His Ransom 6(10)

It was then that I felt the rumbling of the rails beneath my feet.

“Lacey, come on! We gotta go!”

I felt Jake tugging on my arm as I heard the blast of a train horn. I finished the last shadow on the letters. Then I turned to the platform and ran.





Chapter Six

The train’s horn was so loud that it nearly burst my eardrums. Jake tossed his backpack up onto the platform, then boosted me up.

The two security guards pulled me up and I tumbled down on the platform. I was breathless. My fingers were stained with spraypaint. My heart was pounding. And I’d never felt so alive.

I looked back to see Jake scrambling up over the edge just in time. The train blared again as it rushed by, the rails clattering. I breathed out a sigh of relief.

“Express line,” Jake said, brushing off his suit pants. “Forgot about that one.”

“You should have told me. I would have worn jeans. You should have worn jeans!” I cried. There was dirt all down Jake’s shirt. I swiped my hand across his arm to get rid of the dirt marks.

Jake shook his head.

“We don’t want to look like hoodlums,” he said. “That’s a sure giveaway.”

“Nice try. I have paint all over my fingers.”

“Then you should be neater,” Jake scolded. He gave my butt a playful pinch. The train rushed past us and continued on.

“Take a look at that,” Jake said.

I looked up.

Wow.

My lettering looked great. It was the best lettering I’d done in… gosh, forever. And I hadn’t been practicing, either. All of the paintings I’d been working on were flowers and abstract pieces on canvas.

“You’ve still got it,” Jake said, nudging me.

“It looks good, doesn’t it? So does yours.”

The lettering for KAGE was huge, a shining green block of letters next to my curved forms. It was as though the two names were showing off two different competing styles. Soft, organic letters next to Jake’s hard, square lines.

Like a nature scene next to a cityscape. Both parts together made a contrast that showed off the details of each one.

“It works,” I said. “It’s weird, but it works.”

Jake put one arm around me and kissed the top of my head as he hugged me close.

“Yes,” he said. “I think we go well together. Wouldn’t you say?”



The security guards that Jake had hired kept closer to us from then on. I guessed that Jake paid them well enough that they weren’t going to turn us in, but they kept looking at us strangely. I suppose most billionaires don’t jump off of train platforms to paint graffiti.

We walked through the palace of Versailles. The art was… well, I guess it was nice. Stuffy. All of that French nobility. There were multiple oil paintings of Louis the Fourteenth’s dogs. I mean, I like dogs and everything, but there’s a limit. I wondered idly how much Louis had paid for that painting. I wondered if there was a court painter whose job it was to follow the dogs around and get good sketches.

When we got to the gardens, though, I breathed in a sigh of relief. The lawns spread out for as far as the eye could see, the hedges pruned in perfectly aligned rows and sleek circles. The gardens had a look that was almost magical. The honeyed light made everything seem crisp and clear in the cool air.

“We’ll come back when it’s later this spring,” Jake said. “I’m sure the trees are beautiful then.”

“They’re beautiful now,” I said. “This reminds me of my childhood.”

“All the green?”

“That too. But it’s the air, mostly.” I breathed in deeply. “Can’t you taste it? It’s so nice to be out of the city out here. Everything just feels fresh.”

Jake squeezed my hand and I grinned at him. The security guards were hanging back farther. I guess they didn’t think we were going to get in trouble out here in the gardens.

“Is that why you feel so stuffy in New York City?”

“Maybe,” I admitted. “It’s nice to be close to everything, especially where you live. But I think I’ll always need to take vacations out to the countryside.”

“Hmm. So would you prefer Iowa to Versailles?” he asked jokingly.

I laughed.

“Well, Iowa does have some pretty amazing corn mazes. I bet it could give Versailles a run for its money.”

“I bet. Anyway, the royalty here got their heads cut off for spending so much money building extravagant gardens.”

“It’s nice that they’re open to the public now,” I said. “Thanks, Louis the Fourteenth.”

We walked through the mazes of hedges. There was one labyrinth in a back corner of the garden. Jake pulled me through the hedge opening.