The Limit by Kristen Landon Read Free Book Online

a member of our FDRA family.”

THE MEAT LOAF I’D ORDERED FOR dinner didn’t taste right. Mom made a killer meat loaf. It’s what I asked for anytime she gave me a choice.
    The gravy-drenched bite of meat turned to glue in my mouth as I pictured eating at home with my family. Dinnertime had come and gone ages ago, but everyone in my family had probably been too upset to eat anything. At least they’d better have lost their appetites. Abbie should be in bed by now. I bet she’d been too scared to sleep alone in her room. Lauren would let her sleep with her. What were Mom and Dad doing? Making phone calls, doing Internet searches, and examining every single cent in their account, I hoped.
    I shoved the plate of food away and jumped to my feet. Why weren’t there any windows in this room? The other floors had windows. I’d seen the light glowing through them from the outside.
    I paced a nervous circle around the room, like a ratin a cage, trapped and cut off from the world I knew, not knowing what the people in control had in store for me.
    Wait a minute,
I thought as I dug my cell phone out of my front pocket. I wasn’t completely cut off. I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of my phone earlier. I stared at the buttons for a few seconds, deciding who to call first. Two questions burned in my brain. One, what was my family doing? And two, what was everyone at school saying about me—would I ever be able to show my face there again?
    Duh, idiot.
Although I felt as if a week had gone by since Honey Lady showed up at my house, only hours, not days, had passed. No one at school was saying anything about me, because no one had been to school since I’d been taken. I’d wait and call Brennan or Lester tomorrow.
    I pulled up my home phone number and anxiously waited to hear a familiar voice. Instead I heard nothing. I looked at my screen.
No signal.
Oh, come on. Wait a minute. A landline phone sat right by the bed. I picked it up and punched a few buttons.
    Crab Woman’s voice came on, making me wince. “You need something?”
    “I was . . . just trying to call someone,” I said.
    “This is an in-house line only.” She hung up, the loud
click
making my eardrum ring.
    Sweet dreams to you, too, Crab Woman.
    Well, I knew the computer worked at least. If Abbie hadn’t forced Lauren to come to bed when she did, chances were good that Lauren was online. I sent her a message, just asking if she was there.
    Ten seconds went by. Then twenty.
Come on, Lauren. Be online.
Shoot. Maybe Brennan was online. A knock at my door pulled me away from the computer. It ended up being a delivery person who handed over several wrapped paper packages in shiny blue-and-white-striped shopping bags. The new clothes I’d ordered—pajamas for tonight and jeans and a T-shirt for tomorrow. Socks and boxers too. And a toothbrush and toothpaste.
    After I closed the door and tossed the packages onto my bed, I walked back to the door. I opened it again—just a couple of inches. And closed it. Huh. I opened it and closed it again.
    My mind started calculating. Distance equals rate times time—one of the most basic math formulas in the world.
The distance between this door and the end of the hallway—about fifteen feet. Plus another fifty feet to get to the front sliding glass doors equals sixty-five feet.
I could do an eight-second fifty-yard dash. Converting to feet made a rate of 18.75 feet per second. Dividing the distance by the rate gave me a time of 3.47 seconds. I figured I should round up to five or six seconds to allow for thefact that I’d have to turn a corner and dodge a chair or two. Would that be fast enough to make it outside before Crab Woman caught up with me? If she wore high heels like Honey Lady, I’d make it out no problem. Now, Gorilla Man—if he happened to be in the lobby, I’d be toast.
    I slid into the chair in front of the computer and cracked my knuckles. Time to do one of the things I did best: in-depth online