Security Measures. Joanna Wayne

room. She’d caught the tail end of a chat about a new video earlier tonight. She wanted to see if anyone knew the name of the guy in the black leather pants. He was cute.

      A second later, an instant message popped up from Byron. She moved her cursor to the reply field and started typing.

      We got back tonight. And we have company, a friend of my father’s. He’s pretty cool. Handsome, too, but I don’t think my mom likes him. She hardly talks to him at all.

      Mothers can be weird.

      Tell me about it. Is yours working tonight?

      No, but she’s not home. I got some news, too.

      What kind of news?

      Big news. I’m getting a truck. Meet me and I’ll tell you about it.

      Mom’s not going to let me out this late.

      Tell her you’re going to Gayle’s like you always do.

      She’ll say it’s after ten.

      Then sneak out. You’ve done it before.

      Yeah, but I’m always scared I’ll get caught.

      I’ll be at the park in fifteen minutes. I really need to see you. C’mon, Kelly. Don’t let me down.

      I’ll try.

      She logged off the computer, then threw herself across the bed. She had to give this some serious thought. She liked Byron a lot, but she didn’t want to get into trouble. Not that it mattered. She wasn’t going to get to go to New Orleans even if she was an angel.

      A new truck was a big deal.

      And it wasn’t as if it were midnight or something. It was only ten after ten. Some of her friends got to stay out until eleven o’clock when they went to the skating rink. After all, they were starting high school this year.

      Kelly waited ten minutes, then opened her bedroom window. The rest of the house was wired so that if any door opened after her mother set the alarm, a loud buzzer would go off. Kelly had found out how to disconnect the wires from her window in a chat room over the Internet.

      Everything you could possibly want to know was floating around somewhere in cyberspace. All you had to do was find it. And what she couldn’t find, Byron could. He was the smartest high school boy she knew. Actually, he was the only high school boy she knew very well, but still, she knew he was smart. Might even be a genius.

      He didn’t have a dad, either. Well, he did, but he never saw him. He didn’t see much of his mother. She worked nights as a waitress out at a truck stop on the edge of town. Byron worked there some, too. But he wasn’t going to do it much longer. As soon as he turned eighteen, he was going to split.

      She released the catch on the screen and eased it out, leaning it against the house so that it didn’t fall into the grass. Fortunately, the air-conditioning unit was next to her window and very noisy. Her window was on the opposite side of the house from her mother’s bedroom.

      Still, her heart beat really fast when she sneaked out like this. If her mother caught her, she’d be deader than roadkill. Holding her breath, she swung her legs over the edge of the sill and dropped the few feet to the ground below.

      The streetlight in front of their house was out, but there was enough moonlight for Kelly to sneak behind the red-tipped hedge at the side of the house and creep out to the street. It was only three short blocks to the park where she was going to meet Byron. She really wanted to talk to him tonight, and not just because she’d been gone for a week or to hear about the truck he was getting.

      Kelly wanted to talk about why her mother acted the way she did. Mom should be excited to have a good friend of Kelly’s dad visiting with them. But she wasn’t. Anyone could tell that. Yet she’d invited him to stay with them and they’d never had an over night guest, unless you counted Kelly’s girlfriends.

      She picked up her pace once she reached the corner.

      Only she had the strange feeling someone was following her. A second later, she knew she was right.

      Chapter Three

      “Out for a walk?”

      Kelly froze for a second, then spun around. But it was only Vincent. “Kind of,” she answered, then felt herself getting all tense. “Are you following me?”

      “I heard you leave the house and I thought you might like company.”

      “Only if you don’t go blabbing to Mom. If she finds out I sneaked out, she’ll ground me until I’m thirty.”

      “You must be off on some exciting adventure to risk that.”

      “Not really. I have this friend…” She hesitated. Vincent seemed all right—for an adult—but that didn’t mean she could trust him not to repeat any of this to her mother. “I couldn’t sleep so I decided to go for a walk.”

      “To meet the friend? Don’t worry. I don’t squeal.”

      “Yeah, I’m meeting a boy, but just to talk, you know?” She started walking again, and Vincent kept pace.

      “Nice neighborhood for walking at night,” Vincent said. “Well lit. I guess it’s safe.”

      “Real safe. Nothing ever happens around here.”

      “You must have missed your school friends while you were on vacation.”

      “Yeah, but Byron’s not exactly a school friend.”

      “Just a neighborhood buddy, huh?”

      “We’ll both be at the high school next year.”

      “So, Byron’s older?”

      “He’ll be a senior. He’s a lot more mature than the freshman boys.”

      “I’ll bet. So, how did you meet Byron?”

      “On the Internet. We were in a Lord of the Rings chat room, ’cause we both loved the movies.”

      “Good books, too.”

      “You read them?”

      “The whole series, from beginning to end.”

      “So did Byron. I don’t read that much, but I read the Harry Potter books. I like all that magic stuff.”

      “I read those, too.”

      “You’re kidding, right?”

      “No, I’ve had a lot of time to read lately. Does your mother disapprove of Byron? Is that why you sneak out?”

      “You think I’d tell her about him? She disconnected me from the Internet for six months the last time she caught me in a chat room.”

      “She’s pretty strict, huh?”

      “Is she? You wouldn’t believe. It’s worse than being in prison.”

      “I sincerely doubt that.”

      “Believe me, it’s true. That’s why you have to promise not to tell her about Byron, or that I sneaked out of my room.”

      “I’ll never tell—unless I think you’re in danger. Then all deals are off.”

      “I’m not in danger. Byron’s a real nice boy.”

      “That’s good to know, but I don’t think your going out at night without her permission is the right choice.”

      “You would if you lived with someone who treats you like a two-year-old. What was your mom like?”

      “She was terrific, but she died when I was too young to think about sneaking out of the house.”

      “I don’t wish anything like that would happen.