Girl, Stolen (3 page)

As he watched, Cheyenne began to cough again, explosions that jerked her body around on the seat. Finally, she choked out, “Can you get me a cough drop from my purse?”

He pulled off on a gravel turnout but left the engine running. After rummaging in her purse, he found a pack of cough drops. “Here you go,” he said. She opened her mouth. Even though he hadn’t been to mass since his mom left when he was ten, Griffin suddenly felt like a priest with a communion wafer. As he gave Cheyenne the cough drop, his fingertips grazed her lips.

“Look,” he said, “I’m going to need to cover your face for a second. And when we stop, I’ll need you to stay quiet, okay?”

For a moment, the only sound was her sucking on the lozenge. Then finally she nodded.

Griffin pulled the blanket loosely over her face, then put the car in gear and drove on. As he did, he unconsciously rubbed his fingertips together, the ones that had touched her lips.

T
he kidnapper couldn’t see her. Nobody could see her. It was like she was invisible. As she lay on the backseat of the car, hidden under the blanket, Cheyenne allowed herself to cry without making any sound. In the last three years, she had gotten good at it.

After the accident, her dad had fallen apart. Every night in the hospital, he slept in her room. Her mom would have done the same, but her mom was gone. Her dad traveled so much on business that it was her mom who knew her best, who knew everything about her. Who else would remember that Cheyenne loved chocolate chip Teddy Grahams and was scared of moths? Who was going to take her shopping for bras and talk to her about the kids at school? In the hospital, Cheyenne’s dad sometimes woke her up because he was crying in his sleep. She had realized it was her job to be strong for him, so Cheyenne had hid her real feelings, her real self, so that he wouldn’t guess how bad it was.

Now, hidden under the blanket, she felt her chest ache. She didn’t know how much of it was from holding the sobs in and how much was from the pneumonia. Danielle had already guessed it was pneumonia by listening with her stethoscope to the crackle in Cheyenne’s lungs, as well as the dead area where there should have been breath sounds but weren’t. Even though Cheyenne had never seen anything but a blurry slice of Danielle, she still had a clear mental picture of her. Blond, shoulder-length, straight hair and a slender body, looking something like one of a million actresses on TV, although Danielle was smarter than any two or three of them put together.

The visit to the doctor’s office had just been a formality, a way to get the prescription that a nurse wasn’t allowed to write. The doctor had tapped the X-ray, making a hollow plastic sound, and told them that it showed a shadow over the bottom of Cheyenne’s right lung. “With antibiotics, we can knock this thing out in a few days. It will take you some time to regain your stamina, but you’ll be well on your way to recovery by the time school starts after Christmas break.”

Cheyenne took a long, shuddering breath. Her head felt like it was stuffed with cotton. Everything seemed unreal. This couldn’t be happening to her. It was like those old maps from back when they thought the world was flat, where out past the land, far out in the ocean, they had written “Here be Dragons.”

She took a deep breath.
Think
, Cheyenne commanded herself.
Concentrate
. She had to use whatever advantages she had. Except she didn’t have any. If only Phantom were here! More than anything, she missed him. She wished she hadn’t left him at home, but Danielle had thought it would be easier since all they were doing was walking from the car to the doctor’s office and back, and she didn’t need a guide dog for that. But if Cheyenne had had Phantom with her, this creepy guy wouldn’t even have gotten in the car.

Now here she was, blind, kidnapped, tied up, and going who knows where with a criminal. Her mobile phone was gone. And she was very sick.

No!
Cheyenne mouthed the word to herself. She had to stay on track.
Think
. She was blind. That was a fact. That was her greatest weakness. But could she somehow use it to her advantage?

And there were a few advantages to being blind – not many, certainly not enough. But a few. For one thing, she knew how to use all her other senses in a way that most sighted people never did. They smelled and heard and touched all the same things she did, but they had let that part of their brain go numb with disuse, so the sensations didn’t register. And Cheyenne had learned the hard way to always, always pay attention to what was around her, to pick up as many clues as she could.

So how could she use her senses to her advantage? She sniffed, but all she could smell was the stale residue of the cigarette smoke on this guy’s clothes. Until they stopped and he opened the door, she wouldn’t have any clues from her nose. Her ears told her just as little. All she knew was that it had been at least twenty minutes since another car had passed them. And she had long ago lost track of the direction they were headed. They had been on a winding road for a while – but for how long? She twisted her hands until she could run her thumb over the numbers on her Braille watch. It was almost eleven. This guy had stolen the car about forty-five minutes ago. Okay, so they were forty-five miles or less away from the mall. She roughed out the math problem in her head. The result was disheartening. That meant she could be anywhere within a space a little greater than six thousand square miles. Even if they stopped soon, how could her dad and Danielle or even the police find her in all that space?

Cheyenne forced her mind back to the things she might be able to control. Like the guy who had kidnapped her. What could she do to get an advantage over him?

She decided that the first step would be to get him to untie her.
Poor blindy
, that’s what she had to make him think. Once she could use her hands, she could find a phone. Or a weapon. She could even take her cane and run away as soon as it was dark. She longed for it to be nighttime, when she would be more than a sighted person’s equal.

When they got wherever they were going, she would talk him into freeing her hands. Then she would collect all the clues and tools she could and bide her time. And if it seemed like he was going to do something bad, she wouldn’t go quietly. She would give him the fight of his life.

It seemed impossible, but Cheyenne must have fallen asleep. The next thing she knew, the car was lurching down a gravel road so bumpy she almost rolled off the seat. Over the noise in the cab, she heard a dog barking. Judging by how deep the sound was, it was a big dog. And not very well trained.

Another noise was layered over the barking, a high-pitched metallic whine. A saw. The sound, which was coming from someplace in front of the car, abruptly ceased. The window whirred as it glided down. Cold seeped in and pressed against her, even under the blanket. The smells of wood smoke and pine needles filled the car.

The dog stopped barking and started to whine. Footsteps crunched on gravel. Cheyenne’s problem had just gotten twice as complicated. Now there were two people, not one. But maybe this new person would see how ridiculous it was that she was a prisoner. Maybe he or she – it would be a lot better if it were a she – would insist that Cheyenne be freed immediately.

But it was a man who spoke, in a rough voice that mingled interest and suspicion. “God damn, Griffin, what’s this?” Cheyenne filed the name away.
Griffin
. If she ever got free – she quickly amended that to
when
– she would make this Griffin pay. “Where’d you get it?”

“At the mall. Somebody left the keys in it.”

“God damn!” The same words, only this time filled with respect. “But what happened to your face?” Good, she
had
hurt Griffin. Then the other man must have realized what was under the blanket, because his tone changed. “What in hell is that in the backseat?”

“It’s a girl.”

“You killed a girl!” Disbelief.

“No, no,” Griffin said hastily. “She’s just tied up. She was in the car. Lying down in the backseat. I didn’t see her at first. And by the time I did, it was too late. So I had to take her with me.”

The smack of flesh meeting flesh. Cheyenne realized that the other man had just slapped Griffin.

“So you brought her back here? That wasn’t a real smart idea. Why am I not surprised that it was you that thought of it?”

“What else did you want me to do?” Griffin whined. “In five more minutes, the place would have been crawling with cops. I had to get away as fast as I could. I’ll just wait until tonight, and go drop her out on a logging road. And then I’ll hightail it out of there.”

“You idiot! She knows what you look like. And now she’s been here. I don’t need to spell it out for you. She’ll say who we are. She’ll get the cops back here. Are you trying to back me into a corner?”

“But she’s blind, Dad!”

Dad?

“G
ive me her purse,” Roy demanded. He held out his hand. “Let’s see who she is.” He was still angry, that was clear, but Roy was always at least a little bit angry.

The thing was, Griffin thought, watching his dad carefully, his cheek still stinging, how angry was he?

“I already know who she is. Her name’s Cheyenne Wilder.”

He got out of the car. Roy took a step closer. He was all up in Griffin’s face now, nose to nose, which was kind of a surprise. How long had he been nose to nose, eye to eye, with his dad? Sensing the tension, Duke started growling.

Griffin stepped back, holding his hands up in surrender.

His dad spit tobacco out of the side of his mouth. Roy was nothing but muscle and tattoo. Despite the cold, Roy was dressed the way he always was, in a black leather Harley vest open over a flannel shirt. The sleeves of the shirt had been torn off, ragged over his bulging pecs. The Skoal can in his chest pocket had left a faded circle on the plaid.

Jimbo and TJ came out of the barn. Griffin was glad for the distraction.

“Whoa! What is that?” Jimbo asked, shaking his head in admiration as he took in the Escalade. Even though he had plenty of personal insulation, Jimbo was wearing so many layers he looked like the Michelin man. Jimbo was always cold. “A little something you picked up shopping?”

“Sweet!” TJ chimed in. TJ was skinny and short, not much taller than Cheyenne, with a long dirty blond ponytail poking out of the back of his trucker’s cap.

“Only there’s a problem,” Roy said. The red in his face had faded slightly. “The car came with a little something extra. A girl.”

“A kid,” Griffin felt the need to interject. He could already see TJ perking up, and he didn’t need him to get the wrong idea. “And actually, she’s blind, so she didn’t see anything.”

The two men peered through the half-open window at Cheyenne. Underneath the blanket, she was absolutely still. Griffin hoped she couldn’t hear exactly what they were saying.

“So she’s really blind?” TJ asked in a loud voice.

Griffin saw her flinch under the blanket.

Jimbo nudged TJ. “He said blind, dummy, not deaf.”

Roy turned his head to spit tobacco juice. “Did you change the plates?”

“Hey, I didn’t know I was going to find a car. I didn’t bring any with me.”

“Where’s the Honda?”

Griffin didn’t want to answer, but he had to. “I had to leave it there.”

“Where’s it at? Don’t tell me it’s anywhere near where you got this.”

“The Honda is in the far end, by the bookshop,” Griffin said. “And the Escalade was on the complete opposite end of the parking lot.”

“We can’t leave it there overnight or someone might connect the dots between one car left in the parking lot and another car that got stolen.” Roy thought for a moment. “Give them the keys. You two can take the pickup and go out to Woodlands and get the Honda back.”

TJ and Jimbo mumbled agreement. Griffin tossed Jimbo the keys and the two men ambled off toward the pickup. When they were out of earshot, Roy turned to him.