Safety Pin- Chapter Four

Chapter Four1

Trail of Bread Crumbs2

After I got dressed I sat and watched Kevin look over the highlights on the credit card report. I wiggled a little and he glanced up at me.3

"You okay?"4

"Just impatient. What are you doing?" I asked innocently.5

"Trying to find a trail, figure out where they are heading." He replied without looking at me. I slid off the couch on to the floor next to him and gently took the sheet he was looking at away from him.6

"I notice patterns a little better." I teased and stuck out my tongue at him.7

"Watch that tongue."8

"Oh! What are you gonna do about it?" I said playfully as I stuck it out again. I screamed as he pinned me to the floor and slipped his hands up my shirt tickling my sides.9

"That!" He finally said after I had laughed so hard I cried. I sat up and looked at him wiping off my face and holding my stomach.10

"I think I just got my ab work out for the day." I giggled. He poked my stomach gently.11

"Would you like another one?" I shook my head and stuck out my tongue again daring him to try and tickle me. He didn't. Instead he put his hand on my face and sucked on my tongue gently.12

"Mmm maybe I should do that more often." I winked and he laughed.13

"Brat."14

"Goober."15

"Hey is there something going on between you two that you need to tell me?" Kev and I jumped up and turned around. Jake was standing in my door smirking. I rolled my eyes and threw the nearest pillow at him. He threw it back and then walked up and gave me a hug. 16

"Hiya Cuz. Don't you know how to knock?"17

"Nope." He said plainly and tugged on my ear. Something he had always done to me sense we were little. He was my cousin, but I thought of him more as my big brother. Big being the key word there. He wasn't horribly tall. Only 5'11" but he had huge rock solid muscles. He spent more of his time in the gym then he did anywhere else.18

"You dyed your hair." I said running my fingers through the black spikes.19

"Nah I didn't. My hair has been destined to turn this color sense the day I was born."20

"It was brown when I saw you two months ago."21

"So?"22

"Hair doesn't change color naturally that fast." I crossed my arms in front of my chest pretending to be ticked.23

"Guess it does now." He shrugged and plopped himself on my couch. "What's with all the highlighted papers?"24

"Uh." Kev and I said glancing nervously at each other.25

"What are you two up too?"26

"Hey just because your two years older than I am don't mean you ca-."27

"Kat its okay. I'll tell him." Kev sighed and sat down starting the story from the very beginning. I sat down in my recliner and watched the two of them talk. I started biting my lip when Jake picked up one of the papers.28

"Looks like they are heading to Kansas City." He said glancing at the paper and then glancing across the room at me. My jaw dropped.29

"How in the hell do you know that. That is like a fricken trail of bread crumbs. The places jump all over the fricken place. There is even a place where they back tracked and made a huge circle." I argued. I loved Jake, but he annoyed me sometimes. He sighed and walked over to my computer pulling along the credit card sheets. I bite my lip harder as I heard clicking and typing.30

"Kat come 'ere. Kev go get me an atlas." I stomped across the room over to the computer feeling like stubborn two year old. Which Jake had NO problem pointing out. "Tell me what you see."31

"A bunch of dots."32

"What correlation are they?" He sighed. I studied the dots. I remembered the trick my math teacher once taught me. Read it from left to right, like you would normal read a book and see which way the dots slant as you read.33

"Negative."34

"Good Job Kitty." He said patting me on the back as I glared at him. Then he took the atlas and slide it in front of him putting his finger on the dot labeled Chicago. "Tell me what the slope is for that graph please."35

"Okay." I said as I scanned the page finding it in the corner. I watched as he traced his fingers down and left a few times.36

"What two cities are my fingers on?"37

"Chicago and Kansas City." I almost whispered. I got it then. He had made a scatter plot of the credit card locations and times. Then he summed it all up to get the direction that it was generally heading. "Why didn't you become a math professor?"38

"To boring."39

"I guess it’s not a trail of bread crumbs anymore." Kev said with a smile.40

"Yeah." I said disappointed. "But now what do we do?"41