I lived on the east bench of the city, almost as high as any of the houses were allowed to be built. My neighborhood—beautiful homes, some new, some older—looked down on the University of Utah, the capital and downtown buildings, and the Mormon temple and towering skyscrapers situated around the city center.
In the darkness, it must have taken him a moment to get his bearings. But he had studied the scene many times before, and even in the darkness he knew exactly where to go.
Breaking from the foothills, the terrain is bare, with only June grass, rock, and weeds. The first of the houses lie just below the trail. A ribbon of asphalt winds down toward the city. Streetlights line the road. But at two o’clock in the morning, there would have been few, if any, cars. Mine was a quiet neighborhood. A quiet city, even. No one saw him as he hunched beside the road.
He crossed Tomahawk Drive, then dipped through an empty lot to avoid another house before turning north again, bringing himself to look down on my backyard. It backed up to a steep part of the hill and was heavy with bushes and trees. A small storage shed was positioned along the hillside, nestled among the brush. He hid his bags in the weeds, then crept down a narrow path of flat stones to step onto the grass of my backyard.
My house was dark inside. He first circled around, looking for a point of access. Finally, after making sure no doors had been left unlocked, he moved across the patio, past a row of empty windows toward the patio door. Stopping at a narrow window on the left side of the patio, he took out a knife. Long. Deadly. A serrated blade. He carefully cut the screen and pushed against the glass. Earlier in the evening, my mother had burned something on the stove and my dad had left the window open just a crack to air things out. The window pushed back on its hinges. He was able to get into the house!
Mitchell later told me that for a moment he had hesitated.
“If God wants me to do this, He will allow it,” he said to himself.
Mitchell knew that once he climbed through the window, he would be treading on very dangerous ground. From where he was on the patio, he was looking at trespassing. Criminal mischief. Attempted burglary, if the prosecutors really got on a roll. He would have claimed, of course, that he was nothing but a hungry beggar desperate to find a little food. If he’d been caught outside on our patio, he’d spend a few days in jail and nothing more.
But once he crawled through the open window, everything would change. If he was caught inside the house, especially with the knife, that would be impossible for the prosecutors to ignore.
And once he made his way toward my bedroom … that would be a completely different deal.
Yes, he understood the repercussions.
But he did not turn away.
The window was too high, so he leaned an iron patio chair against the wall. Standing on the chair, he shimmied through and dropped onto the kitchen floor.
The house was quiet.
No barking dog. No sounding alarm. Again, he was surprised.
If God wants this … rolled around inside his head again.
Somewhere in the house, a clock ticked. Maybe in the kitchen? Maybe somewhere down the hall?
He moved through the kitchen and into the hallway.
The front door was on his right. A wide stair on his left. He turned. The stairway rose before him. He moved up the stairs and headed down the hall. Which bedroom was I in? In the darkness, he couldn’t tell! He reached out for the nearest door and slowly pushed it open. Soft light fell upon the bed along the wall. My little brother was sleeping there.
He quietly shut the door, then moved a couple steps farther down the hallway until he stopped outside my bedroom door.
5.
Taken
I woke up with my little sister sleeping beside me, a dark man standing over me, and a knife to my throat. Rough hands were pressed upon my body as the stranger leaned over, his dirty beard against my face. “I have a knife to your neck,” he whispered. His voice was soft but very serious. “Don’t make a sound. Get out of bed, or I’ll kill you and your family.”
For a fraction of a moment, I was not fully awake, caught in that fuzzy place between wakefulness and sleep where your body may be reacting but your mind has not realized what is happening yet. Was I dreaming? Was this real? My mind was like molasses. Slow. Caught in uncertainty and fear.
Then I felt the pressure of the knife, cold and sharp against my throat.
“I have a knife to your neck,” he repeated. “Don’t make a sound. Get out of bed, or I’ll kill you and your family.”
I was jolted awake. I felt the sharpness of the knife as he pressed it against my skin. My heart began to race, exploding in my ears. I fought the urge to scream, glancing at my little sister in the dark. The words he had spoken seemed to echo in my ear.
I will kill you and your family!
I wanted to reach out for my little sister, to hold her, to protect her from this horrible thing. I needed to protect her. I froze in fear.