Ransom

by Lois Duncan

“Donavan. Yes, that figures.” He nodded, satisfied. “Next?”

  They gave their names meekly.

  “Jesse French.”

  “Glenn Kirtland.”

  “Bruce Kirtland.”

  The dark boy said, “I’m Dexter Barton. There isn’t any Barton at Valley Gardens either. I live with my uncle Mark Crete.”

  “Crete. Okay.” The red-haired man was still frowning. “That’s five kids, but only four families. What about Joan Miller?”

  There was a pause. Then Marianne answered, “Joan hasn’t been in school this week. Her brother was hurt in an automobile accident when he was riding his motorscooter. Joan is at the hospital with her parents.”

  “Well, how about the Lindleys?”

  “Madison and Erika have Pep Club meeting on Thursdays.”

  “Just our luck!” Juan growled. “Of all days for three kids to be absent. Four families. All this risk, just for four.”

  “You’ll have to ask enough to make it worth it,” Buck said curtly. He glanced at his watch. “It’s only four thirty. That’s not bad, considering. Go ahead and play it just the way we planned. Rita and I will take care of the kids. You stay in town and handle the phoning. I’ll call you in the morning and find out how it’s shaping up.”

  “Right.” The men exchanged quick nods.

  “Oh.” The Mexican hesitated. “Be sure you watch that kid—the big one. He may give you trouble.”

  On the floor by her knees Marianne felt Glenn stiffen.

  “Don’t worry,” Buck said shortly. “Nobody is going to give me trouble. Come on, Rita. Let’s get going.”

  The woman stepped on the starter. From the window Marianne could see Juan walking over to the other car. They were evidently going to leave the school bus just as it was, by the side of the road.

  They were sure to find it here, she thought, and immediately she realized that it would not matter. Buck had worn gloves; he still had them on, brown leather driving gloves which would eliminate any chance of leaving fingerprints. What would the police be able to learn from the bus when they did locate it? Only that it was here, empty. They would know that the driver and passengers had been transferred to another car, but there would be nothing to show what kind of car it was or which way it had headed. With the bus here on the south end of town, parked beside the Rio Grande, it might well be assumed that the car had proceeded south, perhaps en route to Mexico.

  That, Marianne could see already, was not to be their destination. The woman had chosen the north fork in the dirt road and was turning toward the distant Sandia Mountains.

  Four thirty. Marianne recalled the time as Buck had stated it, perhaps fifteen minutes ago. That made it now about a quarter to five. I should have been home forty minutes ago, she thought. Mother will be worrying, wondering what has happened. She’ll probably be checking with some of the other mothers on our route. No, she will think I’m with Rod! This was a thought that had not previously occurred to her. He probably told her that he would be picking me up at school. She won’t know that anything is the matter until he himself gets home.

  She could picture Rod coming into the house, shedding his coat and hanging it carefully in the hall closet, not dropping it carelessly over the back of a chair, the way her happy-go-lucky father would have done. The boys would come surging to meet him, hurling themselves all over him. That was the thing she could not understand about her brothers. They had loved their father almost as much as she had, but how easily they had accepted Rod as a replacement! All he had had to do was to install a workshop and buy some video games and get some paint for Jay’s bicycle, and there he was, king of the roost!

  What callous, fickle things boys are, Marianne thought in disgust.

  For her part, she had not been won over, would never be won over, no matter how many new sweaters and party dresses found their way into her bureau drawers and onto hangers in her closet. Never, as long as she lived, would she accept the name Donavan, as Jay and Jackie had done. She was Jack Paget’s daughter and proud of the fact, and if she had to be the only Paget in a family of Donavans, she would be so.

  Tonight, when Rod walked in, his welcome would not be as enthusiastic as usual. Despite the circumstances, the thought gave her a glimmer of satisfaction. Her mother would look at him and then past him and would ask, “Where is Marianne?”

  “Marianne?” He would be surprised. “Isn’t she at home?”

  “I thought you were going to pick her up.”

  “I tried to, but she wouldn’t ride with me. She insisted on taking the bus.”

  “She couldn’t have, Rod. The bus would have had her home over an hour ago.”

  “But, Marian, I saw her get onto the bus myself. She must have come in without your seeing her and gone up to her room.”

  “But she always stops to speak to me when she comes in. Boys. No, Rod is not going to play with you now. Jay, listen to me, dear. Have you seen your sister this afternoon? Jackie, did Marianne get home while I was out in the kitchen?”

  Yes, it will spoil his homecoming. They may even argue about it. And then more time will go by, and they will really begin to worry. Mother will anyway. I wonder how long it will be before that man Juan phones them? Will he do it right away or wait until late in the evening? Surely he won’t wait too long. He will want to talk to them before they decide to call the police.

  They had skirted the town now. Up ahead the mountains glowed an unearthly shade of pink in the late-afternoon light. In the front seat Buck was holding the pistol, but he seemed to have relaxed a bit, as though the main danger of discovery were over.

  The woman was driving silently, with a clear knowledge of exactly where she was going.

  From his position on the floor, Dexter shifted, trying to move his body into a slightly less awkward angle.

  “Can’t we sit up on the seat now?” he asked. “My legs are killing me.”

  “Stay where you are,” Buck told him. “There isn’t much chance of your making trouble when you are kneeling like that.”

  “We won’t make trouble,” Bruce said. “We promise.”

  “I’m not running any chance of it. There are three of you guys, and I don’t want any kind of scuffle in the car. I might have to blow one of your heads off.”

  Next to him the woman caught her breath. “Buck, you didn’t have to—”

  “Not now, Rita. We’ll talk about it later.”

  “But the old man, the one who is the regular driver. Did you—”

  “I said, we’ll discuss it later.” He frowned at her. “Honey, use your brain. Why do you think I got Juan in on this? He’s taking care of the rough stuff for us.”

  “And he’ll make the calls?”

  “All of them. He will be the only contact. His voice is the only one that anybody will hear. We’re clear, you and I. All we have to do is nursemaid this little bunch for a while and then pocket the money.”

  Marianne shifted her position, trying to move her knees so as to make more room for Glenn, who was crouched on the floor in front of her. On the seat beside her, Jesse had stopped crying. She was leaning forward with her face in her hands, and watching her, Marianne wondered if she was going to be sick. Bruce, crammed on the floor between the two older boys, looked young and scared. On the far side of him Dexter appeared to be the most miserable of all. His face was set in pain, and his legs were doubled under him at what looked to Marianne to be an impossible angle.

  They rode in silence, and the mountains turned from pink to purple, and from purple to gray. The road curved upward, and the occasional approaching cars became fewer. They passed through a small town of a few stores and a couple of adobe houses and a small silver-colored church with a white steeple. After that the road became steeper.

  At home, Marianne thought, they must really be worrying now. I wonder if Mother has phoned Daddy yet.

  She clung to the thought, asking it over and over: Has she called him yet? Is she talking to him now?

 
She kept concentrating on their faces—her mother’s, her father’s—in the knowledge that soon, soon now they would have to be together. She let herself think no further. She closed her eyes and thought of her parents and would not watch the last pale light outside the car windows fading into night.

  Chapter Three

  IT WAS DARK WHEN they reached the cabin. It had taken them three hours, Bruce Kirtland figured, trying to make out the hands of his watch in the dim light that came on in the car when the door was opened.

  Three hours spent kneeling in the confinement of the floor space in front of the rear seat had numbed his legs until there was no feeling left in them. He had to grip the door and lean upon it when he got out, stamping his feet against the frozen ground to bring life back. He noticed that Glenn was doing the same.

  Dexter was in an even worse state. He could not stand at all.

  “He’s pulling a bluff,” the woman said, and Buck nodded.

  “It’s not going to get him anywhere.” He had a flashlight beside him on the front seat, and now he switched it on, lighting the pathway from the car to the cabin. “Okay, everybody, Rita will go ahead of us and unlock the door. I’ll warn you now, there’s no place to run, so you’d better not try to make a break for it. You’d be back in fifteen minutes, begging us to let you in before you froze.”

  Dexter could not get out of the car. Bruce, who was next to him, could tell that he was trying, could see the tendons standing out in his neck as he strained to pull himself erect, and knew that it was no act.

  “Here,” he said, “let me help you.”

  He stooped and got Dexter’s arm across his shoulders and then straightened, staggering a little under the unaccustomed weight.

  “Sorry,” Dexter muttered. “I can’t.”

  “I know. It’s okay.”

  Glenn stepped in then with support from the other side, taking half the weight on his strong shoulders. Between the two of them they half dragged, half carried the boy across the stretch of ground between the car and the house.

  They were, Bruce realized, very high in the mountains. His breath was coming in gasps, and he could feel his heart thudding against his chest. The air was thin and bitterly cold, slicing like a knife through the jacket he was wearing and the flannel shirt beneath it. The ground under his feet was hard and slippery with frost.

  It was very little warmer inside the cabin. Rita flicked the light switch in the wall by the door, and the unshielded bulb in the ceiling brought the interior into glaring view. Glancing quickly about, Bruce could see that it was the crudest sort of hunting lodge. A small kitchen opened directly to the left of the front doorway, and two other doors, evidently to bedrooms, opened opposite the front door. The living room was furnished with a wooden table and benches, a sagging couch, and several odd chairs. One entire wall was taken up with a fireplace.

  A fire was already laid, and Rita went over and lit it. Of one accord, everyone moved toward the flames, and as the first tongues of heat reached them, Marianne let out a little sigh and stretched out her hands to the blaze.

  Dexter detached his arm from Bruce’s shoulders and sank down on the couch and began to rub his legs. Glenn’s eyes never flickered from Buck and the pistol. Bruce turned his attention to Jesse, who had sat next to him on the bus. She was standing alone, a little apart from the others. Her face was very pale, and she looked as though she did not quite realize where she was or what had happened.

  Bruce moved over to stand beside her. “Hey,” he said softly, “are you okay?”

  Slowly Jesse nodded. “I—I guess so.”

  “We’re going to be all right. They aren’t going to hurt us.” He offered the first words of comfort he could think of.

  “How do you know they’re not?” Jesse asked him.

  “I—I just don’t see why they would.”

  “Why wouldn’t they? What is there to stop them? Anyone who would do something like this—” She broke off the sentence, as though suddenly realizing that it was Bruce to whom she was talking. Her voice softened. “You’re right. They won’t do anything to us. They’ll just ask our parents for money and let us go.”

  But it was too late. The doubt in her voice had infected him. He shivered suddenly, chilled inside as well as out.

  Jesse saw this, and now it was she, with the responsibility of her three added years of maturity, who was the comforter. “Don’t worry, Bruce; it will be all right. We’ll all be home soon—just wait and see.”

  He was glad that Glenn was not watching him, Glenn, who was never afraid of anything. I’m scared, thought Bruce. I want to go home.

  For one dreadful instant he thought he had spoken the words aloud. Then, as quickly as it had struck, the wave of panic subsided, leaving him weak and drained. I mustn’t disgrace Glenn, he thought determinedly. Whatever I do, I mustn’t make him ashamed of me.

  The cabin was heating slowly. It was stocked with supplies, for Rita had gone into the kitchen and was opening cabinets and taking down cans. Like a picnic, Bruce thought ironically. He wished Glenn would come over and speak to him.

  In his fifteen years Bruce had never once resented the fact that he was Glenn’s younger brother. It was something that other people found hard to understand. Jesse’s reaction had been a typical one—How difficult it must be to live always in the shadow of someone like Glenn Kirtland! Yet to Bruce, it had never seemed anything other than a privilege.

  From the time he had first learned to walk, he had tottered in Glenn’s footsteps. He had bypassed the usual first words of “Dada” and “Mama.” It had been “Glenn”—not even a babyfied version but the full, solid name—that had been the first word he uttered.

  “One nice thing about Bruce,” his mother sometimes commented, “is that he doesn’t have a jealous bone in his body. He adores his brother. Of course,” she could not keep the note of pride from her voice, “he has good reason to.”

  “Glenn is going to be somebody someday,” Mr. Kirtland would assert firmly.

  “Not someday,” Mrs. Kirtland would add softly. “Glenn is somebody already.”

  To Bruce, Glenn, with his looks and strength, his athletic ability, and charm and personality, had seemed to walk like a king, head and shoulders above other people’s brothers. They had shared a room when they were little, before the Kirtlands had purchased their home in Valley Gardens, and Bruce, who was a light sleeper, would wake in the night and listen for the sound of Glenn’s breathing. Glenn slept hard; nothing ever woke him. Lying in the darkness, Bruce would fit his own breathing to his brother’s, making his chest rise and fall in the same even rhythm, feeling a closeness, a sense of intimacy, which he was never able to achieve during the daylight hours.

  During the day the three-year age gap which separated the boys prevented their sharing many activities. Glenn had his set of friends, his clubs and athletics, his school and social life, which were in a realm far beyond Bruce’s. Even the odd times they did spend together, there seemed to be a wall between them, an invisible barrier which Bruce could not penetrate.

  It was not, he told himself firmly, a thing that was Glenn’s doing. Glenn was not to blame. Glenn was nice to him, but then, Glenn was nice to everybody; it was one of his endearing qualities.

  Whatever lack of closeness there was between the brothers was due, Bruce was certain, to his own inferiority. He had so little to offer in comparison with Glenn’s wealth of assets. Their relationship was bound to be a lopsided one, with one brother bathed in radiance and the other merely mortal, and pretty dull mortal at that. To make up the difference, he tried to make himself useful to Glenn, keeping his things straight, hanging up his clothes when he was too busy to do so, making excuses for him when he was late or careless or forgot things.

  Like the thing that had happened last Monday night.

  Bruce had been in his bedroom, studying. His parents had gone to a concert, one of the symphonies of which his mother was so fond, and Glenn had been at a meeting. It had been
a little after eleven when Glenn’s car pulled into the driveway. Bruce had recognized it at once by the sound of the engine and had laid his books aside and waited for Glenn to come into the house. When five minutes elapsed without this happening, he had got up and gone outside to see what was the matter.

  Glenn was standing in the driveway, holding a flashlight, examining a dent in the front fender. There was a scrape as well, running along the side of the car as far as the door.

  “Glenn?”

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing, sneaking up behind me like that!”

  Bruce was not prepared for his brother’s startled reaction.

  “I wasn’t sneaking. I just came out to see what was holding you up so long.” He moved in for a closer look at the fender. “What happened?”

  “I got swiped by a car,” Glenn said grimly. “He came out of a side street and went right through a stop sign. I never even saw him until he hit me.”

  “Gee!” Bruce reached out and ran his finger along the scrape mark. “You’re lucky it wasn’t any worse. You’d better call in and report it—that is, if you want your insurance to cover it.”

  “It won’t,” Glenn said shortly.

  “Why not? If the other guy was covered.”

  “He never stopped,” Glenn said. “He just swung past and kept going. I didn’t even get his license number. Besides …” He paused.

  “What?” Bruce regarded him with curiosity. “Besides what?”

  “I let the policy lapse.”

  “You let it lapse!” Bruce stared at him incredulously. “Good gosh, Glenn, how did you come to do that? Dad will hit the ceiling!”

  “He won’t have to know about it, I hope.” Glenn was frowning thoughtfully. “I’ve got the cash I was saving toward new skis. I can use that to get the repairs done, and then pick up the policy again next month.”

  “But don’t you have to report accidents?” Bruce asked. “Won’t they have to know, at the garage, that it was reported?”

  “I won’t say it was a two-car accident. I’ll just say that I scraped against a fence post or something.” Glenn stood quietly, thinking through the details. “If I park the car over to the side of the driveway, Dad won’t notice the fender when he comes in tonight. Tomorrow morning I’ll get it into the shop. He won’t even have to know.”