Girl, Stolen(45)

“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.