Girl, Stolen (2 page)

As if to make the thought real, he heard a car in the distance. Approaching them.

“I can’t let you go,” he said, and was starting to add, “not right now,” but before Griffin even got the next word out of his mouth she was fighting him again, opening her mouth to scream. What could he do? Then he had an idea. He didn’t know if it would work, but he had to do something. Desperately, he groped across the passenger seat until his fingers closed on what he needed.

Griffin pressed the barrel against her temple.

“Shut up or I’ll shoot you.”

C
heyenne froze at the touch of the cold metal. She could tell that he meant what he said. He sounded angry and out of control, just like she felt. They were both quiet until the car passed them and the sound of its engine faded. She could feel her strength draining away with it.

“Look – can’t you just chill?” His voice sounded a little calmer.

She made herself nod.

“I don’t need this crap. I don’t need you screaming and kicking and scratching. I can’t think when you do that. So are you going to be quiet?”

Cheyenne nodded again, wishing she could curl up into a tighter and tighter ball, grow smaller and smaller until she just disappeared.

“I
am
going to let you go,” he insisted.

Something must have flickered on her face, betrayed her doubt.

“I
am
! Just not now. Right now, I’m going to have to tie you up and cover you with the blanket so that no one can see you. And tonight, once it’s dark, I’ll let you go.”

Her head ached where it had slammed against the window. That had probably only been five minutes ago, but it felt like a lifetime. Where were they now that he felt he could hold her down in the backseat without anyone noticing? That lone car had been the only one she had heard since he had turned onto this road.

“Take off your shoes.” Cheyenne thought he was trying to stop her from running away, until he added, “And pull out the laces.”

She did as he asked, wondering where the gun was pointing. At her head, at her heart? Or had he already set it down? The tiny slice of blurry vision she had left didn’t reveal any clues. He ordered her to lie down on her side, facing the seat, then tied her hands together behind her. Cheyenne knew he couldn’t be holding the gun when he did that, but even so, he could still pick it up and shoot her if she gave him any trouble. She did as he asked, but at the same time tensed her wrists and held them as far apart as she dared. With the second shoelace, he tied her ankles together. Why couldn’t she have worn loafers?

Her mind raced. When he was finished, she rolled over so that she was facing him. She wanted him to see her face, to see her eyes even if she couldn’t see his. It would probably be easier to shoot someone in the back.

She didn’t want to make it easy for him.

Cheyenne heard him pick up her purse and begin to rummage through it.

“Are you looking for money?” she said. “Because I don’t have much.”

Cheyenne knew she had a twenty, two tens, and some ones. The twenty was folded the long way, the ten the short way, and the ones weren’t folded at all. Whenever she got money back from someone else, she asked which bill was which and then folded it. Every blind person had their own way of folding money to tell it apart. Coins were a lot easier. Each was a different diameter and thickness, and some had smooth edges and some didn’t. Even before the accident, when a coin fell to the floor, Cheyenne had been able to tell what it was, just by the sound it made.

Now she offered him a bargaining chip. “I do have an ATM card. Let me go, and I’ll give you my PIN. I’ve got over three thousand dollars in my account.”

“Three thousand dollars?” There was something about his voice that made Cheyenne think he was younger than she had first thought. He sounded incredulous.

She dared to let herself hope. “You can have all of it. I don’t think you can get more than a thousand out at a time, but I won’t tell them that you have the card. I swear.”

“I don’t want your money!” There was a strange tone to his voice. It was almost like he was hurt by her accusation, which didn’t make any sense. It was okay to steal a car, it was okay to kidnap her, but it wasn’t okay to take her money? “I’m looking in your purse for something to gag you with.”

“You can’t. I’m really sick. If you gag me, I won’t be able to breathe.” It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the whole truth, either. But if he gagged her, it would make it that much less likely that she would be able to get help.

Cheyenne was shaking, partly with fear, and partly, she thought, because her temperature must be spiking again. It had been one hundred and two in the doctor’s office. Dr. Guinn had prescribed antibiotics and said Cheyenne would be all done with them by Christmas. Now the thought struck like a blow to the stomach.
Will I be alive to see Christmas at all?
“That’s why we were at the shopping center, so my stepmom could pick up my prescription at the pharmacy. If I can’t breathe through my mouth, I’ll smother.”

He hesitated for a long time. Finally he said roughly, “Promise you won’t scream?”

“I promise.” Why should either of them believe the other? Cheyenne wondered bleakly as he pulled the blanket over her. They had no reason to tell the truth and every reason to lie. Which meant that he could be planning to hurt her, to chain her up in his basement for years, to shoot her in the heart. Just like she was thinking about how to get away, to get someone’s attention, to hurt him so bad that he couldn’t hurt her back. There was no point in either one of them trusting the other.

Even though he had pulled the blanket over her head as well as her body, the kidnapper had arranged it so it didn’t cover her face. Good. She could still breathe. And because he could see her face, he would remember she was a person, not a long bundle like a rolled-up carpet. It would be a lot easier to shoot a rolled-up carpet. She heard him climb back into the front seat and then the car started.

Cheyenne tried to figure out the direction the car was heading, but she had lost track in the first few minutes after he stole it. All she knew was that the road was quiet and that couldn’t be good for her. Quiet meant no one to notice. Quiet meant he could kill her or do whatever he wanted and no one would know. Her thoughts became darker. Danielle and her dad would be called in to identify her body. What would this man do after she was dead? Would he leave her body in the car and abandon both on some logging road that no one would venture down until spring? Or tumble her out into a ditch in the countryside? Or bury her in a shallow grave in the mountains?

The only thing that might save her life was the fact that she couldn’t describe what he looked like.

But if Cheyenne couldn’t see, how could she escape?

G
riffin turned the key in the ignition and drove away, still feeling amazed. He started to push the cigarette lighter back into the console, but then stopped and put it in his pocket. He might need it again. He had been afraid that the girl might try to shove his hand away when he threatened to shoot her. Instead she had frozen with fear.

The fact that she had really believed the car’s lighter was a gun made Griffin feel oddly powerful. Like he could just wish and make it so.

When music started playing behind him, he almost drove off the road. Then he realized it was a mobile phone playing the first few notes to a popular song. After pulling over, Griffin reached back for her purse. He looked in the phone’s window that showed caller ID. “It says Danielle Wilder,” he said. “Who’s that?”

“My stepmom.” She gave him what he guessed she thought was a friendly smile. It was more like a dog baring its teeth. “Let me talk to her and it will buy you some time. I’ll tell her she parked in a different row than she thinks. She was in a hurry when she went into the drugstore. It will keep her looking for a few more minutes.”

“I don’t think so,” Griffin said, and watched the fake smile fall from her face like a plate from a shelf. He pressed the power button on the phone until the display dwindled and went black. But even with the power off, could the police somehow trace the phone? He slid the window down and threw the phone as far as he could, where it landed in a tangle of blackberry bushes. Too late, he remembered his fingerprints would be on it. He had taken off his gloves to tie her up and then neglected to put them back on again. He swore under his breath. Stupid, stupid, stupid. He was just as dumb as Roy always said. Why couldn’t he ever think things through? Feeling his pulse thrumming in his temples, Griffin tried to reassure himself that it would be all right. No one would find that phone for years.

He pulled back onto the road. When he came to a fork, he took a back way that wound between fields. Here the houses were miles apart. He got a cigarette out of his shirt pocket and flicked his lighter.

“You are
not
going to smoke in my stepmom’s car!”

“What?” He was half amused, half angry. Didn’t she realize who was in charge now?

“First of all, I’m sick. I can barely breathe as it is. Second, my stepmom will kill you if you stink up her car.”

Griffin snorted. But he took the cigarette out of his mouth and put it and the lighter back in his shirt pocket.

For a long time, the car was absolutely silent except for the ragged sound of the girl’s breathing. After about fifteen minutes, he saw a car approaching them. As it got closer, he tensed. Would she try to signal somehow, maybe press her feet against the window, or heave herself up so that her face appeared? He angled the rearview mirror so he could look at her. He watched her face tense and could tell she was weighing her options, the same as he would have in her place. But there weren’t many. The car passed without incident. The driver was an older man talking on a mobile. Griffin doubted that the Escalade had even registered on his consciousness.

Her voice, coming from under the blanket, made him jump. “What’s your name?”

“What? Are you serious? Do you really think I would tell you that?” He countered with, “What’s
your
name?” For a second, Griffin thought of what it must be like to be her. To be blind. Like being on an amusement park ride in the dark, one of those rides where skeletons jumped out at you or ghosts glided up behind you and you only knew they were there when they wailed in your ear.

“It’s Cheyenne,” she said softly. “Cheyenne Wilder.”

“Why did your parents name you Cheyenne?” Griffin asked as they drove past two horses – one brown and one black – running free. His eyes followed them for a moment. “Isn’t that an Indian tribe?”

“I’m one-thirty-second Indian. Not enough to really matter.”

High cheekbones, dark hair, dark eyes – he could see it. His panic had eased a little. “How old are you?” he asked. It was hard to tell. Fourteen? Eighteen? She was smaller than him, maybe five two, and not wearing any makeup, but she also seemed self-assured. Maybe you had to grow up fast if you were blind.

“Sixteen.”

“How come you’re blind?”

Instead of answering, Cheyenne shifted and changed the subject. “Where are you taking me?”

He shook his head, forgetting again that she couldn’t see him. Then he said, “I can’t tell you that.”

“Well, then, how long until we get there?”

“When we do.” An odd flash of memory, some vacation with his parents. His dad just drove, never taking his eyes off the road and never answering Griffin’s questions. His mom turned around in the seat and talked to him, snuck him little snacks. They had played games, like spotting as many different license plates as they could, or vying with each other to think of animals whose names started with each letter of the alphabet.
“Ape, bear, cheetah
…
”
Griffin hadn’t thought about that trip for a long time.

He looked back at Cheyenne again. Her eyes were open but unfocused, which was kind of freaky. It reminded him of parties he had been to, people so drugged or drunk they were lost in their own world. It was weird that he could look at her and she wouldn’t know.