Girl, Stolen

  THE WIND CREATES THE TREES

  One thing Cheyenne hadn’t thought about when she made her impulsive decision was that Duke wouldn’t “clear” her. Phantom had been taught to watch out for low-hanging branches or other objects that might hit Cheyenne even if they missed him. Duke had no idea. And neither did Cheyenne, at least not until she ended up with a deep scratch on one cheek. After that, she put her right hand up about a foot in front of her face, trying to gain a second’s warning.

  Cheyenne had pointed Duke toward the woods, not knowing if he would follow her suggestion, but he had. She had felt him curve around the house and then head into the trees. The ground was crisp with frost, but with a springy softness underneath from decades of pine needles.

  Even knowing that daylight would bring far greater danger, Cheyenne found herself missing the little sight she had. Which way was Duke taking her? She could only follow the sway of the dog and listen to what her body told her. Her joints let her know whether she was going uphill or down, turning right or left. When you were sighted, you didn’t pay attention to such messages because you didn’t need to. When you were blind, you discovered your body had been saying these things all along.

  Now Cheyenne felt a branch brush the top of her head. But at least it hadn’t gone through her head. Duke had led her around a tree, Cheyenne realized. “Good dog,” she said.

  Duke made a noise, low in his throat. It sounded like a question.

  “Yes, you are a good dog.” She didn’t know if that was the question, or if he was asking if he could trust her, or whether Duke wanted to know if they should keep moving.

  Cheyenne just knew that the answer was yes.

  They walked for a long time. It was slow going. Her shoes kept slipping off, until finally she took the remnant of cord still tied around one ankle, cut it in two, and then threaded the pieces through the top holes of her shoes, tying each in a double knot. They went on, pushing their way through undergrowth, her feet catching on roots and downed branches. Sometimes she had to stop because she would start to cough and then not be able to catch her breath. The cold air seared her lungs. Hoping it would warm the air, she wrapped her scarf over her mouth and nose, leaving just her eyes uncovered.

  The wind was so cold it felt like it cut right through her, but it also helped her picture the outside world. She could hear the rustling of the trees now. In a way, the wind created the trees. Without the wind it was like there were no trees at all, at least not until their branches scraped her face or arms.

  Occasionally Cheyenne felt the face of her watch. By the time it got light, she hoped she might find the road that Griffin had told her about.

  Surely the men had returned by now. And they had found Griffin. She tried not to think about what she had done to him. And now they would hunt her down. As long as it was dark, she might have a slight advantage. The problem was that there was no way she and Duke were covering even two miles an hour. Probably much less.

  It got a little easier as they went deeper and deeper into the woods. There seemed to be fewer bushes. The bottoms of her pants flapped stiffly, soaked from pushing through undergrowth. So were her shoes.

  They kept plodding forward. Her legs were so tired they felt bruised, and her feet were frozen stumps. She tried to wiggle her toes and couldn’t.

  Was it starting to get light? All she could see out of her left eye was a hazy grayness. Cheyenne checked her watch. It was a little after 7 A.M. Probably not yet. But soon.

  Duke whined.

  Cheyenne froze. “What is it, boy?” she whispered. She heard a rustle in the bushes to their left. Oh, crap. This was it. They had found her.

  Duke barked. Instinctively, she tried to put her hand over his snout, but he nipped at it. She jerked her hand back, surprised. For a moment, she had forgotten it was Duke she was with, not Phantom.

  Then several things happened at once.

  Straining forward, Duke unleashed a volley of barks.

  Something exploded from the bushes and ran right in front of them. Part of Cheyenne relaxed as she heard the underbrush rattle. Whatever it was, it was small. Definitely not a person. Probably a rabbit or squirrel or maybe even a chipmunk.

  Still barking, Duke lunged after it.

  The belt jerked in her hand. And then it was gone.

  And so was Duke.

  “Come back!” Cheyenne shouted, suddenly frantic. “Duke! Duke!”

  She could tell from the pitch of his barking that he was running away from her. Fast. He was already at least a hundred feet away. Cheyenne opened her mouth to try calling him again. Then she realized that all she was accomplishing was to advertise her presence. Probably for miles.

  Taking a deep, shuddering breath, Cheyenne told herself that she was on her own now. That was a fact and she couldn’t change it, only deal with it. She touched her watch face. It was 7:33. She was pretty sure that they had been traveling roughly northwest. The grayness she could see with her left eye was just getting lighter. Using the trunk of a tree to orient herself, she slowly turned in a circle until she confirmed that east – where there was more light – was where she thought it was. Crouching, Cheyenne groped until she found several long branches. She picked the longest and sturdiest, and then snapped off the smaller twigs. It was hard work. Her right hand was stiff with cold, and her left hand, the one that had been holding the makeshift leash, refused to move much at all. She brought it up to her cheek. It felt as if a branch was brushing her face. Her cheek could feel her icy fingers, but not the other way around. The bottoms of her pants now had a crackly coating of ice.

  After several long minutes, the branch was free of twigs. It wasn’t a dog, and it was barely a cane, but it would have to do. When Cheyenne finally straightened up, her knees had locked. She staggered forward a few steps.

  She couldn’t feel her feet or the tops of her ears. Her left hand was in her pocket, but it still felt dead and stiff. And now her right hand was slowly freezing, making it hard to hold the makeshift cane. Cheyenne continued to tap her way forward, turning her head from side to side, alert for the sounds that reflected back to her, trying to sense objects before she ran into them. Sometimes she just missed a tree or bush at the last moment. Sometimes she tripped over stones or roots.

  Without the company of Duke, Cheyenne was aware of how alone she was. Every sound made her freeze. Could there be large animals in these woods – coyotes or even mountain lions? But the animals that really scared her were the two-legged ones. A crow exploded out of the bushes ahead of her, and she cried out at the sound of its harsh call, the flap of its wings.

  Every creak or rustle behind her was one of her kidnappers. Each time she heard a noise, Cheyenne took a deep breath and forced herself to keep moving forward, trying to make her steps as light as possible. She walked with her head turned to one side, straining to use her left eye as she never had before. Now that it was lighter, she could see just enough to keep from blundering into tree trunks, but not enough to avoid low-hanging branches.

  Her chest ached, and every few minutes she found herself coughing. Each time it was harder to stop. She wanted to lie down. If you froze to death, didn’t you just go to sleep and never wake up? That way, it wouldn’t even hurt. The idea seemed appealing.

  A tiny cold dot landed on her cheek, then another in her eyelashes. Snow. It fell faster, softly freckling her face. At home, she hated snow. All her familiar markings, the different textures of grass and gravel, asphalt and concrete, were obliterated. If the snow was deep enough to cover the curb, she had to stay home, because she couldn’t tell one block from another.

  Here in the forest, the snow presented a different problem. Soon, with every step, Cheyenne would leave a footprint.

  And then it would be a simple matter for them to track her down.

  COMING CLOSER BY THE SECOND

  Cheyenne had been walking by herself for about half an hour when she heard something moving in the woods behind her. Not making any effort to be
quiet. And this time there was no doubt as to what it was.

  A human. And coming closer by the second.

  Panicked, Cheyenne began a blundering search for shelter. She found a clutch of something that still had leaves, some kind of low bush. Pushing aside branches, she scrambled in. She paid no attention to how it scratched her face and neck, or the wetness that soaked through to her knees. And still, when she was in as deep as she could get, she wondered if her silver coat was shining through a thin patch, or if her shoe was sticking out.

  The footsteps came closer and stopped. She could hear someone’s harsh breathing. A man’s. She knew it wasn’t a lost hunter. And it certainly wasn’t someone come to rescue her or they would have been calling out for her. That left only three choices. But which of the three men was it? Roy, TJ, or Jimbo? And did it really matter? Or would she be dead no matter who it was? She remembered TJ’s rank breath when he straddled her. Maybe the real horror would be how long she was alive before she was dead.

  It was so hard to hold absolutely still while every molecule of her being screamed that she should run away. How much snow was on the ground? Did her footprints lead straight to her, like an arrow? She was barely breathing.

  And then Cheyenne felt it. A cough. Forcing its way out of her throat. Her eyes watered. She bit her lip. She couldn’t cough. She couldn’t. A cough would be her death sentence. The coppery taste of blood washed across her tongue as she bit down harder and harder.

  Then the cough pushed its way up out of her chest, tore through her throat, and shattered the silence.

  And the footsteps charged toward her.

  “No!” Cheyenne screamed. “No! No!” Strong arms lifted her off her feet, and a calloused hand went across her mouth. She struggled, kicking and flailing, but all she did was tire herself out. And she was already so tired.

  “Cheyenne!” a voice said. “Sh, sh. Calm down.”

  Griffin?

  She started to cough again. He dropped his arms and stepped back, leaving her standing.

  Cheyenne coughed so hard that she staggered sideways. Finally she managed to gasp, “You’re alive!” In a weird way, it was a relief to know she hadn’t killed him.

  “No thanks to you.” His voice was matter-of-fact.

  The reality of her situation set in. “Oh,” Cheyenne said. “Right. They sent you out after me, didn’t they?” She realized there was no use running anymore, no use fighting. She had done her best. She had done more than she had ever thought possible. But it hadn’t been enough. “Go ahead,” she said. “Do what you have to do.” She took a deep breath and braced herself.

  “What are you talking about?” Griffin asked. “Go ahead with what?”

  Cheyenne didn’t understand why he was stretching this out. He must want revenge for her attack. “You’re going to shoot me, right? Just get it over with.”

  “Why do you think I’m going to shoot you?”

  “Oh, don’t pretend. TJ told me I was going to die. You guys have to kill me so I can’t lead the cops back to you.” She swallowed. In a few more seconds, she would break down and start to beg. And that’s how she would die, begging and choking on her own blood. No. She wouldn’t. She tried to make her voice light, as if this wasn’t really happening. Maybe she could pretend right up until the very end. “So go ahead. Do what you need to do. Just make it fast.” She took a deep breath and then closed her eyes so that she was in complete blackness. She tried to picture her mother’s face. I’m coming, Mom.

  There was a long silence. When it was broken, it was not by a gunshot, but by Griffin’s voice, weary and disappointed.

  “I’m out here trying to help you, not kill you. I came after you on my own. But I don’t think TJ and Jimbo and my dad can be that far behind. So we’ve got to get out of here as fast as we can. Get to the road, flag someone down for help, and go to the cops.”

  “Wait. You came out here to help me? After what I did to you?”

  “When I first woke up I was pretty pissed off. I’ve got a bloody bump on top of my head the size of an egg, and it throbs every time my heart beats.” Griffin’s voice was tinged with bitterness. “I was actually planning on helping you get away. If you had given me a few more minutes, my alarm would have gone off. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t know if I could trust you not to let it slip. Besides, part of me couldn’t believe they would really do anything that drastic. Not really. But then after you hit me with that wrench, I realized that everyone is capable of violence. Even you. Even my dad. And that I was naïve to think that they would really let you go. So my choices were to sit at home and wait, or to find you and help you escape. You know, wandering alone out in the woods in the middle of a snowstorm when you’re blind and have pneumonia is not a really good escape plan.” He let out a long, exasperated sigh. “How could you really believe that I’m some stone-cold killer?”

  “What about that gun you held to my head in the car? Remember?”

  “Oh. That.” His voice sounded oddly embarrassed. “That wasn’t a real gun.”

  Not a real gun? “Well, then, what was it?”

  “That was actually the cigarette lighter from the dash.”

  Cheyenne remembered the circle of cold metal pressed against her temple. “A cigarette lighter?” She had been so scared.

  “Sorry.” He took her arm. “Come on. We’d better start moving before they catch up with us. You can tell the cops that I helped you. And that I never meant for this to happen.”

  Cheyenne didn’t move. “Won’t you get in a lot of trouble?”

  “I think it’s a little bit late for me to be thinking about that. I’m already in trouble. It’s just a matter of how bad. So let’s get going.”

  FACE THE FACTS

  Two hours earlier, Griffin had woken up with one hell of a headache. The alarm was buzzing, and he had a blurry feeling that it had been going off for a while.

  Before he had lain down beside Cheyenne, he had set the alarm for two thirty. He was sure it wouldn’t be necessary, that he would be too keyed up to sleep.

  And that was his last waking thought.

  Now the clock said it was 3:12 A.M. He sat up. A wave of dizziness crashed over him. His head ached something fierce. When he put his hand to the top of his head, it came away wet and sticky.

  At the sight of the red on his fingers, he felt a muzzy sort of shock. He explored the wound more gingerly. Two welts, one an inch longer, right next to each other. The skin around them was swollen tight. But no broken bits of bone when he probed, grinding his teeth together against the pain. Pushing himself into a sitting position, Griffin tried to figure out what had happened. He was on the bed, in his sleeping bag. He looked to his left. The nylon cord was still tied to the empty bed, but there was no Cheyenne on the end of it. And on the floor was a big silver wrench, one end clotted with something. He felt a little sick when he looked at the reddish brown clump, matted with hair. That was blood. His blood.

  Griffin got up. For a second, he had to steady himself on the bedpost. He wasn’t going to make the same mistake he had last time. He wasn’t going to go rushing outside only to leave Cheyenne in the house. He quickly went from room to room, opening all the closets and looking underneath the furniture. The fire in the woodstove had gone out, and the house was quiet and cold.

  No Cheyenne. This time she really had to be in the woods. He yanked on a coat, hat, and gloves, then grabbed the flashlight and went looking for her. And then he discovered Duke was gone, too. To follow their trail, he had been forced to move slowly, scanning back and forth with his flashlight, looking for a footprint in the dusting of snow, or freshly broken branches. Once it got light, Griffin knew it would be easier – for everyone. He had been determined to find her before the others did.

  Now he walked beside Cheyenne through the forest. Even though it was daylight, it was the time of year when even at noon the light was gray and uncertain. Scarves of mist clung to the trees. Sounds carried oddly here, floating through
the cold, crisp air, making it hard to pinpoint where they came from. Even though he was hurrying as fast as he could, it was still slow going as they skirted mud holes and underbrush.

  At least the snow was lighter here, just a spotty dusting, so they didn’t have to worry about leaving tracks. There wasn’t enough clear space for them to easily walk side by side, so while Griffin carefully steered Cheyenne across relatively unlittered ground, his own feet scuffed through ferns or got sucked in by half-frozen mud.

  When his foot was wrenched from under him, Griffin screamed. He couldn’t help it. He fell to the ground.

  “What is it?” Cheyenne yelled. Her hands swam through the air, looking for him. “Griffin? What’s wrong?”

  The pain was so great that he couldn’t speak. Hot tears ran down his cheeks. He pushed himself up on his elbows. His left foot was still half in the hole he had stepped in, some animal’s small burrow. But his leg was now facing a completely different direction.

  “Griffin?” Cheyenne’s voice broke. Her unseeing eyes were wide as she turned her head from side to side.

  “It’s my ankle,” he managed to grunt. “I stepped in a hole, and I think I broke it.”

  Invisible knives were slicing his tendons and nerves.

  Griffin didn’t mean to, but when he pulled his foot free of the hole, he let out another scream. It dangled at the end of his leg like a shoe he had half kicked off. But this was his foot. Panting, Griffin pulled up his trouser leg, ignoring the fresh waves of agony, even though part of him didn’t want to know how damaged it was.

  Cheyenne found his shoulder and crouched beside him. “How bad is it?”

  “Bad. My foot’s pointing the wrong way.”

  “Is it bleeding?”

  “No. But I think at least one of the bones in my ankle is broken.”

  “What are we going to do?” Cheyenne’s face was creased with concern.

  It was hard to think. Griffin realized he was moaning faintly at the end of every breath. “Here. Help me get up. If I can lean on you, maybe I can hop on my good leg. I’m going to have to be your eyes, and you’re going to have to help be my leg.”