Allison Brennan - The Kill

“Then what happened?” Olivia prompted.

“He leaned over to help her up. At least, that’s what I thought. But she didn’t take his hand, and stumbled over her bike, trying to get up. I started to go over to see if she was hurt.”

“Dear Lord,” Mrs. Vail said, stifling a sob.

Abby bit her lip. “I-I didn’t think anything bad was going to happen, really. I mean, nothing bad happens on our street.”

“It’s okay, Abby. Then what happened?”

“He picked her up and she started kicking and I yelled at him to put her down. I think I yelled for help, too. I-I sort of don’t remember.”

Mr. Vail squeezed her hand. “You did, honey. You did the right thing. I was working in my home office when I heard Abby cry for help. I ran outside and saw Nina’s next-door neighbor, Henry Jorge, running down the street. I didn’t know what I was thinking, except maybe the teenager up the street who just got his license had hit one of the younger kids. We’d talked to his mother twice about his fast driving.” Mr. Vail shook his head. “Sorry.”

“That’s okay,” Olivia said, too familiar with the urge to think and act like everything was normal.

“Abby, what do you remember about the man who took Nina?” Quinn asked.

“I told the policeman who came.”

“I know, but I’d like you to tell us, too.”

“He was tall.”

“Taller than your father?”

Abby shook her head. “No.”

“How tall are you, Mr. Vail?”

“Six foot two.”

“What else did you notice?” Quinn prompted.

“He was kinda old.”

“How old?”

Abby shrugged. All adults seemed old to kids.

“What specifically made you think he was old?”

“He didn’t have a lot of hair.”

“Bald?”

She shook her head, rubbing her nose with the back of her hand. “Short, like a buzz cut, but there was a shiny spot in the back. Grandpa cuts his hair really short because it’s falling out and it doesn’t make him look so old.”

“Could you tell what color?”

She shrugged again. “I don’t really know, there wasn’t a lot of hair. It wasn’t dark, like black or brown, though.”

“What was he wearing?”

She thought. “Jeans. White T-shirt.”

Olivia’s heart pounded. “Did you see anything else that seemed different to you?”

Abby shook her head.

“What about his arms? Were they bare?”

“Yeah, but he had on-” she stopped. “No, it wasn’t a shirt. He had some weird blue thing on his arm.”

“A tattoo?” Olivia asked, hitting herself for leading the girl, but unable to help herself.

“Yeah, it could have been, but it was like smudged.”

“Old tattoos can look that way.”

Olivia’s hands trembled and she put them in her lap. Any doubt that Chris Driscoll was Nina’s abductor vanished.

“Do you know who this man is?” Mr. Vail asked.

Zack and Quinn exchanged looks. Quinn spoke, “We have a couple of good leads.”

“Which means what?”

“Mr. Vail, I’d like to tell you everything we have,” Quinn said, “but in the interest of safety, we can’t say. I will tell you that we have a suspect and between the FBI and Seattle PD, we’re doing everything humanly possible to track him down.”

“Abby, would you be able to describe what you saw to an artist?” Zack asked. “Someone who’ll draw a picture of what you say, so you can help us get a good idea of what he looks like.”

“I don’t remember much.”

“But Mr. Jorge remembers some, and you remember some. Together, I think we’ll have a good idea of what this man looks like.”

“I’ll try.”

“Thank you, Abby.”

Zack stood. “The artist will be in momentarily. Can I get you water? Soda?”

The Vails shook their heads. “Just find Nina. Lydia’s world revolves around her.”

A foul smell awakened her.

Nina coughed, her voice sounding far away, then tasted a mixture of car fumes and dirt. A low, steady hum surrounded her, lulling her as she drifted between sleep and alert, but a sudden ping-ping beneath her jolted her awake.

Something was wrong.

Nina’s entire head felt thick, like when her mother woke her in the middle of the night last year to tell her that Grandma had died. But this was different. It hurt. She shivered in the cold, goosebumps rising on her skin.

Go to sleep. You’re dreaming.

No, it wasn’t a dream. Nina tried to open her eyes, but something held them shut. Like a blindfold. She tried to touch the sore lump on the back of her head, but she couldn’t move her arms. She squirmed. Her hands were bound behind her as she lay on her side.

Then she remembered.

Imprinted in her memory was the face of the man who’d stepped in front of her bike and made her crash.

She was turning the corner from Third to Harrison Drive, her street, when a man was suddenly there in front of her. She swerved to miss hitting him and rode into the bushes, falling from her bike.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he had said, rushing to her.

“I’m fine.” She tried to stand, but her ankle twisted between the bike pedal and frame and she stumbled.

He caught her and she sucked in her breath, staring into very pale eyes, eyes that almost didn’t look real. They didn’t show any feelings and they didn’t look sorry.

Something was wrong with this man, with the way he looked at her. As if he knew her. She drew in a breath to scream and his left hand covered her mouth while he turned her around so his right arm could pin her body against his.

It had happened so fast. One minute she was stumbling from her bike; the next he was moving with her across the sidewalk to a big truck she hadn’t even noticed was there.

“Nina!”

It was her friend Abby, who lived down the street.

She bit the man’s hand and he said a bad word in her ear, but didn’t let go. She kicked backward, trying to hit his private parts, which her mother told her would hurt a lot.

If anyone tries to touch you, scream and kick them in their privates. They’ll let go and you run and run fast.

But she couldn’t connect her foot with him, and suddenly her feet were no longer on the ground as he pulled her up, half carrying her, half shoving her toward the big, white truck. Her arms were pinned to her sides and she wildly kicked her legs in the air.

“Let her go! Help! Someone, help! Help!” Abby started screaming and Nina prayed someone, anyone, was around to help her.

The man pushed her through the door of the truck and slammed her head on the dashboard. Tears streamed down her face from the sharp sting, but she still struggled to free herself.

“Stop!” It was a man’s voice and sounded far away. “You! Stop! I’ve already called the police.”

Nina recognized the man-Mr. Jorge, her next-door neighbor, the one who always complained when Scrappy her orange tabby slept in his daisy bushes. He was going to help her!

Then something hit her hard on the head and she remembered nothing until now, when she woke up to the awful smell of car fumes.

How long had she been sleeping? Where was she? She couldn’t see. She squirmed and found that she could move a little. Though her hands were tied, her feet were free. She wiggled around and realized she could sit up.

The awful stench of exhaust. The bouncing, the low hum of the engine… she was in the back of the truck. The man with the light eyes had taken her, and Mr. Jorge and Abby hadn’t been able to stop him. He was going to do something bad to her. Her mom said if a man took her he’d hurt her, and so she had to run. But she hadn’t run, she hadn’t been able to, and nothing she’d been taught had worked.