Girl, Stolen(41)

In the living room, on a rough wooden table, Cheyenne found what she was looking for. Her fingers traced the shape of it and her mind supplied the picture. A big silver wrench. Heavy. She put the piece of glass in her pocket and then picked up the wrench and thwacked the end into her palm. If she hit Griffin hard enough, she could knock him unconscious.

If she hit Griffin hard enough.

And if she didn’t? Then he might wake up. Might chase her down. Might kill her.

Cheyenne could feel her heart rate speeding up, her breath quickening, all that fight-or-flight response they had learned in biology. She turned and walked back down the hall.

Outside the doorway, she stopped and listened. What if Griffin was awake and watching? What if she rushed him and he wrested the wrench from her hand and whacked her with it?

Nothing but the sound of his deep, even breathing.

She drew one last ragged breath and tiptoed toward him. Gripping the wrench in both hands, she raised it high overhead. Then, like a man splitting a log with an ax, Cheyenne swung the wrench in its swift and terrible descent.





BEFORE THEY COME BACK


Tears were still running down Cheyenne’s face as she closed the bedroom door behind her.

Oh, God.

Oh, God.

She was pretty sure that she had just killed a man. A kid, really. Someone her own age. And the only person in this house who had treated her with kindness.

Cheyenne had meant to knock Griffin unconscious, but after she had hit him once, he had started up, yelling.

Her heart had flopped in her chest like a fish. Without thinking, she had struck him again. Much harder. He fell back on the bed. And after that, he hadn’t moved. At all. She had dropped the wrench – wet now with his blood – on the floor.

Forcing her feet to move, she staggered down the hall. If she didn’t hurry, the men would come back and find her. And she knew they would kill her. Especially now. After what she had done.

Oh, God.

How long did she have? How long until they came back? Cheyenne tried to distract herself by figuring it out. The drop had been planned for three in the morning. And they had wanted to make sure the money wasn’t being traced or monitored in any way before they picked it up. Then they would drive back here and split it up. Now it was 2:12.

Cheyenne figured she didn’t have long – an hour, maybe two, no more. She had been around these men long enough to know that they would grow impatient, that their greed would trump any common sense. They wouldn’t be able to watch that lonely bag of money for long before they decided they had to claim it. Before they came back here, she had to get as much distance as she could between herself and them.

She wished she had Phantom. She thought of Duke. Barking, lunging, big. Clearly bought to scare people. Cheyenne felt a flash of unexpected sympathy. You couldn’t always tell what something was by looking at the outside.

In order to move with any speed, she would need something to tell her about obstacles. Her cane was a pile of melted rods inside the woodstove. What could she use as an emergency cane? While she had been lying awake, waiting for time to drag itself forward, Cheyenne had created a useless catalog of things they surely didn’t have – pool cues, ski poles, walking sticks, golf umbrellas. Now she forced herself to be practical. She would have to find a long branch, break it off, and strip it of twigs.

And then Cheyenne realized what this place did have. In bucket loads. Car antennae.

She opened the front door and walked down the three steps. Earlier, her brain had automatically counted the stairs, just as it had the number of steps from the car to the house. The air was so cold it felt like it was pulling her lungs inside out. Her breath shook every time she exhaled, but she still wouldn’t let herself think about what she had just done.

Remembering that the yard had been littered with junk, she took short steps, feeling with each foot before committing her full weight. Her right arm was folded across her belly, like a bumper, and she swung her left arm like a feeler. Cheyenne was alert to every sound, every smell, every bit of information. Her orientation and mobility instructors had tried to help her learn to use blindsight – a sense some blind people had of nearby objects and even their rough dimensions. But usually she relied on a cane or a dog to give her much more accurate feedback.

After a minute or two, Cheyenne hit the jackpot. Her fingers grazed a fender. She felt along the edge of the car roof until she found the antenna. Then she snapped it off.

At the sound, barking exploded from the barn. The chain rattled along the ground as Duke burst out and ran toward her.

Cheyenne threw her left arm over her throat and braced herself. But the impact never came. About fifteen feet from her, the barking suddenly ended abruptly with a choking sound. The dog must have reached the end of his chain. As soon as he got back on his feet, he started barking again. The noise made her wince. But there was no answering human sound. It was just the two of them, in the dark.