the boat if Chipper hadn’t leapt out ahead of him.

She had a slightly dazed expression on her face as she held her arms out to her nephew. As he hugged her, he said, “I was scared they’d killed you.”

Dozily, she said, “I’m still not sure what happened. But Mr. Green kind of filled me in.”

“I saw the whole thing,” Harry said. “And I brought John here up to speed, too. Whatever those men wanted, they sure got what was coming to them.” He was looking out across the lake at the still-burning boat.

“What did they want?” Emily’s father asked.

“Him,” Emily said, pointing to Chipper.

“A dog?” John said.

“You gotta be kidding,” Harry said.

Woozily, Aunt Flo said, “You know I don’t like dogs.”

Together, Jeff and Emily tried to explain what a special dog Chipper was, that he was the product of some secret government research centre. Not surprisingly, the adults were skeptical.

“We can talk to him with our phones!” Emily said. “I set it all up!”

“Come on, this is crazy,” John said.

Jeff handed John Winslow his phone. “Ask him something.”

“Ask him what?”

“Anything you want.”

Emily’s dad looked dubiously at the screen, then said to Chipper, “What’s three hundred and thirty times four hundred and ninety-one?”

Then, instantly,

Emily’s dad did a double take.

Jeff asked, “Is that right?”

He shrugged. “I have no idea.”

Emily grinned. “Trust me, it’s right.”

“No, it’s a trick,” John said. “It’s the phone answering the question, not the dog. It’s an app or something.” He thought a moment. “I’ve got a better test.” He handed the phone back to Jeff, then knelt down next to Chipper and whispered something directly into his ear that no one else could hear.

He stood and said to Jeff, “If he’s so smart, he can tell you what I told him.”

Jeff read aloud from his phone, “Emily means the world to me and I don’t want anything to happen to her.”

Emily looked as though she might tear up. She slipped an arm around her father’s waist and he drew her tightly to him. The man looked stunned. “I don’t know how this is possible.”

Harry said, “I think maybe it is, John.”

Jeff held up his phone so the others could see. “Chipper has more to say.”

They read:

“What’s he mean?” John asked.

“They’re going to keep looking for him,” Jeff said. “And I guess they’re going to be looking for me, too.”

“Just give them the dog and tell them you’re sorry,” Aunt Flo said. “Tell them you’ll never tell anybody about this!”

Harry put a hand gently on Flo’s arm. “I don’t think that’s going to satisfy them, Flo. Your nephew’s in danger. We have to get him away from here.”

Aunt Flo looked at John. “Didn’t you used to be a police officer? Can’t you do something about this?”

John looked at her helplessly. “I’ve never come up against something like this. But I know some people, I could make some calls and—”

“No,” Jeff said. “Chipper says these people from The Institute monitor all that kind of stuff. Anyway, I think Harry’s right. The part about me — about both of us — being in danger.” He put his hand on Chipper’s head. “But where do we go? How do we get there? I don’t know what to do.”

“That’s where I come in,” Harry said. “I’ll get you and the dog far enough away that you’re safe, and maybe by then we’ll have figured out what to do.”

Jeff looked at Chipper. “How does that sound?”

“It’s a deal,” Jeff said. “But how did your van get here? How did you get here?”

“I’d seen what they did to your aunt here, and I was hiding behind one of the cabins. One of them — the woman — saw that I’d stupidly left the keys in the van. She took off with it. Luckily, I’ve got a second set. When they took off up the road, I started to run after them, but I couldn’t exactly catch up to a van. A little while later, I heard this crazy, high-pitched noise coming from the woods.”

Jeff pointed to Chipper. “That was him.”

Harry grinned. “You got some howl. Anyway, it sounded like it was coming from that old train station.”

“You know about that place?” Emily asked. “I thought it was my secret.”

Harry grinned again. “I found it weeks ago when I was taking one of my nature walks. So I headed that way. About the time I got there I saw those three no-goods coming out, one limping pretty bad. Two of them left in the SUV; the one with the limp headed down this way. I went over, got my van back.”

“You’re a pretty smart guy,” Jeff said admiringly. “You know, I think we should get going.”

“I guess so,” Harry said.

“Can I have five minutes?” Jeff asked. “Chipper and I have something we have to talk about.”

Jeff led Chipper off the dock and down the shoreline about twenty yards, where there was a rock about the size of a crushed car. Jeff climbed up on it, sat down, looking out over the water and the dying fire, and patted the stone next to him so Chipper would sit there.

“You had something you wanted to tell me,” Jeff said, phone in hand.

The dog leaned into him, resting his head against Jeff’s chest, poking his nose up under his chin.

“I remember.”

“What?” Jeff put some space between them and looked into the dog’s eyes, which Jeff seriously hoped were no longer sending any images back to anybody. “Are you saying my parents worked for this place, where they turned you into some kind of dog computer?”

“I thought they did research for some drug company.” Jeff felt dizzy, like he could tumble off this rock at any moment. “Are you sure about this? I mean, you knew their names?”

“My parents told you all these things about me?”

It was all starting to come together for Jeff. “So when you escaped, you came looking for me because you knew I’d take care of you. But they must not have told you my aunt hates dogs, that she would never have let me keep you.”

A pause before Chipper said anything.

“Oh, well, fine — so you didn’t think I’d be a good one to take care of you.”

“So now I know,” Jeff said. “My parents lied to me for years. I thought they were figuring out how to make a new and improved aspirin, but instead they were working for some secret government organization that turns puppies into — into I don’t know what!”

“More?” Jeff shook his head. He wasn’t sure he could take much more. “Okay, so what else?”

“What do you mean?”

“Madam what?”

“Well, I guess they got lucky when my parents died in that plane accident,” Jeff said. He thought Chipper would have an immediate reply, but nothing came up on the screen. Jeff wondered whether the battery was running low.

But then:

Jeff felt a chill run the length of his body. “No, no, no. That was an accident. There were like, dozens of people who got killed. It wasn’t just my mom and dad. All kinds of people. Entire families got killed when that plane went down.”

“No way. This is crazy! What you’re saying... what you’re saying is... ”