April Henry - Girl, Stolen

Who knew if anyone was watching her now or if a bush covered the window? Who knew that even if she managed to get out, she wouldn’t immediately find an obstacle — that out-of-control dog, a barbed-wire fence, or a man with fists or even a gun? Who knew that Griffin wouldn’t just break down the door, run to the window, and shoot her in the back?

There was no time to think, no time to hesitate. Cheyenne took a deep breath and slid the window up, praying that Griffin wouldn’t hear the faint rattle over the water gurgling down the sink’s drain. At the base of her throat, she could feel her heart pounding. She fought back the urge to cough. She tucked the trail of cord into her sock, so that it wouldn’t catch on anything. Moving fast, Cheyenne put down the seat and lid on the toilet, climbed up, and braced her hands on the windowsill.

Cheyenne had been in the bathroom for a long time. But Griffin didn’t want to hover outside. He didn’t want to look all pervy. Instead, he paced back and forth in the hall.

Finally, he knocked softly on the door. No answer. He called her name and knocked louder.

Only then did he think of the window in the back of the bathroom. Crap! He tried to turn the knob, but it was locked. Griffin remembered hearing the lock click into place, remembered thinking she was modest for running the water, and knew that he had been played for a fool.

He slammed his shoulder into the door. The impact made his teeth clack together, but the door held firm. Bracing himself in the narrow hallway, he turned and kicked sideways at the door like a kung-fu guy he had seen on a TV movie. He kicked it once, twice, and then on the third try, something snapped and the door swung open.

A blast of cold air hit him in the face. So cold it was a wonder it hadn’t seeped under the door and alerted him to what she had done. The bathroom window gaped open. He ran to it and looked out. Outside, everything was still. There wasn’t even a breeze to ruffle the pine needles. The woods began about twenty feet from the house. He hadn’t left her in the bathroom that long. Even in a worst-case scenario, even if Cheyenne had gone deep into the woods, he should still be able to hear her crashing through the underbrush. Instead it was quiet.

How could that be? But he had already noticed how sure-footed she was, placing each foot as carefully as a cat, drawing back whenever she felt something that wasn’t quite right.

Even if he couldn’t see her, she couldn’t have gotten very far. The quicker he went after her, the quicker he would catch her. His half-formed plan was to bring her back, tie her up again, and convince her not to say anything to Roy. If his dad found out, Roy would beat Griffin black and blue. And probably Cheyenne as well. And that was if Griffin found Cheyenne and brought her back. If he didn’t find her — well, he didn’t like to think about what would happen then.

He had to hurry and find her before she hurt herself. It would be harder to keep the whole thing a secret if she came back all scratched up. A branch could catch her in the throat or poke her in the eye. She could sprain her ankle on the uneven ground.

Right now she must be moving as fast as she could through the woods, knowing that the only thing she had on her side was a little bit of time. Griffin felt a grudging respect.

He stepped up on the toilet seat and grabbed the casement. He was just swinging his leg out when the faintest of sounds made him look toward the tub. Now that he was two feet off the ground, he could just see over the blue shower curtain with its faded green and yellow seahorses.

And what he saw was Cheyenne, crouched in the tub. Hiding behind the shower curtain.

Her hand was pressed to her mouth, and her face was tilted up. Her eyes seemed to be looking right at him, and it was the oddest thing to see her expression not change when he looked back at her. She wasn’t completely still. A fine tremble was washing over her body, so that she almost looked as if she were vibrating. He could tell that she was listening with every fiber of her being. Waiting for him to leap out the window and go running after a figment of his imagination. While she did — what? Found a phone and locked herself in a room? Ran out the front door and tried to find the road? Even hid in the house, figuring they would never look for her there?

As he balanced, half in and half out of the window, staring at Cheyenne, Griffin heard the sound of two cars, one right after the other, cutting through the crystalline air. He identified them as the Honda and the pickup, which was almost as bad as if it had been Roy’s Suburban. TJ and Jimbo were back.

In a few minutes, the two men would be in the house, wanting to ogle Cheyenne, wanting to talk about what they had seen at the shopping mall, wanting to boast about their bravery in retrieving the Honda.

In a single movement, Griffin pulled his leg back in and jumped, not out the window, but into the tub. With a sound like firecrackers, the shower curtain rings popped as the curtain ripped away under his weight. Underneath the damp, sour-smelling plastic, Cheyenne twisted frantically. He wrapped his arms around her muffled form. While he still could, before the engines cut out and the two men made their way into the house, he risked shouting at her.

“Listen to me!” He shoved her back against the tiled wall. Her head made a hollow thunk. “Listen! In a minute, those guys will be in here. And if they know you were trying to escape, they’ll tell Roy. And he’ll make our lives a living hell.” He gave her another shake for emphasis. “ Both our lives. Do you want to get beat up and hog-tied? Do you?”

The shower curtain slid down from her face. Her lips were pulled back in a snarl. “I know your name. It’s Griffin. And now I know for sure that your dad’s name is Roy. When I tell the police that, they’ll find you in a minute.”

He grabbed her upper arms, hard, and he didn’t slacken his grip, even when Cheyenne cried out in pain.

“Do you just want to die?” Griffin hissed. “Is that it? You start pointing stuff like that out to my dad, he’s not going to feel like letting you go.”

Inside, he was shaking. Every second it seemed like all the choices got worse and worse. And there was no way to undo what he had done. If only he had spent two seconds checking in the backseat! A two-second mistake was going to destroy his life. Cheyenne was right, Griffin knew. If Roy let her go, the police would find them without too much trouble. And then what?

Suddenly, she went slack. “All right,” she said, her voice low. “Help me get out of here and then you can tie me back up. Quick.”

He hustled her out of the bathroom — closing the door on the tattletale ripped shower curtain — and then back into his room. He pulled the cord that was tied around her ankle out of her sock and quickly looped it around the bedpost. What about her hands? He had cut off the shoelaces, and the remainder of the cord he had used to tie her ankle was out on the kitchen counter. Griffin had taken two steps to get it when he heard the front door open.

He barely had time to turn back and hiss, “Quick — put your hands behind your back!” before TJ and Jimbo were thumping down the hall.

“You should’ve seen it!” Jimbo crowed. He had added a black down jacket over his coat. Griffin wondered how he had been able to fit behind the steering wheel. “That place was crawling with cops. And they had two of those portable news vans there with reporters doing stand-ups. One was that hot redhead on Channel Three. And they had yellow crime-scene tape up around a bunch of parking spaces — must have been where the Escalade was parked.”