by Cara Martin
Too late.
He’s reaching for the pistol, closing his fingers around the handle and waving it in her face. “Be good, little girl,” he warns.
Tanvi’s voice strains against her duct tape, the words mumbled but her alarm as clear as an air raid siren. The blond girl stumbles, landing hard on her kneecaps before scooching back to her former spot next to Tanvi. “That’s what you’d like to be anyway, isn’t it?” The guy with the gun chuckles snidely from behind his mask. “A good little girl.”
Cal struggles to his feet, a hum of protest exploding from his lungs. “Fugg yoo asshull.”
The black guy pushes Cal’s shoulders, forcing him down again, his gun pointed squarely at Cal’s chest. The white guy aims his gun away from the blond girl to train it on Cal, and then me. “We should’ve left them tied up back at the house,” he complains, shooting me a dirty look. “Both of them. They’re already more trouble than they’re worth, and for all we know they’re worth fuck all.”
“No one asked you,” the guy in the passenger seat bellows. He must’ve witnessed the whole episode, but he’s already turned to face the road. He doesn’t want us to be able to identify him; none of them do. It’s a good sign, and my heart beats faster in relief. They believe we’ll walk away from this. “Don’t be a prick,” he continues. “There’s no room for that while we’re on the job. We couldn’t take the chance that the last kid saw one of our faces. So we’ve got four now, and we’ll get paid for each of them.”
The white guy’s eyes harden. “Those two won’t net a fraction of what we’ll get for the girls.”
“The icing on the cake,” the black guy intones, cradling his gun.
But the white guy’s precisely right when it comes to me. Any kind of ransom is out of the question. Every cent Mom has is tied up in the house and monthly bills. No one can float her the cash, either. Both my grandfathers are dead. Dad’s mom hasn’t seen us in years. We abandoned her baby boy; that’s how she sees it. Any damage he did to us isn’t his fault. Only her son’s pain counts for something.
Meanwhile, my maternal grandmother would sell her organs if it meant getting Mom, Natalya, or me out of a jam. Trouble is, they’re the only things she owns that are really worth anything.
My eyes vault to the blond girl huddled in close to Tanvi. Her jaw’s pointed defiantly into the air. The pose reminds me of someone, but I can’t put my finger on who. Like Tanvi, the girl must be worth her weight in gold. The two of them were targeted. Cal and I were just last-minute add-ons. If Cal’s family turns out to be as hard up as mine, the guy in the passenger seat might start losing his patience.
That could be bad news for all of us.
Uneven ground churns under our wheels, pebbles pummeling the van’s undercarriage and exterior. We’ve hit dirt road.
Outside, the storm is still raging, explosions of light and sound erupting around us like carnival fireworks. Impossible to say how long we’ve been driving. Filling my lungs takes most of my concentration. The stomach pain isn’t going anywhere, either.
Inside the van, tension crackles like static electricity. This is what it used to feel like when my dad came home late, banging the front door open as if it didn’t matter that he woke us. Sometimes falling noisily on the stairs, grumbling loudly to himself, and sometimes blasting TV infomercials or crime shows from a horizontal position on the couch, his shoes still on. If Mom complained, stared at him in the wrong way, or even sometimes when she was careful not to react, he’d spew like a volcano, not quitting until he was empty. No one could fall back to sleep on those nights. Anything could happen.
One morning I found him passed out cold on the stairs. Mom, Natalya, and I each navigated our way carefully around him, tiptoeing down to the kitchen to eat our breakfast in silence rather than risk waking him up. Not so grim, comparatively. We counted ourselves lucky while holding our breath.
If he were still around, he wouldn’t pay my ransom either. He’d find other things to do with the money he made on his last big job. Women. Booze. Drugs. Special projects that would attract other sleazebag criminals and eventually get him arrested.
It’s a wonder he’s been able to stay under the radar this long. At nearly half a million dollars’ worth of merchandise, the score was probably more than he expected. Definitely enough to keep him going these past three years, especially if he’s in Mexico or somewhere in Central America, which is the popular theory in my family.
The cops drop by periodically to ask whether we’ve seen or heard from him. He must be miles away, I always tell them. If he were still around, he would’ve fucked up again by now.
Hands down, the best thing about my dad is his disappearance.
I never thought he had enough sense to stay gone.
It’s the only thing I have to thank him for, and I don’t think about him much these days, except as an example of who not to be. The only reason he’s squirmed his way into my skull now is that stowed in the back of a mobile crime scene, air ringing with silent panic, my hands tied behind my back and my nostrils leaking blood clots, a familiar feeling — waiting for the shit to hit the fan — has razored under my skin, approaching bone.
He’s banging through the front door, half looking for a fight, the other half wanting to be left alone. That’s what it feels like.
Which side of him wins depends on the flip of an invisible coin or a hair trigger that no one can see. The difference is, all those years ago I was afraid of what he’d do to me. Afraid of what he’d do to Mom and Natalya, too. Afraid for all of us.
And now I’m not scared of these guys. Not for me. But nothing can happen to Tanvi.
Nothing worse than we’ve seen so far. Not if I can help it.
The van stops dead, the black guy opening the rear doors and hopping down onto trampled, overgrown grass. “Watch your step, folks,” he says, motioning us forward with his gun. The white guy has his weapon drawn too. He grabs Tanvi’s arm, yanking her up.
“After you, miss,” he declares, his tone malice crowned with sullen deference. His hand on Tanvi’s back pushes her forward, the blond girl leaping up to move alongside her. Cal goes next, glaring at the white guy despite his pistol. I heave myself into a standing position, battling the pain. The barbed wire puzzle pieces clatter noiselessly in my chest, my steps stiff with the effort of appearing unbreakable.
I force myself to jump down from the van, the same as everyone.
Stupid idea.
Landing whacks the air from my lungs, barbed wire fragments kicking my ribs from the inside like steel-toed boots. My feet sink into the wet grass, my head hanging limply as I absorb the hurt. When I look up, the dickhead white guy from the back seat has dropped out of the van and planted himself in front of me. He grins at my discomfort. With his eyes, at least. The ski mask’s mouth hole is a small circle, not enough to give his lips’ reaction away.
My gaze careens past him, to the lean dirt road reclaimed by nature. Our way in and out. With no moon or stars to illuminate the area it’s like trying to see with hands clapped over your eyes, peering through the gaps between your fingers. Somewhere in the distance the road winds into dense woods, any sign of civilization obscured. Overhead, the soot-black sky threatens more rain.
The crew of kidnappers gathers tightly around us, the two from the front seat of the van with their ski masks firmly back in place the same as the others now that they don’t have to worry about being sighted by cops on the road. They have gym bags looped over their shoulders and handguns of their own at the ready.
“Let’s go,” one of them commands. “Turn around and start walking.”
We turn in ragtag unison, the squelch of the grass underneath our feet the only noise I can hear and a flashlight glare guiding us. An abandoned old house looms ahead, surrounded by trees maintaining an uneasy proximity, the forest ready to overtake the entire property the way it took the r
oad. The second-storey windows stare spitefully down at us like mismatched eyes, the pale blue shutters of each of them open wide, but one of the window blinds pulled shut while the other window gapes darkly. The house’s grizzled white paint has cracked and worn away in streaks, like stained sheets that no amount of bleach could revive. A triangular peak divides the roof in two, patches of tiles missing from both sides. From the porch roof also, which slopes gently to the left, an accident waiting to happen.
A simple, double-doored outbuilding in a similar state of disrepair huddles next to the main house, an ugly afterthought. Its fastened-shut doors sag inward, beginning to give in to time and the elements.
The main house’s lower windows have been boarded up, and the porch steps teeter underfoot as we climb them in single file. This place has been forgotten for a long, long while, and resentment oozes out of what remains of its neglected façade.
One of the kidnappers suddenly charges past us, forcing the front door open. It creaks on its hinges. “Wait,” he orders, entering first. Soon dull light leaks out from the open doorway.
“We should get them cleaned up before we make the call,” he hollers from inside as the other kidnappers herd us through the door, past a decaying staircase, and into a shell of a room. “Especially the last kid. We don’t want to give them any reason to be difficult.”
My eyes rake over our surroundings, looking for anything we can use.
The kidnappers have been here before. They’ve made preparations. Folding chairs have been strategically placed in every corner of the room, bare wooden floorboards swept while the ceiling grows moss and the room’s grungy paint sloughs off in strips. If I could still smell anything, the place would reek of mold, dust, and old death. Something’s eaten through the bottom cushions of an ancient rust-green sofa against the far wall, next to an antique wheelchair coated in layers of dust. The fireplace is bricked up, a large wooden cross balanced on the mantelpiece, leaning against the wall behind it. A stack of paper cups, still wrapped, stands beside a collection of water cooler bottles and small pile of recently purchased food — sliced bread, canned fruit, tinned tuna, and a giant box of Special K.
Four battery-operated LED lanterns light the decrepit space. The kidnapper who beckoned us inside holds a fifth in one hand and a gun in the other. “Everybody sit down on the floor,” he commands. “It’s not the Ritz-Carlton, but we have the basics.” The lantern swings under his grasp as he motions to his accomplices. “Un-gag them.” His gaze swerves ninety degrees, colliding with mine. “Any trouble and we press mute again. That’s how this works.”
The black kidnapper veers toward the blond girl, sliding off her tape with unexpected gentleness. She winces anyway. Then sucks in oxygen like someone who narrowly escaped drowning. Hacks like a textbook example of bronchitis. The cough doesn’t give way to normal breathing. She sputters and chokes, bending at the waist, waiting for a lung to squeeze out of her newly un-gagged lips. A third guy hustles to the supply wall, ripping open the paper cups.
No one else moves. Not until the dickhead tears off my duct tape, his arm extending to point me in the direction of the middle of the room. “You heard the man,” he growls. “Down.”
Seconds later I’m sitting on the floor and the blond girl’s gulping water from a paper cup. They’ve freed her hands. Next to me, Cal’s ass hits the hardwood floor. “Shit,” he groans.
“Shut up.” Dickhead waves his pistol at us. “You want the tape back on?”
Cal silently shakes his head. The kidnapper who’s been issuing directions to the others plants his lantern on the floor. “Lauren,” he calls, opening a compact plastic box, “take these. Wipe their faces for me.” He holds out something small and white. A swatch of fabric.
I watch the blond girl freeze with the cup pressed to her lips. The blond girl who must be Lauren but whose connection to Tanvi is a mystery.
“I’ll do it,” Tanvi offers as the duct tape is ripped from her mouth, leaving her lips raw and abraded. The distorted sound of her voice — counterfeit confidence, fear, and a hard shell of protectiveness congealing into a pulpy clump in her throat — makes me shiver and wish I’d done everything differently. Stayed the person she’d made me feel like I was in the beginning.
“No, you sit down,” the kidnapper says decisively. He must be the leader. None of the others are challenging him or interrupting. “She can do it. Either she does it or one of us will.”
The blond girl — Lauren — reluctantly takes the offered material. Crouching in front of Cal, she runs the fabric delicately over his chin and neck, blood lightening in places and then disappearing. But his busted lip needs stitches. No amount of dabbing with a wet wipe will disguise where his lower lip opened up and oozed flesh.
“Sorry, Misha,” Lauren says as she veers away from him and toward me. She winces as she looks over my face, trying to decide where to begin.
“It’s okay,” I tell her. “Go for it.” But how does she know my name? Did Tanvi say it while I was unconscious, before they gagged her?
Lauren sucks in her breath when the wipe gingerly meets my chin. As it skates down my neck, she gains confidence, the towelette accelerating. The kidnappers shuffle noisily around us, one or more of them disgruntled. My ears reach for their words, but fall short. Lauren’s wet wipe has scarcely made contact with the bridge of my nose and I’m flinching under the impact, recoiling with such force that I accidentally stretch my rib cage — like someone hooked a pair of pliers around the bones and tugged.
“Mark, go upstairs,” a somber voice demands. “Try there.” The aggression and distress behind the directive tightens my thighs, my leg muscles jerking me back toward Lauren. What’s going on? Something’s not unfolding according to plan.
“Here,” the same voice says with more restraint. An arm lowers a paper cup to Lauren. “Give him this, too.” The kidnapper’s lightly freckled hand drops two plain white tablets into her palm.
“No,” I protest. Asleep, anything could happen. And any brain-bending substance could make me nearly as useless awake.
“It’s just a painkiller. You look like you need it.”
“I’m fine,” I say shakily.
The lead kidnapper — every aspect of his face except his mouth and the skin directly around his eyes still covered by the mask — lowers himself in front of me, sitting on his haunches. His hand grasps for my stomach, fingers stretching carefully across my abdomen. On a normal day, the action would hurt less than scratching an itch.
Tonight, tears kick their way into the corners of my eyes. A gasp seeps from between my lips.
“Sure.” Lukewarm sarcasm flattens the leader’s words. “You’re perfect — you could bench-press two hundred pounds.”
“It won’t look good if you’re crying on the video,” one of the other men says from behind me.
“He’s right,” the leader confirms. “It’s better that you don’t look like somebody who belongs in an E.R. waiting room. This is just tramadol, I promise. It’ll fix you up.”
“And if I won’t take it?”
The kidnapper tilts his head, the mask doubly sinister askew. “Two options. One of us can force them down your throat, or we can all sit here waiting for you swallow them yourself, delaying the release of the four of you. Is that what you want?”
No choice then. We need to get out of here as fast as possible. The situation’s unpredictable and could nosedive quickly. Anyone willing to commit one felony might just as easily commit another. “Okay, but let her do it.” I cock my head at Lauren. She nods in agreement. Slips a tablet between my lips, then raises the cup to my mouth, chasing the first pill down with water. Half of it slides down my chin. The second try is marginally neater. With both pills sluicing into my stomach, I peer at Tanvi seated roughly four feet away.
She’s absorbing the details of her surroundings, her eyes continually skirting back to La
uren and to the position of the two kidnappers on their feet, guns at the ready. “One more thing,” the leader declares, reaching into the plastic box — a first aid kit — and pinching at two small squares of gauze. “He needs these. Put them in his nose.”
Lauren worriedly accepts the gauze. “I’m sorry,” she mutters under her breath, cautiously stuffing one of my nostrils.
The pills aren’t working yet. My cartilage crunches like broken glass underfoot.
“Sorry, sorry,” she repeats, setting the second piece of gauze in the other nostril. My left foot shakes with the pain, urgently tapping the floor. We both hear it. Probably the others hear it too, and I brace for a laugh from the dickhead, then realize he must be the one who was sent upstairs. Mark, the leader called him.
One final swipe from the wet wipe and I’m as close to being a masterpiece as I’m going to get. Lauren scoots back to sit next to Tanvi.
“Good job,” the leader says detachedly.
Lauren blanches, her cheeks stiffening in reaction to the throwaway compliment. It’s the second sign of contempt she’s shown, and it’s subtle enough that the kidnapper probably doesn’t see it. But I do. She’s only a kid, but she’s no traitor. Not interested in scoring points with the enemy.
It takes a while for someone to reveal their many different expressions. This one, I recognize now that I’ve seen it for the second time tonight. My mind bounces back to Christmas Eve at Tanvi’s house. Helena’s nephew, Braden, was staying overnight with his parents. Tanvi and I played cards with him after dinner, followed by something he called the “drama bag game.” Someone throws five random items into a bag, and the others have to create a skit using all the items.
Braden was better at drama bag than Tanvi and I were. He owned us. He didn’t want to stop playing, and when his mom told him it was time for bed he looked the same as Lauren looks now.
Pissed.
But Braden doesn’t have a sister. Those are his eyes staring out of Lauren’s sockets. His blond hair, grown long. His limbs fitted into slightly more feminine clothing than when I met him on Christmas Eve — pink chinos, a beige peasant top that gathers at the waist, and crochet high-top sneakers.