The Night She Disappeared (20 page)

As an afterthought, I open the glove compartment. And there it is. A gun.

I pick it up by the grip, not putting my finger anywhere near the trigger. It feels serious. Deadly.

I get out of the car and show Drew, careful to keep the barrel pointed toward the ground. He squints in the darkness.

“Holy crap—Miguel has a gun?”

“I guess.” I realize I’m wincing, already braced for the sound it could make. “Have you ever fired one?”

Drew shakes his head. “One of my mom’s boyfriends had one, and I saw it on the dresser. But he would have beaten my butt if I touched it.” He offers the tire iron. “Want to trade?”

I try to think logically about a situation that is no longer logical. “I don’t think I’m strong enough to really do any damage with a tire iron. Besides, we’re not going to use it. Just threaten him if we have to.” I look toward the house and see a shadow walk past the curtains. “Let’s go. And if we see anything weird, or any hint that Kayla is there for sure, we call the cops.”

Drew doesn’t argue.

The gravel is noisy, so we run on the dark road. All too soon, we’re crouched at the edge of the lawn. The lights are on in all the rooms of the house, but the curtains are drawn.

“Look!” Drew whispers, pointing. There’s a vertical line of light in the big window at the front, a gap where the curtains don’t quite meet. We nod at each other and then scurry across the yard. I feel so exposed, like at any moment a spotlight—or a bullet—will find me. My heart is beating in my ears. My breath comes in gasps. I close my mouth, trying not to let the sound out.

Drew looks inside first. He stiffens, then glances back and touches my arm. He moves his head an inch or two so I can see.

There’s a guy scrabbling through a desk drawer, muttering to himself. He’s about ten feet away, his face half turned away from us. At first I think the room is full of doll houses, but then I realize they’re models of buildings.

Finally, he straightens up so that we can see all of his face. I put my hand on Drew’s arm to steady myself. I know this guy with short dark hair and wire frame glasses. He comes into Pete’s all the time, and he always jokes with me. Silly, superficial jokes that you forget as soon as he turns away. He always orders whatever meatless slices we have. He’s just some harmless guy as old as my dad.

Only what he’s taking out of the drawer is a gun.

And before we have time to react, he turns and runs down a set of stairs at the far left of the room.

Drew and I stare at each other. I fumble my phone from my pocket, but before I can even press the nine, a sound comes from the basement that chills my bones.

It’s a woman. Screaming.

The Fourteenth Day

Drew

GABIE’S DIALING 911,
but there’s no time for that. I should have listened to her. No matter what Thayer told us, I should have called them first thing. I try the door. Locked. I slam my shoulder into it. It shakes, but stays solid in the frame. I try again. And again. I’m getting noplace fast.

Kayla screams again. At least I think it’s Kayla. I hope it’s Kayla. I slam my shoulder again, ignoring the pain.

Or should I be hoping it isn’t her?

Gabie is telling the police where we are, so panicked her words are running into each other. I hear her say something about a man with a gun and screams. But she never says Kayla’s name. Which is probably a good move if we want them to believe us.

My shoulder feels like it’s broken, but the door isn’t budging. Then I remember the tire iron. I smash it into the window at the top of the door, then knock away most of the shards. But the lock’s pretty far down. I have to stand on tiptoe and reach all the way to my elbow to get to the lock and turn it. A piece of glass slices into my arm as I pull it back out, but it doesn’t hurt. There’s just a fast, slippy feeling as it parts my flesh.

Already swinging the tire iron in front of me, I open the door, growling as if the guy is going to be right there. Gabie’s close behind me.

“They’re on their way,” she says, shoving her phone into her pocket. But we both know that by the time they get here, Kayla or whoever is screaming might be dead for real.

“Cover me,” I say, because it sounds like the thing to say. Gabie raises the gun to shoulder level, and I just hope she doesn’t shoot me with it. We race down the worn wooden stairs into darkness. Just around the corner, I hear another scream and a grunt of pain. Is it really Kayla? All I know for sure is that whoever is screaming is a woman.

“Police!” I shout, making my voice as deep and as authoritative as possible. Maybe I can buy us some time until the real police get here.

I round the corner at the bottom of the stairs. Twenty feet ahead of me, light spills out of a doorway to a narrow white room. It reveals the shadowy contours of a low-ceilinged basement with a concrete floor. I have a vague impression of a workbench to our right. But I only have eyes for the guy. He’s facing the light, with his back to us.

And standing silhouetted in the doorway of that small, windowless room is—oh, my God!—Kayla. Her hair is matted, and she looks skinny and dirty, but it’s Kayla, all right. Holding a short board like a softball bat, cocked above her right shoulder. She must have already hit him once, because there is blood on the side of his face.

His free hand comes away from his cheek, his fingertips dark with blood. Now he’s lifting his gun.

“Drop your weapon!” I yell. But the guy doesn’t move. He’s going to kill Kayla.

Gabie lets out a little moan. Just as I whip my head around to see what’s wrong, she pulls the trigger on her own gun.

There’s the faintest little plasticky pop.

“Ow!” With his free hand, the guy swipes at the back of his neck. The undamaged back of his neck.

Oh, crap. Reality sinks in. Miguel didn’t have a
gun
in his car. He had a BB gun. And those two little letters are probably going to make the difference between at least one of us living or dying.

I have to do something, but in the time it will take to tackle him, he could shoot Kayla. So I shout and throw the tire iron at his head. And watch with horror as it misses him by an inch and goes clattering into the dark. But along with the tire iron, blood flies off my fingertips and splatters all over the guy, Kayla, and even the walls, like I’m some kind of crazy Jackson Pollock. My hand and arm look like they’ve been dipped in red paint. The guy with the gun grimaces and tries to wipe the blood off his face with the heel of his hand.

Kayla takes advantage of that moment of distraction to swing the board again. Not at his head, but at the gun. It skitters across the concrete floor into the darkness.

Now it’s three of us against one of him, and nobody has a gun. The tables are turning.

Then suddenly the light is gone, and the tables have turned back again. The four of us are alone in the dark—but only one of us knows the layout of the basement. There’s just a faint square of light at the top of the stairs. Everyone moves, everyone cries out, so there’s a confused jumble of noise and shifting shadows.

“Kayla!” Gabie shouts. “Kay—” Her voice is choked off. I spin in a circle, my hands outstretched, trying to figure out where she is.

I hear scrabbling, and then two dim figures lurch to the base of the stairs. It’s the guy. He’s got Gabie in a head-lock. And his right hand is pressing something that flashes silver against the side of her neck. At first I think it’s a knife, but then I realize it’s a screwdriver from the workbench.

I look around for Kayla. She’s on her knees, head hanging down, one hand inside the little room that must have been her prison, the other pressed against her stomach. She isn’t holding the board anymore. Did he hurt her? Jab her with the screwdriver before he took Gabie?

“You. Boy. Get that flashlight.” He jerks his head at where it hangs on the workbench. I do as he says, revealing the black flashlight-shaped outline he has traced on the pegboard. “Now find the gun and give it to me, or I’ll stab Gabie so hard it will come out the other side.”

It doesn’t seem possible that my anxiety could be any greater, but when I hear Gabie’s name in his mouth, I want to scream. He digs the screwdriver in a little deeper. A tiny dark line snakes down the white skin of Gabie’s throat.

He’s got her head pulled so far back that I can’t see her eyes. But I can hear her voice. “Don’t do it,” Gabie chokes out. “Don’t listen to him.” I know what she’s thinking. Once he has the gun, what’s to stop him from shooting all three of us?

But I do. I do listen to him. Because his eyes are crazy and his mouth is set, and I know he will kill Gabie right now if I don’t do what he wants. And I can’t just stand there and watch that happen.

There’s another empty outline on the pegboard, one shaped like the screwdriver he has pressed against her neck. The board still holds a couple dozen tools: wrenches, hammers, putty knives, saws. While they all look like they could inflict some damage at close range, none of them are worth the risk. I thumb the flashlight on, then walk to the corner where I saw the gun go flying.

“Hurry up!” he barks, and for punctuation Gabie lets out a whimper. How far has he pressed it into her? I think of all the important stuff that runs through your neck, like we learned in biology. The trachea. The jugular vein. The spine.

The flashlight picks up a black gleam. The gun. I switch the flashlight to my left hand, pick up the gun and straighten up. Even though I’m moving quickly, time slows down. My thoughts tumble over themselves as I wonder if I have the courage or the stupidity to try shooting him when he’s tucked himself right behind Gabie. I turn around, still not sure what to do. And that’s when Kayla launches herself past me with a wordless scream. In her hands is something white and narrow and about six inches long.

Then the three of them are a shouting, screaming, grunting blur on the floor. A girl cries out. Sirens cut through the air, getting louder. But I don’t think they’ll get here in time.

I swing the flashlight over. The guy gets to his feet, pressing one hand against his bloody side where his shirt has been sliced open. Kayla and Gabie are still on the floor. He kicks Kayla. Hard. Then Gabie. They don’t seem to be moving. He takes two steps to the pegboard. His fingers run over it and stop at a huge silver monkey wrench. He yanks it off its pegs, turns back, and lifts it high overhead.

And that’s when I pull the trigger.

The Fourteenth Day

Kayla

THE SOUND
of the gun going off is so loud that I can’t hear anything for a few seconds afterward.

Then I dimly become aware of sirens wailing and men shouting, “Police! Police!”

“Down here,” I yell, then start to push myself up. My bloody hand slips on the painted concrete floor, and I fall onto someone else. Someone warm and wet. It’s him, I know it. Gagging with revulsion and fear, I scramble back. But when a flashlight slices down the stairs, I see it’s Gabie. Her neck is shiny with blood as red as paint, and more blood is running down to pool on the cement floor.

“Help us!” I scream, and press my hand against her throat. “She’s hurt!” The hot blood seeps between my fingers.

The first cop down the stairs points his gun past us. Right at Drew.

“Put down your weapon!”

I whip my head around. Drew is frozen, one hand holding a flashlight loose at his side, his other hand still wrapped around the gun, blood dripping from his arm. His eyes are fixed on what lies just behind Gaby and me, the remains of the man who held me prisoner. Drew’s lips are pulled back in an expression that’s halfway between a grimace and a growl. He seems completely unaware of the cop.

I realize if Drew doesn’t put the gun down soon, the cop is going to decide that he might just be the bad guy.

“Drew,” I say in the most soothing and reasonable tone I can muster, “it’s okay. Put the gun down and help me with Gabie.”

He stares at me, unmoving. The moment stretches out. I don’t think any of us even blink. Finally Drew gives his head a little shake, then bends down and lays first the flashlight and then the gun on the floor. As the first cop holsters his gun, more cops come running down the stairs.

Drew yanks the red Pete’s shirt over his head and throws it to me. I press it against Gabie’s throat. She’s not moving at all. I tell myself she’s still alive. She has to be. I mean, dead people don’t keep bleeding, do they?

The lights come on, and we all blink. There’s so much blood it looks fake, especially splashed around in this tidy room where the only things out of place are the blood-drenched people. Gabie looks like a girl cleverly fashioned of wax. The cops are barking orders, calling for ambulances, bending over the body of the guy who kidnapped me. One of them pushes me aside and starts working on Gabie. A second one starts to wrap something around Drew’s arm.

I stand up and back out of the way. And when the one who put his fingers against the guy’s throat straightens up and shakes his head, relief surges through me. It’s over. It’s really over. My knees buckle, and I almost fall down.

“Kayla,” Drew calls out, and I tear my gaze away from the dead guy. Instead I look at Drew, at his bright blue eyes. “Gabie always knew,” he says. “She tried to tell everyone you were still alive.”

FIVE MINUTES LATER,
two paramedics are strapping Gabie to a backboard. The cops have separated Drew and me. I can see him gesturing, pointing with his roughly bandaged arm at the body of the man in the corner. At the man who kept me here. The man who tried to kill me. They haven’t even covered his face.

Another cop touches my arm lightly, and I turn to look at him. He has a notebook. “So your name is…?”

“Kayla. Kayla Cutler.”

His eyes go wide. “Kayla Cutler? Who worked at Pete’s Pizza?”

I nod. It’s clear from his expression that if I had been able to get the TV to play anything but static, I
would
have heard my name, heard how they were searching for me.