James Grippando - The Abduction

“Darn it, Reggie,” she muttered. She shook her hair out, styling it the cool way she liked it, then picked up her book bag and started toward the corner.

The van was just twenty feet behind her.

Kristen ignored him, refusing to look back. Her eyes were fixed straight ahead until she stopped at the corner to check traffic. Not a car in sight. The van rolled through the intersection, right past her. It stopped on the other side of the street, as if positioned to lead her straight to the high school.

She was mad now. What the heck is Reggie up to?

She crossed the street and stopped even with the van. The colored leaves from the canopy overhead reflected off the windshield, making it difficult for her to see inside. But she could make out Reggie’s familiar old driving cap. From the sidewalk, she glared and shouted, “Reggie, we had a deal!”

The engine was running, but the van stayed put.

With angry steps she approached the van and yanked the passenger door open.

She started, then smiled. He was wearing a rubberized Lincoln Howe mask, the most popular mask for Halloween 2000. “Very cute, Reggie. Happy Halloween to you, too.”

The driver grabbed her wrist.

“Reggie, come on-”

She froze in mid-sentence. The hand was white. It wasn’t Reggie.

The grip tightened-the powerful grip of a man much younger than Reggie. A quick yank nearly ripped her arm from its socket. In a split second she was off her feet, flying through the open door. She landed upside down on the passenger seat. Another man grabbed her legs, threw a sack over her head, and pulled her to the rear of the van.

“Go!” he shouted.

The door slammed, the locks clicked. Kristen tried to kick and punch, but her wrists and ankles were bound with plastic cuffs. The heavy sack muted her screams. Her thigh burned with the jab of a needle, like the vaccinations at school.

The driver pulled off his mask and drove away slowly-just like Reggie Miles, the most careful old driver at Wharton Middle School.

A sharp bell rang through the high school halls. Lockers slammed. Cigarette smoke poured from the boys’ and girls’ bathrooms. A fight beneath the stairwell finally broke up, leaving one kid crying. A steady stream of latecomers trickled into Mrs. Roberta Hood’s tenth-grade English class, though a few students just seemed to come and go as they pleased, unwilling to commit to in or out. The raucous Halloween spirit had invaded Martin Luther King, Jr., High School.

Mrs. Hood was middle-aged, but she looked much older. Her hair was completely gray, and her glasses were so thick they distorted her eyeballs. She’d taught high school English for over twenty years, searching for the next Ralph Ellison or Maya Angelou. She was quite certain her protégé wasn’t among the delinquents in the back flicking lighted matches into a waste can.

“Boys, stop it!”

The class laughed as she stomped out the flames. She brushed the ashes from her elaborate costume-authentic black and leopard-spotted robes of African tribal royalty-then returned to her desk and checked the seating chart. Some of the students were too cool for costumes, but many came dressed. Werewolves and vampires were especially popular. She noted the usual no-shows-and one who was not so usual. Her favorite student was missing. She scanned the room to see if she’d taken a different seat, or if she’d just missed her in her costume. She didn’t see her. She rose from her desk and checked the hallway. Not there, either.

A look of concern came over her face. She felt particularly protective of Kristen, given her age and her family’s stature. Kristen had missed class only once before. That time, the assistant principal had called from the middle school to say she wasn’t coming.

Mrs. Hood cleared her throat and called for attention. “Class, quiet, please.”

A mob by the window was fighting to have their palms read by a girl who’d come as a gypsy. The rest of the students kept talking. Even in a magnet high school, it took only a few bad kids to disrupt the entire class, especially on Halloween.

“Claaaaaass!”

Her shriek was louder than even she thought possible. The room was startled into silence. As she paused to catch her breath, the concern in her eyes turned to fear.

“Please,” she said breathlessly. “Has anyone seen Kristen Howe?”

Reggie Miles reached into his pants pocket.

His head was throbbing from the blow he’d received, but it had rendered him unconscious for only a moment. He’d pretended to be out for much longer than he was. Though blindfolded, he’d heard enough to realize they’d gotten Kristen, too.

Reggie hadn’t heard a peep from her since the abduction. He’d overheard the men talking about some kind of injection they’d given her-something to make her sleep. He could still hear them talking, presumably in the front seat. That meant he and Kristen had to be in the back. Engine vibrations told him they were moving, as did the gentle rocking of the vehicle that came with maneuvering through traffic. He was counting the turns-left, right, right again-trying to figure where they were headed. He was losing track, though with all the stops and starts he was sure they had yet to reach the expressway.

His hand moved a centimeter at a time, deeper and deeper into his pocket. The plastic cuffs pinched his wrists, but after twenty minutes he’d worked his hands into the right position. Finally, he reached his key chain. He cupped the entire ring in his palm, so it wouldn’t jingle. He slipped it from his pocket, then slid his hands back into the restrained position, behind his back. Reggie’s fingers weren’t as nimble as they used to be, but fifty years of whittling had made him pretty facile with a jackknife. He opened the blade.

Slowly he started to cut through the plastic ties that bound his wrists.

The Wharton Middle School van pulled into a narrow alley behind an old redbrick warehouse. It bounced over a pile of rusty pipes and a series of muddy potholes, slowing as it reached the garage at the end of the alley. The corrugated metal door rattled as it recoiled on noisy spring hinges. It opened just enough to allow the van to pass, then quickly rolled down. The van stopped inside, beside a white Buick Riviera with New York license plates.

Fluorescent lights blinked on from the rafters overhead, illuminating the garage. Oil stains dotted the cracked cement floors like huge amoebas. Beneath the dusty canvas tarpaulins lay mounds of useless machine parts.

Two men jumped out of the van, both wearing leather gloves and black leather jackets. The driver was Tony Delgado, a heavyset Italian with a Brooklyn accent. His younger brother Johnny was smiling widely.

“Perfecta-mundo!” Johnny crowed. He and his brother slapped each other on the back.

A third man emerged from behind the Buick. He was tall and clean-shaven, easily more handsome than the others. He was younger, too, in his early twenties, closer in age to Johnny than the older Delgado. Tony, the ringleader, had purposely kept his accomplices from meeting each other before the kidnapping, to prevent leaks. He quickly made the introductions.

“Johnny, this is Repo.”

They shook hands. “Repo what?”

“Just Repo.”

Johnny scoffed. “What, like Cher or Madonna?”

He looked confused. “No. Like Repo.”

Tony rolled his eyes. “I don’t give a rat’s ass if it’s like Lassie. Let’s get the little princess out of the van and into the car. You got the trunk ready, Repo? She’s not gonna suffocate in there, right?”

“Have a look for yourself,” said Repo.

Tony glanced at his brother. “Johnny, empty out the van.”

Repo led Tony to the car and popped the trunk. Johnny went to the van and opened the rear emergency door.