Or the Girl Dies

by Rachel Rust

“Excuse me?” Josh asked, wide-eyed.

  I ignored him, turning to Victor. “We have to go check it out if there’s a chance Mason’s there.”

  Josh let out an abrupt laugh. “Hold up. In case you forgot, we have school tomorrow, it’s one in the morning, and, let’s see…you’re not a fucking cop. There’s no way you’re going to down there to look for that kid.”

  “But it’s Victor’s cousin and—”

  “You’re not going down there!” Josh roared, then let out a single laugh. “It’s ridiculous that you’re even here, talking about all of this.” He gave Victor a cutting look. “I don’t know what the hell’s going on, but you’re done dragging my sister into your shit. She stays here and you can leave now.”

  “Josh, don’t be an ass, he’s just—”

  “He’s right,” Victor said. “Stay here with your brother. In fact, spend the night here, it’ll be safer.”

  Both Josh and Victor stared at me. Probably so they wouldn’t have to look at each other. Inside, Kyle had turned his attention away from us, texting someone. Brody was now seated on the sofa, watching TV. Spending the night with Brody at Kyle’s house? A lifetime ago—that is, five hours ago—it would have been a dream come true. But now? Victor’s dark eyes and perfectly messy hair loomed over me.

  I grabbed his elbow and moved him to the corner of the patio. “I want to help you,” I whispered.

  He shook his head. “You’ve been through enough. Stay here.”

  “But you can’t go down to that shop by yourself,” I said. “That’s way too dangerous.”

  “I’ve got a couple guys I can take with me. But you’re staying here.” He didn’t wait for an answer. He pivoted away and walked back inside. He disappeared into the foyer, no doubt headed for the front door.

  I stared at Brody through the glass doors. I could hang out with him all night. Snuggle up to him under a blanket and fall asleep while inhaling his orgasmic scent. The normal part of me wanted it. It wanted him. Kind, simple normalcy in a sea of fucked-up-ness.

  But my toes wiggled inside my Converse. My skin tingled. I took a deep breath of cool air and moved past Josh.

  He grabbed my arm. “You’re not leaving.”

  The muscles in my jaw clenched. My skin flushed hot. Men had ordered me around one too many damn times that evening. “I’m going to the bathroom,” I said, yanking myself free.

  He let me go. I walked through the TV room toward the adjoining bathroom. I needed to clear my head, to figure out why my intellectual self—the one who had wanted to jump Brody’s bones since ninth grade—was being outgunned by some wild, new persona that had taken my thoughts hostage. Normal people stayed at a safe location and made out with the well-dressed popular guy. Normal people did not follow a drug dealer into certain danger.

  The bathroom was small with only a toilet and sink.

  And a window.

  I closed and locked the door. There was a simple locking mechanism on the top of the window. I flipped it and the window flew up with a light push. I glanced back at the door—normal life waited for me on the other side. But out the window, in the cool, dark air, trouble waited.

  Except he wasn’t waiting. He was bound to light a cigarette and peel away from the curb any second.

  It was now or never.

  I went out feet first, then shut the window behind me. I ran to the front of the house. Victor stood in the middle of the driveway, near Kyle’s Lexus, phone to his ear. I walked along the shadows of the front yard, under the small crabapple tree, behind the trio of pine trees in the front corner, until I reached the Trans Am. I lifted up on the handle of the passenger door slowly, then climbed into the back seat and closed the door as softly as possible.

  I hid myself behind the driver’s seat. Victor got into the car a few minutes later, started it up, lit a cigarette, and drove away. Knees to chest, I sat on the floor of the backseat just behind him, afraid to even twitch a finger. Afraid to breathe normally. Shallow and steady my breaths came—in, out, in, out.

  It wasn’t clear to me how to alert a driver that someone lurked in their backseat. With the stress Victor was under and considering the night he was having, surprising him may have landed me with a broken nose. Or in a major car accident if he lost control of the car.

  We were still in the city—slow speeds, and occasional stop-and-go movements. Out the window over my head, the bright signs of businesses flew by: McDonalds, Walgreens, a liquor store.

  Victor took a hard right and my body pressed against the driver’s side of the car. We drove in one direction for a long time. A Toyota dealership sign flew by and I knew we were on the edge of town. Rapid City wasn’t that big. It didn’t take long to get out of the hustle and bustle and into the country.

  The Black Hills sat to the west of Rapid City. But we weren’t going up any steep inclines, nor were we twisting through any tight curves. So we weren’t headed west. We could have been headed north or east, but I knew we were going south. Victor was headed down to that old mechanic shop, McNally’s. And he was going alone. He wasn’t taking any other guys with him. He had lied to my face.

  That jerk.

  A phone buzzed and, for a split second, I froze with terror, thinking it was mine—thinking I was two seconds from being found out and thrown from the car by a rabid, pissed off Victor. But it was his phone.

  He answered with a, “What?”

  There was a pause.

  “No, I’m headed down south.”

  I smiled smugly. I knew it.

  “I haven’t heard from him all night,” he said.

  There was another pause, longer this time.

  “Mancini knew all about McNally’s.”

  My heart thumped at the sound of my last name, though I knew I wasn’t the Mancini Victor was referring to. He was talking about Josh. But why was he talking to someone—and who?—about my brother? What did Josh have to do with all this?

  “No,” Victor said. “I’m gonna go down and take a look. There’s a gravel road about a quarter of a mile up from the shop. It’s got a clear view. I’ll see if there’s any movement, any sign of Mason.”

  I squeezed my legs tighter to my chest. Victor knew an awful lot about the McNally’s shop for someone who just twenty minutes ago told my brother he didn’t know what it was. Yet another lie.

  I was beginning to wonder how many lies Victor Greer had told so far that night.

  Chapter Twelve

  The road was smooth under the tires. Whatever gravel road Victor said he was headed toward, we hadn’t gotten there yet. There were no other phone calls. No radio. Only the hum of the road and an occasional whiff of tobacco that blew into the backseat.

  We were out of the city completely. No business lights. No street lights. It was nearly black in my immediate space. Sprinklings of stars flew by the windows in blurry blobs. If I tilted my body a bit to the right, I could probably see out the front window. Seeing a landmark or sign might’ve given me a better sense of how far we’d driven. But I didn’t move, unsure of Victor’s range of view in the rearview mirror.

  The more time I spent wedged behind his seat, the more fearful I became of what I had done, and of how he’d react upon finding me. My phone was in my pocket. I could crawl out undetected after we stopped and call Josh to come and get me. He’d be pissed as hell, but at least I could trust him. I was beginning to question if the same could be said for Victor, given that he had lied to me at least twice already tonight.

  A click sounded—Victor lighting another cigarette. The guy really needed to cut back.

  I leaned forward, placing my forehead on my bent-up knees. My eyes closed. In normal conditions, I would’ve passed out in seconds from sheer exhaustion. I wasn’t much of a night owl, but my mind and nerves fired nonstop. There was no rest for the idiotic.

  The car slowed and my head sprung back, eyes wide opened. We turned right. Gravel pinged under the car. The bigger chunks pounded under my butt. The car crawled slowly, stopped f
or a few seconds, then moved forward again. Victor turned to the left, backed up to the right, then straightened the car out—a three-point turn. We were now facing the same direction we had just come from.

  The car stopped. Victor killed the engine and silence enveloped us. Every muscle in my body stiffened, terrified to make a move. Even the slightest movement would sound like thunder in the quiet car.

  The glovebox opened. Papers rustled. The glovebox closed. Victor’s arm shot back in between the front bucket seats, reaching into the backseat space. My body and face clenched, waiting for his hand to bump my side. Waiting for him to freak the hell out and drag me from the car. But all he did was grab a pair of binoculars off the floor behind the passenger seat. He got out of the car, leaving the driver side door ajar. His footsteps on the gravel were easy to make out. He walked behind the car to the passenger side. The footsteps became softer until they faded away altogether.

  It was now or never if I was to have any chance of sneaking away undetected. I pushed the metal lever under the driver’s seat and the top part of the seat leaned forward. I stopped. Waited. Listened. No footsteps, no Victor screaming at me, asking what the hell I was doing.

  My right leg and shoulder squeezed out the door, followed by my left side. Crouching onto the ground alongside the car, I waited once again for signs of being caught. But there was nothing but silence.

  The moon illuminated the narrow gravel road just enough to see that trees lined it on both sides. Victor had parked the car off the road, in a shallow ditch. With my head ducked down, I scurried over the gravel to the other side of the road. Lying low in the ditch across from the car, a dreadful realization hit me hard. The moonlight was scarcer than I had thought and the thick band of trees shadowed the space even more. I could hardly see the black car just twenty feet away. I was fairly certain Victor had turned the car around, which meant it was now pointing toward the main highway that had brought us south.

  But I wasn’t sure.

  The gravel road in that direction disappeared into blackness. No signs of a highway or any other civilization. The road in the other direction led to more blackness.

  I had no idea where I was. No idea which direction to go.

  My chest tightened. Maybe getting back into the backseat was a better option. I listened for Victor’s footsteps. For sound of any kind…him stepping onto a branch, or making a phone call. My eyes squinted for the light of his cell phone screen somewhere in the darkness. But all was quiet, dark, and desolate.

  Back across the road, the car door still hung open—an open invitation. I made up my mind—I was getting back into the car. Better to be yelled at by a lying, no-good Victor than left for dead in the middle of whoknowswhere. If the people who kidnapped Mason didn’t find me, a mountain lion surely would.

  With small, tip-toed steps, I rushed back across the gravel. But a light caught my eye before I made it back to the car. It was quite far away, dim and small, but there nonetheless. I crept around the front of the car and knelt down between two trees. Beyond the gravel road was an expansive grassy field bathed in gray-white moonlight, descending toward a large building. The small light that had caught my attention was a lamp post of some kind, and revealed only a portion of the building. The rest of the roofline and siding disappeared into darkness beyond the scope of the yellow glow.

  The building was too far away to make out any details, but there was movement around it. Every once in a while, something distorted the light. People, perhaps.

  It had to be McNally’s. I couldn’t help but wonder what was inside its walls. Weed for sure. Maybe pills or heroin. Bags of cocaine.

  Or a scared thirteen-year-old boy.

  Another light turned on next to the lamp post. This one was brighter and began to move.

  A car.

  It left the perimeter of the building and turned, moving our direction—up the highway. I was right, the Trans Am was parked facing the highway that led back to Rapid City. I could walk back to town. That way I wouldn’t have to deal with either Victor or Josh.

  Before I could execute a walking plan, the headlights of the vehicle came closer. The highway was fifty feet down the gravel road from where Victor had stopped his car. I stood up to get a better view of the vehicle. If I could figure out the make or model, it could be helpful in pinpointing who The Barber was, or at least get us closer to one of his minions.

  It was a dark-colored pickup, which wasn’t much help. Half the population in a hundred mile radius drove a pickup. Winters were hell. Outside of the plowed city streets, four-wheel drive wasn’t a luxury, it was a necessity.

  I stepped out of the trees, hoping to see something distinguishable about the truck. Was it old or new? Did it have a cattle guard? A topper?

  I took a few more steps, ambling out into the field.

  The pickup screeched to a halt.

  An unseen hand slapped across my mouth and a body shoved into mine, tackling me to the ground. I slammed into the cold, hard dirt with a thud.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The scream inside me couldn’t escape, blocked by a strong hand, which also cut off my air supply. I didn’t have to see his face to know the body lying on top of mine was Victor. I could smell him. Tobacco, spearmint, and strangely a little bit of Josh, thanks to his shirt.

  My fingernails scratched at his hand over my mouth.

  “Shhh,” he whispered directly into my ear. “Don’t scream. Do not make any noise.”

  I nodded in frantic agreement. He lifted his hand and I gulped in a breath, though with his weight bearing down on me, I could barely take in enough air. His legs were on top of mine, his torso directly over mine.

  I was about to wiggle in an attempt to get him to move when I froze solid at the sight of a bright beam of a flashlight hitting the blades of tall grass just over our bodies. It swung to the left. Then back over us again to the right.

  “There’s nothin’ out there!” a guy shouted.

  “I wanna be sure,” said another voice—this one much louder, much closer. “I saw somethin’ movin’ out here. I swear I did.”

  “It was just some damn deer. Now get back in the truck, will ya?”

  The flashlight skimmed the grass near us once again. Grass blades crinkled from movement not far from our heads. The next pass of the flashlight highlighted the tips of Victor’s hair. The mud still held it in place. Boy band hair, hiding in a field from bad guys. It was like a ridiculous music video.

  After another swipe of the flashlight, the crinkling movement through the grass moved further away. “Coulda sworn,” the guy said softly, as though just to himself.

  Thirty seconds later, car doors closed. Then the soft roar of an engine dissolved away. I twisted my body under Victor’s until he finally rolled off me. It was too dark to see his face. I only knew he was still beside me because of his body heat.

  I didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t yelled yet. So far, so good.

  “Give me your hand,” he said. I raised my right hand. He grabbed it forcefully and pulled me to my feet. “Let’s go.” His fingers moved from my hand to my wrist, clutching it tightly and leading me back into the shelter of the trees alongside the dirt road. Once our feet hit gravel, he spun to face me, the moonlight streaking across his face. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  I didn’t answer, not knowing what to say. There was no good explanation, except that I was an idiot. And anything I said would be met with more attitude from him.

  “I told you to stay with your brother! You wanna get yourself killed?”

  “I didn’t mean to—”

  “You didn’t mean to what? To follow me here? You accidentally got into my car? You accidentally didn’t say anything to me the entire fucking time I was driving down here?”

  “I didn’t know how to tell you.”

  “There was no good way to tell me because you should’ve never been in the damn car to begin with!” he yelled. “You think Little Bobby’s house was bad? T
hat’s a cake walk compared to what’s going on down at that shop!” He stepped up directly in front of me, with a finger pointed in my face. “You have no clue what the hell you’ve gotten yourself into!”

  I shoved him back as hard as I could. “Stop yelling at me!” Even in the low light, the clench in his jaw was clear as day. “I wanna know why you lied to my brother about not knowing what McNally’s was.”

  “I didn’t lie,” he said.

  “Yes you did. You told Josh you didn’t know what it was.”

  Victor shook his head. “I never said that. I only asked him if he knew what it was. I needed to know what he knew.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I needed to know what McNally’s is being used for,” he said. “The Barber’s used that shop for a long time, long before I ever got into the game. He used to use it for running guns, but then it sat empty for a long time. But apparently that’s changing and I wanted to know if he’s using it again, and for what.”

  “Why?”

  “The why doesn’t concern you,” he said. “You ask too many damn questions and you need to get back in the fucking car.”

  “Stop ordering me around.”

  “Stop being a pain in my ass!”

  I let out a short, snotty laugh. “I know what the tattoo stands for…you’ve been slapped twenty-two times for being an asshole.”

  “No, but nice try.”

  My eyebrows shot up. “You sure? You’ve never been slapped by some ex-girlfriend who got sick of being ordered around? ‘Get back in the car, wear a dress, wear uncomfortable heels, stop asking me questions, stop—’”

  He put his hands up. “Okay, I get it. I’m a jerk.”

  I remained silent, seeing no reason to belabor the point.

  “Why did you come here with me?” he asked.

  “I want to help.”

  He sighed, hands on hips. “I know you do, but there’s not much you can do to make the situation better.”

  “I’m an extra set of eyes and ears.” I nodded down the field to the shop. “You grabbed binoculars out of the car. Did you see anything?”