Two to three months sometimes wasn’t enough, Daddy eventually throwing up his hands and giving up on them.
Yet here she was, acting like a good little schoolgirl on a leash, one that followed Misty’s instructions to the letter during their fifteen-minute journey from the barn to the car.
The policeman was up to something.
What exactly, she didn’t know, but her initial instinct coupled with this display of obedience solidified the fear.
They had to get back to the barn.
“Give me your wrists,” Misty instructed once the schoolgirl was in the driver seat, her own body standing in the open doorway.
Once again, the girl complied.
Misty unlocked her left wrist and hooked the cuff to the steering wheel, and then hurried around to the passenger side.
“Well?” Misty said once she was inside.
“What?”
“Drive.”
What if she doesn’t know how?
What if it had all been a lie to simply get her away from the barn for a while?
The schoolgirl twisted the key, the engine coming to life.
Voices appeared.
Police radio!
Misty reached for the handset before the schoolgirl could even consider taking hold of it.
“I wasn’t going to try for it,” the schoolgirl said.
“Why not?” Misty asked.
The schoolgirl shrugged.
“Let’s go,” Misty said.
The schoolgirl nodded and then started looking around.
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s a bit different than my parents’ car,” the schoolgirl said.
“You said you know how to drive.”
“I do, but every car is different.” She bent her head a bit. “Ah, there we go.” She took hold of a lever sticking out of the steering-wheel area, shifted it, and then turned to look back.
“What’re you doing?” Misty asked.
“We need to back up and turn around.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m pretty sure the driveway is back that way.” She pointed with her free hand.
“Oh.”
The schoolgirl was right. Given the layout of the house and barn and the part of the driveway they had walked on to get to the front of the house, the entrance to the driveway was likely behind them somewhere.
“Ready?” the schoolgirl asked, voice a bit apprehensive for some reason.
Misty nodded.
The car lurched backward and then came to a jarring halt.
“Why’d you do that?” Misty demanded.
“Sorry, I’m still a bit new to this.”
“You said you knew how to drive.”
“I do, I do, but it’s been like a week.”
“Since you drove?”
“Yeah, but I did well during that lesson.”
“Lesson?”
“For my driving class.”
“You’re in a class?”
“Yeah, to get my license.”
“You don’t have one?”
“No, just a permit.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s what they give you when learning to drive.”
“But you have driven before, right?”
“Yeah.”
“How many times?”
“Um…four times, no, five.”
“Five?”
“Yeah, and last time they let me on a road rather than just a parking lot, though no stoplights yet.”
Misty had no idea what that meant.
The schoolgirl took a deep breath and then turned backward once again.
The car started moving, this time without the sudden lurch.
“Shit!”
The car jolted to a halt.
“What?” Misty asked.
“It’s hard to turn the wheel like this, especially while going backward.”
“Why?”
“It’s like crisscross.”
Is she faking?
Is this all part of a ruse?
“Try again.”
“I can’t, not when cuffed like this.”
“Try!”
The schoolgirl sighed and tried again, this time jolting them to a halt with the vehicle nearly sideways in the road.
“This is too hard,” she said.
“We’re halfway turned around,” Misty replied.
“But I can’t get it all the way around with my hand attached to the steering wheel, and if we back up any further, we might go off the road.”
“Then pull forward a bit.”
The schoolgirl considered this and peered forward, her eyes squinting to see through the darkness.
Misty squinted as well, but couldn’t see much beyond the car. It was just too dark.
More voices echoed from the radio, something about the high school.
“Do you have the headlights on?” Misty asked.
“Shit! I forgot.” She started looking around, hand touching things. “I think this one is it.”
“You think?”
“I’ve never driven at night before.” She twisted something.
Both jumped as the windshield wipers squealed against the dry windshield.
“Sorry!” the schoolgirl said and quickly shut off the wipers.
Another switch turned on the siren.
“You know what, just turn on the spotlight and use that,” Misty said, pointing.
“Hang on, I think it’s this one.”
This time the headlights came on.
Misty sighed.
“You’re right,” the schoolgirl said, leaning forward once again. “I got plenty of room to pull forward.”
They went backward, the car jolting once again as she slammed on the brake.
“Oops. Forgot to put it in drive.”
Misty didn’t reply.
The schoolgirl took a breath and then eased the car forward a bit while turning the wheel.
“Stop!” Misty cried as they neared the ditch in front of the car.
Another jolt.
The schoolgirl backed them up a bit, the car turning slightly.
No jolt followed, the girl easing the car to a halt.
And then they started going forward, speed increasing with each second that passed.
“Too fast,” Misty said.
They halted with a screech of brakes, Misty hitting the dash.
“Sorry.”
Misty stared at the girl for a moment, trying to figure out if she had done that on purpose, but then decided she most likely hadn’t. She also decided to put on her seat belt.
They started forward again, initially at a crawl, but then speeding up.
“Slow down,” Misty said.
The schoolgirl did.
And then a mailbox appeared.
It was on the opposite side of the road, but it marked where the driveway was.
The turn was too fast, gravel spraying everywhere as they left the pavement, the car skidding rather than jolting to a halt as the schoolgirl slammed on the brake.
Norman waited for several seconds after the two left the barn before he tried bouncing the keys out of his pocket, his teeth having managed to rip out the button moments before Misty had entered with the flashlight.
It took three buck-like thrusts before the keys cleared the fabric lip and landed in his lap.
Yes!
All he had to do was get the keys into his hand, find the handcuff one, and thread it into the keyhole.
Once he did that—
Outside he heard something. It sounded like a yelp, one that was close to the barn.
Nothing followed.
He waited.
Did Abigail try something?
Even though she knew I was close to getting the key?
Would she do that?
He wanted to say no, but after going through what she had gone through these last two days, he couldn’t say for sure that she wouldn’t make an attempt at freedom if one pres
ented itself. He also couldn’t blame her for trying. No. All he could do was focus on freeing himself. That way, if her attempt had failed, which, given the odd yelp, sounded likely, he could still salvage things with his own attempt and put this thing to an end.
Outside, the silence continued.
Were they heading toward his patrol vehicle?
If the yelp had been the result of Abigail trying to make a break for freedom, one that Misty had countered, it seemed unlikely that she would then willingly walk toward the patrol vehicle. Instead, she would likely continue to fight, the sounds of the struggle echoing.
But no sounds of a struggle echoed.
There were no sounds at all.
Had the yelp really been an escape attempt?
Or had one of them simply stumbled in the dark.
Just get the keys!
Shifting himself around the post once again, the edge digging into his back, he eventually managed to get himself into a position where his hands could grab at the keys, his fingers finding them quickly, the handcuff one easy to single out.
He then tried to find the keyhole.
Fuck!
Misty had locked the cuffs so that the keyholes were facing away from his fingers.
Had the holes been on the same side, fitting the key into one would have been fairly simple; now it wasn’t, his wrists having to twist around painfully so that he could get the key in one of the narrow openings and turn it, the angle such that he was forced to make blind stabs at where he hoped the hole would be.
The first dozen attempts failed, the key often falling from his fingers given how difficult it was to hold at such an angle, silent cusses echoing within his mind.
And then he did it, his mind not even processing that the key was in the slot, his fingers thinking they had lost it once again when the sensation of it between his fingers disappeared, a brief scramble in the dirt adding fear as he realized the key wasn’t there, a brush with the keychain that was dangling from the handcuffs alerting him to his success.
One good twist and he would be free.
It was not as easy as it seemed.
His fingers could barely get hold of the key, and whenever they did, twisting it was almost impossible.
Seconds turned to minutes, his panic growing.
He was so close, yet it could all come crashing down.
If Misty stepped inside…
They’d be fucked.
Plain and simple.
It was one thing to have the keys in his pocket, or even on the ground beneath his body, but dangling from the keyhole of the handcuffs themselves…there was no hiding that.
Come on!
He got his fingers across the key chain and started working his way back up to the handcuff key, wrists screaming as they were forced to bend at odd angles, his fingers using the key ring as a sort of anchor to bring the fingers, wrists, and handcuff key all together.
The cuff popped open.
One moment it was secure, the next his hand hit the ground, the other swinging around under the force of the crazy contortion attempt.
Disbelief overwhelmed him, his brain unable to process the reality of his freedom.
Get up!
He tried, his legs and back locking up on him while the room spun.
Several dry heaves hit, nothing but a tiny speck of bile appearing.
And then came the bloody mucus, the heaves having torn whatever healing had occurred within his nose.
Once finished, he carefully worked his way up to his feet, the pole acting as a brace, edges tearing at his finger flesh.
The keys were still dangling from the keyhole.
He waited several seconds for the world to still and then pulled the key free and used it to unlock the other wrist. After that, he pocketed the keys and cuffs and turned toward where he thought the door would be, the darkness so great he couldn’t make out anything within the barn.
Deep breath.
And another.
Five total, the last one marking the start of a lap around the post, one hand on it for support just in case the world twisted again.
It didn’t.
Another breath, and then he stepped away from the post, his bloody fingers leaving the jagged edges and shifting out to feel the area in front of him as he walked, his lap around the post having made him a bit uncertain on just which direction he was facing, though he felt chances were good he was heading toward the door.
Abigail had been hoping to get the police car stuck on the turn into the driveway, thereby making it a marker for other police officers should Norman fail in his endeavor to free himself while they were retrieving the car, but the skid into the field as they turned didn’t lock them into the mud like she thought it would. Even worse, the farther up the driveway they went, the more unlikely it would become that someone would spot the police car, which meant she might have missed her only opportunity.
I should have just put it into the ditch alongside the road.
The trouble was, she had wanted the act of getting stuck to look like an honest mistake. Had she simply put them in a ditch from the start, Misty might call into question whether it had truly been a mistake. By the time they made it to the driveway, there would be no doubt.
Only they hadn’t gotten stuck.
Muddied up, yes, but stuck, no, though at first she had thought her plan successful given how much the tires spun before graining traction and jerking them forward onto the gravel.
Misty had too, her screams of frustration and belittlement of Abigail making that clear.
“You’re lucky we got out of that,” Misty said.
Nothing else was said.
Abigail considered speeding up again and then losing control, her frantic, inexperienced hands “accidentally” bringing the car to the left and back toward the road, but feared that she wouldn’t be able to go far enough into the field to where it could be spotted from the road within the darkness. Once morning came, people would see it, but at that point, the van would be a marker, and though a disabled police car would probably bring about attention quicker, she felt that might be too late.
No.
She needed to do something that would bring the police there now, something that would act like a backup to Norman’s attempt at freedom.
But what?
The radio?
It seemed like an option, though only if Misty let her guard down to the point where she could get control of the handset. Another was the phone that was sitting in a tiny slot between the cup holders, a phone that she was sure Misty hadn’t noticed, because if she had, she would have likely grabbed it the way she had the radio handset.
Moving slowly, they crept along the driveway, Misty seemingly relieved that Abigail wasn’t pressing on the gas, her thinking likely being that she had made a big mistake in letting Abigail behind the wheel.
Then again, what choice did she have?
She obviously had never learned to drive, and since she wasn’t about to let the police officer free, not when he was bigger and stronger and could easily overpower her even while cuffed, Abigail and her apparent lack of driving skill were the only real option.
Crash it?
Into the barn?
Not at a suicidal speed, but at one that would be enough to distract Misty to the point where she could grab the phone without her knowing, thumb 911 into the dial pad, and then drop it beneath the seat.
Once that was done, all they had to do was wait.
The police would track the call and respond, so even if Norman hadn’t managed to free himself, they would still be rescued.
And once again, her apparent inexperience while behind the wheel could be blamed.
It was perfect.
The only downside was that Misty had put on a seat belt, so the chances of her being injured in the impact were slim. Still, even a slow-speed crash would be jarring enough to throw her off balance.
Up ahead, the house appeared in the headlights.
House or barn?
Barn.
That way she could act like she’d lost control while turning the car to face it, and then hit the gas a bit in her panic.
Are you really going to do this?
Yes.
No.
Indecision gripped her.
“It turns up there,” Misty said, caution present.
“I see it.”
“Maybe slow down a bit.”
“We’re good.” She pressed on the gas.
“I think we should slow down.”
“It’s cool.” More gas.
“Please! Slow down!” Misty cried, grabbing the armrest.
The car came upon the large turnabout area, Abigail twisting the wheel to point them toward the barn, tires skidding in the gravel.
“Abigail, please!”
She pointed the car toward the barn door, foot still on the gas.
Too fast! her own mind warned.
Releasing the gas, she moved her foot toward the brake.
“Stop!”
She tapped the brake a bit, hoping to slow the car as they sped toward the barn, her own panic beginning to set in.
The barn door opened.
Norman’s eyes went wide as the car came toward him, headlights trapping him like a deer.
“Shit!” Abigail cried, twisting the wheel while hitting the brake.
The car wobbled and fishtailed, Abigail trying to steer the car away from the doorway without effect.
Misty screamed.
The front driver side of the car slammed into the barn, the impact throwing Abigail toward the steering wheel, the airbag catching her. It wasn’t soft. More like a firm pillow that would not yield.
Norman felt cold and knew something horrible had happened as he opened the door to the barn, one that had taken him far too long to find after having walked straight into one of the livestock pens that Abigail had been handcuffed to earlier.
Abigail.
What happened?
He tried to get up but couldn’t, the movement causing a tug within his belly that was impossible to ignore. It didn’t hurt, not yet, but was far from pleasant, almost as if…
Oh God!
His hands found his stomach and whatever it was that had skewered him, the object protruding about five inches from the left of his belly button.
A cramp hit.
With it came the pain.
It was the worst thing he had ever experienced, the intensity of it blocking out everything else.
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