Ryan had run by while they had been teasing and joking. Knowing where they were, he took a long route to make sure there was no way they could see him. Then he worked his way back to the building where Ivan was hiding.
Ivan stood on the far side of the building with a boom box in one hand and a cell phone in the other, occasionally peeking around the edge of the building and through some trees to check on Alan and Christine. They were over a hundred feet away. It would be extremely hard for anyone to see him during one of his occasional peeks, since he'd carefully picked this location.
Ryan reached Ivan, patting him on the shoulder.
Ivan knew what he was going to ask. As he put his cell phone away, he said, "They're still there. You got here just in time."
Ryan smiled. "Do it then. When you're ready."
That exchange had taken place while Alan was still peeing.
Once Alan was out of the restroom, Ivan decided the time was right and started playing back Rebecca's recorded screams on the boom box he was carrying. Ryan had devised a fiendish plan to lure Alan, and Christine if she was there too, into an ambush to rescue a screaming woman (or so they would think). He knew their reputation as moralistic do-gooder types and figured they couldn't resist such a chance to save a "damsel in distress."
Alan started to walk back towards the stairs leading up to the stands. "I never did tell you why the blonde sold her car. It was for the gas money... No? No laugh? I need to work on my delivery."
"Shhhh!" Christine hissed, looking all around very suspiciously.
"Wow, I must really-"
"Shut up!" she hissed. "Listen!"
Alan listened. It was faint, but he could hear the sound of screaming. Female screaming.
"You hear that?" she asked warily.
"I think so... it's gone already. Sounded like someone screaming, maybe. Could that be coming from the game?" He looked east towards the stands.
She paused, trying to listen closely. "No, I don't think so," she finally concluded. "It sounds like it's coming from that way." She pointed west.
"I think it might have been a female voice. Is it my imagination, or did you hear it again? And a bit louder now?"
In fact, he was right. Ivan had turned up the volume on the boom box a couple of times already. The plan was to make the occasional screams just loud enough to draw Alan's and Christine's attention and send them searching for the source. It would be very bad if anyone else heard.
He added, "I think we should go check it out. It sounds to me like someone in trouble."
Christine was listening closely and getting that feeling too, although it was hard to tell. When the wind picked up and rustled the leaves on nearby trees, it was impossible to hear any of the voice at all.
She looked around carefully and said, "Well, okay. We can check it out a little bit, but let's not stray too far from the stands. This could be a trap."
"It could be," he admitted as he started to walk west. "But the odds are so improbable. Ryan and his whole bunch are playing in the game right now. We know that. If it was half time, then maybe, but that could be ten or more minutes off, the way our team is running their no huddle offense."
The two of them walked ahead warily.
Christine was careful to make sure that she and Alan remained in the open and far from any possible ambush spots. She wondered if Alan was right and she was being too paranoid, but she kept her cell phone in her hand ready to dial, anyway. She knew the others, and especially Alan, already thought she was being way too paranoid. She had to admit to herself that Alan had a point - she had just seen with her own eyes a few minutes earlier that Ryan and his gang were safely involved with the football game.
To make matters worse, there was the incident in the boy's locker room with Ryan and Amy that turned out to be just a feint on Ryan's part. So Alan had already effectively cried wolf once, making school officials less likely to move rapidly to help.
The two of them quickly walked west a couple hundred feet until they came to a building known as The Clubhouse. The surrounding neighborhoods were wealthy, in some cases extremely so, and their school was remarkably endowed considering it was public. The Clubhouse was at the center of all the sports facilities on the west side of the football field and stands. There were tennis courts, racquetball courts, basketball courts, a volleyball court, and even a walled Olympic-size swimming pool. There was also a nearby gymnasium with indoor basketball courts, and more.
All the facilities were closed and locked for the duration of the Thanksgiving vacation, so there was no reason for anyone to be about. The parking lot was on the other side of the football field. The area was completely deserted.
Rock and Ivan had been hiding on the other side of The Clubhouse, but once they saw Alan and Christine heading towards them, they ran off to hide behind a more distant building, making sure to move at an angle so The Clubhouse would block the view of their retreat.
Staging an ambush at The Clubhouse would not do, because it was within easy sight and hearing distance of anyone who might wander from the stands to either the men's or ladies' restrooms.
Christine moved forward warily, with Alan just behind her, until she cleared the far side of The Clubhouse. She stopped and looked around. She said quietly, "I don't see anything. There's no one here. And I haven't heard any screams for a while."
"Yeah, it looks that way, and I haven't heard any, either," he admitted. "But the sound could have been coming from maybe inside one of the tennis courts. Or racquetball courts." He pointed in one direction. "Or maybe from inside the pool area." He pointed in another direction.
"Maybe," she said as she carefully walked around The Clubhouse until she'd nearly circumnavigated it. "But it's been a while. Maybe whatever it was is over."
Alan listened carefully. In fact, the boom box had been turned off while Ivan and Ryan moved to a new position where they couldn't be seen, so even the occasional distant scream had come to a halt. But just as Alan was about to agree with Christine that he didn't hear anything either, Ivan turned the boom box back on. Again, the goal was to make the scream just barely loud enough for their two victims to hear.
"Wait! There it is again," Alan finally said. "It's still coming from that way, I think." He pointed west again.
Christine nodded, and said, "It could be off the school grounds." About two hundred feet ahead, the fence bounding the school property could be seen, plus an undeveloped canyon beyond it.
"Could be," he admitted, "but we should check it out just the same. That's not just some kids playing; that sounds like someone in serious trouble."
Driven by curiosity, and still afraid of crying wolf, she decided, "Let's go a little bit further and then call for help if we still can't figure it out. It could still be nothing. Or maybe it's a couple of lovers doing the deed."
The more Alan thought about it, the more it made sense to him that it could be a woman crying out in ecstasy, not in pain. That eased his worries a lot, and he relaxed enough to joke, "'Doing the deed'? What do you mean, a couple of real estate developers signing papers?"
She rolled her eyes at him and made clear with her disapproving face that he should be quiet so they could listen for the screaming.
He decided it would be wise to shut up. He knew this was a potentially very serious situation, but teasing Christine was so much fun that he couldn't help himself. I've got to try harder. Christine's really trying her best, and she cares. She cares about protecting me and even about protecting strangers. Sure, it was probably just a couple of lovers sneaking off, but what if I'm wrong? He sighed happily, despite the strange situation. That's one thing I absolutely love about her - she inspires me to strive to be a better person.
They could still hear the occasional screaming, although both of them were beginning to wonder why it was no louder than when they'd first detected it. It was still just barely audible.
Christine pointed out they could be moving parallel to it instead of directly towards it, which would explain why it wasn't getting louder. (In fact, Ivan and Ryan had moved positions yet again, drawing them further away from the stands and the football field.)
Much of the area around them was open ground where it was impossible for anyone to hide. For instance, the bicycle racks were to the north, as was the teacher / staff parking lot, and the odds of anyone hiding that way were low.
To the west were the swimming pool, tennis courts, racquetball courts, and more. There were lots of potential places to hide, so they found themselves drifting that way.
Alan pointed out, "You know, if it was a couple of lovers sneaking off for a quickie, they might be doing that inside one of the tennis courts or racquetball courts. Normally that would be way risky, but look how deserted everything is." The green fences around the tennis courts would provide some cover, but even better were the racquetball courts, which were surrounded by concrete walls.
The screaming was starting to get a little bit louder as they got closer to the racquetball courts, though still very intermittent. The two of them were walking quite briskly now. If it was just a couple of lovers, they wanted to confirm that quickly and get back to the safety of the stands. But if it wasn't, they didn't want to be creeping about while a woman was potentially being raped or otherwise attacked.
The distances they'd walked were not vast, and it had only been about a minute or so since they'd started to chase after the mysterious screams.