The Abduction (28 page)

That tickles him.

The engine is making strange noises. And it smells awful. She sees the tops of other cars and eighteen-wheelers passing them. They’re on the highway. The sun is shining in the right side of the car. Which means they’re heading north. Which must be why she now catches a slight chill, particularly when—

Without moving her head, Gracie checks herself over. Her white soccer shoe is on her left foot, but her right shoe is missing; she’s still wearing the blue knee socks and shin guards. She feels around inside the blanket and—her uniform is gone! Her jersey, her shorts—all she’s wearing is her Under Armour! Why did they take her uniform? And the answer comes to her:
Oh my God, they raped me!
She bites her tongue to silence her feelings and squeezes her eyes tightly to hold back the tears. But one tear escapes and rolls down her cheek, lands on the seat, and disappears into a crease in the cracked vinyl.

Gracie wasn’t entirely sure of everything that being raped included, but she knew it meant some male person sticking his penis into a girl down between her legs without permission (although she could not imagine ever giving a boy permission to do
that
). Mother never talked to her about sex or any of that stuff yet; she learned what she knew from Ms. Boyd in health class. Ms. Boyd told the girls that when a boy makes unwelcome physical advances, they should point their finger at him and firmly say, “No! And no means no!” The girls and boys attended separate sex ed classes; the girls giggled at the drawings of penises in the book. The only real live penises she had seen were Sam’s, which was really little and couldn’t hurt a girl her age, and Dad’s, one time when she walked in on him in his bathroom. He got totally embarrassed and covered up real fast, but she got a good look at it. Dad’s penis was big enough to hurt a girl her age.

But she doesn’t hurt down there. She doesn’t feel different at all. Maybe the two men have little penises like Sam’s and that’s why she doesn’t hurt. Or maybe they didn’t rape her.

Or maybe … she closes her eyes and sleeps again …

… Until she is awakened by a door slamming.

She cracks her eyelids. The blond man is gone. The big man turns toward her; she quickly shuts her eyes tight. She feels his gross hand over the blanket, shaking her leg not so gently.

“Wake up,” he says.

She pretends to be asleep, but she hears his heavy breath as he exhales, and she knows cigarette smoke is coming her way. She holds her breath, but the toxic fumes find their way into her nose. She coughs. She can’t pretend to be asleep now. She opens her eyes. The big man is looking at her and not like he wants to be friends.

He is way past ugly.

His nose is broad and flat, like he had run face first into a brick wall. A long scar zigzags down the left side of his face. One eye doesn’t look right. His whiskers look like Coach Wally’s hair when his burr cut starts to grow back in. The skin on his face is blotchy and leathery and filled with little pockmarks like that guy at BriceWare. (Dad said the guy had bad acne as a child.) A cigarette is clamped between his teeth and smoke comes out with each breath. He’s the biggest human being she has ever seen, and he looks really mean. Gracie realizes she is trembling, she is so afraid. But her mother’s advice plays in her ears like a song on her iPod:
Men are like dogs. They can smell fear on a woman. Never let them smell your fear. Never let them see you cry. Always act tough even when you don’t feel tough.
So Gracie acts tough.

“You wanna put that thing out?” she says. “Passive smoke is dangerous to a child’s health.”

The big man snorts like a bull and a stream of smoke comes out both nostrils. “Not as dangerous as me, pissed off as I get when I don’t smoke.”

He has a point, Gracie figures.

He flips a Twinkie back to her; it lands on the green blanket. Yuk, it isn’t even individually wrapped! It’s probably covered with cooties.

Still, she is hungry.

She pushes herself up, careful to keep the blanket wrapped around her, even though the Under Armour shorts and tee shirt cover her up. Her head feels heavy. She’s in a sports utility vehicle, a real POS: no plush leather seats or cherrywood trim, no Harmon Kardon stereo system or color-coordinated carpet, no TV built into the dash like Dad’s new Range Rover, and no CD player. This SUV is old and has bench seats instead of buckets, and crushed beer cans and cigarette butts and wadded-up fast food bags on the bare metal floorboards, the head liner is drooping in several places, and it sure as heck doesn’t have a heater that works.

She looks outside. They’re in a Wal-Mart parking lot, a long way from home. She recognizes the yellow license plates on the other cars, just like the ones on Ben’s Jeep.

They’re in New Mexico.

Gracie picks up the Twinkie and realizes she is not tied up. Her arms and legs are free. She scarfs down the Twinkie in three big bites.

“Um, you got another one of those?” she asks the big man before she’s swallowed the last bite.

He turns back in his seat and leans over. Gracie jumps to the door and yanks frantically on the handle. Nothing. To the other door. Nothing. The big man turns back and flips another Twinkie at her.

“Don’t bother, honey. Doors don’t open from inside. We ain’t stupid.”

Gracie considers debating that point with him, but she decides against it. She checks out the nearby cars. Maybe she can get someone’s attention, bang on the window and scream for help. But there is no one … except the blond man carrying a brown bag and walking toward his POS SUV with the kidnapped girl in it.

He doesn’t look much older than the boys on the high school football team. Dad took her and Sam to the big homecoming game last season; the blond man is cute enough to be the homecoming king, except he’s wearing a plaid shirt that looks like Dad’s pajamas. Homecoming kings don’t wear plaid.

He walks to the front of the SUV and lifts the hood. Smoke billows out. He steps back and waves his hand at the smoke like Dad when he tries to barbecue, then he ducks back under. After a minute, he slams the hood down and flings a yellow container aside. Wow, he doesn’t even recycle.

The blond man wipes his hands on his shirt, gets in the car with the bag, and says, “Ten goddamn quarts and we ain’t even halfway home.” He tosses a carton of cigarettes to the big man, who immediately tears into them like Dad into a new bag of Oreos. He then hands the bag back to Gracie. One of his fingers is just a nub. She empties the bag: pink sweats.

She sighs. “Well, kidnapping me is bad enough, but now my mom’s really going to be PO’d at you.”

“Why’s that?” the blond man asks.

“Making me wear clothes from Wal-Mart.”

The blond man chuckles as he puts the car into gear and drives out of the parking lot and back onto Highway 666 North, the sign says.

“Which reminds me—did you like, rape me or something?”

The vehicle suddenly swerves off the road without slowing down, sending the big man’s cigarettes flying—“Jesus Christ!” he says—and Gracie to the seat. The blond man slams on the brakes, stops the car, and practically climbs over the back of his seat. His face is red. He points the three fingers of his right hand at her.

“You think I would do that to you? You think I would let anyone do that to you? You’re pure and you’re gonna stay pure! Anyone tries to dirty you, I’ll kill him!”

She sat up. “You took my uniform.”

“I didn’t look! And you’re wearing them funny underwear, can’t see nothing anyhow. I put you in that blanket real fast.”

“Then why?”

“To throw the Feds off our trail. They ain’t never gonna take you back, Patty.”

“
Patty?
My name is Gracie. Don’t tell me you two morons kidnapped the wrong girl?”

“No, we got the right girl,” the blond man says, turning back in his seat. “That’s your name now.”

And Gracie wonders why …

… The old man at the gas station is looking at their SUV kind of funny. He has a nice face. He’s standing on the other side of the gas pumps, shaking his head, gesturing at their SUV, and saying something to the big man, who’s smoking even though the sign says no smoking. The SUV’s hood is up. The engine must really be on fire now because an even bigger cloud of black smoke hangs in the air under the bright tube lights above. Gracie is wearing the pink sweats now. She inches her head higher. She wants to scream,
Help me!

“Stay down,” the blond man says.

Gracie lies back down. But the old man saw her. And she saw him.

They’re in Idaho …

… And her head is heavy again, murky images and noises all around her, and the thick cigarette smoke suffocates her. A bed in a room but not her bed and not her room. She remembers being carried in the blanket and the same funny wet smell and the same dizziness and unable to resist when they tied her hands and feet again. And sleeping and dreaming and drifting in and out of dark and light for what seems like days, the TV blaring nonstop and mixing with men’s voices and the smell of—
tacos?
—and wondering if they will ever go to sleep.

“Me, I wouldn’t never win a million bucks, them questions is real hard.”

“That’s ’cause you ain’t never watched TV, boy.”

“That big guy right there, they call him Hoss—”

“Bonanza?”

“Why they got so many Mexican channels in Idaho?”

“Go to sleep.”

Laughter.

“That Elmo, he’s a funny sumbitch!”

“Shut up.”

“Gilligan’s always messing up and—”

“Shut the fuck up!”

“That guy there, he’s a doctor and he’s married to her, but he’s screwing the blonde, and—”

“Soaps? Boy, you like a kid with a new toy.”

“Hey, Patty’s on the news!”

“This here show, they put them people on a deserted island, see, then they vote one off each week. Last one left wins a buncha money. Was me, I’d tell them motherfuckers they vote me off I kill ’em.”

“I always liked that about you.”

“Paper says they arrested Jennings last night.”

“Good. The truck’s fixed, let’s hit the road.”

Now they’re back in the POS SUV and Gracie’s lying across the back seat and her eyes droop until …

… She opens her eyes to a greasy face pressed against the window and grinning in at her with several teeth missing.

“She’s a cutie,” he says.

“Get the shit loaded, Dirt,” the blond man says.

When the man called Dirt moves away, his face leaves a big smudge mark on the window glass. The rear hatch and tailgate open and the men push in green metal boxes with long shiny metal containers inside and letters on the side—USAF—and a word she had never seen before—NAPALM—then cover them with a heavy tarp.

“And the brass wonders why their inventory never comes out right,” the man with the missing teeth says.

They all laugh like he’s Jay Leno or something …

… And now she’s lying on a small bed in a small room in a small house. The sheets stink of foul body odor. She’ll have to bathe for a week to get this smell off. They think she’s asleep. She tiptoes to the door and peeks out. The two men are in the big room with another man with red hair who’s holding a long black rifle with a telescope on it and caressing it like a girlfriend. They’re drinking beer and smoking and laughing.

The big man says, “That red hair, ain’t no one gonna believe you’re some Muslim raghead.”

“Don’t matter none,” the man with red hair says. “FBI ain’t never gonna find me. Hell, they can’t find their butts with both hands.”

The big man points a thumb at her room and says, “What does the girl say, Junior? ‘Like,
duh
.’ ”

They all laugh again; then they get real quiet and the big man says, “Easter Sunday, Red. Don’t fuck it up.”

Gracie goes back to the bed and lies down and thinks,
Isn’t Easter Sunday this Sunday?
…

… She sees a sign that says
Cheyenne, Wyoming
.

She’s lying on the back seat of the car again; the two men up front seem happy.

The big man says, “You believe that sumbitch give himself a necktie? Goddamn, we are home free, podna.”

“So can we go through Yellowstone?” the blond man asks. “That’d be real neat for Patty to see.”

“Why sure, Junior. And after that we’ll take her down to Disneyland.” The big man looks at the blond man he calls Junior like he’s nuts; he exhales smoke and says, “This ain’t no fucking family vacation!”

Family?
Did this Junior guy take her to be his …

… Gracie is cold. Her body is shivering uncontrollably. She is all alone. And so terribly afraid. She starts crying. She can’t hold it back any longer. But just when she’s about to lose it big time, she sees him, high up in the sky, floating under a white parachute. And he sees her. Coming closer now, the green beret, the uniform, the medals glistening in the bright sunlight, just like the picture on her desk.

Save me, Ben.

He is coming.

And for the first time since she was taken, she is no longer afraid …