Lisa Lutz Spellman Series E-Book Box Set: The Spellman Files, Curse of the Spellmans, Revenge of the Spellmans, The Spellmans Strike Again by Lisa Lutz Read Free Book Online Page A

hours. Eventually my parents gave in.
    She was six. Six, I repeat. When my parents told me that Rae would be joining us the next day on the Peter Youngstrom surveillance, I suggested that they’d lost their fucking minds. My mother apparently had, shouting, “You try! You try listening to that begging all day long! I’d rather have a toenail slowly removed than go through that again.” My father seconded that with, “Two toenails.”
    That night I showed Rae how to use a radio. My father hadn’t updated the equipment for a few years. While the radios were perfectly utilitarian, they were also the size of Rae’s entire arm. I stuck the five-pound electronic device into her Snoopy backpack, along with some fruit roll-ups, packaged cheese and crackers, and a couple of Highlights magazines. The mouthpiece I slipped through the opening of the backpack and clipped to the collar of her coat. I showed her how to reach through the zipper opening and adjust the volume on the radio. Then all she had to do was press down the button on the mouthpiece when she wanted to talk.
    We began the detail outside the subject’s home at approximately six o’clock in the morning. Rae awoke at 5:00 A.M ., brushed her teeth, washed her face, and dressed. She sat by the door from 5:15 to 5:45 A.M ., until the rest of us were ready to leave. My father told me I could take a lesson. As we waited in the surveillance van three doors down from the subject’s residence, Rae and I once again tested and reviewed radio procedures. I reminded her that crossing a street without being given the okay from Mom or Dad would result in a punishment so awful, her young mind could not envision it. Then my mom reiterated the street-crossing rule.
    Rae followed every instruction to a T her first day on the job. I usually took point, instructing Rae by example on the general rules of surveillance. You could provide a manual on how to perform an effective surveillance, but those most suited for it follow their instincts. It didn’t surprise anyone that Rae was a natural. I suppose we all expected it, just not to the level at which she adapted to the work.
    I closed my distance from Youngstrom when the noon lunch traffic cut down on visibility. I was within ten feet of my subject when he made an unexpected one-eighty and shot back down the sidewalk in my direction. He passed me, brushing against my shoulder and offering a quiet “Excuse me.” I was made and could no longer take point. Rae was about ten yards behind me and my mother and father were a short distance behind her. Rae saw Youngstrom turn back before my parents did. She quickly ducked under some scaffolding hidden from his view. My parents, focused on their six-year-old daughter, didn’t notice the subject until he was practically standing right in front of them. Rae realized that she was the logical person to take point and made the offer into the radio.
    “Can I go?” Rae pleaded, watching Youngstrom slowly fade out of view.
    I could hear my mother sigh into the radio before she replied. “Yes,” she said hesitantly, and Rae took off.
    Rae ran down the street to catch up to the brisk walk of a man over two feet taller than she. When the subject turned left, heading west on Montgomery, my mother lost sight of Rae and I could hear the panic in her voice when she called to her through the radio.
    “Rae, where are you?”
    “I’m waiting for the light to turn green,” Rae replied.
    “Can you see the subject?” I asked, knowing that Rae was safe.
    “He’s going into a building,” she said.
    “Rae, don’t cross the street. Wait until Daddy and I catch up,” my mother said.
    “But he’s getting away.”
    “Stay put,” my father said more forcefully.
    “What does the building look like?” I asked.
    “It’s big with lots of windows.”
    “Can you see an address, Rae?” I asked, then rephrased the question. “Numbers, Rae. Do you see any numbers?”
    “I’m not close