But yes, there it was. Directly outside, on the other side of the wall. That gentle wheeze she knew all too well, that juicy little huff. Lars, Rodent Face, had circled around the building and now waited for her outside. Watching that window, pistol in hand, ready to put a bullet in her brain the instant she clambered up and exposed her face.
Now what?
She hung there on aching fingertips, her shoes dangling three feet off the floor, desperately wishing she’d just misheard the growl of the wind outside. But she knew she hadn’t. She knew Ashley had sent obedient little Lars out there to cut off her escape. Which left a far more cunning and dangerous enemy unaccounted for.
Then she heard the restroom door click shut.
He’s in the room with—
A plastic bag tugged over Darby’s face from behind. She screamed, but it was trapped inside her mouth.
1:09 a.m.
Jay Nissen sawed through the last bar on the dog kennel.
She’d cut them one at a time, sawing with the toothed knife the way the red-haired young woman had instructed. Like a miniature tree cutter. Her left hand throbbed with pins and needles, so it took a long time. Twice, she’d dropped the knife and had to grope for it in the darkness. Once, she’d feared it had bounced outside the kennel and been lost forever. But she found it.
And now?
With a push, the grating fell away and chattered against the van’s door.
This was the first time the cage had been open since they took her. She didn’t know how many days ago. She hadn’t been counting. Going more than a night without her shots made her woozy, and since then she’d fallen into an irregular rhythm of sickly, four-hour naps. The sun had been up and down, rising and falling from different windows. The smell of ketchup, ranch sauce, and stale sweat dewing on glass. The crumple of Jack in the Box wrappers. Their murmuring voices, Ashley’s knee-slapping jokes, the hum of blacktop, the urgent tick of the van’s turn signal. Could it have been a week already? What were her parents doing right now?
Her Wii U controller had been charging when they came to her house.
She’d been plugging the gray wire into the Nintendo port when a single, sharp knock came from the front door. Like a tennis ball. She’d scurried to the door and opened it a few inches — there’s a little brass chain the door catches on — and that was when she first saw him, the one she now knew as Lars. Back then, he hadn’t developed his head cold yet. He’d smiled thickly down and told her he was here with the Fox Roofing Service, that her father “Mr Pete” had given them permission to enter the house.
Jay said no.
Lars had asked her a few more times, in a few different ways. He seemed to think “Mr Pete” was at the grocery store, which was false (her father had called from the office to tell her the babysitter had the flu and that there was leftover Mongolian Grill in the fridge). Even then, Jay got the impression that Lars wasn’t like other adults in her life. She suspected that even at her age, she was already smarter than he might ever be.
Lars asked less politely. Leaning in. His teeth smelled like dead leaves.
Jay shut the door.
When she turned around, the one she now knew as Ashley was sitting at the oval kitchen table. His boots had left muddy prints on the parquet. He’d looked up at her casually, munching a handful of banana chips from the ceramic bowl. She still didn’t know how he got inside the house — a window, maybe? The garage?
She ran for the living room. She didn’t make it.
Here and now, Jamie Nissen — or Jay, as she’d gone by since first grade — crawled out of the dog kennel on her palms, over the itchy blankets and towels her rescuer had hidden beneath two hours ago. The metal bars chattered and twanged around her; she hoped Ashley and Lars weren’t nearby to hear. She reached the rear door of the van, expecting it to be locked. Lars had always been careful to re-lock the van’s doors, every time he—
The handle clicked in her bloody fingers.
The door swung open.
Jay froze there on her hands and knees, looking out into the darkness. Thousands of swirling snowflakes. A shivery gust of night air. A parking lot of smooth, undisturbed white, glittering with crystals. It was strangely thrilling. She’d never seen this much snow before in her entire life.
Now what?
*
“Now what, Darbs?”
She couldn’t breathe or see. Plastic stretched tight over her face, suctioning against her front teeth. Knuckled hands around her throat, twisting the bag, squeezing her airway shut. Slippery, buried-alive panic.
“Shh, shh.”
She thrashed but Ashley was too strong. He had her arms twisted backward in some kind of wrestling hold. Both of her shoulder blades were wrenched ajar and her hands were somewhere far behind her, pinned and useless. Like fighting the embrace of a straitjacket. She kicked, her feet searching for the restroom wall to use as leverage, but found only empty space. Her backbone cracked.
“Don’t fight,” he whispered. “It’s all fine.”
Pressure building inside her chest. Her lungs burning, swelling against her ribcage. She felt her own last breath — a half-gasp that had been inside her throat when the bag came down — trapped against her face, foggy and wet. Warm copper spreading down her chin. Her nose was bleeding again.
She fought again, twisting, flailing. Her legs kicked out into space. Her fingers clawed and scratched; she found the loop of the lanyard in his jacket. Keys chattered. But there was no gun, no weapons to grab. She was losing energy, too. This thrash had been weaker than the first.
This is it, she realized. I’m going to die here.
Right here, in a dingy restroom off State Route Seven. Next to the bleached toilets, the carved mirrors, the peeling stall doors scrawled with graffiti. Right here, right now, with that Lysol-taste still in her mouth.
“Shh.” Ashley moved his head, like he was checking over his shoulder. “It’s almost over. Just let it happen—”
She screamed silently inside the Ziploc bag. The plastic flexed a small bubble. Then her lungs reflexively inhaled — a bracing gulp — but found only negative pressure, sucking a scant few centimeters of reused air.
“I know it hurts. I know. I’m sorry.” The bag twisted tighter, clockwise, and now she saw the window. Through one clamped eye, blurred by cloudy plastic and tears, she saw that little triangular window, eight feet off the floor, dusted with snowflakes. So close. So agonizingly close. Somehow, she wished it were further away, across the room, hopeless and unreachable. But no, it was right there, and she could almost reach out and touch it, if her hands weren’t pinned.
She thrashed a third time, but it was uncoordinated and limp. This time Ashley barely had to hold her. She knew this was the last one; that there couldn’t possibly be a fourth rally. She was a goner now. Ed and Sandi were in the same building, on the other side of a wall, ten feet away, oblivious while she suffocated to death in the arms of a killer. She felt time dilate. A thick and comfortable rest settled over her, like a heavy wool blanket.
She hated how good it felt.