“What about the reading assignments? Do you have a machine that reads books to you?”
“Reading.” Cheyenne let out a long sigh. “I miss reading, you know, just picking up a book. There’s a million ways to read if you’re blind, but none of them are as good. Sometimes Danielle pays someone to read to me. And volunteers read my textbooks. With one of them, it’s some guy who always sounds like he has a cold – wid a code. It’s nearly impossible to make out what he’s saying. That’s why I like CDs and downloads so much better, you know, like Books on Tape, the same as sighted people buy. Have you ever heard the guy who reads Harry Potter?” Her face lit up. “He’s wonderful. He has a different voice for every character.”
Griffin smiled back at her. Cheyenne was smiling, too, but of course it wasn’t a shared smile. It must be weird not to be able to have a nonverbal conversation just by rolling your eyes at someone, or grinning, or stifling a yawn.
“But when I read on my own,” Cheyenne continued, “I’m not a very good reader.”
Griffin was surprised. “Really? But you’re smart.”
“I mean, I’m not that good at Braille.”
“Braille’s like those little dots on the elevator buttons, right?”
She nodded. “Yeah. You feel the different dots in each Braille cell. You have to memorize what each of them means. I have friends who were born blind, and they’re a lot faster than me. They can even use both hands to read. I can’t do that. I have to go really slow, and even then I get confused. If I get one dot wrong, then it could mean an entirely different word. Big words scare me.”
Cheyenne had no idea how well Griffin understood her. “But you would know big words if someone said them to you, right?”
“Of course. I just can’t read them.”
“I have a hard time reading, too,” he admitted. “Last year, I had to read aloud in class. And there was this word, and I kept saying it ‘Brie. Fly. Brie-fly.’ It was supposed to be an article about flowers, but all I could think about was a piece of cheese with a fly on it.”
“Brie-fly,” Cheyenne said, echoing the way he had said it, before she got it right. “Oh. Briefly. It makes sense. Have you ever been tested for dyslexia?”
“I’m not retarded,” Griffin said quickly, wishing that he hadn’t opened up to her.
“No, that’s not what being dyslexic means. Dyslexia is having trouble with the physical part of reading, not the comprehension part. Like me having trouble with Braille.” She straightened up. “You could get tapes from the same place I do. They’re not only for blind people. You just order them through the school district.”
“What makes you think I’m still going to school?” Griffin said, feeling deflated. He had been hoping she thought he was about thirty. Thirty seemed like a good age.
“You live with your dad, for one thing.” Cheyenne shrugged. “I don’t know. The more I listened to you, the more I figured you were about my age. Blind people are good at sizing other people up.” She leaned forward. “That’s why I know you’re not like the other guys here.”
NOTHING BUT IFS
Cheyenne could do the math. These men thought they could get five million dollars from her dad. And they probably could, if he had enough time. And after that they would have two choices.
Choice one: Free the girl who could help the police find them.
Choice two: Kill the girl and find a good place to hide her body.
And the longer she was here, the more they might start thinking that it wasn’t in their best interests to pick the first choice. Because, blind or not, she would know too much.
Forcing herself to take a deep breath, Cheyenne tried to calm down. These guys were criminals, yes, but they were car thieves, not killers. And that was a pretty big difference. Griffin had kidnapped her only by accident. And while it was true that he could go to jail for that, maybe his sentence wouldn’t be too bad because he hadn’t meant to do it. But murder – she forced herself to think of what she really meant – actually killing her, for that they could be put to death themselves. That had to serve as a deterrent. Didn’t it?
But then Cheyenne thought of how empty the roads had been on the way here, and the impression of stillness and space that had surrounded them as they walked to the house. Even though the punishment for murder was much worse than it was for kidnapping, that still assumed someone would find her body.
Her head felt muddled and thick, but she forced herself to think straight. Just by the way the three older men treated her, she could tell that they saw her as a thing, not a person. They probably saw everyone as things, but her blindness just made it easier for them to write her off.
Griffin was the only one who might want to save her. Cheyenne had to make sure he continued to see her as a person. She had to make him care about protecting her. She had to give him a reason to hesitate. No more arguing with him, she vowed. No more fighting. Because her life depended on it.
But Cheyenne knew it was a one-way street. If she had a moment when she might turn the tables, she had to be willing to do whatever it took. Even if it meant hurting Griffin. Even if it meant worse than that. Because she was pretty sure this situation was going to end with somebody dead.
After a long pause, Griffin said, “How come you think I’m not like them?” She couldn’t read the emotions that colored his voice.
“You’re kind, for one thing. And for another, I think you’re smarter than they are.” Cheyenne was telling the truth. If she had to lie, she hoped she could make that sound like the truth, too.
He shook his head hard enough that she could feel it because the bed wiggled. “I’m not smart. I dropped out of school before they could kick me out.”
“I don’t believe it. Maybe you have troubles reading, but I do too, and I’m still smart, and so are you. If you start believing what other people think, you’ll never get anywhere.”
Cheyenne thought of her biology teacher, Mr. Waddell. Even though he insisted his name was wa-DELL, the kids all called him Mr. Waddle. “Just because you have a disability, I’m not going to be lenient with you,” he had informed Cheyenne, asking her to stay behind after her first class with him. “Don’t expect any special considerations from me. You will be treated like any other student.” Of course, was he really any worse than Ms. Crispin, who taught English? For their project, everyone in the group had gotten a failing grade. Cheyenne got a B. For the exact same project. Two weeks ago, Ms. Crispin had said to Cheyenne, “I wanted to tell you how impressed I am. You can hardly tell you have a disability.”
Griffin’s bitter voice snapped Cheyenne back into the here and now. “You really think it makes any difference what I think of myself? You really think I could be anybody I wanted to, even president of the United States? You’ve got to face facts, Cheyenne. You’re blind, which means you’re never going to be able to do a million things. And the facts of my life mean I don’t have many choices, either. I don’t have many choices at all.”
“So does that mean you just have to go along with what’s happening here? Just because you took my stepmom’s car doesn’t mean you have to keep going down this road with them.”
“What are you thinking? Are you thinking I’m going to drive you to the police station and turn myself in?”
Put like that, Cheyenne could hear how ridiculous the idea was. But what would happen to her? She blurted out her fear. “I don’t think they’re ever going to let me go.”
“Of course they will.” Griffin sounded like he was trying to convince himself.
“You know as well as I do what the easiest solution would be,” Cheyenne countered. “For them to keep the money and get rid of me. I’m the only witness. Probably nobody saw you at the shopping mall. Certainly not well enough to recognize you. And it was a fluke thing. You have no connection to my family or to me. None. Meanwhile, the police will be looking at people connected to Catlin Gabel School, and every housekeeper and groundskeeper we’ve ever had, and people Dad knows thro
ugh Nike. They’ll look at everyone who works at Nike now or who has ever worked there, including all the people who have been fired from Nike and all the people who hate Nike because they think it has overseas sweatshops.”
“That’s a pretty big list. That’s practically the United States of America.”
“Right,” Cheyenne said. “So what are the chances that they’ll find you guys? Probably pretty slim. Unless you give me back. And those other guys won’t believe me if I say I won’t tell. That if you let me go, I won’t say anything. But I promise I won’t.”
“We’re gonna give you back, okay? We’ll take you someplace safe and turn you loose.” Again Griffin sounded as if he wished he believed what he was saying.
There had to be a way for her to get out of this alive, Cheyenne thought. There had to.
“What would have happened if I had gone through the bathroom window? What’s back there, anyway?”
“Nothing. No people anyway, at least not for most of it. It’s just woods. It stretches on for miles. To the east, there’s a river. To the west, there’s our road, and after about four miles, that meets up with a bigger road. But it’s still pretty quiet. You probably would have just wandered around and got lost and died. It gets down pretty far below freezing at night.”
Cheyenne opened her mouth to say something but found herself yawning so she made a creaking noise.
She felt his cool hand on her forehead. “I think the Advil brought your fever down. You need to get to sleep. We both do.” He pulled the blanket up to her chin. “The floor’s too hard. I’m going to sleep on the other side of the bed in a sleeping bag. Don’t worry – I won’t bother you or anything.”
Cheyenne knew that if she could see, Griffin’s face would be bright red.
She heard him stand up, turn off the light, then felt him sit on the other side of the bed. Rustling as he got into his sleeping bag. No part of him touched her, so she knew he must be lying just on the edge of the bed.
She was exhausted, but she was also wide awake. She couldn’t pin her hopes on Griffin. He might stop things from happening, but he probably wouldn’t. After all, he was just a kid. Like her.
Long after Griffin’s breathing had reached an even rhythm, Cheyenne lay awake, trying to think of a way out.
If she could get to a phone.
If she could find another way to alert the authorities.
If she could persuade Griffin to save her.
If she could escape.
Nothing but ifs.
LET’S SEND HIM A FINGER
When Griffin woke up, he didn’t know where he was. He was on the wrong side of the bed, in a sleeping bag, with someone breathing right next to him.
And then it all came back to him in a rush.
He levered himself on one elbow. Cheyenne’s breathing hitched, but then straightened out again. Her face was still pale, except for the flush across her cheeks, but she didn’t look as bad as she had the night before. He wondered if this was how married people felt when one of them woke up and the other one was still asleep. Her mouth was soft and vulnerable. Underneath her pale lids, her eyes moved back and forth. What was she seeing in her dreams?
Even though he had gotten just a few hours of sleep, Griffin was now wide awake. He managed to get off the bed with a minimum of rustling. He padded out into the kitchen, the floor icy under his bare feet. The woodstove was going in the living room, but the heat only went so far.
Griffin was surprised to find Roy, awake, leaning against the counter, drinking coffee. Next to him, the phone lay on the counter. Or what was left of the phone. Someone had taken a hammer to it. Now it was shards of plastic and colorful wires. Griffin was surprised he hadn’t heard his dad whaling on it the night before. He poked at it.
“What happened to the phone?”
Roy shrugged. “Insurance. I don’t want her getting loose and calling anyone. Now she can’t.” His eyes were bloodshot and his hands shaky.
Griffin wondered why his dad hadn’t just unplugged it and stuck it on a high shelf, but there was no use asking. “What if I need to call someone?”
“You can use that mobile I got.” He looked over Griffin’s shoulder. “Is she sleeping?”
“Yeah. In the middle of the night, she seemed like she was running a fever. I went through the stuff in the bathroom and found an old prescription of Mom’s to give her.”
At the mention of the bathroom, Griffin had been sure his dad would remember to ask what had happened to the shower curtain. Instead, he just looked startled. “Your mom’s? Really?”
His dad never talked about his mom anymore. But after Griffin came home from the hospital, he would sometimes find his dad crying and holding something that used to belong to his mom – a bracelet or a sweater. She had left a lot of stuff behind. They had had a big fight about what had happened to Griffin. It must have been the last straw, because she had taken off with her purse and her car and some pictures of Griffin and that was it. Gone so good that she never looked back.
“Mom had the prescription filled a few months before she left, but she only took about half the pills.”
Roy nodded and lifted the cup of coffee to his lips. Griffin couldn’t read the expression on his face.
They heard the front door open and then the sounds of TJ and Jimbo coming in.
“What’s the word?” Jimbo asked when he walked into the kitchen. Today he was wearing an extra-long stocking cap and padded ski pants. “Have you talked to them?”
“I got off the phone with the dad about twenty minutes ago. He says they can’t raise that kind of money. Not in cash. Not that fast.”
“I’ll bet we can speed things up,” Jimbo said. “Let’s send him a finger.”
Griffin couldn’t tell if he was joking.
“Or an ear,” TJ added. He definitely wasn’t joking.
To Griffin’s intense relief, Roy shook his head. “We do that and they’ll decide she might be dead already and hunt us down with guns blazing. We start chopping off body parts and they’ll figure they’ve got nothing left to lose.”
“Did they say how much they could give us?” Griffin asked. He kept his voice soft, hoping to influence the others to talk more quietly. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like for Cheyenne if she woke up and heard them talking about lopping off her fingers or ears.
“A million.” Setting down his coffee cup, Roy scrubbed his face with open palms. “I told him I would call him back.” His voice was glum, even though a few days ago he would have been over the moon about the prospect of getting a million dollars.
“That’s still a lot,” Griffin said. “That’s like $250,000 apiece.”
Roy shook his head. “You’re still a minor, and you still live under my roof. I’m going to watch after your share.”
TJ and Jimbo exchanged a look. “Do you really think that’s fair?” Jimbo asked. “You get a cool half million, and we get only half of that?”
Roy straightened up, and Jimbo and TJ automatically took a step back.
“Hey, I’m the one who is taking all the risks here. She’s on my property, and it’s my voice that’s getting tape-recorded every time I call. And I’m the one figuring out the logistics.”
“Logistics?” TJ echoed. It was clear the word wasn’t quite familiar.
“The plans. When I call back, I’ll tell the dad to be ready to make the drop at three this morning. Then, at three, I’ll tell him to drive someplace. But when he gets there, we’ll tell him to take another phone we’ll have waiting and ditch his first one. I’ll have one of you there watching to make sure he does leave his phone. The new phone will have outgoing calls disabled. So he won’t be able to tip anyone off. And then I’ll call him on the new phone and tell him to make the drop at Ironwood Road.” Ironwood Road was a long stretch that linked together two other equally desolate roads. It was quiet no matter what time of the day or night it was. At three in the morning in the middle of winter, it would be dead. “And I’ll hav
e one of you watching Ironwood Road before he even knows that’s the drop site. Then we’ll grab the money and leave the bag in case they put something in it, like a tracer or those exploding dye packs they use on bank robbers. Then we’ll come back here and split up the money and go our separate ways.”
Jimbo let out a whistle. “Sounds slick.”
Griffin didn’t care about the money. The idea of it didn’t even seem real. “After we get the money, then what?”
“I think we should all get out of town,” Roy said. “I know I am. I’m headed down to the airport to get on the first flight I can find to someplace warm where they put an umbrella in your drink.”
“Wait, we won’t be working here no more?” TJ looked confused.
“You won’t need to work, dummy.” Jimbo shook his head. “That’s the whole point. You won’t need to work for years and years. If we go down to someplace where they don’t ever see tourists and haven’t jacked up their prices, we’ll never run out of money.”
Griffin couldn’t believe they seemed to have forgotten the girl who was in the middle of all this. “But what about Cheyenne?”
Roy’s face twisted. “What about her?”
“We’ll let her go, right? We’ve never used our names. And of course she has no idea what we look like.” Griffin made his voice as certain as he could. Hearing Cheyenne say, “I know your name. It’s Griffin. And now I know for sure your dad’s name is Roy. When I tell the police that, they’ll find you in a minute.” Griffin didn’t know how to make things right. He just knew that he couldn’t stand by and let something bad happen to Cheyenne.
Roy looked skeptical. “Sooner or later, she’ll tell them something that will let them know exactly where we are.”
Griffin remembered his earlier conversation with Cheyenne. “Not if we’re careful, she won’t. For one thing, she’s the daughter of Nike’s president. Do you know how many people would want a piece of that pie? When you call back, you can say something to make them think it’s all about Nike. They’ll spend years tracking down every person who’s protested against them or worked there. And they’ll never find us. Because they won’t realize it was random. That it didn’t have anything to do with Nike at all.”