Helga Pataki stared up at the sky. From her spot in the alley she didn't have a view of the sunset itself, but she could see its effect beginning to change the color of the sky and highlighting the thinning clouds with golden light. It was beautiful. Helga began to reach for the ever-present pink notebook in the messenger bag at her side, but stopped herself. This wasn't the time, she was supposed to be watching for her ride. She also had to worry about how to find Arnold, before his chivalrous streak would land him in a trap. She had been the bait in that trap less than a half-hour ago, but being cooperative about that sort of thing really wasn't in her nature.

A car pulled up to the mouth of the alley and stopped, giving a short honk of its horn. Helga dashed to the sedan, threw open the passenger-side rear door, leapt in and slammed the door behind her in one fluid motion. She immediately leaned between the passenger and driver seats and started speaking fast, a slight pant in her voice from the burst of activity.

"Phoebe! Gerald! Arnold's in town!"

"Um… Yeah, we know," Replied Gerald with a curious smile.

"He's probably in this neighborhood somewhere!"

"Yeah, I bet he is." Gerald looked amused, and Phoebe giggled as she started to drive again.

"We have to find him! He could be walking int-"

"Helga," He replied patiently.

"I don't know where to start looking, he migh-"

"Pataki!" Gerald shouted, then turned his glare to the other half of the car's rear seat.

Helga looked directly beside her. In her flurry of excitement, she had somehow completely failed to notice that there was a fourth passenger in the car. Sitting on on the other side of the same bench-seat was Arnold, looking angelically innocent, though with a highly amused grin spreading across his face. He gave a small wave, since it seemed like the safest response at that moment.

Helga was going to speak, but Phoebe interrupted. "We stopped along the way for some Ice Cream." She giggled once more, Arnold and Gerald both looking at her in puzzlement.

In the back-seat though, Helga's face was turning a bright shade of pink. In their elementary school days, "Ice Cream" had been Arnold's code-name when Helga talked to Phoebe about her feelings for the boy. She was relived to see that her secret had been kept so far, considering the confused looks on the faces of both boys. On the other hand, Phoebe's little inside joke was bound to lead to follow-up questions. Ok, time to go on the offensive and hope that everyone forgets.

"Criminy, Football Head! What the heck are you doing here?"

"Well, the guys who took you left a note. Told me to meet them at the FTi building, with the memory card." Arnold explained, mentally noting to ask about ice cream later. "So I showed up there a little bit early and planned to sneak in the back way to look for you."

"Oh?" she quirked her eyebrow at him "And how did that work out?"

"Well, somebody ran out the rear door I was watching, so I ran in and started at the basement. I assume the goon with the bleeding nose was your doing?"

"Naturally."

"So I asked him a few questions and ran back out before anyone else noticed I was there. How did you get free?," Arnold gave a slightly sheepish smile, "I guess you didn't need my help after all."

"I used my feminine wiles on poor ol' Carlos. He didn't stand a chance," she batted her eyelashes at him, "and actually, you helped me more than you might think." She pulled a short piece of stiff silvery wire from her front pocket and handed it to him, which after a few seconds of examination was recognizable as a broken paper-clip.

"Um… That doesn't actually explain anything." Arnold finally said, after a few moments of thought. She pulled the his letter out of her pocket, and pointed to an indentation in the corner of the pages, where the pages had clearly been worn-in by the now-absent paper-clip.

Helga folded the papers back up again. "Anyway, we can talk about the details later. Right now we need to figure out what our next move is."

"Did you… y'know… Did you read the letter?"

Helga blushed once more, just a little, turning her gaze downward. "I did. I want to talk to you about it. I really do… but not right now. This isn't the right time or place. Ok, Football Head?" She looked up into his eyes as she said this last part.

Arnold wasn't sure how to feel about her response. There was a certain softness in the way she said "Football Head," As she said it just now, it felt more like a term of endearment than a playground insult. Was this a new thing, or just something he never noticed before? He was unsure, but also knew she was right about finding a better time and place to talk about it.

Arnold nodded once at Helga before breaking their stare, and turned toward Gerald and Phoebe in the front seats. "So, any suggestions? I'm coming up a bit dry at the moment. We need to get the evidence to my Mom's colleague. He's a professor at the local college. I don't have his home phone number or address though. I tried looking him up online, but he's pretty private about his home life."

"So you're saying we can't find him until classes start on Monday, right?"

Arnold sighed, "Right. We've got to stay safe until then. We can't go back to the Boarding House right now, La Sombra would know the moment we arrive."

Helga frowned at this statement, "How do you know that? Did you figure out how they were tracking us?"

The football-headed young man gritted his teeth, looking genuinely angry. "Yeah. We've been sold out. Kokoshka has been telling them everything he knows. Luckily, he's so self-centered that he never paid much attention to the other kids in the neighborhood, so Gerald and Phoebe shouldn't be in any danger. But he knows me, he knows you, and he's been listening in on our calls to my Grandpa."

Helga remembered Oskar Kokoshka seeing them in her… Arnold's… the bedroom shortly before La Sombra's men arrived. That lazy weasel never gets out of bed before breakfast is ready, yet there he was, as if he knew to expect something. If she hadn't been distracted by the sudden appearance of her childhood love in her own bedroom, that probably would have been enough to made her suspicious.

She balled up her fists and growled, her eyes narrowed, shaking with a barely-contained rage. "When I get my hands on Kokoshka, I'm going to tear his eyes out through his belly-button and nail them to his forehead. I'll skin him, dump him in a bathtub full of lemon juice, and throw in a hungry tiger. I'll cut out his intestines and make him use them to go bungee-jumping. Then I'm going to start to get unpleasant."

"Oh dear." gasped Phoebe, worry evident in her voice as she continued to drive. She hadn't seen her best friend in a mood like this for quite a long time, and was a bit concerned.

Helga seethed with rage for a bit longer, noticing that the car had gone completely silent. She looked up into Arnold's face, which broke into a smile again.

"I've missed you, Helga G. Pataki." Said Arnold, wistfully.

The young woman's rage evaporated instantly, replaced by sort of a confused giddiness. She wasn't sure what reaction she would have expected from him for her outburst of pure venom, but that was definitely not it. Still, she wasn't complaining. Baffled, but calmer, she shook her head a few times to clear the cobwebs and changed the subject.

"Ok, at least for this evening, how about we stick to my original plan for the weekend. Let's go to the Hillwood Cheese Festival."

"What? We're being hunted and you want nachos?"

"Of course I want nachos, Football Head, but that's just a bonus. Think about it. La Sombra's goons want to get to us, but they need to do it quietly. That's why they cornered us at the Sunset Arms in the morning, or Bob & Miriam's empty house after that. They can't afford to draw attention. Logically the safest place to hide would be in a big crowd, and the biggest crowd we're likely to find around here is the festival."

Arnold gave this some thought, and it seemed to make sense. Then his eyes lit up and he added to her idea. "Yeah, that could work. We can make this even easier on ourselves with a little help from Oskar."

"Kokoshka?" Gerald chimed in, "what makes you think he's going to help. He's not the most helpful person in the world. In fact, he may actually be the least helpful person in the world. Even if you could bribe him with more than he's already being paid, I'd still be waiting for a knife in the back at any moment."

"That's the easy part. We don't have to trust him to do the right thing, we just have to trust him to be Oskar Kokoshka. Helga, can I borrow your phone?"

Phil picked up one of the boarding house's phones before the second ring. Clearly he had been waiting there, hoping for a call from his Grandson. Arnold started with a bit of small talk, just saying he was safe, they were hidden, and the usual pleasantries. Holding his breath and listening, he could faintly hear the breathing of a third person on the line.

Their little chat had an audience. Excellent.

"Grandpa, Helga and I are going to go to Quigley Stadium. It's closed, but her cousin is a night janitor there and can get us in. It's big, quiet, and we should be safe hiding there all night. No need to worry about us, ok?" Arnold felt slightly bad about lying to his Grandfather, but knew it was more than worth the trouble if Oskar was listening in.

"Well, ok Short-Man, you be careful."

Arnold hung up the phone and handed it back to Helga, who gave him an honest look of approval and a slight nod. "Crafty, Arnoldo. Didn't know you had it in you."

He winked back at her, "I learned from the best."

To be continued...