Or the Girl Dies

by Rachel Rust

  Every one of my muscles clenched, already defensive toward anyone who had any intention of tracking me down and throwing me in a white Mercedes. I grabbed my phone from my pocket. “We need to call the police. You need to tell them about Mason, about the kidnapping, it’s the only way to—”

  Victor gave off a single, solid laugh. “No police.”

  “Why not?”

  He cast a dead-eyed glare my way. “I don’t deal with cops.”

  My stomach tightened. Of course he didn’t deal with cops. There were drugs or guns somewhere in the car around me—potential misdemeanors and felonies all around. My arms wrapped around my torso, suddenly afraid to touch anything.

  “Besides,” Victor continued, “cops are clueless. They can’t touch these people.”

  “Why not? Who are they?”

  “People you don’t wanna fuck with, that’s who.” He glanced at my phone, then back at me with an unblinking glare. “No cops. A badge doesn’t make people trustworthy.”

  I slowly put my phone back in my pocket. “Why don’t you drop me off at my house then? I’ll just stay there for a while and come back later and pick up my car.”

  “No.” He shot me a sharp glance. “Staying at your house is not an option either. They’ve seen you, and they wanna meet you. If you run and hide…they’ll find you.”

  “They’ll find me at my house? That’s ridiculous. They’ve seen my face for a few seconds. How would they know who I am just from that?”

  He eased the car forward out of its parking space. “You do not want to underestimate these people. Besides, your car is parked in front of my house. It doesn’t take much for someone who knows a thing or two about computers to turn a license plate number into an address.”

  Oh shit.

  “That’s why we gotta go to your house and we need to do it quick,” he said. “You change into different clothes and then we’ll leave immediately.”

  “So, I can’t wear my clothes, I can’t get my car, and I can’t stay at my house.”

  “No.”

  “I have to stick with you?”

  “Unfortunately.”

  “And what happens if I stick with you?”

  “Don’t know,” he said, turning out of the parking lot and into the street. “Guess we’ll find out.”

  Chapter Six

  When we got to my house, I instructed Victor to park behind the garage where there was an extra parking pad, out of sight from the street. In the summer months, it was where my dad parked his boat that we never used.

  My dad was at a conference down in Cheyenne all night, and thankfully, Josh’s monstrosity was not parked in the driveway. He was probably preoccupied with a giggly sophomore, two seconds from another sprained ankle. Which was fine with me because the last thing I needed to do was explain Victor’s presence to my stuck-up brother. I had never witnessed Josh and Victor interacting at school. Given Josh and his friends’ affinity for body spray, expensive clothes, and styled hair, I doubted the two of them had much in common.

  As I exited the Trans Am, Victor got out as well. He began texting someone on his phone.

  “Stay here,” I said.

  “No.” He followed me to the back door and then inside. “Nice place. Guess it pays to be a doctor.”

  The living room, kitchen, and dining area were all one big space. My dad wasn’t much for decorating, so the room gave off an air of minimalism, though really it was just a lack of design knowledge. Both the living room and dining area had floor-to-ceiling windows, showcasing the thick shelter of pine trees.

  The bedrooms were all upstairs, situated over the triple-car garage. My foot hit the first step and stopped. Victor was right behind me. “You can wait in the living room,” I said.

  “I’ll go up with you.”

  “Not to my bedroom, you won’t.”

  He grinned slightly and then proceeded to follow me upstairs.

  “What exactly am I supposed to wear?” I asked.

  “Not jeans.”

  “A dress?” I nearly choked on the word.

  Victor shrugged. “I don’t know, stuff girls wear to parties.”

  “We’re going to a party?”

  “You could sort of call it that.”

  I had never gone to a party in anything other than jeans. At the last party, I had worn brand new jeans and Sophia puked all over them after only a couple of beers. I wondered if students at Columbia had puke parties. They probably did, but not with cheap beer.

  “I don’t have any dresses,” I said as we entered the hallway. My dad’s bedroom was on one end. Josh and mine were on the other. “If I knew where we were going, I’d have a better idea of what to wear.”

  Victor rubbed his chin and leaned against the wall. “This LB guy we’ve gotta go see, his house is like a nonstop party, people in and out all the time. And the girls—women, they’re…”

  “Prostitutes?” I asked with a slight laugh.

  “No. Well, yeah, some of ‘em.”

  Holy hell, I had been totally joking. I took a step back. “I’m not going. Who is this guy anyway? A drug dealer?”

  Victor gave me a sympathetic look. “Among other things.”

  “Like what?”

  He shook his head at my question. He didn’t want me to know what he knew. And given that he was the type of guy who seemed to speak his mind and not sugarcoat things, the fact that he was unwilling to speak whatever horrible truths he was privy to scared the hell out of me. He wanted to drag me along to an unknown person’s house, for an unknown bad reason.

  “I’m staying home,” I said.

  “It’s not safe.”

  “You can stay here, too. We can work on our assignment and we’ll lock the doors and windows in case the guy in the white car comes back.”

  “Jesus, Natalie, that won’t work.”

  I sucked in a quick breath. It was the first time he’d said my name. My heart beat harder, though I didn’t understand why. Victor and his stupid car and unkempt hair—big deal if he said my name.

  “Listen.” He stepped forward, right in front of me. “You cannot stay here. They specifically said to bring you with me, and they want you to look…nice.” His voice was gentle and I studied his face as he spoke. The pleasant version of Victor wasn’t nearly as rage-inducing as asshole Victor. “That’s why I need you to change clothes. I know it sucks and you have no idea what’s going on, but right now I think the best thing is to play along and keep LB from getting pissed off. Because if he gets pissed, there’s no telling what’ll happen, including you ending up in the trunk of that guy’s Mercedes. And he might help me get Mason back, too, so I really need him to be happy and cooperative.”

  “So I have to dress in skimpy clothes and stick by your side all night?” It sounded like some horrible practical joke and at some point during the night Josh would jump out of some bushes with a dastardly laugh. Except he wasn’t quite that much of an ass. And the solemn brown eyes of Victor Greer were serious. Regretful, but serious.

  “Bringing you with me isn’t my idea,” he said. “I wouldn’t do it if there was another way.”

  I thought about the call he had made in his car. Someone authoritative—someone over his head—had told him to bring me. I shook my head in passive resistance, knowing it was futile. “These people, why do they want me to come with you?”

  Victor thought for a moment before responding, as though trying to choose his words carefully and also omit the information he was trying to shield me from. “I’m not sure, but we don’t have a choice.”

  “Why do you care what happens to me? You don’t even know me.”

  His lip curled. “Despite whatever you’ve heard about me at school, I’m not a total prick.”

  His eyes stayed on mine, watching me grapple with the pit of hell I had just fallen into. Maybe he was telling the truth—maybe he really didn’t know why I had to meet the LB guy. But there was a sliver of fear behind Victor’s eyes that, no matter how tall h
e stood or how confident his words were, he could not erase. There was more to the story. More to why he was told to bring me with him, and why I needed to dress nice.

  I glanced down at my jeans and sneakers—perfectly normal clothes and I mourned their existence on my body already. “Is it dangerous for me to meet these people?”

  Victor leaned back against the wall, hooking his thumbs into his front pockets. “No, it’ll be fine.” His sudden lack of eye contact said exactly the opposite.

  My eyes grew warm and my insides squeezed tight. Like a bad dream, the world spun around me, things out of my control. Homesickness crept in even though I was standing in the same house I had lived in for ten years. I wanted my car back. I wanted my dad. I wanted to wake up in my warm, comfortable bed and laugh at my ridiculous nightmare imagination. A single tear spilled down my cheek.

  Victor stared at it. I wiped it away with the back of my hand. Without a word, I went into my bedroom, then shut and locked the door before he had the gall to follow me.

  Ninety percent of my wardrobe was jeans and t-shirts. In the back of my closet hung my navy blue graduation dress. My eyes scanned the lightweight, cotton-blend material—material that would cloak my skin in just four short days when I collected my diploma and kissed Kennedy High goodbye—so long as I made it through my night with Victor without succumbing to the same fate as Mason.

  I shoved the dress to the side, scanning my other non-jeans options. I had a floral skirt from my cousin’s wedding last summer, but the big purple and yellow flowers didn’t scream sexy. Nor did the fact that it came down to my knees. I still had my freshman year homecoming outfit which included a lavender miniskirt. It was tight enough that my dad had been hesitant to let me wear it to a school function. Delilah, though, changed his mind, saying I had looked grown up.

  Delilah.

  My dad still had a box of stepmonster’s things in his bedroom. He had said she would come and get them, but she never did. She was remarried less than a year after divorcing my dad. She was done with us. Her leftover stuff was as good as mine now.

  I rushed down the hall to my dad’s room. Victor still leaned against the wall, now talking on his phone. His voice paused as I walked past him.

  My dad’s walk-in closet was huge, nearly as big as my bedroom. Behind the door was a large cardboard box. I lifted open the flap and was assaulted with the scent of perfume. If diamonds had a scent, it would be Delilah.

  I pulled out random items—blouses, a pair of black sandals, something skimpy and lacy that immediately got dropped back into the box. And then I pulled out a black dress. Strapless, tight, short. Then something red caught my eyes. Shoes. I picked them out of the box. They were shiny with a super high and pointy heel.

  Tiny dress, red shoes. I hoped that was nice enough for whatever horror I was about to get myself into.

  Back in my room, I curled my hair into as big of bouffant curls as I could manage, spraying them down with hairspray in the hopes that my lackluster hair would stay put for at least part of the night. I applied twice as much makeup as usual, including the red lipstick that I usually avoided because the last time I wore it Josh asked if I had been hit in the mouth.

  The dress fit pretty well, thanks to my ultra-padded pushup bra. I wasn’t used to showing off—or even having—cleavage. And I really wasn’t used to wearing heels. I grabbed my wallet and keys from my jeans and shoved them into a small black purse. I staggered out of my bedroom to find Victor now seated in the hallway, head back against the wall.

  I nudged his foot. “My God, do you ever not fall asleep?”

  His eyes opened. A little at first, then wider at the sight of me. “That’ll do.”

  I rolled my eyes and then nearly fell with my next step as my ankle bent under me. Victor hopped up and grabbed my elbow, steadying me. “I’ve never worn heels before,” I said, yanking myself free from his grasp.

  “Never?”

  “No. Why, have you? Are you going to wear heels and a tight dress tonight, too?”

  He smirked. “Lecture me about sexist double standards later, ‘cause right now we gotta go.”

  I took a few wobbled steps down the hall, but was then yanked back as Victor ripped my purse away. He unclasped the top and reached his hand in. “Leave this,” he said, tossing my wallet my way.

  “Why?”

  “Carry no ID, that way you’re nobody.”

  “Fine.” I threw my wallet into my bedroom. It landed on the floor next to my Converse. My feet cried out for their comfort.

  The evening sky had turned a purplish-black by the time we made our way north in Victor’s tobacco and spearmint Trans Am—more tobacco than mint as he was unable to start his car without lighting a cigarette.

  Gregory Street flew by us. Brody’s coffee shop was on Gregory Street. Coffee and Brody sounded really good in that moment. Coffee, Brody, and comfortable clothes.

  Victor’s hand rested on the gear shift not far from my bare leg. The lower portion of his forearm had a few veins popped out even though he wasn’t gripping the gear very hard. My eyes ran up the length of his arm. He was more muscular than I had first realized.

  “How do you know this LB guy we’re going to meet?” I asked.

  “I used to work with him.”

  “What does LB stand for?”

  “Little Bobby.”

  “Little Bobby? Is there a Big Bobby?”

  Victor half-grinned. “Fuck, I hope not. Little Bobby’s about five hundred pounds.” He gunned the engine and tore through a yellow light that turned red while we were still in the intersection.

  “Is Little Bobby the one who kidnapped your cousin Mason?”

  “No.” He leaned his head back on the seat with a sharp exhale. “Little Bobby and I both used to work for the same guy. I guess you could call him our boss. And I’m pretty sure that’s who kidnapped Mason. I stopped working for him and he’s pissed.”

  “You stopped selling for him, you mean?”

  He nodded. Finally an affirmation straight from Victor Greer himself. He really was a drug dealer.

  “What were you selling? Pills?” Victor dealing pills was the most talked about drug rumor in the school hallways, so I figured it probably had the highest chance of being true. And his silence confirmed it. “So the boss guy is pissed because you stopped selling for him?” I asked. “What does Mason have to do with that?”

  Victor’s grip on the steering wheel tightened. “Some jobs you don’t quit, at least not without paying for it. Taking him was a message.”

  “Do what we say or else?”

  “Exactly.” He downshifted, but still took the next left with far too much speed.

  My right elbow braced against the door to keep myself from smashing into it as we turned. “So you think Little Bobby knows about the kidnapping and might know where to find Mason?”

  Victor nodded.

  “What’s the name of the boss guy? Do you know where he lives? Why not just go talk to him instead? Can you call him? Do you have his phone nu—”

  “You ask too many damn questions.”

  “Excuse me,” I snapped. “I’m about to kill myself in 4-inch heels all because of your messed up life. I can’t go home, I can’t go to my car…I think I deserve to know what the hell’s going on.”

  Instead of answering, Victor slowed down and took the next right. We rolled into a residential neighborhood with narrow streets. The houses were small, most with chipped paint. Cars were parked on either side of the street, making some places passable for only one car at a time.

  Victor pulled up in front of a square white house. Its front door was in the middle with two small windows on either side. The gray-shingled roof had a low pitch, appearing nearly flat. He pulled out his phone, read a text, then shoved it back into his pocket.

  “Look,” he said as he turned off the car. “I’ll explain things later, but you have to understand that some of the stuff you don’t wanna know. And it’s better if you don’t.”


  “Don’t patronize me. I want to know everything.”

  “Of course you do,” he muttered under his breath.

  I waited to exit the car until he was out and standing near my door. The blinds in one of the windows moved. Once again, we were being watched.

  “Is this Little Bobby’s house?” I whispered as I shut the car door.

  “Yes, and do me a favor. Don’t talk when we’re inside.”

  “I’ll talk if I want to talk and—”

  Victor spun around to face me, nearly knocking me back. “No, you won’t. You’re gonna go in there and not say a fucking word to anyone, got it?”

  I nodded, wide-eyed.

  “This isn’t some bullshit high school party with kegs and beer pong. You don’t look at anyone, you don’t talk to anyone, and you sure as hell don’t eat or drink anything in there even if it looks safe. Understood?”

  “Yes.”

  Pleasant Victor had gone bye-bye, and I was once again in the company of asshole Victor. Asshole Victor didn’t even have the decency to walk in a slow pace as I wobbled along the front walkway in my stupid shoes. Asshole Victor didn’t even offer to help me up the half-crumbled front concrete steps. My heels sank into the rubble and, with no handrails, it took me about twenty steps to move up two feet.

  As he opened the front door, the stench of marijuana smacked me in the face. He whispered, “Don’t inhale, Miss 4.0.”

  “Screw you.”

  Chapter Seven

  Little Bobby’s house was tiny. My lungs struggled with the musty air tinged with smoke. Brown carpet lined the living room, sculpted in some strange, circular pattern. Along the far end of the room was a grandma-like floral couch with no legs and two guys relaxed back on the lumpy-looking velvet material. They removed their eyes from the large TV and stared at me. One was chubby with a black bandana across his forehead and a tattoo of a cross on his neck. The other one was skinny with greasy brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. He winked, then licked his lips. Disgust ran across my face and I became hyper-aware of my exposed legs and cleavage.