Ransom River

by Meg Gardiner

  They found it in a sticky patch of mud. Rory wiped it off and slung the pack across her shoulders. She swallowed the lump that clogged her throat. Don’t cry.

  And don’t tell. Telling would do no good. Her mom would turn purple, and her dad would phone Aunt Amber—she could hear the phone conversation, the black storm in her dad’s voice, yet another warning that Amber needed to lay down the law to Riss and Boone.

  It would backfire. Rory’s parents would fight her corner. They’d go Conan the Destroyer on anybody who hurt their only child. But when the backlash came, they wouldn’t be around.

  She pulled the cuffs of her sweatshirt over her hands and wiped them against her eyes. No, telling would only deepen her problems. A hard breath caught in her chest. She would just have to hold it in, all of it.

  She walked with Petra back to the sidewalk. Across the street on the soccer field at school, the drill team was practicing. Riss had stepped out of line and stood at the fence, staring at her.

  “Let’s go,” Rory said.

  Petra picked up her bike. Rory climbed on behind her and hung on, all the way home.

  24

  In her third-grade classroom at West River Elementary School, Petra was writing on the blackboard. The chalk broke and her nails hit the slate. At the sound, the kids squirmed and said, “Eww.”

  She brushed chalk dust from her hands. “Ooh, indeed. You know what that sound is? It’s a horse’s hooves raking the ground. The horse that belongs to the Headless Horseman.”

  She picked up The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

  But before she could read from it, a car alarm rang. The classroom overlooked the parking lot, and twenty small heads swiveled to see the culprit.

  “Class. Back here.” Petra made a spinning motion with her finger. And she glimpsed a Camry with its flashers blinking.

  Dammit.

  A minute later she was speed-walking across the parking lot. She raised her key fob and clicked the remote. The alarm kept blaring. She clicked again. The lights were having a seizure. She jogged up to the driver’s door and hit the remote one more time.

  The alarm shut off. The lights stopped flashing. The car looked fine.

  The voice behind her was low and chesty, a big man. “Alarms are so sensitive. Sit on the bumper, they go off.”

  She turned. A guy in a suit straight out of Mad Men stood behind her. Out of Mad Men, if he’d been blown up into one of the balloon animals for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

  A dark SUV crept nearer in the parking lot. Balloon Animal was wearing dark glasses and enough hair gel to grease a seal.

  “We need a word, Miss Whistler.”

  She backed up. How did they know her name? She turned, and another man was standing there blocking her path. She glanced toward her classroom. She couldn’t tell whether anybody inside was looking.

  Balloon Animal walked toward her. He could barely fit between her car and the one next to it. When he brushed the door she expected him to squeak like rubber.

  “You’ve got a problem,” he said.

  “Stop,” she said.

  He kept approaching. “I’ll do whatever I want.” His face was grim. “This problem you got, it’s called Aurora Mackenzie.”

  Seth and Rory cruised in his truck through a flat commercial zone of mattress showrooms and used-car dealerships. On the car lot, windshields shone with the sun, prices painted in red wow-kapow letters across the glass. Rory held her phone to her ear and talked to her law school professor David Goldstein. She spoke for a minute and thanked him. Hung up.

  “He’s found a criminal attorney who’ll see me today,” she said.

  “Where?” Seth said.

  “Century City.”

  That was a forty-five-minute drive over the hill, across the San Fernando Valley, and down the Sepulveda Pass to the busy business corridor in west L.A.

  “I’ll drive you to the meeting,” he said.

  “This isn’t your problem.” She gave him a sideways glance. “Don’t you have work today?”

  His smile was low and chilly. “I am working.”

  “On what?”

  “Conspiracy, fraud, perverting the course of justice. If the Ransom River PD screws with you, I’ll read ’em the entire penal code and sprinkle the charges over the department like confetti.”

  “Who’ll be the client?”

  He grinned, still chilly, and looked at her.

  “Me? No. I don’t want to be used as a front for a vendetta.”

  His face turned stung and uncertain. “That’s not what I’m after.”

  “I’m not bait, Seth.”

  “Duly noted.”

  “Sorry.” She was fuming. She forced herself to calm down. “I feel like I’ve been rubbed raw with sandpaper.”

  “I know.” He drove in silence for a minute. “So Riss is pissed off that you were chosen Hostage for a Day. What happens if you ignore her?” he said.

  Rory ran a hand through her hair. “Doesn’t work.”

  She’d tried it when she was twelve, after Riss’s posse roughed her up in the orchard and stole her notebook. She went back to school and pretended nothing had happened. And the next day, she was called to the office.

  The cafeteria staff had found her notebook on a lunch tray. The school secretary told Rory to be more careful with her things. The look on the secretary’s face caused her stomach to hum. When she opened the notebook, she saw why. It was vandalized. Her English class poem was covered with graffiti. She saw her own words: iridescent and chimera. They were crowded by Boone. By hearts, and I love you and…She stared. Let me suck you.

  And half the pages were torn out. Her muscles turned to yarn.

  She began to find pages around campus. Stuck to her locker with chewing gum. Taped to a mirror in the girls’ room. They were covered with swear words. And perv. And virgin. And drawings of dicks. And of her, naked. Bent over. She knew Riss had goaded her posse to do it. Riss was too smart to risk doing it herself.

  In Seth’s truck, she watched the used-car lots stream past. “Ignoring Riss, staying under her radar, playing dead—it all just fans the flames.”

  What happened if she ignored Cinderella? Prince Charming would show up.

  That Memorial Day Rory’s family had held a barbecue. Burgers and hot dogs on the grill. Rory helped her mom slice beefsteak tomatoes. Sam wore an orange paisley shirt and capris, and she rattled the ice cubes in her tea and joked with her friends in the kitchen. Outside by the BBQ, jovial banter surrounded her dad. Amber sat in a lawn chair on the patio, nursing a beer. Riss and Boone watched TV in the den.

  It was never spoken of—the awkwardness of Uncle Lee’s absence. He was Will Mackenzie’s baby brother, the rascal who always got into trouble and almost always wriggled out of it with a smile and a contrite shrug. And he’d left town. For work, Amber insisted.

  Sam would nod, tight-lipped. She and Will mentioned Lee only in murmurs. They stopped if Rory came into the room. Her dad would look furtive and her mom would smile in a way that seemed painfully sweet. But then, her mom never let anybody speak ill of the family. If somebody slighted Will or Rory, she wanted to “tear them a new one.” Will called Sam his little wolverine. So nobody badmouthed Lee. Nobody ever used the word abandoned.

  Because Lee hadn’t abandoned his family, Rory thought. He was working in Mexico. He sent Amber money. He wrote Rory postcards. Greetings from Yucatán. The postcards showed aqua seas and jungles with ancient stone pyramids. She imagined him digging for treasure in Mayan ruins.

  She finished slicing the beefsteak tomatoes and set out the ketchup and mustard and stood on tiptoe to watch the brownies baking in the oven.

  Her mom smiled and wiped a smudge from Rory’s cheek with her thumb. “Looks like mustard, sweet pea. And it’s on your shirt.”

  Wiping the back of her hand across her face, Rory went to change.

  When she walked into her room, Boone was standing at her corkboard. He nodded at the postcards tacke
d to the board. “‘Wish you were here.’”

  “What are you doing in here?” Rory said.

  He looked at the floor next to her, with the slitty-eyed look. “You owe me an apology.”

  “Sorry I called you a sack of flaming dog poop.”

  “When did you do that?”

  “Just now.”

  He turned and looked directly at her.

  She pointed at the door. “I have to change. Excuse me.” She was ready to push him out. Shaking inside, and suspicious, but ready.

  He walked to the door. But instead of leaving, he shut it. “Apology, Aurora.”

  “Boone, get out.”

  “Say you’re sorry.”

  “Fine, I’m sorry,” she said. “Now get out.”

  He crossed his arms. “I don’t believe you.”

  Rory grabbed the knob, but he leaned back against the door with all his weight, so she couldn’t open it. Distantly she heard women’s laughter and Led Zeppelin. Her dad was in charge of the music.

  “Okay, I’m really actually truly sorry I kicked you in the face,” she said. Not.

  “That’s a start,” he said. “You were pretty ballsy. But only because you had a boy there to back you up. Let’s see how brave you are when nobody’s here to help you and you don’t have to hit me at all.”

  “What are you talking about?” A quaver lurked in her throat.

  “A dare. It won’t hurt.”

  She didn’t like that. “Boone, get out of my room.”

  She tried to shove him aside and open the door. He moved her back, not hard, but firmly.

  “Get away,” she said. He blocked her path. “Boone.”

  He raised his hands, like he was patting out a fire. “Shh. Rory, it’s just a game. Stop being a wuss.” The sneaky smile had gone far, far away. “You kicked me. So you kiss it and make it better.”

  She felt a crawly sensation down her arms and legs. “That’s all?”

  “Yeah.” He stepped closer.

  She just wanted him to leave her alone. “Fine.” She stood on tiptoe and pecked him on the forehead. His shirt was warm. He smelled like sweat and spearmint gum.

  “Better?” she said.

  “Now it’s my turn.”

  She stepped back. “Boone, you said.”

  His hand went to the hem of her T-shirt. “It’s no big deal.”

  She shoved his hand away. “No.”

  He stepped closer and looked at her directly and tugged again on the hem of her shirt. His left hand slid beneath it and stroked her stomach.

  “Boone, stop it.”

  “It’s only fair. You touch me, I touch you.” His hand flattened against her skin. His palm was hot. “It’s not like it’s going to hurt. Everybody does this. Everybody in the world.”

  “No, they don’t.” She squirmed. “You’re my cousin.”

  “Shh,” he repeated. “Just show me your tits. Let me touch them and we’ll be even.”

  “No.”

  “What are you scared about? Doctors look at tits all day long. Babies suck on them. In public, at the food court at the mall. Why are you making this a big deal?”

  “Stop it.”

  She shoved at his hands but he moved against her and he was bigger, he weighed more, and he kept nudging her back, toward her dresser, toward the wall.

  “Cousins aren’t supposed to do this,” she said.

  “That’s weaksauce. I’m your step-cousin.” He tilted his head and smiled a weird smile. “Okay, I’ll let you touch me first.”

  He pulled his hands off her and unzipped his jeans.

  She shoved him away, hard. And that’s when she saw that her closet door was open. Standing inside it, staring at her like a mannequin, was Riss.

  “Shit,” Rory yelled.

  Boone turned to his sister. The look on his face said, You spoiled the game.

  Riss stood for a long, still second, her eyes unblinking. She took one step toward Rory.

  “You are such a freak,” she said.

  There was a knock on the door. An adult called, “What’s going on in there?”

  Rory ran for it. Behind her, Riss muttered, “And a loser.”

  Rory threw the door open. In the hallway stood one of her mom’s work friends. The woman wore an expression of surprise and a teacher’s suspicion of kids doing bad things behind closed doors.

  “Sorry, I thought this was the bathroom,” she said.

  “No. We’re going outside now.”

  Rory looked pointedly at her cousins. Boone slouched past her and down the hall, avoiding the teacher’s gaze. Riss glided from the closet, like a reanimated doll, and sauntered past Rory.

  Rory’s heart was beating like a rabbit’s. She felt like she was going to vomit. In a bright haze, she told the teacher, “Bathroom’s down the hall.”

  She walked back to the kitchen and through the happy chatter. She went outside to the patio and got herself a soda from the cooler. Her dad was flipping burgers, telling the neighbors that the Lakers weren’t worth a good piss this season.

  Amber sat in the lawn chair, beer in one hand, cigarette in the other. Rory took her soda to the avocado tree that shaded the back wall. It was a perfect climbing tree, with sturdy branches and smooth bark. She put the soda in the notch and hoisted herself up.

  The leaves formed a canopy. She sat in the tree and popped the top on her soda but couldn’t force even one swallow.

  Her mom was laughing in the kitchen. The sun bounced off the patio windows, reddish. In the family room, Riss and Boone had slumped onto the couch to watch TV. Riss was peering out the window in Rory’s direction.

  Below the tree, Pepper barked up at her.

  “Not now, boy,” she said.

  Riss kept staring.

  Later, after everybody went home, Rory discovered that Uncle Lee’s postcards had been ripped off her corkboard. All that remained were the tacks. She decided to ask for a lock on her door. And her window.

  At school the next week, Rory got used to feeling like silence wasn’t safety. Something was waiting, some jack-in-the-box, ready to spring. Later, she saw a documentary and learned about the Bouncing Betty, a kind of land mine. That’s how she felt walking around school.

  It was Friday when Riss found her, between periods, at the water fountain. Rory felt her looming as she bent and drank. Slowly she straightened and wiped her lips. Riss had on the mannequin face.

  “That’s it. Close your mouth. Close it tight,” Riss said.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Rory said.

  Riss didn’t exactly smile. She looked more—dismissive. “Is that your new plan? Amnesia?”

  “I don’t want to talk about this.”

  The look got sharper. It was a sneer. “Actually, amnesia is good.”

  Rory turned and headed for the science pod.

  Riss caught up with her. “Nothing happened.” She walked alongside, staring at her. “Because if you ever claimed that it did, you’d be wrong.”

  “Sure, Riss. Whatevs.”

  “You’d be lying.”

  Rory looked straight ahead and headed for her classroom.

  “Bad things happen to liars,” Riss said. “Because they deserve it.”

  Stop it, just stop it, Rory thought. But she didn’t say it. The only thing that would make Riss go away was getting to her science classroom.

  “Liars get in trouble,” Riss said. “But not just them. Things happen around them. It’s called karma.”

  Don’t look at her.

  “Like, you know when people talk about you, your ears burn? When liars talk, it’s their stuff that burns.”

  That was when Rory first thought that Riss was crazy.

  Riss lowered her voice. “You know how your dad was cooking hot dogs? How’d you like it if your real dog got cooked? Pepper on the grill.”

  Rory stopped. She turned and glared at her cousin. Riss pulled back a few inches.

  “Don’t you dare even talk a
bout hurting Pepper,” Rory said.

  Riss held back, but only for a second. “I’m not. Karma is.”

  “I hate you,” Rory said.

  “Liar. Liar, liar.” Riss backed away. “But you’re not going to say anything about Boone. Because you don’t want your world to get burned up by your lies.”

  The bell rang.

  “If you tell, I’ll know. If anything happens to Boone, I’ll know. If your dad does anything, or your mom, or the school, I’ll know. And you’ll pay. You won’t know when. But anything you touch gets taken away. You poison it. If you touch it, you kill it.”

  She walked away.

  25

  Seth drove slowly along in traffic. “You need to stay away from her.”

  “I need to put an electronic ankle bracelet and a muzzle on her. But that ain’t gonna happen.”

  “Is she after publicity?”

  “I never know,” Rory said. “She’s certainly after a way to break out of waitressing at a cocktail bar where she dresses up as a naughty Catholic schoolgirl. And she’s still after me. Why she’s so gung ho on the trial, and the attack…”

  They rode in silence a moment. They both knew that Riss loved to pull tricks from her sleeve. Rory knew the only thing that would really protect her from Riss’s desire to lash out: getting out of town.

  “Tell me about the second gunman,” she said.

  “Kevin Berrigan.”

  Seth slowed for a corner and turned toward the foothills, headed to Rory’s neighborhood.

  “Salesman for a tool-and-die company in North Las Vegas. Steadily employed. On his first marriage. One kid in first grade at his local public school, the second in diapers at home. And not just an usher at church, but a Eucharistic minister,” he said. “But it seems he had a taste for something besides communion wine.”

  “Gambling.”

  “Poker to begin with. And bets on the sports book. Basketball. That’s how he got into trouble.”

  “In debt to bookies?” Rory said.

  “At first.” He stopped for a light at a railroad crossing. “Then in debt to the loan sharks he used to pay off the bookies.”