Snatched

by Pamela Burford

  Darkness. He lay curled on his side, his cheek pressed to flattened shag carpeting that smelled like spoiled lunch meat and cigarettes. Something was crusted on his face. Dirt and tears and dried snot. The drumbeat grew more insistent, and now it pounded in his arm, his left arm, from the pinky finger right up to his shoulder. Ricky’s wrists were bound in front of him. He began to roll onto his hands, intending to lever himself up. The orange ball detonated into an explosion of pain. He heard a scream and, suddenly alert, realized it had come from his own throat.

  Ricky collapsed onto his back, releasing shrill cries with every gasping breath. The bass drum had multiplied a thousandfold, echoing the beat of his heart. But only in his head, he now realized. The drum, the orange ball, they were inventions of his muzzy, pain-fogged head. The hammers on the roof, though, they were real. He tasted blood, turned his head and spat. He’d bitten his lip.

  It was rain. Not hammers. Rain on the roof, a hard, steady downpour. But the roof of what? He still had no idea where he was being held.

  Ricky felt the tight band around his eyes and knew he was still blindfolded. He lay there struggling to slow his breathing, to push back the pain, to compress the glowing ball into a fiery point. He tried to remember the last day or so, but it was all kind of a jumble. So much easier to forget.

  In his head he heard his father’s familiar exhortation. Try harder. You’re my son. Don’t tell me you can’t. Auditions. Callbacks. Memorizing lines. Laughing on cue. Crying on cue. Struggling to please his acting coach. His voice coach. The directors. The executive producers. Never quite managing to please Dad.

  I’m trying, he thought now, deliberately summoning his father’s image, the man’s flat, overenunciated baritone. I’m trying to remember, Dad.

  The knife. He remembered the knife. And the plastic princess grinning down at him. After that, he couldn’t be sure what was real and what was a dream. His little finger was gone; that part wasn’t a dream.

  There had been yelling. He couldn’t say when, or precisely what they were arguing about, but there’d been a lot of yelling. His kidnapper and someone else. A woman. The man was saying a lot of bad words. It sounded like someone was getting hit. The woman was hysterical, screaming and crying. She said the same thing, over and over, in a hoarse shriek, more animal than human. What have you done? What have you done? Not long after that, Ricky smelled vomit. He knew he hadn’t imagined that part, because the stink was still there, though fainter.

  Later—he didn’t know how much later—he felt hands on him. Not the kidnapper’s hands; these were smaller, gentle. The hands pushed up the sleeve of his rugby shirt. He felt the stab of a needle, like when Dr. Lamstein gave him his booster shots. The hands began to peel away the cloth his kidnapper had tied around his left hand. The cloth was stiff now and stuck to where the pinky finger used to be. Ricky tried not to cry, but he couldn’t help it, the pain was so immense. Someone said, “Shh . . . shh . . .” The fingers that stroked his head were cold and they shook.

  Ricky began to feel strange, like he was there but not really. His breathing slowed, along with the tears. The nurse—is that what she was, a nurse?—carefully teased away the stiff cloth. It still hurt, but he found he could kind of wad up the pain and push it away from himself. The nurse wiped something cold and wet on his hand, especially where he’d been cut. Don’t cry, he wanted to tell her. It doesn’t hurt so much anymore. Then the winding of a bandage, the real kind, the kind that comes in a roll. Then he slept.

  How much of that had he dreamt and how much had really happened? The medicine in the shot was real. He felt the lingering effects even now, lulling him back to sleep.

  He wanted to sleep, wanted the oblivion it would bring, the respite from the pain and terror, however brief. It would be so easy. But instinctively he knew that someone bad enough to cut off a kid’s finger wouldn’t stop at that. He needed to stay awake, if only to know when the monster was coming back to do something else, maybe something even worse.

  Ricky forced his heavy limbs to move. He shifted toward his right side, braced himself on his elbow. Every movement, no matter how slight, triggered flares of scalding pain. He used the pain to concentrate his depleted strength and sit up. He paused, listening. Just the rain pummeling the roof. Still, he couldn’t be certain he was alone. His kidnapper could be a foot or two away. Watching him.

  That was why Ricky had never dared to touch his blindfold, wondering what the monster might do to him if he did. He no longer wondered. He brought his bound hands to his face, panting against the pain. Using his good hand, he pushed the blindfold—a soiled bandana—up his forehead.

  He’d taken a huge risk for no gain. His surroundings were pitch black; not one light shone. On the plus side, he had to assume his abductor wouldn’t be sitting around in the dark. Most likely Ricky was alone. But who knew how long that would last.

  Tentatively he groped the air in front of him, his hand still throbbing to the cadence of his heartbeat. Nothing. He scooted forward on his knees, reaching out in the dark, until his fingers brushed against something. It felt soft and springy, like a sofa or an easy chair. Leaning against it for balance, he struggled to his feet and began to shuffle through the space, feeling his way with his bound hands. His sneakered feet knocked against junk left lying around, stuff he imagined to be cardboard cups and burger wrappers and empty fast-food sacks.

  There was more stuffed furniture and a low, cluttered table sticky with grime. He groped his way to the wall, hoping a door or window might have been left unlocked. There was a window, but not the kind he expected. It didn’t have a real wooden frame, just metal all the way around. It was covered by a sturdy shade, which he yanked on repeatedly, to no avail. He took a breather, listening hard for sounds of footsteps or a door opening. All he heard was the rat-a-tat hammering of the rain. If anything, it was coming down harder than before.

  He felt along the edges of the shade and discovered that, unlike conventional roller shades, you had to push this one down from the top. He figured out how to release the latch and inch the shade down. Weak light shone through the narrow gap. Ricky hadn’t known whether it was day or night, and he still wasn’t sure, so dark was the rain-swollen sky. Wherever his captor was, would he notice the gap in the window shade? It was another risk Ricky had to take.

  He pushed it down a little more, just enough to peek outside. He glimpsed bare tree limbs. He risked another inch, two inches. This place was in some kind of wooded area, like the witch’s cabin in “Hansel and Gretel.” Ricky could see little besides the trees. He was about to search for the door and try to escape when a movement outside caught his eye.

  He blinked, fighting to focus his vision through the driving rain and the lingering fuzziness from that shot. Everything kind of drifted a little. He squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed them, but it didn’t help. He stared hard through the lashing rain. There it was again. Something dark in the distance. Man-sized.

  His heart banged. They’d come for him. The police. But as he stared, the image resolved itself into a lone individual. Cops didn’t do rescues all alone. On TV and in the movies, yeah, but he was pretty sure that in real life they did stuff like that in pairs and groups. Which meant this was his kidnapper out there in the rain. Ricky rubbed his eyes again. The man was covered in something dark, head to calves. A rain slicker, with the hood pulled down so low over his face, Ricky didn’t have a prayer of seeing his features. What was he doing out there?

  The wind shifted direction, affording Ricky a clearer view through the curtain of rain. The man had a shovel. He was digging next to a huge rock that from this direction looked like a tooth, the flat-topped kind in the back of your mouth.

  Ricky stopped breathing. My grave. His kidnapper was going to kill him and put his body in that hole.

  The man jumped into the hole and dug some more, tossing the dirt onto a pile. After a while he pitched the shovel aside, leapt out, and bent to lift something off the ground, something dark and
rectangular that Ricky hadn’t noticed before. It looked heavy. He dropped it into the hole and stood there awhile, looking down at it.

  The man picked up the shovel and refilled the hole. Fast, like it was some kind of race. He tamped down the dirt, then kicked leaves and sticks on top of it so it wouldn’t look like anyone had been digging there. The man straightened and looked toward Ricky, who ducked. After a few moments he risked another peek. The man was just a few feet away now, striding back with the shovel over his shoulder, his hooded head bent against the rain.

  Ricky shoved the shade up and hurriedly groped his way back to the spot where his kidnapper had left him, barking his shin on the table and crunching litter underfoot. He heard a door start to open and threw himself to the floor, pulling his blindfold back in place and curling onto his side.

  Chapter 22

  WILL SHIFTED THE bottle of wine to his left hand, rang Lucy’s doorbell, and listened to the muted chime in the foyer of her home. The two of them had arranged this little assignation last Wednesday before she’d set out from his place, and he was ready. They’d been so close in his bedroom, almost there. And then that Esterhaus fellow had to go and spoil the fun.

  Well, nothing was going to stop them today. Today it was just Will, Lucy, and a big, empty house.

  The door was opened by a woman he’d never seen before. Please, God, let this be the housekeeper, he thought. And let her be on her way out. She was about his age and on the tall side, two or three inches shorter than his six feet. She had a bun in the oven, the blessed event advertised by a stretchy neon green top that displayed every maternal curve, right down to the outie bellybutton. A multicolored sarong was tied low on her hips. Price tags dangled from both pieces. She presented him with a side view. “Whaddaya think?”

  “I think it makes your stomach look fat.”

  That elicited a jolly cackle. Will decided he liked this person, but he still wanted her to go away.

  From inside the house Lucy called, “Who is it, Anne Marie?” She joined the other woman in the doorway, and he watched her expression morph from surprised to chagrined.

  “I forgot.” She looked genuinely contrite as she took hold of his forearm and ushered him inside. “I’m sorry, Will. It’s just . . . there’s been so much going on.”

  He forced a smile. “No problem.”

  “You met Anne Marie.” She led them through the greatroom to the library, where a second Lucy sat cross-legged on the bare wood floor—Frank had liberated his big chair and his antique Oriental carpet—amid heaps of clothes.

  Will glared at the irrepressible practical joker. “Hello, Ethel.”

  She glanced up from the slinky, royal blue cocktail dress she was examining, apparently unsurprised to see the man she’d hired to fake-kidnap her sister strolling into the place with a fifty-dollar bottle of pinot grigio. “How’s it going, Will?”

  “Smargin’ peachy. How’s it going with you?”

  “Can’t complain.” She gave Anne Marie a thumb-up. “That outfit’s a killer. Put it on the yes pile. Try this on.”

  “Like I have somewhere to wear a dress like that.” Anne Marie started to untie the sarong. “Fair warning,” she told Will. “This thing’s about to come off.”

  He turned his back to her. “Looks like you ladies are busy. I’ll leave you to it.”

  “No.” Lucy still looked contrite, which should have made him feel better but didn’t. In a low voice she said, “I really am sorry, Will. It’s not like me to forget something like that. Things have been crazy.”

  Anne Marie said, “I’d love to see Frank’s face when he gets the bill for all this.”

  “He can afford it,” Ethel assured her, “no matter what he claims. Anyway, it’s about time you had a few nice things.”

  “You can say that again. Is this the front or the back?”

  “It’s the back. Here, let’s get it turned around.”

  It sounded like Lucy was buying her friend clothes on her estranged husband’s credit. Will had thought she had more class than that.

  She smiled knowingly, watching him. “You ready for this? Anne Marie is Frank’s wife.”

  “Really. I didn’t know he’d been married before.”

  “She said wife.” Anne Marie joined the conversation. “Not ex. You can turn around.”

  Will did. The dress was as figure-hugging as the previous outfit, the neckline low enough to be interesting, the hem high enough to show off a pair of long, more-than-decent legs.

  The women paid close attention to his reaction. “See?” Ethel said. “What did I tell you?”

  “I’m going to burn all my old maternity stuff,” Anne Marie said. “Just pile it up on the grill, soak it in lighter fluid, and . . .” She mimed tossing in a lit match. “Whoosh!”

  “We’ll go shopping again after the baby,” Ethel offered. “Get you fixed up with a whole new wardrobe.”

  “Where will I put it all?”

  “In the humongous walk-in closet in your new house.” Ethel adjusted the dress to hide Anne Marie’s bra strap. “The modern one with the attached greenhouse. Solar panels.”

  Anne Marie shook her head. “I like the big stone one with the playhouse that looks like the big house. And that fabulous pool. And the multi-tiered deck. Did you see that deck?”

  Lucy explained. “Ethel and Anne Marie have been house-shopping on the Internet. The better Chicago suburbs. Anne Marie lives out there—she’s been staying with me for a few days.”

  “Somebody going to explain this ‘wife’ thing to me?” Will asked.

  “Frank married Anne Marie twelve years ago,” Lucy said. “Only he neglected to inform me.”

  Ethel muttered something under her breath. Will thought he heard the words “lowlife” and “prick.”

  “I didn’t know about Lucy either,” Anne Marie said.

  “Wait a minute.” He shook his head. “April Fool’s Day was a couple of weeks ago, ladies.”

  “The only fool here is me,” Lucy said, “for not wising up sooner.”

  “So what does that make me?” Anne Marie turned and let Ethel unzip her.

  Will presented his back once more. Frank Narby was a bigamist. He tried to imagine that gadget-happy dweeb behind bars. “Think he’ll do time?”

  “Oh, we’re not going to report him,” Lucy said.

  “No need to get outsiders involved.” Anne Marie’s voice was muffled by whatever garment Ethel was tugging over her head. “This is a family matter.”

  “Not to worry,” Ethel said. “By the time these two are finished with Frank, he’ll wish they’d turned him in.”

  “How did you two find out about each other?” Will asked.

  “I’ll tell you about it. Later.” Lucy commandeered the wine bottle and took his hand. “First there’s something I want to show you.”

  This was more like it. As they left the library he heard Anne Marie say, “You have got to be kidding.” He peeked over his shoulder to see her gaping down at herself in the maternity equivalent of a tube dress, the elastic material knitted in an exotic diamond pattern. She looked like a rattler that had swallowed a . . . well, a baby.

  Ethel was wagging a pair of pointy-toed high heels at her. “Try it with the shoes before you say no.”

  Lucy deposited the bottle on the counter, then led him past the laundry room and half bath to the basement door.

  Well, why not? He wasn’t averse to a little subterranean slap-and-tickle.

  She flipped on the lights and preceded him down the stairs and into a spacious entertainment room, complete with sixty-inch plasma TV, state-of-the-art sound system, cushy cream-colored furniture, and an ultramodern pool table made of cherry wood and brushed aluminum.

  Will backed Lucy against the table and grabbed a double handful of soft, jeans-clad tush. “I hope you didn’t bring me down here to play pool.”

  “Actually . . .” She pushed gently on his chest as he went in for the kiss. “I brought you down here to talk.�
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  He sagged theatrically. She patted his shoulder. Why did women think maternal gestures like that helped at a moment like this?

  “Really, Will, we have to clear the air about some things.”

  “We can do that after.” He’d already learned how sensitive her throat was. Now he splayed his fingers in her hair, tipped her head back, and brushed his mouth from the tip of her ear to the place where her pulse fluttered against his lips.

  Her thighs tightened around his hips, just a little, just enough to turn Mr. Happy into Mr. Happier. Suddenly it was hot as hell in that basement. Will released her for the fraction of a second it took him to lose his jacket.

  “Hear me out, Will . . . I’ve been thinking about this.”

  “So have I.” He trailed kisses into the vee neckline of her taupe sweater, noting with satisfaction how her breathing quickened. “I’ve thought of nothing else for the past four days.” He tugged down on her sweater and dipped his tongue into the newly minted cleavage. She smelled like her own delicious self and something else, some kind of fancy soap they didn’t carry at the local supermarket.

  “Don’t do that,” she groaned. “I can’t think when you do that.”

  Good to know. Will dragged his mouth over the sweater and homed in on a nipple valiantly struggling to raise its little head through layers of lace and cashmere. Lucy’s shuddering groan made him pull her even harder against him.

  “We shouldn’t do this.” She pushed on his shoulders even as her legs closed pincerlike around his waist. “We aren’t going to do this. Listen to me, Will.”

  He closed his eyes, struggling to rein himself in. “I’m listening. Talk fast.”

  Lucy scooted back and adjusted her sweater. “I know we got kind of, you know, frisky the other day in your bedroom.”

  Frisky? She could have been talking about a basketful of kittens. “If Archie’s timing hadn’t been so lousy,” Will said, “you and I would’ve had sex.”