by April Henry
Not that he would see her here. The prosecutor, Bennett, had made that clear, his blue eyes boring into him. As if he could see Griffin thinking that Cheyenne must have been there before him, breathing the same air. As if he could tell how much Griffin longed to see her, even once.
Bennett had made him a deal. Tell the truth about what his dad had done, about what all of them had done, and his dad would go to prison while Griffin would be free.
But free to do what?
CHAPTER 4
SUPPOSED TO BE THE VICTIM
CHEYENNE
Cheyenne was brushing her teeth when she heard movement behind her. Maybe it wasn’t even a sound that alerted her but the air shifting. A second later, an arm slid across her throat.
She dropped her toothbrush and tried to spin away. Too late. The arm yanked her back in. A grunt in her ear. The heat of her attacker’s body against her back as the arm began to tighten.
Cheyenne knew how it would go down. Once pressure was applied to the carotid arteries, she’d be unconscious within ten seconds. And it wouldn’t take much longer to kill her.
She could try to claw the eyes, but her attacker’s cheek was pressed tight against her shoulder blades. Try to shift her hips and go for the groin, hoping to at least loosen the grip. But if that didn’t work, there wouldn’t be time to try something else.
Her attacker probably hoped she would go down without much of a fight.
Oh, hell to the no. Cheyenne curled her fingers over the arm and yanked, letting her legs go boneless. As she dropped, she twisted, rolling her attacker over her hip. No sounds except for their ragged breathing. But that was enough for Phantom to know something was wrong. Out in the hall, he scratched at the bedroom door her attacker had closed and then began to bark in sharp, staccato bursts. The chances anyone would hear him were small. Mary, their cook and housekeeper, had already gone home. Her dad was in Japan. And Danielle was volunteering at an evening clinic.
Cheyenne managed to stay on her feet, still holding the arm she had grabbed straight up. As her attacker fell, it twisted nearly to the breaking point. She turned her head, and there it was, a pale, blurry line in the tiny slice of vision she had left. She dropped her knees, one on her attacker’s head, the other on the ribs, and began to inch the arm back, back, back. Finding the point where it would snap.
“Tap!” Jaydra grunted.
Cheyenne let go and straightened up.
“You were smiling,” Jaydra said as she got to her feet.
“Sorry.” Feeling her face warm, Cheyenne went to the door and let Phantom in.
“No, the smile was a nice touch,” Jaydra said. “A bad guy is going to think twice or even three times if he sees the person who’s supposed to be the victim smiling.”
Phantom let out one last woof as Cheyenne rubbed the fur behind his ears. She wondered what he thought of Jaydra. Around other people, he would curl up and nap if he wasn’t needed. But with Jaydra, he was always alert.
“That was very good,” Jaydra continued. “You never stopped moving. And you didn’t end up on the bottom. I only weigh one-forty. If some guy weighs two-forty, it won’t matter how many locks and chokes you know. You let him get his weight on you and he won’t even have to know jujitsu.”
“I don’t know why I have to worry about this.” Cheyenne shook her head. “Phantom will protect me.” Hearing his name, he pressed against her thigh. Part of her was braced for Jaydra to come back at her. She liked to spring things on you when you least expected it. Just like she had three minutes ago, when she had come over from the guesthouse and slipped into Cheyenne’s room.
“He’s a guide dog. Not a guard dog. He’s not bred for it, and he’s not trained for it. He’s not like Duke.” Duke had once been Roy’s dog, and as a result, he had some issues. Still, he had helped Cheyenne escape, and she had returned the favor by taking him in.
“But Phantom is smart. Like, if I tell him to cross the street and can’t hear that an electric car is coming, he won’t move, even though he’s supposed to obey me.” It was called intelligent disobedience. “So why couldn’t he learn to be a guard dog?”
“Not crossing when an electric car is coming is a lot different from deciding whom you’re going to bite and whom you’re going to ignore. And he can’t both guide you and guard you. Even if he tried, that harness is going to get in his way. And what if they lock him in a car? Or hurt him? Even kill him? You can’t rely on anyone but yourself to get you out of trouble.”
For the past six months, Jaydra had been not just Cheyenne’s bodyguard but her trainer. After Nick had hired her to watch over Cheyenne, Jaydra had sold him on also teaching Cheyenne how to protect herself. It was like the orientation and mobility training she had right after the accident, except this focused solely on dealing with bad guys. How to keep safe at the ATM, on public transportation, walking in an iffy neighborhood. What to do if someone grabbed your wrist, your neck, around your waist.
And how to fight back. A sighted person could run away, but a blind person needed to disable their attacker. As long as Cheyenne had contact with her partner, she didn’t need to see to use jujitsu. Could be, according to Jaydra, as good as a sighted person. Since she couldn’t watch Jaydra’s moves, Cheyenne had learned how to kick, punch, and flip people by feeling the position of Jaydra’s body and then copying it herself. They practiced in the home gym, which had been reconfigured with mats covering the hardwood floors and even two of the walls. Sometimes Jaydra attacked her with a plastic training gun or a training knife that lacked an edge on the blade.
Cheyenne had never seen anything but a blurry sideways slice of Jaydra. Three years ago, two cars had been racing down a country road, the same road she and her mom were walking on. Then an oncoming car made the driver in the wrong lane swerve onto the shoulder—and right into them. Her mom had been killed, and Cheyenne had been thrown into a sign. The impact bounced her brain off the back of her skull. While her eyes still worked, the part of her brain that took in the message had been destroyed. The car accident had spared only the far-left edge of her old field of vision, and even that was fuzzy and unfocused. From that, she knew Jaydra had pale skin and long, dark hair. In her imagination, the other woman’s eyes were blue. That part she would never know, unless she asked. Her slice of sight wasn’t even enough to tell her that Jaydra wore her hair pulled back into a tight braid. Her fingers knew, though. It was useful for yanking when Cheyenne could get past her own reluctance to fight dirty.
Jaydra was all about fighting dirty, if it let you live. All about improvising with what you had on hand. Anything and everything could be a weapon. A phone could be smashed across the bridge of a nose. A pen could stab an eye or the throat. A bag of groceries could be shoved into someone’s arms—and then Cheyenne could attack while they fumbled. Even an empty hand could be slapped across the ear, damaging the ear drum.
That thought made Cheyenne shiver. To be blind and deaf? She had met a few people like that, and while they seemed to have adjusted, to her it would be like being locked in a box forever.
“At the end, you twisted your head,” Jaydra said. “You need to forget about that little bit you can see. It won’t help, and it puts you in a bad position versus your attacker.”
“Okay.” Cheyenne repressed a sigh. Nothing she did was ever good enough. She could probably kill Jaydra, and the other woman would manage to come back from the dead to critique her technique.
Still, Cheyenne liked grappling. It made her feel badass. Like a ninja warrior.
At the same time, it was overkill. Her dad and stepmom had turned paranoid and protective. Cheyenne had lost count of the times Danielle had apologized for leaving Cheyenne alone in the Escalade.
But she hadn’t been the target. The car had. It was just a fluke Griffin hadn’t noticed her until it was too late. A once-in-a-lifetime thing.
Cheyenne couldn’t wait for the trial to end. Until then, she joked to her friend Kenzie, she was just lucky Jaydra wa
s staying in the guesthouse instead of in a bunk bed in Cheyenne’s room.
Every weekday, Jaydra took Cheyenne to her private school and then picked her up to take her straight home again. Her dad would no longer let Cheyenne go out to movies or concerts or even to friends’ houses. If she wanted to hang out with someone, he said she should just ask them over. If she wanted to go shopping, he said she could have things shipped to her and return those she didn’t want.
She felt like she was slowly suffocating. At home it was so quiet. Danielle had her volunteer work, and her dad was always traveling. Some weeks Cheyenne talked to Mary or the gardener, Octavio, more than she talked to her parents. Of course there was Jaydra, but conversations with her tended to be more like lectures. While she could text or call her friends, that wasn’t the same as being with them. And even though Kenzie and Sadie would come over if she asked, it didn’t change the fact that she was still stuck at home.
“It won’t be long until the trial starts,” Cheyenne said now. “Once Roy is sentenced, my parents won’t have to worry anymore.”
Jaydra made a noncommittal grunt.
Cheyenne tensed. “What?”
“It’s not only Roy that Nick’s worried about. It’s anyone with a cell phone. Anyone who looks at you and sees dollar signs. You’re not exactly incognito. You’re pretty and petite, so I’m sure guys were already noticing you. Now everyone recognizes you, especially given you always have a cane or a dog. Do you know how many stories have been written about you? I don’t mean just People magazine. I’m talking tabloids, blog posts, Twitter, Tumblr. Your family has been wanting to shield you from it, but there are a lot of crazies out there. Hiding behind made-up names, anonymous IP addresses. And some of them want to do more than just take your picture.”
After Jaydra left, Cheyenne searched for her own name on Twitter. And was immediately sorry after her computer read her the first leering remark.
“I’d like to tie her up and hold her for ransom.”
And that was mild compared to the rest. Her stomach crammed into the back of her throat as she slammed her laptop closed.
Would she ever get her life back?
CHAPTER 5
BUILDING THE GIRL PIECE BY PIECE
TJ
TJ Meadors lay in his narrow bed in the room he shared with five other men at the Oregon State Hospital and thought about Cheyenne Wilder.
His lips moved as he softly said her name. Even saying it out loud, it still sounded like a whisper. He imagined tucking her long, dark hair behind her ear. Breathing “Cheyenne” into that white shell.
Only this time she wouldn’t flinch.
TJ spent as much time with Cheyenne as he could, even if it was only in his head. It helped him block out reality, like the snoring and mumbling around him. And later, when lights suddenly ripped open the night just so a staff member could untangle a headphone cord from around one of TJ’s stupid roommates’ heads, he pulled the blanket over his face and remembered.
Thoughts of Cheyenne helped him ignore how the blanket smelled like disinfectant and the pillow was as hard as a board. He just kept his eyes closed tight and filled his senses with memories of her, building the girl piece by piece. Her soft, pale skin. Her sweet smell, like something precious and expensive. Her dark sightless eyes that had looked right at him but never seen him.
Two weeks ago, Dwayne, Roy’s half brother, had visited, promising that TJ could see Cheyenne again. Do more than see her, if he wanted.
On the grounds, they sat in white plastic lawn chairs, away from the others. TJ ate chip after chip from the two bags of Ruffles Cheddar & Sour Cream Dwayne bought from the vending machine.
“Easy there, eager beaver,” Dwayne said. Roy was thin as a snake, but Dwayne was bulked up, with tattoos crawling up his thick arms. “You might want to think about chewing.”
“It just tastes so good. The chow here sucks.” Somehow the food service department was able to mess up anything, even spaghetti, but you still had to eat it.
“You always wear a jacket like that?” Dwayne eyed TJ’s brown puffer coat, one of the few things he really owned. Underneath he wore “state clothes,” which were the cheapest sweatpants, T-shirt, underwear, and socks available.
TJ hunched his shoulders despite the sunshine. “I get cold.” He was always cold now. Jimbo was the one who used to complain about how he was freezing, who dressed in layers until he looked like the Michelin Man. Had some part of Jimbo slipped into TJ after he squeezed the trigger?
“My brother said you liked Cheyenne.”
TJ smiled. “She’s pretty.” He used to have a picture of her, torn from People magazine (headline: KIDNAPPED BLIND TEEN ESCAPES ABDUCTORS!). He had kept it under his T-shirt, close to his heart, until a nurse found it and took it away.
“I know what you’re thinkin’, Abe Lincoln. The trial’s gonna be happening soon. She’s testifying against Roy.”
TJ shrugged. Nobody was calling him to testify. Not from this place.
“How’d you like to be with her again? Be all lovey-dovey?”
Even though he wanted it to be true, TJ knew enough to be wary. People didn’t offer you good stuff for free. “How could that even happen?” He reached up to stroke his rat tail, until he remembered how they had cut it off that first day and then buzzed his head in a room that smelled eye-wateringly of bleach.
Dwayne looked around the yard, which was filled with a half dozen guards and more than a hundred patients. Only they weren’t patients. They were prisoners, just like TJ. “Say you could get out of here and go to her. Would you?”
“Yeah, but that’s never gonna happen.” The hope that fluttered in his chest stilled. There were no bars on the windows here, but there might as well be. Every unit had a locked door. Even if you got through that, the stairs and elevators couldn’t be entered without a security badge. And the only exit required passing through not one but two locked gates.
“Never say never. In a couple days, you might get a little present.”
TJ still wasn’t following. “Are you going to bring Cheyenne here?”
A look of impatience crossed Dwayne’s face, so for a moment he looked more like Roy. “No. But I can help you go to her. Every time they let you out into the yard, start pulling a chair right up to the fence.”
“And do what?”
“Just link your fingers in the chain links and stare out. And that’s all you do. Every day. Pretty soon they won’t care, because they’ll figure they don’t need to. They won’t even really see you. The way a place like this works is that they focus on people who’re trouble. They’re not gonna care about you sitting here doing nothing.” Dwayne smiled. One of his eyeteeth was gray. “And then one day soon, you’ll just go—poof!”
CHAPTER 6
FLY UNDER THE RADAR
GRIFFIN
The only good thing about a dress shirt, Griffin thought as he fumbled with the buttons in the changing room, was it mostly covered up the scar wrapped around his throat. He hated summers because the scar was so much harder to hide. Cheyenne knew about his scar, but she was the only person he had met who wouldn’t flinch if he took off his shirt.
Since you couldn’t outgrow a tie, Griffin had brought the one he’d worn to the original hearing into the dressing room, along with the new suit and shirt. He didn’t know how to tie it, so he carefully slipped it over his head before tightening the existing knot Uncle Jeff had made six months ago.
Next, he shrugged on the suit jacket. In his reflection, Griffin saw both his dad and his mom. His dad in his narrow lips, his mom in his sad, dark brown eyes. So which one did he take after? The criminal or the victim?
He walked out of the changing area and took a deep breath.
“Do you like that one? It looks good on you.” Debby nodded, agreeing with herself. The suit was a blue so dark it was almost black. She adjusted a seam on his shoulder, smoothed down his lapels. “And you can wear it to your mom’s service as well as to court. Oh
, Griffin, I wish Janie could see you all grown up.” She slipped her arms around him.
He let her hug him, trying not to stiffen. It was his fault his mom was dead.
When he was ten, Griffin had startled his dad when he was cooking out in the barn. Not food, but meth. When it flared up, it caught Griffin’s shirt on fire. A month in the burn unit followed. In his nightmares, the nurses in their blue plastic gowns and rubber gloves were wheeling him to the debridement room to scrub off his dead flesh with wire-bristled brushes.
While he was in the hospital, his parents fought over what had happened. Roy shoved his mom, and Janie fell and didn’t get up. He claimed to have thought she was dead drunk, at least until the next morning. By that point she was simply dead. He had buried her out back.
After the truth came out six months ago, the authorities had dug his mom up and then conducted an autopsy on what was left of her remains. None of her bones, including her skull, were broken. Without a clear cause of death, they decided it was too hard to prosecute Roy, even as they went after him for Cheyenne’s kidnapping.
Debby had arranged for a small memorial service Saturday, the day after tomorrow. It had made sense to wait until both of them would be back in town for the trial. His mom had already been dead for nearly eight years, so Debby said a few more months wouldn’t matter. Griffin wondered if there was anyone left in Portland who remembered her.
Debby interrupted his thoughts. “Why don’t you wear the suit out of the store. It makes you look so grown-up.”
He did as she suggested, carrying himself a little taller. When they walked into the prosecutor’s office, Bennett cocked his head.
“New suit?”
“He outgrew the old one,” she explained.
One side of his mouth went up in what might have been a smile. “You should probably take off that tag before going to court.”