Running Out Of Time

Over the phone, Jessie explains the dire medical situation in Clifton to Mr. Neeley. He asks if she is safe and if anyone knows she has escaped, then assures her he will pick her up from the restaurant and help her. He tells her what he looks like so she will recognize him. While Jessie waits for him, she remembers that he did not ask what she looked like, but shrugs off her suspicion and buys a chicken dinner. Mr. Neeley arrives and reassures Jessie that everything will be fine; he claims he called the board of health and that they will take medicine to the children. When Jessie asks why Clifton’s men would allow children to get sick and not help them, Mr. Neeley gets angry and quiet. He turns on the radio and asks Jessie more questions to distract her while they drive to his apartment. After they arrive, Jessie notes the place seems lonely. Mr. Neeley gives her a glass of water and leads her to a bedroom to rest. She believes the water could be contaminated after her encounter with the environmentalist near the creek and tosses the water out the window. When Jessie can’t sleep, she hears Mr. Neeley on the phone; he threaten to kill Jessie because she knows too much.

Shocked, Jessie hears Mr. Neeley invite the people he is working with to his apartment to carry out his plan. She rushes back to the room and pretends to be asleep while she figures out her own plan. She wonders how Ma could have trusted Mr. Neeley. After the others arrive, Jessie listens to them talk in the living room. She learns that one of them is Miles Clifton, who sounds panicked and wants to shut down the village. Mr. Neeley rejects this idea; he claims his research is not finished. Mr. Neeley reveals that his men have been following Jessie ever since she escaped. Mr. Neeley surprises Jessie by checking in on her and discovering that she is awake despite the drugs he slipped into her water. She hits her head on a bedside table and blacks out.

Jessie wakes, disoriented, but then remembers that Mr. Neeley wants to kill her. When she checks the door to the bedroom she is in, she finds it locked. She \ feels that she has let the children in Clifton down. Suddenly, she remembers the window through which she tossed the water the previous night. She climbs down onto the window ledge to escape, pretending this is a dare from Andrew to overcome her fear. She lands painfully in a bush but manages to make it out of Neeley’s apartment without getting caught.

Although she fears she may be followed, Jessie walks to a nearby bus stop and meets a talkative old woman named Mrs. Tyndale. Jessie boards the bus with her and asks how to call the board of health and schedule a news conference. The old woman tells her the state capitol would be a good place to hold a news conference. When the bus stops in front of the capitol building, Jessie exits the bus. Jessie finds a phone and manages to reach the board of health, but they do not take her seriously. She almost succumbs to her fear and exhaustion, but the memory of Katie fortifies her into calling a local news station to schedule a news conference. When they ask what the conference will be about, Jessie replies, “’Terrible problems at Clifton […] And an evil man who’s planning a murder’” (151).