Page 41 of Be A Detective, They Said. It’ll Be Fun, They Said

She smiled, sweet and warm. “Yes, dear. Of course, it’s me.” She held out her hand. “Come with me, and I’ll show you the way out of here. It’s so dark and dusty, eh?”

Aw, no...

C’mon! It was Mrs. Goodfellow snatching children? What a cruel twist of fate. I don’t know why I asked something so silly, but ask I did. “What are you doing down here?”

She grinned, but there was something so cruel, almost evil about it, I hesitated taking her hand. “I’m here to help you, of course.”

I continued to refuse her hand. “Help me what?”

I sniffed a change in her emotion. She was growing impatient, and I could smell it. Also, the lighter was getting hot and burning my finger.

“I don’t need your help. I need you to explain yourself. What’s going on?”

Her eyes narrowed the tiniest bit, but then she adjusted her gaze. “Come with me, and I’ll tell you everything, dear.”

As she spoke, I kept moving forward, and Mrs. Goodfellow kept moving back, giving me a much bigger picture of the landscape I was up against.

That’s when I saw them—far off in the distance of what I believed was the basement of the school.

Children. Four in a row. All on hospital beds in this cold, dank place. Nothing but concrete as far as the eye could see.

Then there was Neerie, tied to a chair…

And Mrs. Goodfellow, also tied to a chair.

I didn’t know exactly what was going on. I didn’t understand how Mrs. Goodfellow could be standing in front of me and at the same time tied to a chair. Obviously, it had to do with shapeshifting, but who was doing it, I had no clue.

And all I knew was, I had to get to those children.

Because one of those children was my son Sam.

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