NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: Thoughts and prayers go out to Jerry Lawler, who collapsed last night (9/10/12) during the RAW broadcast from an apparent heart attack. Didn't like the guy for many years, but I admire and appreciate the contributions he's made to the world of professional wrestling. Hope you get well soon!
With that said, on to the next chapter. As JR would say, business is about to pick up...
Chapter Four
The kids hung on for dear life as the tow truck, with the Roadmaster swinging crazily off the back, exited the freeway and tore through residential streets in a run-down looking neighborhood.
Cody reached for the glove box. "Look out kids," he warned them.
"Oh, God!" squeaked Phil, as he covered his eyes. The others widened their eyes in shock (unknown to Phil). "Is it a hand?"
Chase shook his head. "No."
Phil sighed and uncovered his eyes. "Oh good."
"It's a gun."
Phil squeaked and covered his eyes again as the tow truck screeched to a stop outside a house. "Oh God!"
Tempest was grinning. "That was fun! Can we do that again?"
Cody didn't hear her. Instead, he leaped out of the truck, gun in hand and rushed into the house. The sounds of a fight, complete with shouting, four-letter words, and things breaking, could be heard.
Chase looked pale. "What's going on in there?" he asked, his voice wobbly, before a gunshot made all the kids jump.
The older Irvine-Hardy glanced up just in time to see Cody punch a strange man through the window of his house. Shaking his head, he gasped, "I can't believe this."
Everything happened at once. The guy Cody knocked through the window stumbled to his feet and tried to run off. Cody picked up his gun and fired another shot. It went wide and hit the passenger's side window. Tempest shrieked as Anna shoved her down onto the truck floor.
"Oh, crap!" Anna squeaked, reaching over to open the driver's side door. This night was going from bad to worse in a hurry. "Everyone out of the truck!" As quiet as church mice, the kids managed to slip out of the truck. Anna saw another car, a late-model Cadillac, parked on the street. The last thing she wanted to see was one of the kids hurt, and the car looked like a suitable place to take temporary refuge.
She gestured towards her charges. "Be careful, kids."
As they crept down the street, Cody fired his gun again. This time, the shot hit the front window of the Roadmaster. The bullet didn't break out the window, but it left a hole, and the glass exploded into multiple starlike fractures.
Anna wheeled around in shock. "My grandma's car!" she shrieked, as the man Cody was firing at locked eyes with her. Anna found herself frozen in fear like a deer in the headlights.
"Anna!" Chase saw his babysitter in danger and rushed back to her. Grabbing her by the coatsleeve and dragging her, he exclaimed, "Anna! Come on! Get in the car!" The kids climbed in, shutting all the doors.
The man saw the kids and chased after them. "Hey! You kids get out of my car!"
Anna slid into the passenger's seat in the front. "Lock the doors!" she barked.
Before the were able to, the doors suddenly locked themselves with a loud thump! The kids looked at each other in confusion. Before any of them could speak, a well-muscled black man man popped up from the front seat of the car. He appeared to be in his early thirties with short dreadlocked hair, and he was covered in tattoos. The kids all screamed in surprise.
Suddenly the man Cody was shooting at banged on the window. "Get out of my car!" He pounded on the windows again. "Get out of there. Get out of my car!"
"Sorry, dude!" The dreadlocked man shook his head then deftly hotwired the car. The Caddy rolled off just in time for the kids to glance out and see Cody drag the cars owner away and pound on him with his fists in the front yard.
Anna grinned in relief at the driver. "Oh thanks mister, you saved our lives."
"Anna?" Chase said.
"Yeah?"
"Uh…he's a car thief. This is a stolen car."
Anna slumped back in the passenger's seat. "No…"
Phil shook his head. "The chick is losing it."
"I am not!" Anna snapped.
Tempest smirked and pulled out a Nestle crunch bar. "You guys want some candy?"
"Don't mind if I do, Temper." Grinning, Chase took the candy and began to unwrap it, and Anna snapped.
Climbing over the seat, Anna knocked the candy bar out of Chase's hand. "Chase, no chocolate!" she exclaimed. "Your acne." She whipped the bottle of cough syrup and a spoon out of her coat pocket. "Temper! It is time for your cough syrup. Phil! Fasten your seat belt!"
Tempest giggled. "She is definitely losing it."
Anna gave Temper a dirty look. "I am not losing anything! I am still in control here! You got it?!" The man smiled and shook his head. Phil and the Irvine-Hardys all nodded.
Turning her attention to the driver, Anna asked, "Sir, would you please take us to the next corner and drop us off?"
The man chuckled. "In this neighborhood? Hey, I wouldn't even get out of the car in this neighborhood."
Chase chimed in with, "Well, could you drop us off at the nearest mall?"
"A mall?" The man snorted in disbelief. "Where you think we're at, Boise, Idaho? Shoot…man. Look, look why don't ya'll come with me? I've got a little bit of business to take care of, all right? And then I can drop you off at the train station or something like that, but I ain't driving to no mall. No way."
"Do you promise me you won't hurt these kids?" Anna questioned.
The man cast a glance at Anna and her charges. "Yeah, yeah I promise you."
~~~BABY~~~
Eventually, the car pulled into an alley near a warehouse. The driver pulled a garage door opener from the pocket of his denim jacket and pressed a button to open the warehouse doors.
"Where are we going?" Anna ventured as the man pulled the Caddy into the warehouse.
Phil couldn't resist. "To Hell. Kind of exciting, don't you think?"
Anna shook her head and watched the scene through the car windows. A bunch of guys worked on various makes and models of cars. It dawned on Anna that this wasn't a mechanic's shop. "It's a chop-shop," she realized, under her breath. "They're stolen cars."
A group of swarthy-looking guys were at a table eating sandwiches and drinking coffee. One of them got up and walked around the car as it rolled to a stop.
Phil gazed around wide-eyed. "Did you steal all of these cars?"
"Yeah," nodded the Good Sam behind the wheel. "Gets me some good money."
"Isn't it kind of dangerous?" Chase asked.
"Hey, I like danger."
"You should try babysitting," Anna chuckled. The Good Sam moved to get out of the car but she stopped him. "Sir? Uh…"
"Wait, wait. My name is Ron Killings, okay?"
"Then, uhhm, Mr. Killings…"
Ron laughed. "No, you can call me R-Truth. Everyone else does."
Anna nodded. "We have to get our car to Swagger's Garage…do you think you could…"
"Relax," R-Truth reassured her. "Relax. Everything's going to be okay."
R-Truth got out of the car and walked up to Dreamer, just as a bell rang.
Dreamer shouted out to the other guys working on the cars. "All right, it's quitting time!" He turned to R-Truth and nodded. "Good job, Truth. Got any defects?"
R-Truth smirked, just as the kids got out of the car. "Yeah, a few."
Chase shut the door of the Caddy, and the kids all turned to look. R-Truth shrugged, Dreamer looked confused, and another man at the table, Stevie, looked a little hacked off to see the unexpected visitors.
Chase took the opportunity to shake hands with the guys standing nearby. "Hi. Uh…hi, how're you doing? I'm Chase Irvine-Hardy. Nice to meet you. This is my sister, Tempest. This is Anna Hollenbeck, and that's my best friend Phil Brooks. How're you doing? Nice to meet you."
Dreamer arched an eyebrow at his colleague. "R-Truth, what are you doing?" he started, before Chase shook his hand.
"Hi! Nice to meet you. This is a nice place you've got here, really."
Dreamer pulled his hand away. "Thanks."
Chase stammered, "Yeah, it's uh…it's great. Look, we sorta took a wrong turn somewhere, and if you don't mind…we'd like to get out and go home," as the other kids nodded.
Snarling, Dreamer punched R-Truth in the jaw. Squeaking, Anna grabbed Chase in fright. Chase glanced over and couldn't help but grin.
R-Truth got back in Dreamer's face. "Hey, hey, don't hold it in Dreamer. Go ahead and get pissed man."
Dreamer grabbed R-Truth by the lapels of his jacket and shoved him up against the stolen Caddy. "You went and boosted a Caddy full of kids?"
"Hey! They got in the car while I was stealing it, man. What was I supposed to do, put them out on the street? They would've been killed!"
"They know where our operation is! They could go to the cops!"
"Sir?" Anna ventured. Dreamer let go of R-Truth. "No, we wouldn't go to the cops."
Dreamer glared at the babysitter. "How am I supposed to know that?"
Chase glanced around at everyone. "Hey, uh…we could put it in writing. Everyone would sign it, huh? We could take it to a notary republic…"
"Shut up!" Dreamer snarled, as Stevie, the hacked-off looking guy, slammed his hand on the table.
"Alright!" he bellowed. "Take the Brady Bunch upstairs!" The kids followed his eyes to an office that was on the second floor. "We'll take care of them after the meeting."
Dreamer turned to his remaining workers. "All right, you guys go on home! Clear outta here!"
Quietly, R-Truth led the kids upstairs to the office. He ushered them in. "Stay here. We're gonna sort everything out." He was trying to be reassuring, but the situation was becoming rather volatile.
Once R-Truth was back downstairs, Anna gave Tempest, who was looking a little nervous, a hug. "Don't worry. We'll get home. This has all just been a big mistake."
"What about AJ?" asked the little Thor fanatic.
Phil snorted. "That was her parents mistake."
~~~BABY~~~
AJ sat at one of the many TV's that populated the bus station, trying not to pay attention to the homeless woman that sat beside her. Yawning, AJ slipped her glasses off and set them on the arm of her chair so she could rest her eyes.
The homeless lady let curiosity get the better of her and quietly picked up the glasses (she thought the tortiseshell frames were cute) and tried them on herself. A smile crossed her face as she realized that she could see again. Pumping her fist in triumph, she got up and left, leaving her sunglasses behind.
A moment later AJ reached down to put her glasses back on but stopped when she realized that she wasn't picking up what she'd thought she had. "Hey! These aren't mine!" she gasped, dropping them onto the arm of the chair.
She got up and felt around frantically. Her heart sank when she realized that her glasses had been stolen.
"I can't see!" Groaning, AJ flopped back into her seat and threw her head in her hands. "Oh Anna, please hurry and pick me up!"
~~~BABY~~~
Back at the warehouse, Tempest hung up the phone. "It's dead," she sighed, hanging her head in disappointment.
"Kinda like us," Chase nodded.
"What are you talking about?" Anna questioned. She wasn't about to give up yet.
"We're really in trouble. We're gonna die here."
While Chase was bemoaning his and the others' predicament, Phil glanced over at the desk. A smile crossed his face when he recognized the Playboy issue. The cover girl who looked remarkably like Anna smiled up at him.
Phil picked up the magazine and slipped it under his hoodie. "Sorry, guys. I can't buy a Playboy yet, and my dad needs his back."
Tempest looked and spotted something on the ceiling. "We're not gonna die here, guys—look!"
The other kids saw what she was looking at. There was a decent-sized hole in the ceiling, big enough for someone to crawl through...
Anna shook her head vehemently. "Oh no! We are not climbing up there. It is much to dangerous. I mean, look at that…you could poke you're eyes out."
Chase looks out the window to the meeting going on below. "Yeah, well the guys down there might poke our brains out. I don't wanna stay here any longer than I have to. Let's go!"
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: Looks like things are going from bad to worse for the kids right now. At least R-Truth was being as nice as he could be under the circumstances. Matt and Chris would blow a gasket if they found out where everyone was. And Phil's dad could whup him for swiping the Playboy. And Anna's grandma would flip out if she knew what happened to her car!
REVIEWS = LOVE