The Abduction

35

Kristen sat on the bare hardwood floor with her knees up and her back against the wall. Repo sat on the floor in the corner, near the window with no drapes. The empty living room was dark, but there was nothing to see anyway. No pictures on the walls. No rugs or furniture. They’d tried to turn on a light, but the power had been cut off. The house was growing colder as night settled in.

Kristen drew her knees closer to her chest, trying to get warmer. “How did you know this house would be empty?” Her voice echoed in the empty room.
Repo shifted his eyes from the window. “The sign out front.”
“Oh, you mean the one that says, ‘This house is empty’?”
“No, smarty-pants. Back in high school, whenever me and my buddies wanted a place to party, we used to drive around looking for the houses with the ‘for sale’ signs out front. If you see one that says ‘price reduced,’ nine times out of ten it means the owners are desperate to sell because they’ve already moved out. Empty house. Party time.”
She nodded, thinking how her mother would kill her if she broke into somebody’s house. Her toes were getting cold. She scrunched them in her shoes, finding warmth in the friction.
“By the way,” she said. “Thanks for letting me call my mom. I’m sorry I caused so much trouble.”
“Not a problem.” Repo kept staring out the window.
“I was kind of wondering, you know, why you’re so careless.”
“What do you mean?”
She shrugged. “Well, you let me see your face. You let me call home and talk too long. You don’t even wear a goofy wig or a hat for disguise. I have friends who are more careful when they cut class.”
“You watch too many detective shows.”
“Do I? Or have you, like, just become totally fatalistic about this whole thing?”
He winced, confused. “Totally what?”
“Fatalistic. Do you think your fate is sealed? No matter what you do—hide your face, wear a disguise—you can’t change the outcome.”
He smiled weakly. “Fatalistic, huh? That’s a fancy word. Where I grew up, we used to just say your ass is grass.”
“Okay, then. Do you think your ass is grass?”
“Definitely.”
“And who’s the lawn mower?”
“You don’t really want to know.”
“You don’t really want to tell me.”
He shook his head, smirking. “For a kid, you’re not too dumb.”
“And you’re not too smart,” she said in deep, affected voice. “I like that in a man.”
He shot a funny look. “Huh?”
“Just kidding. That was my Kathleen Turner imitation. Didn’t you see Body Heat?”
“Uh, no.”
“It’s, like, my mom’s favorite movie. We have it on tape. You really should rent it.”
“For sure,” he scoffed. “Maybe we can all go see it sometime.”
They sat in silence. Kristen glanced out the window. It was completely dark now, inside and out, but her eyes had adjusted. “I’m kind of hungry.”
“I’d make you a sandwich, but the meat’s all gone.”
“Yuck. I hate bologna anyway. Got any more Froot Loops?”
“I bet Kathleen Turner doesn’t eat Froot Loops.”
“I bet she doesn’t eat bologna, either.”
They both smiled this time. A noise rumbled outside the house, loud enough to be in the yard. Kristen stirred. “What was that?”
He raised a hand, hushing her. He listened, but all was still. “Wait here.” Staying low, he cautiously approached the window, kneeling on one knee as he peered out over the sill.
A silent projectile hit the window, shattering it, raining glass upon them. Kristen screamed. Repo dove toward her, wrapping himself around her like a protective shield and covering her mouth.
“Quiet!” he whispered. They waited. All was still. He released her from his arms.
“What’s happening?” Her voice was hushed but racing with panic.
“Somebody’s shooting at us. With silencers.” He pulled his gun from his jacket and quickly slid on his knees to the other window. Slowly he raised his head above the sill. It was brighter outside the house than in, which enabled him to see clear across the lawn. He looked toward the driveway but saw nothing. The sidewalk was clear. He rose higher in his crouch, still on his knees. He kept his head behind the wall as he strained to see the front porch.
The glass shattered, again in silence. Repo was knocked to the floor, landing on his shoulder with a heavy thud.
Kristen screamed as she cowered in the corner. Repo scrambled toward her. His left arm protruded like a broken wing. He slammed against the wall beside her, groaning with pain.
Tears streamed down Kristen’s face. “Why are they shooting?”
Repo stretched his shoulder, fighting the pain. “Doorbell must be broken.”
His humor landed flat. Then she saw the blood. “You’re shot!”
He bit his lip. The pain was excruciating. “Hollow point ammunition,” he said, speaking more to himself. “These bastards mean business.”
Kristen curled into a tight little ball, quivering as she spoke. “They’re going to kill us. We gotta get out of here!”
“Stay down,” he said. He struggled to his knees, then maneuvered back toward the window. He gripped his pistol tightly. “I have twenty-one bullets in here. I’m going to fire them off, almost like a machine gun. As soon as I start shooting, you crawl as fast as you can on your hands and knees for the back door. No matter what happens, just keep on going and don’t look back.”
She looked up. Her face was frozen with fear.
“You hear me?” he said. “Just keep on going.”
She took quick and shallow breaths, on the verge of hyperventilation. “Okay,” she nodded.
Repo nodded back. “On three,” he said. “One. Two. Three.”
He hurled a leather bag through the window to shatter the remaining glass, then jumped to his feet and started firing like a gunslinger. The shots cracked in quick succession from his semiautomatic pistol. Kristen sprinted on hands and knees toward the kitchen, glancing back only once to see Repo tumbling back and his gun flying in the air. He hit the floor hard and grabbed his bloody hand.
“Repo!”
He rolled toward her, grimacing in pain. “Just go!”
His right hand was a shattered mess. He grabbed the gun with his left hand and cleared away a hunk of his own flesh and bone from the trigger hole. He jumped back to the window, firing again in rapid succession. As the shots rang out, Kristen got up from her knees and sprinted for the back door, too frightened to look back.
Another precision shot hit Repo in the left hand. He cried out as the gun flew from his hand and skidded on the floor. It landed in the middle of the room. Repo looked toward the kitchen. The back door was open and there was no sign of Kristen. He checked his bloody hands. They were useless, both of them. He kicked his leg out like a hook, trying to curl the gun toward him. Another shot from nowhere hit him in the foot. He recoiled as two more quick shots hit the gun in quick succession, sending it skidding across the room, well out of his reach. Repo shuddered. The shooter was a pro.
He rolled to the corner, leaving a thick trail of hot blood. The pain from each of his four hits was coalescing into a full-body numbness. He lay flat on his back, helplessly staring at the ceiling.
He heard footsteps pounding on the wood floor, but he lacked the strength or the will to turn his head and look. Suddenly the marksman was standing over him, a black silhouette in the darkness. His deep voice echoed in the empty room.
“Did you really think you could run away, Repo—that I would never find you?”
Struggling, Repo raised his head an inch from the floor. He could barely see, but he knew the voice.
He lowered his head and closed his eyes, bracing for the worst.


Harley Abrams gave a hand signal from the field across the street. With a flip of the switch, a battery of fifteen-hundred-watt floods lit up the yard and the front of the house. Patchy fog sparkled in refracted light, giving the scene a mystical shroud.
The porch light switched on, but there was no other sign of motion from within the house.
Snipers readied themselves in trees and on rooftops surrounding the house. SWAT members lay in the grassy ditch across the street and in the back, behind the hedge. Harley picked up the microphone and switched on the loudspeaker.
“This is the FBI,” he said, his voicing blaring at the brightly lit house. “You are surrounded. Come out with your hands up.”
Trigger fingers twitched in the edgy silence. Generators hummed with power for the lights, the only sound in the neighborhood. Fog swirled up from the ground in slow motion, making the wait seem even longer.
Harley reached for the microphone, then stopped. The front door opened. Harley announced, “Keep your hands above your head.”
A man came out first. He stepped tentatively onto the porch, nervously thrusting his arms in the air. A woman followed with a young girl at her side.
The SWAT team raced across the lawn, pointing their automated rifles. “Down, down, everybody down!” they ordered. The petrified family fell to their knees, then flat on their stomachs in the dew-covered grass. The SWAT leader put a gun to the man’s head and another grabbed the girl. Five others burst through the front door and into the house. Another team raced in the back. Harley ran to the suspect in the lawn. Up close, it was plain to see the man wasn’t white.
“Where’s the white guy?” the SWAT leader demanded.
The man was shaking. “There ain’t no white guy.”
“Where is he?!”
Another man in SWAT gear rushed from the house, bounding down the front steps. “House is clear. No suspect.”
Harley glanced at the young girl. She was African American and probably twelve or thirteen. But she definitely wasn’t Kristen Howe. He took a closer look at the man in the grass. He, too, was African American, but his skin was lighter than his wife’s and daughter’s. The deputy sheriff had obviously mistaken him for white.
“It’s not them. We’ve got the wrong place.”
The man lifted his face from the lawn and looked up angrily. “Damn straight you got the wrong house. I’m gonna sue your Nazi asses.”
Harley looked away, running a hand through his hair with exasperation. “Just what I need,” he said, groaning.