the damn van was not starting.
She turned the key, turned it back … turned it again. An ominous click-click-click was the only sound she heard. Where was the beautiful purr of the engine?
“Problem?” Luke emerged from the doorway, and was it her imagination, or was he biting his cheek?
Gabi popped the hood and got out, like she had a clue what she’d do once she got to the front of the van. She propped the hood up on its lever, then scanned the engine compartment.
Then she closed her eyes in abject frustration.
“Where’s the battery, Luke?”
“In the camp safe.”
“What?”
“Oliver said we had strict instructions not to let your little hotwiring artist take off with the school van. Again. So I disabled it.”
Gabi crossed her arms. “You disabled me.”
He shrugged. “Side benefit.”
“Luke, seriously. You can’t hold us hostage here.”
“Not hostage. Just helping. Running these roads at night looking for runaway teens is nobody’s idea of fun. If you need the battery, just ask. We’ll put it back in.”
“I need the battery.”
“Nah. You don’t, really.” He smiled, locking the admin cottage door. “Nothing’s open in town after six. There’s nowhere to go.” He turned toward the pathway. “Have a nice night, Gabi. Make sure those girls don’t have anything edible in that tent when you’re done, or I guarantee you’ll have visitors.”
Gabi shivered as he walked away, then crossed her arms over her stomach.
If the girls had any food in that tent, she’d leave them out as bear bait.
Chapter 4
“Gabi, what’s that noise?” Waverly’s panicked voice came from somewhere near Gabi’s feet. It was two in the morning, and not one of them had fallen asleep yet. Gabi’d spent a full four hours fuming over Priscilla’s directive to have Luke and Oliver disable the van once they’d arrived, and by the time the girls had finally constructed a canvas and pole structure that resembled a tent, it’d been well after dark.
By the time they’d pulled the sleeping bags out of the van, the moon had been high in the sky. And by the time they’d put their elementary spatial reasoning skills to work and figured out how to fit five sleeping bags in the space, Gabi had been ready to go sleep in the van.
It had practically killed her to sit there and watch the girls struggle to figure out the tent. As they’d argued and clanked poles and screeched when the whole thing came crashing down—multiple times—she’d checked her watch, checked the sky, checked the perimeter of the clearing for glowing eyes, sure that a message had to have gone out into the wilderness by now announcing the arrival of fresh meat.
After five long tries, though, the girls had finally pushed up the poles and braced themselves for the tent to come falling down again … but it hadn’t. Gabi’s eyes had widened as she’d watched the four of them, all with their hands out in front of them, ready to catch poles and canvas. And when Sam had given her pole a gentle push and nothing bad had happened, a whoop had gone up, and Gabi’d smiled in relief.
But now it was dead-dark, the mosquitoes had discovered every single hole in this godforsaken tent, and it sounded like the entire wild kingdom had gathered just outside the platform to investigate.
“I’m sure it’s nothing, Waverly. Go to sleep.”
Suddenly Waverly leaped out of her sleeping bag and crawled over Sam, making Sam curse loudly.
“Well, it might be nothing, but it’s got a nose, and it just poked right through that hole.” Her voice was half whisper, half screech, and Gabi pulled out her flashlight to shine it in the direction of Waverly’s pillow.
Two brown eyes and a masked face froze in the light, and crafty black paws closed around a chocolate bar.
The next thirty seconds were a blur of screeches and confusion as Gabi and the four girls slithered out of their sleeping bags and made for the tent flaps, running out into the clearing. They’d almost made it when Waverly accidentally tripped Eve, who went flying into a tent pole. As Gabi closed her eyes and cringed, the entire tent crashed to the ground, and five little raccoons skittered back into the woods.
Gabi scanned the clearing with her flashlight, hoping her heart rate wasn’t going to send her to the nearest ER. After she’d assured herself that there weren’t any more four-legged creatures lurking, she turned the light on the girls, who were huddled near the collapsed tent, their eyes wide as