Picture This (5 page)

I stayed inside the whole of the next day. I don't know how many times I peeked out the windows. Maybe dozens. Maybe hundreds.

The phone rang just before dinner. Mr. Ashdale answered it. He was on the phone for a long time. When he finally hung up, he came into the kitchen, where I was helping Mrs. Ashdale make a salad.

“That was an Officer Firelli,” he said. “He called to let us know that they had made some arrests based on the identifications made by you and some other witnesses.”

Mrs. Ashdale breathed a sigh of relief.

“Thank goodness that's over,” she said.

Mr. Ashdale and I looked at each other. I could tell by the grim look on his face that he was thinking the same thing I was—it wasn't anywhere near over. The cops had made some arrests. They had picked up some guys on weapons charges. But no one had been killed. No one had even been hurt. It was just a matter of time before the guys who had been arrested were let out on bail—and probably not very much time either. Then what? If they really had been shooting at me, what if they decided to try again? And what if, next time, they didn't miss?

Chapter Eight

Mrs. Ashdale talked to Officer Firelli the next day. Most of the guys the cops had arrested were already out on bail, with strict conditions. The only one who had been detained was the Nine-Eight who had chased me to the bus. Apparently this wasn't his first weapons charge.

I felt like one of those teenagers in a horror movie. I kept holding my breath and looking over my shoulder. Mrs. Ashdale drove me to the community center for the next couple of days and picked me up in the afternoon on her way to get Alan and Tricia from camp. While I was there, I stayed inside. I didn't even leave the building to pick up a pizza slice or some fries for lunch with the others from the Picture This program. I also stayed in all night every night.

Nothing happened.

By the end of the week, I had relaxed a little. Maybe Detective Catton was right. Maybe the Nine-Eights were scared to come after me again so soon. Maybe they knew the cops would go straight to them if anything happened to me. Maybe they thought I wasn't worth it. After all, I didn't live in the area anymore and never set foot in their territory. By the next Sunday, just over a week after the shooting, my life went back to normal. I got up that morning, put on my sneakers and slipped my camera into a fanny pack.

“Going to the ravine?” Mrs. Ashdale asked me.

I nodded. I went for a run in the ravine every Sunday morning. Right afterward, I spent time in the cemetery. It was the biggest and oldest one in the city. Lots of famous people were buried there. I'd discovered it when I moved in with the Ashdales. I'd also found out that it was a great place to take pictures—of gravestones and mausoleums, of trees and flowers and birds, and of people. Especially of people. All kinds of people came and stood in front of the graves of people they knew. You'd think that most of them would be sad, but not all of them were, not by a long shot. That was what fascinated me. I had started taking a series of pictures of those people. So far I had people who looked sad, people who were crying and people who looked lost. I also had people who looked smug, people who were nodding with satisfaction, and one man who was smiling at the name on the headstone he was looking at.

“Maybe you should ask Bill to go with you,” Mrs. Ashdale said.

“I'll be fine.” Besides, Sunday was Mr. Ashdale's day to catch up on his newspapers. He loved to read the papers but didn't always have time. On Sunday he drank coffee and read his way through the pile that had accumulated during the week.

“At least take my cell phone,” Mrs. Ashdale said. “Just in case.”

I didn't want her to worry, so I tucked it into the pocket of my shorts. Then I set out for the ravine.

As usual, there were a few other runners down there and a few people walking their dogs. And, as usual, I was surprised that the place wasn't crammed with people. It was so peaceful down there. It was the next best thing to being out in the country.

I ran the same route I always did. I started across the street from the south end of the cemetery and ran down the path alongside the river. The first half of the run was always the easiest. It was a gentle downhill slope all the way. Then came the loop, a long curve away from the road and away from the river. I hardly ever saw anyone down there, and that Sunday was no exception. There were days when I wished that loop would go on forever and that I would never see another person. I breathed in deeply. All I could hear was the crunch of my sneakers on the gravel path and the song of birds from the treetops on either side of me. I couldn't help thinking about Sara. She'd said she had seen me running down here before. I wondered if she would see me today—and if I would see her.

I knew I was halfway through my run when I saw the gate up ahead. It was always padlocked, and it blocked access to the massive houses that perched on top of the ravine. You couldn't see the houses this time of year, when the trees were covered in leaves. But in winter, through the naked branches, they were impossible to miss. They were all massive, and they sat on a ravine-side road in the most expensive part of the city. I'd never seen any of those houses from the front, but when I ran in winter, I always imagined what it must be like for the people living up there. I imagined them cozy and warm, sipping cocoa and looking out over the treetops. It must be like living in the country.

I was approaching the gate when it happened. My foot got tangled up on something, and I went crashing to the ground. I threw out my hands to break my fall. They hit the gravel and skidded. I felt sharp pebbles biting into the palms of my hands. Then my knees hit, hard, and a searing pain shot up both my legs. I was on my hands and knees, wondering what I had tripped on, when everything went black. Someone had put some kind of hood over my head so that I couldn't see. Then I felt something slip over the hood and tighten around my neck. I panicked.

I grabbed at whatever was around my neck. It was a rope. I tried to loosen it, but instead it got tighter.

A voice said, “If you struggle or make a noise, you'll be sorry.”

Then someone jerked hard on the rope, almost choking me.

“Get up,” he said.

I tried again to get my hands on the rope. The man jerked on it again, tightening it even more.

“Get up,” he said.

I got up. He grabbed one of my arms and started tugging at me. I tripped. His fingers bit into my arm as he hauled me to my feet. He shoved me ahead of him, holding me so that I didn't fall again. Something brushed against my leg. That's when I realized that I wasn't on the gravel path anymore.

The man slammed me against something. A car. He jerked my arms behind my back and tied them with the same rope that he had slipped around my neck. I tried to struggle, but when I did, the rope tightened around my neck. I heard a throaty chuckle. What was going on? Who was this man? What was he going to do with me?

He grabbed me by my tied hands and yanked me away from the car. I listened hard, trying to figure out what was going on. I heard a sound, like the trunk of a car popping open. Then the man shoved me forward again so that my head and shoulders were inside the trunk. He grabbed my legs. I kicked hard to try to stop him. The rope around my neck got tighter. The man was strong. He shoved my legs into the trunk. Then he slammed the trunk shut, and I felt myself go cold all over. I was going to die.

Chapter Nine

I tried to fight back the terror that surged through me. Where was he taking me? Why had he grabbed me in the first place? I squirmed and struggled, and then panicked again when the rope around my neck got tighter. I forced myself to lie still. I pushed my arms up my back as far as I could to release some of the pressure on the rope. It worked. But I still felt panicky. The hood over my head made it hard to breathe, and the air in the trunk was hot and stale. I began to worry that the trunk was airtight and I would use up all the air before I got wherever we were going.

I remembered that I had Mrs. Ashdale's cell phone in the pocket of my shorts. I tried to reach it with my hand. But that just tightened the rope again, and I had to reposition my hands and arms so that I could breathe.

At first the car stopped and started a lot. That had to mean we were still in the city; he was stopping for red lights and stop signs. I twisted myself onto my back. Every time the car stopped, I kicked the lid of the trunk as hard as I could with both feet, over and over again. I yelled for help. I prayed that someone would hear me and call the police.

Then there were no more stops, and I knew we were on the highway. I tried to stay calm. Maybe someone had heard. Maybe someone had called the cops and given them the license number of the car. Maybe someone would come to my rescue.

The car kept moving. It seemed to be going faster and faster.

Panic crept over me again.

After what seemed like an eternity, the car slowed down a little.

Then it turned onto a bumpy road, and I heard pebbles
ping
against the hubcaps.

The bumpy road turned washboardy, and I was jarred and jostled inside the trunk.

Finally the car stopped. I held my breath. Now what?

I heard a car door open and then close again. The trunk popped open and cool fresh air flooded in. Rough hands grabbed me, yanking me out of the trunk and dumping me onto the ground. The hood was ripped off my head.

I felt like I was going to throw up. Blood rushed to my head, and my knees wobbled. I stared at the man who had hauled me out of the trunk. I was sure I recognized his cold, hard eyes and small, mean mouth. I was sure he was the same man who had held me up in the alley. But why? And why had he brought me here?

He pushed me over to a birch tree and forced me down into a sitting position. My tailbone landed on something sharp. I let out a yelp. The man ignored it and tied me to the trunk of the tree. When he had finished, he unbuckled my fanny pack and opened it. He pulled out my camera and turned it on. He scrolled quickly through the pictures. He must have come to one that interested him, because he stopped and stared at it. Then he dropped the camera onto a rock and started to stomp on it with one booted foot. He stomped and stomped until my camera was smashed to pieces. Then he went back to the car and got a shovel out of the backseat. He started to dig a hole. This couldn't be happening to me. It just couldn't.

“Why?” I said. The word came out of me the way it might come out of a frog, like a croak.

The man didn't even look at me. He just kept digging.

“Is it because I wouldn't give you my backpack?” I said.

He paused in his digging and looked at me.

“You should have handed it over like you were told, Ethan,” he said. I stared at him. He knew my name. “If you had, we wouldn't be here right now.”

“But there was nothing in it,” I said.

He started digging again.

I looked at my smashed-up camera. Is that what he had been after the whole time? I glanced at him again.

“It was you who went by the youth center asking about me, wasn't it?” I said.

He didn't answer. But it must have been him. He'd asked DeVon about the program. He'd asked to see my pictures.

DeVon had told him I never backed my pictures up.

Sara had told him I always had my camera with me when I ran in the ravine on Sunday morning.

“You shot at me outside the Eaton Centre too,” I said. It had to have been him. “How did you know I would be there?”

He shook his head. “I do my homework, Ethan,” he said. “I always do my homework.”

“But the Nine-Eights,” I said. “How did they know?”

Then I remembered Mrs. Ashdale's fridge calendar. It had been on the floor after the break-in. Whoever had trashed the house must have seen it. My dentist appointment had been on it. So had the Eaton Centre.

The man's mouth turned up into a smile. “Someone must have told them,” he said.

Someone? He meant himself.
He
had put the Nine-Eights on me.

I sat there, my brain reeling, watching the man dig. He was going to kill me. I was sure of it. But why? What had I ever done to him? And what did my camera have to do with anything?

While he dug, I tried to untie the rope around my wrists. It was tight. And my butt was sore from whatever I had landed on when he pushed me down. I shifted positions as much as I could and felt behind me. No wonder my butt was sore. I'd been sitting on a sharp piece of rock.

A really sharp piece.

I maneuvered my wrists so that they were against the rock's sharpest edge.

I started to move them up and down, up and down, carefully so that the man wouldn't see what I was doing, but firmly so that maybe, with some luck, the rock would bite into the rope.

Up and down.

Up and down.

Sweat started to pour off me.

I'd never been so scared in my life.

The man dug and dug. He hummed while he worked. He was enjoying himself. He wasn't the least bit worried that he would be interrupted. He had chosen this spot well.

Up and down.

Up and down.

The hole got deeper and deeper. It got longer too. Just the right size for a person.

For me.

Up and down.

Up and… I could feel the rope starting to give, but not nearly enough. The man climbed up out of the hole.

“Please,” I said. “Let me go. I won't say anything. I swear. Please just let me go.”

The man's cold, hard eyes peered at me.

“Really, Ethan,” he said. “How stupid do you think I am?”

He planted the shovel into the pile of dirt he had dug out of it and went over to the car. I continued to rub the rope against the rock while he opened the car door and leaned across the front seat. My eyes were burning. I felt like I was going to cry. I felt even worse when the man backed out of the car. He was holding a gun in his hand. I froze up. He tucked the gun into the back of his pants and started toward me.