Girl, Stolen (8 page)

“Don’t talk like that around her,” Griffin said sharply. He could see how stiffly Cheyenne held herself.

Jimbo and TJ responded at the same time with a mocking “ooh!”

“How much money do you think he’ll want to spend to get his own daughter back?” Jimbo said. “A million?” Griffin heard the yearning in his voice.

TJ reached out to finger Cheyenne’s curls. “A pretty thing like you ought to go for a lot.”

Cheyenne’s lips curled back. She jerked her head away from TJ. But when she did, she lost her balance and had to put out one hand to stop from tipping over. A hand that was obviously not tied to anything at all.

“Well, well, well, what have we here?” Jimbo said. “How come you don’t have her tied up?”

S
omething dark loomed in the corner of Cheyenne’s vision as the gross one taunted her. When she instinctively pulled back, her hand flew up, revealing that she was no longer tied up. She froze. What excuse would Griffin give? Five minutes earlier, she had been ready to scratch his eyes out. Now he seemed like the only buffer between her and these men who treated her like she didn’t have ears to hear what they said.

Griffin sounded unhurried, unworried. “She had to go to the bathroom. I was just getting ready to tie her back up when you guys came home.”

“Are you sure that’s all that’s been happening?” the gross guy said. “I mean, maybe you’re just taking advantage of the fact that you finally got a girl in your bed.”

So this was Griffin’s room, not a guest room. Cheyenne was surprised.

“Better not handle the merchandise,” the other man said. He seemed smarter, but not by much. “Remember, you break it, you bought it.”

Wanting to keep the focus away from her untied wrists, Cheyenne put the hand that was no longer behind her back in her pocket. She barely missed cutting herself on the piece of glass she had hidden there earlier. It was nestled in the kibble that always, since she had gotten Phantom, half filled her pockets. (Cheyenne had learned the hard way to check before she put her clothes in the washer.) The kibble was used for rewards, as well as for what the guide dog school had called counter-conditioning. If Phantom was distracted, giving him a piece of kibble was one sure way to get his attention back on her.

“Bring me the twine,” the second man said. “Let somebody who knows what he’s doing tie her up.”

The gross one sniggered.

For a minute, Cheyenne wondered if she could use the glass to hold them all at bay. And then what? She couldn’t come up with a scenario that lasted for more than a few seconds. It probably wasn’t even possible to cut someone with a broken piece of glass without cutting yourself at the same time.

“I’ve got things under control,” Griffin said. “And it’s not like she’s some huge flight risk. She’s blind, remember? You guys should go out and finish working on that Toyota.”

Nobody moved. There wasn’t a sound. She wished she knew what was happening. In the silence, she could feel the tension stretching out between Griffin and the two men.

Then the second man laughed. “You just think you got things under control.” But there was a note in his tone, as if he were trying to save face, trying to make Griffin think this was his decision, not Griffin’s.

Cheyenne and Griffin were both silent until they heard the front door open and close. Then she said, “Thanks. I don’t like them.”

“You’re not the only one.”

“Who are they?” Cheyenne made a conscious effort to look toward his face. People got nervous if you didn’t look at them, but for her, the face was no longer important. It was just the place the voice came from.

“Guys who work for my dad.”

“Doing what, exactly?”
What kind of employees would just accept it if you showed up with a kidnapped girl?

Griffin hesitated for so long she wondered if he was even going to answer. Finally, he said, “We sell cars and car parts for cheaper. Say you want to buy a seat for a Honda Civic. If you get it from the dealer, it’ll cost you three thousand. Buy it off us, it’s a lot cheaper. A lot.”

“So why is it so much cheaper?” Now that the two men were gone, Cheyenne’s body was reminding her how sick she was. She had used up all her energy thinking about how to escape, then deciding it would be better to try to find a phone once the house was empty, and then struggling with Griffin. “Do you guys run a wrecking yard or something?”

“Or something.” Griffin sighed and settled down on the end of the bed. Cheyenne pulled her feet farther back so that she wouldn’t touch him. “It’s a little bit of this and a little bit of that.” He took a deep breath. “One of the things we do is buy junker cars at auction. Stuff that the insurance company has declared a total loss.”

“And you use them for parts?”

“Mostly we just use a couple of the parts, and that’s it. Just the ones with the VIN on them.”

“What’s a VIN?”

“The vehicle identification number. Each car has a different one. There’s a tiny one on every dashboard that you can see through the windshield, but they put them in a few other places, too. The cops can check a VIN to see if a car has been stolen. So once we buy a junker, then we go looking for a second car that’s the exact same year, make, and model, only
not
totaled.”

Cheyenne thought she knew where this was going. “And you don’t buy that other car, do you?”

“No. We steal it. Then we put the VINs from the junker on the stolen car, and we end up with a car with a clear title and a perfectly legal VIN. We register it with a phony name and address and then resell it to someone who isn’t going to ask too many questions about why they’re getting a nice car a couple of thousand under Kelley Blue Book.”

“But it’s stolen!”

“You really think the person who buys it doesn’t have any idea?” Griffin snorted. “They know. They just don’t want to know. If you know what I mean.”

“So is that why you stole the Escalade – you have a trashed one sitting around someplace that you can use the VINs from?”

Cheyenne could hear the reluctance in his reply. “Uh, that was more like an accident. Normally, we get the junker first and then steal the better car. And I don’t usually take cars. J—” He stopped himself from saying someone’s name, but she filed away the initial. “The other guys do that. I just saw the keys in the ignition and I acted on impulse. Obviously. Or I would have noticed that you were in the back. My dad’s not real happy with me right now.”

“So what are you going to do with Danielle’s car? Buy a damaged one and switch out the VINs?” But it would always be her family’s car, Cheyenne thought. The one with the inch-long scratch on the passenger’s side where Phantom’s rigid steel harness had caught the first week she had him.

“It’s a sweet ride, but right now it’s a little too hot, even if we put on new VINs and new plates. They’ll be stopping every car like it from Seattle to San Francisco. The radio said they’ve got an AMBER Alert out for you. We might just have to part it out, you know, and sell a piece here and a piece there, but not the whole car. A bumper from a car like that might cost four thousand new from the dealer. We could cut a car repair place a deal for half the price and still come out ahead, since we got the car for free.”

For free
. Cheyenne guessed that was one way to describe stealing. “But what about the VIN? Won’t they know the bumper came from our car?”

“They don’t put the VIN on every part, so once you take a part away from the car, the cops can’t trace it. There’s a lot of body shops that will look the other way and buy stuff from us. They save money, and we make money. So everybody’s happy.”

“Except the guy who just paid a lot for a stolen bumper. Or the person whose whole car has been turned into a pile of parts.”

She could hear his shrug. “My dad says that’s what insurance is for.”

“But what about—” Cheyenne started to argue, only the words caught in her throat. Then she was doubled over coughing, trying to catch her breath.

Griffin brought her some more water, but she waved it away, still coughing. Finally it was done.

“Are you okay?”

Maybe she was imagining it, but she thought there was real concern in Griffin’s voice.

“Not really. Could you maybe just let me sleep?” It was all she could do to hold her head up and have this conversation.

“Sure.”

She had one last waking thought. “Just keep those guys away from me.”

F
iguring he had better do it before his dad got back, Griffin tied Cheyenne’s ankle more tightly to the bed. She barely stirred, her head pillowed on her forearm. She looked exhausted. Except for her flushed cheeks, her face was as white as paper. Griffin got a blue-and-pink quilt (his grandma had made it when his mother was pregnant with him but didn’t know if he was a boy or a girl) from the hall closet and gently draped it over Cheyenne. It smelled kind of musty, but he wanted her to be warm.

In a way, it had been a relief to talk to Cheyenne about Roy’s business. At first Griffin had considered not answering her question about what his dad did, or lying. But what was it his grandma used to say before she stopped making sense? Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, that was it. Meaning, if you were already screwed, then what the hell. Cheyenne already knew too much, so what was a little bit more?

Besides, he had never talked about it to anyone. Griffin had felt a strange sense of pride as he had described the various tricks they used to turn something illegal into something legal or something that nobody wanted into something that somebody did. He had kept on talking, even when it was clear she was barely staying awake. It had been like trying to stop the air from leaking out of a punctured balloon. He wished he had thought to tell Cheyenne about the “strip and run,” his favorite trick. TJ or Jimbo would steal a car, strip its parts, and then abandon what was left. Eventually, the police would recover the vehicle and cancel the theft record. Then Roy would purchase the frame at an insurance auction and tow it home. In the barn, the stolen parts would be reattached to the very same car they had come from. The end result was a whole, valuable, and perfectly legal car that Roy could sell for many times more than he had paid for the stripped frame.

Thinking about stolen stuff reminded Griffin that there was still a trunk load of loot from the shopping center in the Honda. But there was no way he was going to leave Cheyenne here alone to go sell it on Eighty-second in Portland, even if she hadn’t begged him to watch over her. Griffin didn’t think TJ was anything more than talk, but there were times when Jimbo found a way of goading TJ into action. If it worked out, Jimbo would join in. If it didn’t, Jimbo stepped back and let TJ take the blame.

As he gently closed the door to his bedroom, Griffin wondered when his dad would come back and what he would say when he did. He reached into his pocket for his cigarettes as he walked into the kitchen. Ever since he had brought Cheyenne inside, he had seen the house with new eyes. And what he saw was depressing, shabby, and dirty. It didn’t matter that Cheyenne would never actually see it. He slid the cigarette pack back into his shirt pocket, then emptied the sink, filled it with hot, soapy water, and went to work.

Two hours later, the dishes were drying in the rack and the kitchen floor had been mopped until it shone. Griffin had a sudden appreciation for what it must have been like for his mom. No wonder she had left. Two hours of work, and he knew it could all be undone in a few minutes. Still, he had a feeling of satisfaction. The mail, old newspapers, and random auto parts that had covered the dining room table had been either sorted into neat piles on the sideboard, taken out to the burn barrel, or put away in the barn. Whenever Griffin went outside, TJ and Jimbo didn’t seem to be working much, just leaning on half-dismantled cars, their breath clouding the air, talking and gesturing toward the house. They shut up whenever he got near enough to hear what they were saying.