“Does he know you’re following him?”
“I don’t think so. It took me a while to decide what to do, so it wasn’t like I drove off after him right away. There’s a car between us, and I’m keeping way back. His taillights have a weird pattern, so I’ll know if he turns.”
I hurry into the break room. My fingers find a set of keys in one of the cubbies. “I’m coming.”
“What?”
I wait until I have the back door closed behind me before I tell him the rest. “I’m taking Miguel’s car. Hold on a sec.” I unlock the car, throw the phone on the passenger seat, get in, and put the key in the ignition. I’m backing up when Miguel runs out the back door. I put the car into drive and swerve around him. Yelling, he reaches out to grab the door handle, but he misses.
Miguel’s a lot taller than I am. After screeching out of the parking lot, I adjust the rearview mirror. But I can’t figure out how to move the seat up, so I’m forced to sit on the edge. At a light, I put on the seat belt, then pick up the phone and ask Drew for directions. As soon as the light turns green, I start weaving around cars, going as fast as I dare. Seat belt or no seat belt, my parents would totally freak out if they could see me now.
As I follow Drew’s instructions, I think of what might have happened if I had been the one making deliveries. How my car might be sitting empty right now. Another empty car, another missing girl.
“He’s slowing down,” Drew says.
“Don’t let him see you.”
“I turned off my headlights when we went around a turn.”
“Is that safe?”
“This from the girl who jumped in the river and just stole Miguel’s car?” Drew snorts with nervous laughter. Then his voice changes. “He’s stopping. I’m pulling over.” There’s a pause. I cut around a dawdling car and then push the speedometer to a place where it doesn’t really belong. I’m out in the middle of nowhere now. No street-lights, and the houses are few and far between.
I strain my eyes, looking for his car in the darkness. “I’ve got to be close,” I tell him.
“Good, because he’s getting out of the car and going into a house.”
“Does he know you’re there?”
“I don’t think so. I’m about a football field away, and there’s some trees between us.”
A minute later, I pull onto the gravel behind the Mini. I barely register the dent in the back bumper. Wordlessly, Drew points through the trees at a sturdy old farmhouse, the white paint so pristine it practically glows in the dark. The curtains are drawn. The nearest houses are hundreds of yards away.
I get out. Drew’s holding a tire iron. I only recognize it because my dad insisted I learn how to change a flat. He hefts it and says in a half whisper, “I figure we need a weapon.”
Suddenly I want one too. All I find in Miguel’s trunk is a bag of gym clothes. I’m careful to close the lid as quietly as possible. Next I open the car door a crack, snake my hand in, and turn off the overhead light, and then slide back into the car to look on the floors and seats. There’s wrappers and receipts, but nothing useful.
As an afterthought, I open the glove compartment. And there it is. A gun.
I pick it up by the grip, not putting my finger anywhere near the trigger. It feels serious. Deadly.
I get out of the car and show Drew, careful to keep the barrel pointed toward the ground. He squints in the darkness.
“Holy crap—Miguel has a gun?”
“I guess.” I realize I’m wincing, already braced for the sound it could make. “Have you ever fired one?”
Drew shakes his head. “One of my mom’s boyfriends had one, and I saw it on the dresser. But he would have beaten my butt if I touched it.” He offers the tire iron. “Want to trade?”
I try to think logically about a situation that is no longer logical. “I don’t think I’m strong enough to really do any damage with a tire iron. Besides, we’re not going to use it. Just threaten him if we have to.” I look toward the house and see a shadow walk past the curtains. “Let’s go. And if we see anything weird, or any hint that Kayla is there for sure, we call the cops.”
Drew doesn’t argue.
The gravel is noisy, so we run on the dark road. All too soon, we’re crouched at the edge of the lawn. The lights are on in all the rooms of the house, but the curtains are drawn.
“Look!” Drew whispers, pointing. There’s a vertical line of light in the big window at the front, a gap where the curtains don’t quite meet. We nod at each other and then scurry across the yard. I feel so exposed, like at any moment a spotlight—or a bullet—will find me. My heart is beating in my ears. My breath comes in gasps. I close my mouth, trying not to let the sound out.
Drew looks inside first. He stiffens, then glances back and touches my arm. He moves his head an inch or two so I can see.
There’s a guy scrabbling through a desk drawer, muttering to himself. He’s about ten feet away, his face half turned away from us. At first I think the room is full of doll houses, but then I realize they’re models of buildings.
Finally, he straightens up so that we can see all of his face. I put my hand on Drew’s arm to steady myself. I know this guy with short dark hair and wire frame glasses. He comes into Pete’s all the time, and he always jokes with me. Silly, superficial jokes that you forget as soon as he turns away. He always orders whatever meatless slices we have. He’s just some harmless guy as old as my dad.
Only what he’s taking out of the drawer is a gun.
And before we have time to react, he turns and runs down a set of stairs at the far left of the room.
Drew and I stare at each other. I fumble my phone from my pocket, but before I can even press the nine, a sound comes from the basement that chills my bones.
It’s a woman. Screaming.
The Fourteenth Day
Drew
GABIE’S DIALING 911, but there’s no time for that. I should have listened to her. No matter what Thayer told us, I should have called them first thing. I try the door. Locked. I slam my shoulder into it. It shakes, but stays solid in the frame. I try again. And again. I’m getting noplace fast.
Kayla screams again. At least I think it’s Kayla. I hope it’s Kayla. I slam my shoulder again, ignoring the pain.
Or should I be hoping it isn’t her?
Gabie is telling the police where we are, so panicked her words are running into each other. I hear her say something about a man with a gun and screams. But she never says Kayla’s name. Which is probably a good move if we want them to believe us.
My shoulder feels like it’s broken, but the door isn’t budging. Then I remember the tire iron. I smash it into the window at the top of the door, then knock away most of the shards. But the lock’s pretty far down. I have to stand on tiptoe and reach all the way to my elbow to get to the lock and turn it. A piece of glass slices into my arm as I pull it back out, but it doesn’t hurt. There’s just a fast, slippy feeling as it parts my flesh.
Already swinging the tire iron in front of me, I open the door, growling as if the guy is going to be right there. Gabie’s close behind me.
“They’re on their way,” she says, shoving her phone into her pocket. But we both know that by the time they get here, Kayla or whoever is screaming might be dead for real.
“Cover me,” I say, because it sounds like the thing to say. Gabie raises the gun to shoulder level, and I just hope she doesn’t shoot me with it. We race down the worn wooden stairs into darkness. Just around the corner, I hear another scream and a grunt of pain. Is it really Kayla? All I know for sure is that whoever is screaming is a woman.
“Police!” I shout, making my voice as deep and as authoritative as possible. Maybe I can buy us some time until the real police get here.
I round the corner at the bottom of the stairs. Twenty feet ahead of me, light spills out of a doorway to a narrow white room. It reveals the shadowy contours of a low-ceilinged basement with a concrete floor. I have a vague
impression of a workbench to our right. But I only have eyes for the guy. He’s facing the light, with his back to us.
And standing silhouetted in the doorway of that small, windowless room is—oh, my God!—Kayla. Her hair is matted, and she looks skinny and dirty, but it’s Kayla, all right. Holding a short board like a softball bat, cocked above her right shoulder. She must have already hit him once, because there is blood on the side of his face.
His free hand comes away from his cheek, his fingertips dark with blood. Now he’s lifting his gun.
“Drop your weapon!” I yell. But the guy doesn’t move. He’s going to kill Kayla.
Gabie lets out a little moan. Just as I whip my head around to see what’s wrong, she pulls the trigger on her own gun.
There’s the faintest little plasticky pop.
“Ow!” With his free hand, the guy swipes at the back of his neck. The undamaged back of his neck.
Oh, crap. Reality sinks in. Miguel didn’t have a gun in his car. He had a BB gun. And those two little letters are probably going to make the difference between at least one of us living or dying.
I have to do something, but in the time it will take to tackle him, he could shoot Kayla. So I shout and throw the tire iron at his head. And watch with horror as it misses him by an inch and goes clattering into the dark. But along with the tire iron, blood flies off my fingertips and splatters all over the guy, Kayla, and even the walls, like I’m some kind of crazy Jackson Pollock. My hand and arm look like they’ve been dipped in red paint. The guy with the gun grimaces and tries to wipe the blood off his face with the heel of his hand.
Kayla takes advantage of that moment of distraction to swing the board again. Not at his head, but at the gun. It skitters across the concrete floor into the darkness.
Now it’s three of us against one of him, and nobody has a gun. The tables are turning.
Then suddenly the light is gone, and the tables have turned back again. The four of us are alone in the dark—but only one of us knows the layout of the basement. There’s just a faint square of light at the top of the stairs. Everyone moves, everyone cries out, so there’s a confused jumble of noise and shifting shadows.
“Kayla!” Gabie shouts. “Kay—” Her voice is choked off. I spin in a circle, my hands outstretched, trying to figure out where she is.
I hear scrabbling, and then two dim figures lurch to the base of the stairs. It’s the guy. He’s got Gabie in a head-lock. And his right hand is pressing something that flashes silver against the side of her neck. At first I think it’s a knife, but then I realize it’s a screwdriver from the workbench.
I look around for Kayla. She’s on her knees, head hanging down, one hand inside the little room that must have been her prison, the other pressed against her stomach. She isn’t holding the board anymore. Did he hurt her? Jab her with the screwdriver before he took Gabie?
“You. Boy. Get that flashlight.” He jerks his head at where it hangs on the workbench. I do as he says, revealing the black flashlight-shaped outline he has traced on the pegboard. “Now find the gun and give it to me, or I’ll stab Gabie so hard it will come out the other side.”
It doesn’t seem possible that my anxiety could be any greater, but when I hear Gabie’s name in his mouth, I want to scream. He digs the screwdriver in a little deeper. A tiny dark line snakes down the white skin of Gabie’s throat.
He’s got her head pulled so far back that I can’t see her eyes. But I can hear her voice. “Don’t do it,” Gabie chokes out. “Don’t listen to him.” I know what she’s thinking. Once he has the gun, what’s to stop him from shooting all three of us?
But I do. I do listen to him. Because his eyes are crazy and his mouth is set, and I know he will kill Gabie right now if I don’t do what he wants. And I can’t just stand there and watch that happen.
There’s another empty outline on the pegboard, one shaped like the screwdriver he has pressed against her neck. The board still holds a couple dozen tools: wrenches, hammers, putty knives, saws. While they all look like they could inflict some damage at close range, none of them are worth the risk. I thumb the flashlight on, then walk to the corner where I saw the gun go flying.
“Hurry up!” he barks, and for punctuation Gabie lets out a whimper. How far has he pressed it into her? I think of all the important stuff that runs through your neck, like we learned in biology. The trachea. The jugular vein. The spine.
The flashlight picks up a black gleam. The gun. I switch the flashlight to my left hand, pick up the gun and straighten up. Even though I’m moving quickly, time slows down. My thoughts tumble over themselves as I wonder if I have the courage or the stupidity to try shooting him when he’s tucked himself right behind Gabie. I turn around, still not sure what to do. And that’s when Kayla launches herself past me with a wordless scream. In her hands is something white and narrow and about six inches long.
Then the three of them are a shouting, screaming, grunting blur on the floor. A girl cries out. Sirens cut through the air, getting louder. But I don’t think they’ll get here in time.
I swing the flashlight over. The guy gets to his feet, pressing one hand against his bloody side where his shirt has been sliced open. Kayla and Gabie are still on the floor. He kicks Kayla. Hard. Then Gabie. They don’t seem to be moving. He takes two steps to the pegboard. His fingers run over it and stop at a huge silver monkey wrench. He yanks it off its pegs, turns back, and lifts it high overhead.
And that’s when I pull the trigger.
The Fourteenth Day
Kayla
THE SOUND of the gun going off is so loud that I can’t hear anything for a few seconds afterward.
Then I dimly become aware of sirens wailing and men shouting, “Police! Police!”
“Down here,” I yell, then start to push myself up. My bloody hand slips on the painted concrete floor, and I fall onto someone else. Someone warm and wet. It’s him, I know it. Gagging with revulsion and fear, I scramble back. But when a flashlight slices down the stairs, I see it’s Gabie. Her neck is shiny with blood as red as paint, and more blood is running down to pool on the cement floor.
“Help us!” I scream, and press my hand against her throat. “She’s hurt!” The hot blood seeps between my fingers.
The first cop down the stairs points his gun past us. Right at Drew.
“Put down your weapon!”
I whip my head around. Drew is frozen, one hand holding a flashlight loose at his side, his other hand still wrapped around the gun, blood dripping from his arm. His eyes are fixed on what lies just behind Gaby and me, the remains of the man who held me prisoner. Drew’s lips are pulled back in an expression that’s halfway between a grimace and a growl. He seems completely unaware of the cop.
I realize if Drew doesn’t put the gun down soon, the cop is going to decide that he might just be the bad guy.
“Drew,” I say in the most soothing and reasonable tone I can muster, “it’s okay. Put the gun down and help me with Gabie.”
He stares at me, unmoving. The moment stretches out. I don’t think any of us even blink. Finally Drew gives his head a little shake, then bends down and lays first the flashlight and then the gun on the floor. As the first cop holsters his gun, more cops come running down the stairs.
Drew yanks the red Pete’s shirt over his head and throws it to me. I press it against Gabie’s throat. She’s not moving at all. I tell myself she’s still alive. She has to be. I mean, dead people don’t keep bleeding, do they?
The lights come on, and we all blink. There’s so much blood it looks fake, especially splashed around in this tidy room where the only things out of place are the blood-drenched people. Gabie looks like a girl cleverly fashioned of wax. The cops are barking orders, calling for ambulances, bending over the body of the guy who kidnapped me. One of them pushes me aside and starts working on Gabie. A second one starts to wrap something around Drew’s arm.
I stand up and back out of the way. And when the one who
put his fingers against the guy’s throat straightens up and shakes his head, relief surges through me. It’s over. It’s really over. My knees buckle, and I almost fall down.
“Kayla,” Drew calls out, and I tear my gaze away from the dead guy. Instead I look at Drew, at his bright blue eyes. “Gabie always knew,” he says. “She tried to tell everyone you were still alive.”
FIVE MINUTES LATER, two paramedics are strapping Gabie to a backboard. The cops have separated Drew and me. I can see him gesturing, pointing with his roughly bandaged arm at the body of the man in the corner. At the man who kept me here. The man who tried to kill me. They haven’t even covered his face.
Another cop touches my arm lightly, and I turn to look at him. He has a notebook. “So your name is…?”
“Kayla. Kayla Cutler.”
His eyes go wide. “Kayla Cutler? Who worked at Pete’s Pizza?”
I nod. It’s clear from his expression that if I had been able to get the TV to play anything but static, I would have heard my name, heard how they were searching for me.
“And that man”—he gestures with his chin—“who was he?”
“A customer, but I don’t know his name. Just his face. He locked me in here.” I shudder. “He wanted me to call him master.”
His lips press together for a long second. “And how did he die?”
“Drew shot him when he was pushing a screwdriver into Gabie’s neck.” We both turn and look as the paramedics begin to carry her up the stairs. Her mouth is slack, her eyes closed.
They’ve summoned another ambulance for Drew and me, and the cop says the rest of the questioning will wait until we’ve all been checked out at the hospital. He takes my arm as we go up the stairs. Outside the front lawn is covered with cop cars. There are no nearby houses. No one who could have heard me screaming.
The back doors of one of the two ambulances are open. Inside, I can see them working on Gabie’s still form. She’s being given oxygen, and one of the paramedics is hanging a clear bag of liquid that goes down into a tube that ends in the back of one of her hands.