by Leah Burke
When she was brave enough to blink open her gritty eyes, she found herself in a small room with a single, barred window. The light fixture in the ceiling was nothing but a bare bulb and the paint on the walls was faded and peeling. It was empty except for a pile of boxes and some construction debris in a corner…
And the two teenage girls sitting a few feet away.
Jessie and Julia Marlow were huddled against one another, watching her with wide, frightened eyes. Their willowy arms were linked tightly around one another’s shoulders. Tangled hair surrounded their heart-shaped faces and their clothes were filthy.
“Oh my gosh, we thought you were dead!” Jessie whispered,
I definitely feel like I am, Marissa groaned to herself. She sat up slowly, relieved to find that in spite of the aches, all her limbs still worked. She raised a hand and gingerly touched the wound on her forehead. She found a large lump above her left eye that twinged painfully when she pressed on it and she winced.
“I bet that hurts,” Julia said tentatively. “It looks like it’s only a bad scrape, though.”
Marissa had to agree. Though a scab had formed over the abrasion, it didn’t seem to have bled much, especially for a head wound.
“Who are you?” Jessie asked at last.
Marissa licked her dry lips and tried to smile. “My name is Marissa Larkin. I’m a photojournalist from New York.”
The twins frowned in confusion, the expression pulling their brows into identical furrows.
Jessie, seemingly the more forward of the girls, spoke again. “You’re that journalist Ryan and Tyrone were arguing about yesterday. But what does Tyrone want with you?”
“Well, I’ve been helping the police look for you,” Marissa told her. “Why were they arguing about me?”
“I’m not sure,” Jessie admitted, “but Tyrone told Ryan he was stupid for talking to his cousin after he knew she’d talked to that reporter.”
Ming must have told him I was asking questions, Marissa mused. Had that happened before or after Ming’s phone call? There was no way to know, so she changed the subject to something more immediately important.
“Do you know where we are?”
The girls shook their heads in unison and Marissa sighed inwardly. They were just kids and they were understandably terrified. She needed to be gentle with her questions if she hoped to learn anything that could help them get out of here…wherever here was. If she pressed them too hard, they might shut down entirely. That wouldn’t help the situation at all and Marissa suspected they might be running out of time.
“I know you’re scared and want to go home,” she soothed, “Can either of you remember anything about the day you were kidnapped? Anything that might help me figure out where we are? Sounds or smells or anything like that?”
“Tyrone was waiting in the car when Thomas got ready to take us to the set,” Jessie started slowly, chewing on a thumbnail as she thought, “He was in the backseat and he held a gun to Julia’s head and told Thomas where to go. There wasn’t anything he could do but drive.”
“Tyrone put pillowcases or something over our heads so we couldn’t see where we were going,” Julia almost whispered, “We were in the car for what seemed like a really long time.”
Jessie nodded. “We stopped once and Tyrone made Thomas get out of the car…” She trailed off and both girls started to cry.
Marissa felt her heart break for the twins and she leaned forward to take their hands in hers. Slender, cold fingers clutched at her and she gave them a squeeze.
“You can tell me, honey, if you want to,” she said gently.
“He…we heard them arguing and then there was a gunshot,” Jessie finally stammered, “Tyrone got in the driver’s seat and drove away. He killed Thomas, didn’t he?”
“I’m afraid so,” Marissa admitted bleakly, “I’m so sorry.”
Julia’s face crumpled in grief, but Jessie’s expression hardened. She wiped a sleeve across her eyes, sniffling once before squaring her shoulders. A stubborn, angry glow came into her pretty green eyes.
“I think he killed Ryan, too,” Julia whimpered.
“What makes you say that?” Marissa asked.
Jessie took over for her twin again. “We heard them fighting last night after Tyrone brought you, then it got quiet. We haven’t seen or heard Ryan since.”
An image of Ryan Chase lying dead in a vacant lot like Thomas Duvall flashed through her mind and she shuddered. It was more than clear that Tyrone had no qualms about murdering for the sake of convenience.
They had to get out of this place, and fast. While she could hope that Detective Lawson would put the pieces together when no one was able to get a hold of her, she couldn’t count on it.
“Jessie, Julia, we need to get out of here,” she said as calmly as she could.
Julia shook her head. “He keeps the door locked and the windows are barred.”
Marissa swore under her breath. She should have expected that.
“Ryan...might have taught me how to pick locks,” Jessie admitted after a moment and blushed when Julia and Marissa stared at her. “But I don’t have any bobby pins.”
Marissa reached up and pulled one out of her hair and offered it to the young girl.
Jessie nodded and put it in her pocket. “Okay. If Tyrone leaves again, I could probably get us out of this room at least.”
Marissa grinned. “That is definitely something we can work with. When he leaves, we can get out of here and find a neighbor or a gas station or something and—“ She stopped talking when footsteps hurried up the hall.
“You got fifteen minutes,” Tyrone snarled, “and no funny business. I’ll be back.”
The lock turned and the door opened. A young man holding a KFC bucket and 2-liter of Coke was shoved into the room, the door slammed behind him and the lock reengaged.
Marissa studied him as he caught his balance and set the food carefully on the floor. He was tall and gangly, clearly still making the transition through his teenage years. Shaggy black hair fell over his forehead and he brushed it out of his dark eyes. Marissa could see a slight resemblance to Ming Robertson...something in the shape of the eyes and mouth, maybe.
“Oh my God, Ryan!” Jessie cried. She scrambled to her feet and threw her arms around the young man.
He hugged her back, but didn’t say anything.
“I thought he’d killed you, too!” Jessie mumbled into his chest.
“Sorry,” Ryan whispered, “Jessie, I’m so sorry. This is such a mess, I—“
“It’s not your fault. You didn’t know any more than we did,” Jessie said. She turned to Marissa and waved a hand. “Marissa, this is Ryan. Ryan Chase. He’s my—“
“—boyfriend,” Marissa finished with a tight smile, “I know, honey. I’ve talked to Ming.”
Ryan’s eyes went wide with panic at the mention of his cousin but Marissa didn’t look away. It was clear she knew he’d made the ransom call, and it was just as clear that Jessie and Julia did not. Part of her wanted to tell them, but she couldn’t bring herself to take away what little comfort they had in this awful situation.
“Hey, Jules,” Ryan said and nodded.
“Hey, Ry,” Julia replied with a tired smile.
“Um, so I brought you guys something to eat,” Ryan stammered.
The smell of fried chicken filled the air and now that she was paying attention, Marissa suddenly realized she hadn’t eaten in...a while. How long had she been here, exactly?
The four of them sat together in the middle of the floor around the KFC bucket. They ate and passed the Coke around in silence. When the fifteen minutes was up, Tyrone returned and glowered from the doorway as Ryan gathered up the bucket and empty soda bottle.
“If you gotta pee, you better speak up now,” Tyrone ordered, “Otherwise you better hold it till dinner.”
One by one, they were allowed to leave the room and Ryan escorted them to the tiny bathroom down the hall.
Whe
n it was Marissa’s turn, she leaned in close and spoke so only the kid could hear. “She doesn’t know, does she? That you made the ransom call?”
Ryan shot a nervous look in Tyrone’s direction, but he was busy watching the twins. He shook his head. “Please don’t tell her. She’d hate me.”
“Shouldn’t she?” Marissa hissed, “You helped kidnap her and her sister and killed Thomas!”
“I didn’t have anything to do with Thomas, I swear! And the kidnapping... it wasn’t supposed to go down like this!” Ryan moaned.
“Hey, hurry it up!” Tyrone barked, “If you gotta go, woman, you better do it now!”
Marissa shut the door to the bathroom and looked around frantically. The little room was empty except for the toilet and sink; no towel bars, no soap dispenser, not even a window. She peeked into the cabinet under the sink, but there wasn’t anything there except some dust bunnies. Sighing in frustration, she did what she’d been sent in to do, rinsed her hands since there wasn’t any soap, and returned to the hall.
As soon as she was back in the room, Tyrone slammed the door and locked it. She and the twins were alone once more.
Prowling the room, she looked for something, anything, that could help them escape.
“We’ve already looked through everything,” Jessie told her. She was sitting on the floor in the corner, her twin’s head resting on her shoulder.
“Can’t hurt to look again, right?” Marissa quipped, “Besides, what else is there to do?”
The girls laughed and let her go about her search. They were right, though; there was nothing in the room with them but random garbage. When Marissa turned her attention to the window, she found it was indeed barred, and although the metal was rusting in places, it was fixed securely to the house and didn’t even wiggle when she yanked on it with all her strength.
“Well, crap,” she sighed, plopping down next to the twins and leaning her head back against the wall.
“Pretty much,” Jessie replied.
They sat and listened to the muffled sound of Tyrone and Ryan arguing. None of them could make out the words and pretty soon, it was just background noise. The sun began sliding to the west and soon shadows crept into the room.
“Want the light on?” Marissa asked once it was almost completely dark.
“Yes please,” Julia said,
“Argh, I’m so bored!” Jessie complained, thumping her head against the wall, “What is even happening?”
“We could play a game,” Marissa suggested, “Either of you any good at checkers?”
Jessie snorted. “What would we play with?”
“I’ll show you.” Marissa winked and moved over to the pile of construction cast-offs. She dug around for a bit, then came back with a handful of nails and fragments of wood. She used her finger to draw a board in the dust on a section of floor that hadn’t been walked over, then handed the nails to Jessie and the screws to Julia.
“I’ll play the winner,” she said with a grin.
The girls looked at each other, shrugged, and turned to her with matching smiles.
“Why not?” Jessie said, sounding more upbeat than she had all day.
They played round after round of checkers, then chess (with the addition of wood and paint chips for the other pieces). Tyrone brought dinner instead of Ryan, and that made Jessie nervous.
“It’s always been Ryan. D-do you think he’s okay?” she asked, biting her lip nervously.
“I’m sure he’s fine,” Marissa reassured her, though the silence all afternoon made her fear the opposite. No need to mention that to the girls, though.
It felt late when they wrapped up their last game, turned off the light, and curled up to try and sleep. Marissa watched the moon through the window bars until sleep finally claimed her
Chapter 19
It wasn’t much after dawn when the door slammed open and rebounded off the wall with a bang. Tyrone strode in, gun in hand, and headed straight towards them. The girls scrambled backwards, but he barely even looked at them. He bent, seized Marissa by the front of her shirt, and yanked her to her feet. Julia Marlow whimpered in terror and covered her eyes with both hands. Jessie moved closer to her sister’s side in a protective manner.
“What did you tell the cops?” Tyrone demanded, shaking Marissa hard enough that her teeth clacked together.
“Nothing!” Marissa insisted. She rubbed at her sleep-gritty eyes.
He shook her again. “I just saw the news and that pig Lawson is lookin for me and Ryan!”
“They already know you two made the ransom call,” Marissa said, the mention of the detective bringing her to wakefulness faster than a dash of cold water. “I didn’t have to say a word.”
She had, of course, said a word. Several, in fact, including the phrase “Yup, that’s him. He’s the jerk who called and threatened me. I’d recognize his voice anywhere.” But Tyrone didn’t need to know that.
Tyrone stared into her eyes for a long moment, as if hoping he’d find the right answers in their brilliant blue depths, then swore and let her go. He began pacing the room, running an agitated hand over his head and playing with the safety on his pistol. It made a disconcerting clicking noise as it was repeatedly switched on and off.
“Shoulda known I couldn’t trust that little rat,” he muttered, “Went and snitched to his cousin and screwed everything up. We coulda been in another country by now if he’d kept his trap shut.” He pointed the gun directly at Marissa. “Maybe I should just kill all of you now and get this over with.”
Marissa decided to take a chance. This man seemed interested in nothing and no one but himself. He didn’t care about her life or the twins’ lives—likely not even Siena Marlows—but it was blindingly obvious he’d do anything to save his own.
“You could kill us,” Marissa agreed slowly, hoping she’d judged him right. If not, all three of them were about to be very dead. “But then they’d really be after you.”
“What do you mean?” he asked suspiciously.
Marissa added ‘not too quick on the uptake’ to the growing list of attributes she’d been mentally composing for him. Good Lord, how had this idiot managed to pull off the kidnapping? Looks like she’d have to spell this out for him, and try to use very small words while doing so.
“The local cops might do their best to find a kidnapper,” she told him, “but they’d probably bring in the U.S. Marshalls to hunt down a man that murdered a reporter and two defenceless kids. Your face would be all over every news station across the country and you might even end up as one of America’s Most Wanted. Pretty hard to hide out with that kind of attention, right? And you definitely couldn’t pick up, let alone spend, the money that Siena Marlow is probably having someone drop off under the 19th Street Bridge.”
“You’re too smart for your own good, you know that?” Tyrone growled.
Marissa bit her tongue and didn’t reply.
“I’ma get my money,” he informed them, tucking the gun into the waistband of his pants, “then we’ll see.”
He left the room, but was back an instant later and this time he had a coil of rope.
Marissa’s heart sank when she saw the rope; being tied up would certainly slow—or completely hinder—their plan to escape.
“Sit,” he ordered and proceeded to tie their wrists and ankles.
With that, he left the room once more and this time they heard the metallic sound of the lock being engaged. They were bound and trapped in this tiny room, but at least Tyrone was leaving. But even so, what could they hope to do about it now?
The front door slammed and silence descended.
Marissa turned to the still-cowering twins. “I think we’re alone, but I’m not sure for how long. We need to try and get out of here before Tyrone gets back.”
“How?” Jessie asked and raised her bound hands. “We’re stuck.”
“Let’s try to cut these ropes first. Then you can work on the door.” Marissa replied. She hopped over to
the pile of construction debris and began to carefully sift through it.
Nails, screws, splinters of wood…nothing looked like it would help them, until she found a broken bit of saw blade buried near the bottom of the pile. She bent to pick it up, thanked God that their hands were tied in front of them and not in the back, and hurried back to the twins.
“Hold out your hands and pull them apart as much as you can,” she instructed Jessie.
The girl complied. It took a depressingly long time to cut through the rope—it was thick stuff and the saw was dull. Her own bound wrists made holding the blade fragment awkward and her arms were screaming by the time she finally cute Jessie free. After trying to untie Julia and then Marissa without success—the knots were simply too tight, Jessie took the blade and started working to free her twin. Her progress wasn’t much faster than Marissa’s had been.
At one point, the saw blade broke in half and what was left was barely big enough to wield without cutting her fingers, but Jessie persisted. What felt like an eternity later, the last threads of the ropes around Julia’s wrists parted and the second Marlow girl was free. Thankfully the ropes on their ankles weren’t tied as tight and they were able to untie them after some work. The twins hugged each other fiercely for a long time and Marissa felt tears prickle at the back of her eyes as she watched them.
Jessie took a deep breath, pushed her sister gently away, and turned to Marissa.
“I’m going to work on the door while Julia gets you free.”
Marissa nodded, “Get after it, honey!”
“Hands out,” Julia said, taking the small sliver of metal from her sister, “and sorry if I accidentally cut you.”
She started in on Marissa’s ropes and Jessie crouched in front of the door, probing at the lock with the bobby pin. For the longest time, there was no sound other than the sawing of rope and the soft clink of metal.