Dollar Runaways

Chapter 29: Motion

MONDAY MORNING CAME early for Agent Kline. He had to get to the airport by seven, and fought traffic all the way there. Passing four wrecks on the way there had left him at his wits end by the time he arrived. There he got to the zoo that was security, and realized he'd forgotten to fill out one form for his firearm, and hoped they didn't give him too much grief about it. He stepped into the line that was designated for people such as himself and thankfully got waved through with just a check of his badge.

He sighed in relief as he boarded the airplane to Dallas. The whole trip there he spent time going over what he thought were possibilities to track Megan Franchino down. He was certain his best hope was figuring out which hotel she stayed in. With the best photo he had printed out inside his briefcase to show around, he hoped he would have some luck. He'd already picked out twelve hotels he thought were likely candidates. One of them felt more right than the others, so he decided to stay there himself when he set up the reservation.

Once in Dallas he rented a car and headed to the hotel, hoping that all of the ones he wished to check would still have their videos from the day in question...

MONDAY AFTERNOON, AFTER lunch the truck arrived with the contents of our supposed house. The hands all pitched in to unload it and I found six large boxes and two wardrobe boxes sitting in my room. "Where am I going to put all of this?!?" I asked myself when the hands were gone. I just sighed and began working on getting through the boxes. One of the first boxes I got to had more stuffed animals than I had ever seen. I immediately picked two that I would say were my favorites. Well, who wouldn't love the cute white tiger and the purple bunny!?!

Both toys earned a spot on my pillow after Mom whispered to me that they had been washed already. She and I were a bit on the germophobic side of things on stuff like that. The last thing I wanted was some other kids slobber on the toy that was on my pillow... That's just nasty!

Dolls, a dollhouse, Polly Pocket toys, and just about anything that might have been bought for a girl as a toy from her fourth birthday to her eighth birthday were there. "Need some help?" Madison asked close to dinner.

"Please!" I asked.

She smiled and whispered, "Whoever your mom knows sure was thorough..."

I nodded. She opened the top of the box for me and giggled, "Ooh, you're going to look so cute in this!!!!" She exclaimed and held up a pink leotard and a tutu.

I turned bright red... "Umm... I'm guessing I did when I was FOUR!"

She smiled and said, "Well... We'll see later..."

We started hanging up my clothes in the closet and the wardrobe before also using part of her closet, "I don't live here," she reminded me with a smile. There were a number of outfits in there that I'm embarrassed to say would fit...

There were a couple of knit dresses that had heart embroidery on them that I saw were by a clothing company I knew only made pre-school and younger clothes. Madison had held one up to me and smiled, saying, "It still fits!"

I just stuck my tongue out at her and kept unloading boxes. In the end we managed to find places for almost everything, except a few things that we decided to get rid of. Why the person had included a few toys that were waaay too young for me I didn't understand!

Mom had similarly unloaded some of her stuff in her room, but as she was supposedly a college kid there wasn't as much. The stall of the barn that we'd unloaded furniture into included a canopied bed frame set for me, but since we had nowhere to put it, and I liked my current bed it had been put away. There were also a number of 'family' photographs that had appeared out of nowhere with Mom and I with our fictional parents. Whoever created them did an amazing job of finding two people that looked like they could be our parents and putting us in them. My baby picture book was particularly embarrassing.