The Lost Treasure

Hiding in plain sight

I saw something which made my heart beat out of my chest.

It was our bikes

And there were men examining it.

  Without a moment's hesitation i ducked behind the wall of the building where the road turned in to the garage's street, with the other two following suit.

I panted silently, holding my hand to my heart, trying to grip on what I had just seen.

Men, but who were they working for? Were they just regular passersby?

  No, they had to be in league with the people whom we stole the paper from. They had to be, it was a guarantee.

  I looked back at the others and I could see they were worried. I was too. In fact, I felt like I could pass out at any second.

  I assessed the situation quickly. What could we do? What should we do? Uh we couldn't run in and ask them for the bikes. We couldn't sneak around the back and get the bikes back stealthily either.

That left the one option I could think of: waiting.

  "David, Charlie, we might have to wait a while to get our bikes" I whispered, taking great care not too talk even a little bit louder than I had to.

"God dang it" Charlie asked, "Do you suppose they caught up with us?"

"Seems like it" I mumbled, before a scary thought hit my head.

"Guys, we didn't happen to write our names on the bikes did we?"

I looked back at my two friends and their facial expressions told me everything.

  "Damn it" I swore. "That makes things much worse for us. Much worse, especially if this is a professional operation which these people are running, which they are."

"W.what can we do now Ibrahim?" Charlie asked, but it was David who answered.

  "We'll try to get as close to our bikes as possible without getting caught, and hope for the best. If we can't get our bikes back then we'll have to be even more careful with what we plan further" David replied, looking serious.

  I nodded, David was right. We had made a very foolish mistake leaving our bikes there, literally handing it to enemy on a silver platter.

  But we couldn't waste any more time thinking of how we should have done things, we had to focus on the now and play our cards right.

Hopefully Ronan and Ben were doing a better job than us.

Ben's point of view:

  What Ronan had just done was stupid and not thought out! Did he not realize the risks of going alone to spy on dangerous men? It was plain foolishness!

  And not to mention he left me to cover up for him when of course I didn't have experience with that field.

  All I can say is, I was having none of this. If Ronan was going to spy and have all the fun, then I'd do a little spying of my own. It was only fair after all.

"Dad?" I said, gently nudging him.

"Yes Ben? What's the matter?" inquired my dad.

  "Ronan's calling me over to look at a few things, is it okay if I go with him?" I asked, pointing to where I thought he had gone. I tried to sound as normal as I could while trying to deal with the guilt of making up that lie.

  "Fine son, but don't wander off too much. I don't want you both to get lost" replied my dad, ruffling my hair and smiling.

  "Yes dad, for sure" I smiled, giving him a quick hug before going off in the direction where Ronan had supposedly been calling me.