Abduction (5 page)

Standing face-to-face with him her eyes confirmed what she had sensed with her body as he had caged her against the door, as he had pinned her down out in the mud.

He was terribly large. Well over six feet, broad and strong. Whatever he wanted with her, he did not need a gun.

For the first time she noticed. Mercury irises. Luminous. Toxic.

Trembling slightly, he spoke with a strained voice.

“Now, tell me what you’re doing in my house.”

TWO: The Stranger

Her brain tripped.

His house.

She stared at him. His bulk. His gun. His hate.

His house.

“I asked you a fucking question.”

His voice quavering. Louder.

“Your house?” she responded, lamely, barely audibly.

“Yes. My fucking house. What are you doing here?”

Of course. How could she have failed to guess? It made sense. Much more sense than that there would be another one like
him
here in the same backwoods chunk of Washington...

“Well…”

It was his house. He was not some serial killer rapist, he was just a guy who was pissed off, and understandably so, to find some girl squatting in his house. But her fear would not abate completely under his seething stare. It was a look that went beyond the anger of a large man who has found that a small girl has broken into his house. And another thought darkening her small hope beneath a shadow of dread: when she had run, why had he not just let her go?

“I was lost in the woods,” she stammered, “and I saw this place. I’d been in the woods for days, I was freezing and hungry. No one was home. Here. I broke in. I’m sorry.” Her stammering stuttering start ended in a breathless gush.

He looked at her skeptically. Under his scrutinizing gaze she barely believed her own story.

“You were just lost in the woods? You just stumbled upon this place?”

“Yes.”

And what were you doing in the woods?”

Because the truth was impossible she lied.

“I was camping with some friends, and I went for a hike.” She was talking too fast. Even to her own ear she sounded weird. “I got lost. I couldn’t find our campground.

I just kept getting more and more lost, and I ended up here.”

“What campground?”

After a damning hesitation she could only come back with, “I don’t remember the name of it.”

“I see.”

He sounded utterly jaded, as if her every utterance emerged from her mouth just as he expected it, perfectly predictable in tone and content.

“Where are you from?” Tense and terse, his voice just dared her to go on lying.

“Seattle.”

“All right. How did you get to the campground?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t driving. I wasn’t paying attention. I’m terrible with directions.”

“Clearly.”

He stared at her for a long time, whittling away the matchstick of composure she was clutching.

“What’s your name?”

“Devan Astor.”

Devanastor. Disaster. Devastator. Devastate her.

He kept her in an agony of suspense, withholding judgment. His gaze drifted, at last, from her face, where he had seemed to be trying to read her lies, and down, over her wet, shivering body, pausing on her mud-soaked shins and feet before it stopped on the mucky mess she had tracked over the floor.

“Take off those socks.”

After a moment of terrified paralysis she complied. It was his house. She was the intruder. But the malevolence in his look and his voice, the strained posture of his massive body, the way his trembling hand went on clutching that gun, she felt little hope that she was out of danger.

Not taking his eyes off her, using his feet, he pried his shoes off.

“And those pants.”

Almost limp with sapping fear she pulled down the sopping, muddied sweat pants, revealing the stranger’s boxers.

The man with the gun looked at her, exasperated.

“Where are your clothes?”

She had trouble finding her voice. When she spoke her words came out on a quavering little wheeze.

“In the garbage.”

“What garbage?”

“In the bathroom.”

“Go get them.”

She turned and walked unsteadily toward the bathroom. He followed her, gun hanging at his side. She went into the bathroom, stooped and pulled out the wad of clothes she had discarded two nights before.

“Forget it, put them back,” he said when he saw the state they were in.

She did as he told her.

“Come on,” he said, backing away from the bathroom door, “into the bedroom.” That phrase, “into the bedroom,” sent a fresh wave of terror crashing over her, knocking the wind out of her. She came out of the bathroom and turned to enter the little bedroom. She thought hopefully of the gun hidden in the folds of the sleeping bag.

“Not that one.”

Her hope crushed she halted, changed course, and entered the stranger’s bedroom. He began opening dresser drawers, pulling out tshirts and sweatpants.

“Okay, back into the bathroom.”

He followed her as she walked back.

“Get in the shower.”

She complied, her fear escalating to a fatal pitch. Helpless. Hopeless. He pulled the shower curtain across, putting its vaguely opaque beige barrier between them.

“Take off everything you’re wearing. Start with the sweatshirt. Take it off, and hand it to me.”

Why? Why was he doing this to her? When she pulled off the sweatshirt the tshirt half came off with it. Frantically she pulled it down, even as she chided herself it was futile, knowing he would make her strip naked. At the same time in her irrational 41

terror she was expecting him to shoot her, over and over, through the shower curtain, at any second. She handed the sweatshirt to him, sticking her arm out past the shower curtain.

“Are you wearing another shirt?”

She didn't answer.

“Hand it to me.”

She peeled off the pointlessly rescued t-shirt and passed it to him.

“Now the boxers.”

She pulled them down and stepped out of them. Now that she was undressed she waited for him to fling back the shower curtain, to stare at her standing there in that tub, naked, cold, terrified. Numbly shaking she put her hand, holding the boxers, through the curtain, and felt them pulled from her grasp.

“And your bra.”

She was silent.

“Hand me your bra.”

Palpable malevolence in his quiet voice.

“I’m not wearing one.”

She said it as quietly, as quickly, as tonelessly as possible, keeping herself from him as much as she could. She would not cry. She would not cry.

A moment later the dry sweat pants and t-shirt the man had taken from the dresser appeared through the opening in the curtain. Tentatively, she took them, then put them on. She was ready to sob with sudden relief, to be dressed again, to not be struggling violently and futilely against him in one of the thousand awful scenes that had 42

played through her mind on extreme fast forward from the moment he had caught her. A few hot tears slipped down her face before she could stop them.

“Are you dressed?”

She did not answer but wiped away her tears so he would not see her cry.

Fuck him. Fuck him for scaring me this way.

“I’m going to pull the curtain back, okay?”

There was a whine of metal on metal as the rings sung over the rod and the shower curtain shrank away.

“All right, come on out.”

He directed her into the living room and over to the sofa.

“Sit down.”

She sat. She watched as he went to the back door, opened it, leaned out, and dragged in a large pack, shut and locked the door. He stood there for a moment, hesitating over something. His second of stillness burst into startling movement, and he stomped into the kitchen. His eyes off her for a moment, she thought of running for the door again, or for the gun hidden away in the little bedroom. From the kitchen he looked back at her.

She had not moved. He took a tumbler down from a cupboard, and a whiskey bottle down from another, and half filled the glass. He walked back to the living room, threw two logs onto the dying fire, and sat on the hearth, opposite her, and took a drink.

In silence he went on, just sitting there, slugging his whiskey, eyeing her distrustfully.

She watched him. His body seemed to belong there, in that forest, among the huge hard trees and boulders. It looked like it could crush her. And his eyes seemed to 43

be trying to pry her open. That look, unflinching, penetrating, objectifying as if she were a mere thing for him to examine, was unraveling her precariously propped-up calm second by second.

“Do you know who I am?”

The sudden bluntness of this disconcerting question caught her off balance. She whispered her reply.

“No.”

“You didn’t come here, somehow, looking for souvenirs, or hoping to see me, maybe get a photo, maybe catch me in some juicy situation?” She just stared, her mind not tracking. Then, through the sounding alarm, prodding familiarity. His face…and now that it was on this track, her mind went back to the letters in the desk—maybe the name was familiar, too.

“Well, I’ll have a look around, and if I find anything missing, or if I find a camera of yours stashed away, you and I will have another talk.”

“There’s no camera. And I didn’t take anything,” she blurted defensively, thinking of souvenir-like things.

Then she remembered the pack filled with provisions. And the gun. He would find them.

“I mean, I didn’t mean to steal from you. I just wanted to get home somehow, to hike out of here. I packed some supplies.”

“Supplies?”

“I found a pack in your closet, I filled it with food and stuff. I was going to leave in the morning.”

“Leave? To go where?”

“To try to find my way to a town or something.”

“Show me. Get the bag.”

She stood and walked back toward the little bedroom. He followed her, drink in one hand, gun in the other. She went to the corner where she had left the pack. She stared down at it, considering the gun tucked away deep in the rolled folds of the sleeping bag. What would she do if she grabbed it? Force him to put his gun down? Tie him up? What if she shot him? Murdered a man whose house she had broken into?

More likely, he would see her pull the gun out from the bag and shoot her. She set the sleeping bag on the floor and lifted the pack.

“Bring it out here.”

They returned to their seats in the living room.

“Open it up.”

She uncinched the pack and began pulling out the supplies she had stashed inside: cans of food, clothes, matches, knives. He raised the gun and pointed it at her face.

“Put those down.”

She set the two knives, the big one and the little one, on the floor between them.

She sat back up, then stayed still. He stooped, grabbed the knives, then took them into the kitchen, stashing them in a drawer. He went back to his seat, then, keeping the gun on her, reached over and pulled the pack away from her. He pulled out the remaining supplies and the books she had packed:
A Light in August
and
The Stranger
.

He looked at her, scrutinizing her all over again, then laughed a low growling laugh.

“You can’t ‘hike’ out of here.

“What do you mean? How’d you get here?”

”I was driven in the twenty odd miles from the road as far as the terrain allows, and hiked in the last nine miles. We’re thirty miles from anything—any road,” he laughed a humorless, mocking laugh, “or any campground. And I’d say the nearest town is about sixty miles off.”

He had finished in the tone of a summation, as if he had offered an irrefutable proof against the legitimacy of her story. But it was her turn to be skeptical. The ridiculous isolation of the cabin and his fear of her being there to spy on him and steal souvenirs seemed like megalomaniacal fantasy. She remembered, though, that going over a waterfall had been part of her journey to this place. Perhaps what he was saying was true.

“Who are you?”

He regarded her suspiciously for a moment, then finally answered.

“Vaughn Doe.”

“Vaughn Doe?”

It was the name she had seen on the envelopes, but she still didn't know who he was. He smiled, sarcastically, as if he were indulging her in a duplicitous game.

“Yes, Vaughn Doe. Lead singer of Halcyon.”

“Oh.”

Of course she had heard their music—they had been around forever—but she had only a hazy image of the lead singer to recall, perhaps from a magazine cover glanced at in line at the grocery store check-out. The man with the gun stood, went to a trunk by the bookshelf, opened it, and pulled out a CD case. He came back and held it out to her. She took it and examined it. There he was, standing next to three other guys in predictable album cover choreography. His huge frame, his dark hair, his strange, lambent eyes.

“So that’s you. You really thought I broke in here like some kind of insane groupie.”

“I still do.”

If she had not been so scared she would have laughed. A groupie. She, who was left out of every idle conversation at school because she was so out of it when it came to anything pop culture. But it was impossible to feel amused under the heat of his stare.

He was looking at her like he might be trying to incinerate her with his strangely glinting eyes. Burn her up like a loathsome insect under a magnifying glass. His hateful stare and the chill air were pricking her flesh, raising goose bumps on her bare forearms and down her neck and back. Under his eyes she felt naked. She wanted desperately to cross her arms over her chest, cover her breasts that to her felt so exposed with no bra, so visible, it seemed to her, under the thin fabric of his t-shirt. She was so aware of them she felt he had to be aware of them, too. But, determined not to draw his attention to her discomfort, to her awareness of her vulnerability, she rubbed her hands up and down her arms, trying to chafe off the cold of the air and his stare.