Bones in the Sand, Julie Steimle [best books to read for students .TXT] 📗

peeking back at Jeff who nodded with a sheepish shrug, hands in pockets.

"Oh."

But Brian felt somehow that her answer had not been quite honest - especially how Jeff shared an approving look with Zormna that seemed so out of character.

The movie, much to its credit, was just as ludicrous as the first one. The entire group left the movie laughing, including Zormna. It wasn't the usual monster-alien-comes-to-destroy-the-world kind of movie that she so despised. It was more the adventurer-in-an-ancient-space-alliance-meeting-strange-yet-good-creatures-fights-evil-nemesis-and-saves-the-universe type movie. She liked those. It allowed for people from outside Earth to be decent and for aliens not to be so strange in comparison to humans. The movie countered everything she had read in War of the Worlds that day, and it made her feel good.

The seven friends parted ways in the mall parking lot. Brian and Joy took their truck home. Mark rode with Jonathan and Adam. Jeff and Zormna were left to the darkness and his motorcycle.

Jeff drove Zormna home, delivering her to her door near one o'clock in the morning. Zormna parted with a simple good-bye then closed and locked the door. And the FBI agents watched Jeff ride off to his neighborhood where they waited for the report that Jeff had made it to his home and had gone to bed.

<<The boy's here. He's parking his bike,>> the report from the radio came in. <<He's going into the house. His uncle meets him at the door.>> They pause. <<Ok, he's in.>>

They waited in the cold night. That was the most important hour. Agent Sicamore feared that the two teens would take advantage of the cold and sneak out at night to do who-knows-what. The agents who had traced them at the mall had waited through the long movie in the cold with barely any sign that they were up to anything unusual, but they waited because the mall was the place those two had snuck away from them the last time Jeff and Zormna had interfered with an out-of-state operation. But this time, they got nothing. Instinctively, however, they felt that things were too quiet.

Frankly, Agent Sicamore was getting anxious. It seemed too good to be true that the two alien irritants actually were clueless to their operation in Arizona. In fact, the pair had seemed so on top of things involving the Florida operation, this silence was peeling away at his nerves like acid. Though he hoped that maybe they had finally managed to rout out the moles in their operations, he still wondered at how Jeff's operation kept such perfect tabs on his parents. Agent Sicamore had relocated them three times now, and each time Jeff had managed to send him a message letting the FBI agent know Jeff's alien operation knew exactly where the Sicamore's were living. So they waited and watched as carefully as possible. Agent Sicamore hoped the pair was letting their guard was down - though he did not trust that hope. In the frigid, still morning, the agents on duty kept their eyes open as they kept warm by electric blankets and thermal underwear.

The lights in Zormna's house went out, and the same was reported at Jeff's place, as it happened yesterday. The same day in and day out. Nothing out of the ordinary. One of the agents yawned with a deep wish that he could sleep.

Morning.

The sun rose and drew long shadows in the snow. The two FBI operatives were ready to be relieved by the agents taking over for the day shift. It was six am, and the house was still, cold, and silent much like the rest of the street. Nothing. It was Saturday and everyone on the street would sleep in except for the paperboys.

The paperboy delivered his papers at seven a.m. He tossed a plastic bagged paper at Zormna's front step. It bumped against the front door. She didn't come to get it. But then it was Saturday, and she probably was sleeping in from being awake too late the night before. Besides, she usually spent her Saturday mornings doing exercises in her living room - most of it various martial arts stretching, repetitions and weight lifting. She usually did it to music that Jeff had lent her.

The relief crew came at eight am. Agent Hayworth got comfortable in his seat next to his partner, Agent Simms, sipping his morning coffee while watching the other car take themselves to warmer places. The two long-standing agents on the project watched the front door, also keeping eyes on windows and possible motion in the back. They had an angular view of the house, so they could see enough from their vantage point. So far all they got was a show of the Asher kids going out to make a snow man, with Darren shoveling the walk.

"It's ten a.m." Agent Simms said, checking his watch with a peek at her front window. He didn't even see a shadow of her through the curtains doing exercises. "Zormna never sleeps in this late."

Agent Hayworth shrugged, sipping more of his coffee. "Perhaps she is awake but staying in her room today. She has six chapters of War of the Worlds to read, and I hear she doesn't do homework on Sundays anymore."

His partner huffed, his eyes fixing on her front door as if it had insulted him. Since Zormna had moved into the house full time and set up her security system, no agent has been able to enter the place. No only had she set up an alert system that Jeff's crew would see, she had found a way to lock the house up so tight.

<<Agent Hayworth.>>

Agent Simms nearly jumped from the sudden noise from his radio. He looked to his partner who had almost spilled his coffee.

<<This is Agent Harwell. Have you seen the girl yet?>>

Hayworth picked up the radio and responded, "No, Harwell. She hasn't emerged yet. Has the boy come out yet?"

The other sided buzzed.

<<No, and he usually leaves early to work at the auto shop on Saturdays.>>

Agent Simms glared again at Zormna's front door. He opened the passenger side and stepped out into the icy wind. Agent Hayworth watched him, but answered the CB. "Maybe today is his day off? Have you contacted the men stationed at the shop?"

The man on the other side replied. <<Yes, sir. They say he never showed up. That boy Alex is there instead.>>

Agent Simms had crossed the road and walked to Zormna's front door. His breath came out in puffs like a steam locomotive. He moved as fast as one, walking up the slightly frosted steps to the front door where he pressed the doorbell. Agent Hayworth watched him from the car. It was so like Zormna to play cat and mouse games with the FBI agents when she was sick of them. Yet this did not have the same feeling as one of her games.

"Well..." He watched Agent Simms press the doorbell again. Drawing in a breath he uttered, "Oh my. They did it again. I don't know how...."

Agent Simms pressed the doorbell again, waiting for a minute each time. He gritted his teeth and shook his head, pressing the doorbell longer and harder each time as he peered through the window, trying to make out shapes through the sheer curtains. No one came. Not even a sound from inside answered.

"You can sleep on the flight, Zormna," Jeff had said at around three a.m. while they were riding the bus to the city from the Pennington transit center. Zormna had never actually ridden public transport, even when she was back Home. The creepy men on it always made her nervous. What made her more nervous was that her eyes were growing heavy, and all that she had to protect her while she wanted to sleep was Jeff - and he was fighting to keep awake himself.

How they exactly managed to sneak out of their neighborhood without being seen in the dead of night was actually thanks to Darren. Darren had rented three lockers at the transit center the night before and stuffed their back packs and their sleeping bags inside them, all filled with their necessities. He also had borrowed his father's car that night and left it unlocked with the keys under the seat two blocks away in a prearranged driveway. He knew an old lady that regularly went to Arizona in the winter, and figured she'd never know if they parked there. It was a risk Jeff made him take, promising monetary reimbursement if the car ever got stolen. They then snuck out as soon as they made it home from the movies to get to the lady's house. Zormna and Jeff took the car to the transit center, where they parked it and hid the keys back under the seat for Darren to collect the next morning. The thing was, Darren had a paper route. He rode his bicycle and left his bike at the transit center, taking the car back to his home before his father would find it missing. That was the easy part.

The hard part was getting from Pennington by bus and reaching the airport on time for their flight. They had thought about taking a taxi, but even Zormna didn't have the cash for that on short notice. Since neither of them had ever ridden the bus in Pennington, neither one of them knew the routes to the city. Both had to guess how to get there by reading the cryptic maps and bus schedules in the transit center. Luckily for them, they found the right bus.

It was four a.m. when the bus pulled into the airport bus station. Jeff had to nudge Zormna awake to get off. Lulled by the rocking motion of the vehicle, unable to fight the exhaustion at all, she had been leaning on his shoulder, fast asleep.

"We're here," he whispered.

Zormna blinked and looked up. Wiping the damp corner of her mouth, Zormna blinked her bleary eyes once more and nodded. She staggered to her feet, grabbed her backpack, and followed Jeff down the steps and out the door.

It was still too early for much activity, or so Jeff had expected. But he was not used to early flights and the business mind of the American people. All hours worked, and early hours were cheapest. And so they made their way through the number of cabs and people in suits hurrying to catch their flights. Jeff led the still-groggy Zormna to the ticket counter and placed his backpack on the weighted baggage stand, looking the attendant in the eye.

"We need to check in for two flights to Arizona at five a.m." he said, clearing his throat of phlegm.

The neatly-dressed woman nodded politely, and asked, "You have your tickets?"

Jeff nodded, handing them over. "Yes."

She glanced at Jeff and said, "Your name, please, and some ID."

Jeff swallowed and handed over his driver's license. "Jeff Streigle."

Routinely smiling at him, she took both and went through procedure to make luggage tags for them both. After a few bits of typing, the woman printed off the seating passes. She then gestured to the attendant on hand to tag his backpack and pull Zormna's backpack up to be weighed and added to the checked luggage. Between sleep and awake, Zormna had been leaning on Jeff's back. She let her backpack go without a drip of protest, her eyes only peeking back for anyone suspicious - just in case they had been followed...though she sincerely doubted it. Her escape from her house had been perfect. The houselights were on a timer. Everything had gone flawlessly. The FBI hadn't even shifted in their seats when she had taken off to meet up with Jeff to borrow the car.

Handing over the ticket envelope and returning his license, the woman smiled at Jeff and the exhausted figure of Zormna who swayed on her feet wrapped in her faux fur lined silver coat. "Head to gate A-28."

Jeff nodded. He pulled on Zormna's sagging hand for her to follow