Cheyenne leaned down. Putting her hands around his wrists, she began to pull while Griffin tried to stand on just his right leg. She was overbalanced, in danger of toppling onto him. He got nearly all the way up and then lurched forward. His left foot touched the ground. A bolt of electricity jolted its way up his leg, burning every nerve. With a cry, he fell back on the ground, pulling Cheyenne over on top of him. He let out another scream when some part of her pressed against his ankle. He was in too much pain to be ashamed. She rolled off him so they were lying next to each other on the icy ground. For a second, there was just the sound of their breathing.
He made himself face the facts. “I can’t do it, Cheyenne. You’ll have to go on on your own.”
She propped herself on one elbow. “I’m not leaving you here. You could freeze to death. I can already hear your teeth chattering.”
“It’s nothing. Just from the shock, that’s all.” He was vaguely aware of the cold and wet seeping through his jeans. “Look, we’re only about a mile or two from the main road. I can point you in the right direction. Just keep walking in a straight line, and you should get there in less than an hour. That’s not enough time for anything bad to happen to me. Face it. There’s no way I can put any weight on my leg. Even if I managed to get to my feet, I can’t hop for two miles. You go out to the road and flag somebody down. Then you can come back for me.”
She trailed her fingers up his chest until she found his face, then cupped his cheek. “But if they find you, they might kill you for helping me.”
“But they won’t know that I was helping you.” He had to speak through gritted teeth as the pain seared up his leg and into his brain. “I’ll just tell them I was looking for you. And then I’ll say I saw tracks going in the completely opposite direction.”
“No.” She shook her head, her upper lip curled. “No way.” She grabbed one of his hands and half stood. “I can’t leave you here. You have to come with me. Come on. Just try getting up again. You gave up too soon.” Her face was so white. A blue vein fluttered in her temple.
“Cheyenne” – he hardened his voice – “I can’t. If either one of us is going to survive, you have to get to that road as soon as possible.”
A QUARTER-MILLION DOLLARS, TWO GUNS, AND A DEAD MAN
Griffin was so cold. His whole body vibrated. And each time he shivered, it ran down his leg to his ankle. It felt like the ends of the bone were grating together, but he couldn’t stop shaking. He remembered shaking like this in the burn unit. The nurses had told him it was shock and then wrapped the unburned parts of his body in white blankets warm from a special dryer.
He tried to tense his body so that he would stop shaking, but it didn’t help. Every shiver was echoed by a wave of pain that radiated from his ankle to his pelvis. Trying to conserve the little heat he had, Griffin curled on his side. But he was still just as cold, if not worse, and now a new side of him was wet. The backs of his clothes were already stiffening with ice.
He didn’t know how long he lay there before something roused him out of himself. At first Griffin thought he was imagining it, but then he definitely heard something. He corrected the thought. Someone. Moving through the forest. And voices, too. He couldn’t make out any words, but the tones were familiar – Jimbo and TJ. Arguing. That was familiar too.
“We just go back to the house and take the truck and go,” said Jimbo. “Go before Roy has a chance to rethink this. Screw them. We’ve got our money.”
“But where are we supposed to go?” TJ sounded confused.
“Don’t you get it? There isn’t any more ‘supposed to.’ We can do what we want. We each have a quarter of a million dollars. I think I’m going to Brazil. I’ve always wanted to go to Carnaval.”
“What about TJ?”
“What about you?” Jimbo echoed.
“Am I going with you?”
Jimbo didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Then he said, “Maybe it’s time we did things on our own.”
“Hey!” Griffin yelled. “Hey!” He levered himself up on one elbow, ignoring how much it hurt to move.
“What the hell was that?” TJ sounded spooked.
“It’s Griffin, dummy,” Jimbo said. “Hey, Griff – where are you?”
“Over here. I’m hurt.”
A few seconds later, they were standing over him.
“Well, well, well. What happened here?” Jimbo seemed to be dressed in every coat he owned. He stood with one fist on his hip. The other hand held a rifle. TJ stood two paces behind, holding his own gun.
“I’m hurt. I was trying to track Cheyenne down when I stepped into a hole.” Griffin pointed. “My ankle’s broken.” He looked past them. “Where’s my dad?”
“Driving the roads, looking for her,” TJ said. Turning to Jimbo, he took a mobile from his pocket. “Should we call Roy?”
“You’re going to have to call someone,” Griffin said. “I can’t walk. You need to get someone out here to help me.”
“Hold on a minute, Teej.” Jimbo cocked his head. “Where’s Cheyenne?”
“She hit me in the head and knocked me out. Didn’t you see my note?”
“We saw the note.” TJ leaned closer to look at Griffin’s ankle. He shook his head. “Did you find her?”
“I was getting close right before I stepped into the hole. I could hear her over there.” Griffin pointed in the opposite direction from the way Cheyenne had gone. “But before you go looking for her, could you call my dad?”
“He’s busy, like we are,” Jimbo said. “Trying to find the stupid girl you let slip through your fingers.”
Griffin didn’t like the way this was going. “Then could you carry me out? I can’t put any weight on my foot at all.”
TJ stretched his free hand in Griffin’s direction, but Jimbo touched his arm, and he stopped. Then Jimbo pointed at something with the nose of his rifle.
“What’s that?”
Griffin looked. Lying next to him was the striped scarf Cheyenne had worn around her neck. It must have come off when she lost her balance and fell, trying to help him up.
“I – I don’t know.”
“Hey, that’s Cheyenne’s,” TJ said slowly. “I thought you said you didn’t catch up to her.”
“I didn’t.” It seemed painfully clear he was lying. “She just dropped it here, and I found it.” It made sense, but he should have said it first thing. Now they would figure out he had let her go.
“You just found it,” Jimbo said. “Lying in the bushes?”
“Yeah. That’s how I knew I was getting close.”
“Okay, Griff, what really happened? Did you get her back for whacking you upside the head?” Jimbo grinned. “I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” He looked around. “So where did you put her?”
“What are you talking about?”
TJ shook his head. “Never mind,” he said. “It’s nothing you need to know.”
Jimbo looked back at Griffin, a sly grin playing across his face. “Where do you think your mama’s been all these years?”
“Chicago,” Griffin said, but when he said the word out loud, it seemed silly somehow. “With her family.” He had always wondered if she had remarried, maybe had another family. A kid who didn’t have scars.
“I told you, don’t tell him,” TJ said urgently. “He doesn’t need to know.”
Jimbo didn’t pay any attention. “Chicago?” he echoed Griffin sarcastically. “Uh-huh. Eating deep-dish pizza and listening to jazz?”
“Why?” Griffin sat all the way up, ignoring the screaming pain in his leg. “Is she, like, in Portland or something?”
“Portland. That’s a good one,” Jimbo muttered. “Portland.”
TJ sighed. “She’s been out in the back, Griffin, underneath a Honda quarter panel. We buried her out there.”
“What?” Griffin didn’t even feel shock. He just felt – nothing. Like he was falling, and there would never be anything to catch him.
&n
bsp; “Roy’s always had a temper, you know that,” Jimbo said, shrugging. “Well, things went crossways between him and Janie when you were in the hospital. She was always ragging on him about you getting burned. And one night he gave her a little shove when she had been getting into his face. She tripped and her head hit the fireplace. He left her there to teach her a lesson, and went to bed. And when he got up, she was stone-cold dead.”
“No,” Griffin said. He shook his head violently, not caring that it might jostle his leg. “No.” Even though he could picture it in his head, even though he could see it more clearly than he could see Jimbo and TJ. He started to stand, needing to get to his feet, and then fell back with a cry. His mother was dead?
“Look at him,” Jimbo said in a flat, unaccented voice, like a hypnotist’s. “If we leave him here, then how long is he going to last? I mean, look at him.” TJ turned and together the two men regarded Griffin as calmly as if he were something they had found by the side of the road. “His skin’s already kind of blue. We’ll just tell Roy we never saw him and let nature take its course. And that way we’ll know he’ll never tell anybody about the money.”
It was like Griffin wasn’t even there.
TJ cocked his head to one side. “But what about Roy?”
“That’s not our problem, dummy,” Jimbo said. “If he wants to come out in the woods and start looking, then so be it. We’ll be long gone by then.”
“You’re just going to let him freeze to death?” TJ seemed to have finally grasped what Jimbo was saying.
“He’s already halfway there,” Jimbo said calmly. “Why do we have to intervene?”
Griffin thought it couldn’t get much worse, but his blood turned to ice at TJ’s next words.
“Jeez, if I had a dog like that, I’d shoot him.” TJ pointed his handgun at Griffin’s midsection.
Griffin froze.
Jimbo pushed the barrel of the gun aside. “Don’t be stupid. You do that, they’ll go looking for who shot him. You leave him just like he is, and it will be clear what happened. He caught his foot in a hole, he broke his ankle, and he died. End of story. Nobody asks any questions, and nobody’s in trouble.”
“I’m not stupid. We’ll bury him out here. I’m tired of you saying I’m stupid.”
Griffin’s hand closed on a fist-sized rock. It was ridiculous – like using a slingshot against a bazooka – but he wasn’t going to die just lying on his back on the icy ground.
“I told you,” TJ repeated when Jimbo didn’t respond. “Don’t call me stupid.”
“Why not? It’s the truth.” Jimbo shrugged. “You are stupid. It’s way too much work to bury him. But that’s just like you – you never think things through.”
Then a gun went off. And Griffin’s heart stopped.
But it was Jimbo who collapsed on the pine needles.
“There,” TJ said. “Who’s stupid now? Who’s stupid now, Jimbo?” He was breathing hard.
Griffin’s ears were ringing. He did not move a muscle. He was dead now. It was only a matter of time until TJ made it official.
But then TJ dropped the gun and leaned over, his hands on his knees. Vomit splattered on the pine needles.
Griffin cut his eyes toward Jimbo and then wished he hadn’t. He adjusted his head a couple of inches so that he wouldn’t accidentally see the body again.
Straightening up, TJ wiped the back of his mouth with his hand. “I’ve never done that before,” he said. “It’s different than you think.”
Griffin was afraid to even meet TJ’s eyes. When he finally did, he saw TJ’s pupils looked too big. And his face looked like he was about ready to laugh or cry – or both.
“Oh, well,” TJ said, “there is one good thing. Jimbo finally, finally shut up.” His laugh was high-pitched. It sounded like glass breaking.
Griffin heard TJ go over to the body, but he still refused to look. Jimbo had landed on his side. He heard TJ pull the backpack off Jimbo’s back.
TJ walked back into Griffin’s line of sight. “It’s half yours,” he said, hefting the backpack.
“That’s okay. I don’t need any.”
TJ unzipped the backpack. There was a long silence. “It’s wet. Why is the money all wet?” His voice arced higher. He reached in and grabbed a fistful of money, pulled it out. Red drops speckled the snow. “It’s blood. Oh, my God, it’s blood!”
He dropped the money and then the backpack. A bill floated down and landed by Griffin’s hand. One end of it looked like it had been dipped in red paint.
TJ found a little patch of snow. He knelt down and began to wipe his hands on it like it was a towel. Washing his hands in snow. It quickly turned slushy and pink. And then he stood up, without saying another word to Griffin, and walked away. Leaving Griffin with a broken ankle, a bloody backpack filled with a quarter of a million dollars, two guns, and a dead man.
THE HARDEST THING IN THE WORLD
Crouched behind a huge tree, Cheyenne tried to be as quiet as possible. She was too winded to hold her breath, so she panted shallowly, openmouthed. The cold air scraped her lungs. Her eyes watered, but she refused to cough. Any second they would find her. Thirty minutes ago she had heard the sound of a gunshot, not close, but not far away, either. It had spurred her to walk even faster.
Then five minutes ago she had heard the faint sound of a car engine. She must be near the road! That meant there were people up ahead, people who could help her. And then this whole long ordeal would be over.
She had hurried forward, mindless of branches that lashed her legs, of ground so rough she stumbled and nearly fell a half-dozen times. Her only thought had been to flag down the driver, even though part of her knew that he was surely long gone.
But then she had heard it. Someone running through the trees. Running right for her. And who else would be out in the woods? The driver of the car wouldn’t suddenly get out, because he wouldn’t have any idea she was here. It must be one of the three men. She had gotten lucky when Griffin had turned out to be one of the good guys.
She didn’t think she would get lucky twice.
So Cheyenne had hidden behind the biggest tree she could find and concentrated on remaining absolutely still.
It was the hardest thing in the world. She wanted to jump up and start waving her arms and screaming. Just to get the inevitable over with. Was her killer even now aiming a gun at her?
Cheyenne tried to think of a plan. Knowing she was probably going to die gave her a certain amount of freedom. Maybe she could rush whoever it was – TJ, Jimbo, or Roy – and wrestle the gun away before he overcame his amazement at her suicidal charge. Although it was more likely that she would just end up with a fist-sized hole in her chest.
Still, something inside of her refused to give up. Not after she had gotten so far, risked so much, done so many things she would have said were impossible just a week earlier.
Then words rang out through the cold, still air.
“Freeze! Police! Hold it right there!”
An electric shock jolted from Cheyenne’s head to her heels.
Not the bad guys, then.
Cheyenne was going to live. She had made it!
She didn’t obey the cop. She couldn’t. She stood up and ran toward his voice, heedless of what might be in her way.
“Help me, oh, please help me!” Something sharp tore through her pants, gouging her left calf. Shaking herself free, she ran on, holding her hands high overhead so he would know she didn’t constitute a threat. Her only goal was to close the gap between herself and the cop as fast as she could. She wanted to finally be safe. “Help me!” she yelled again. “I’ve been kidnapped.”
A firm hand gripped her shoulder. “Slow down there, little lady. What are you saying?” There was a faint sound of amusement in the cop’s rough voice. Did he think she was playing some kind of game?
“I’m Cheyenne Wilder. I was kidnapped from the Woodlands Experience shopping mall two days ago.”
“Wait a minut
e – they mentioned you at roll call this morning. Are you really Cheyenne Wilder? The daughter of Nike’s president?” She could feel him inspecting her. Cheyenne imagined how she must look, her clothes muddy and torn, her face scratched, and her tangled curls filled with old leaves, pine needles, and broken sticks. But her appearance would serve as proof. The only way anyone could look the way she did was if she had been running blind through the woods all night long.
“Jeez,” he said, half to himself. His voice was hoarse, like he was just getting over a cold. “I’m out looking for people jacking deer and instead I find the girl they’re searching for in three states.” She heard his feet shift, and she imagined him looking around. “Where are these guys? Did they follow you?”
“No, no. I was so afraid.” A little sigh escaped her now that she could let go of the fear. “I was so afraid you were one of them. I thought they had finally found me.”
He let out a two-note laugh. “Don’t worry. I’ve got you now. You’re safe. I’d better call in with the good news.” She heard him punch some buttons. “Guess who I’ve got? Cheyenne Wilder! And she appears to be in good condition. Over.”
She could hear a faint, tinny voice, but couldn’t make out the words.
“Roger that,” the cop said. “You can stop searching for her.”
“Let me talk to my father,” she begged, holding out her empty hand. “Please.”
“Oh, he’s not at my station, Cheyenne.” Then the cop spoke to the voice at the other end of the line. “Could you get in contact with Mr. Wilder and have him ring me back? Someone here would very much like to speak to him. Meanwhile, I’m bringing her in. Over and out.” His voice changed, and she could tell he was talking to her again. “My car’s about a half mile down the road. Do you think you could walk there if I guided you?”
“I just made it through the woods. A road’s no problem.” There was no way Cheyenne was going to let the cop get more than five feet from her. She couldn’t stand the idea of being alone, even for a second. What if one of the men popped out of the woods behind her while she was waiting?