Shackled (11 page)

I hadn't actually seen Franklin Rebane yet today. The driver of the car could've been a friend. A friend who had a daughter who looked like Tara. Or it
had
been Rebane at the café, but the girl just went to his church or something.

Whatever. Didn't matter. I'd made a horrible mistake. That's what mattered.

I'd just turned the television off when I heard a car pulling into the driveway out back.

The oxygen in my lungs froze like the snowflakes falling outside. The freeze twirled down my legs and paralyzed me.

Rebane was back.

I moved on some bizarre autopilot. Shuffled my ice-block feet backward in the living room. Into a corner, so that the entrance from the kitchen was on my left. Once against the
wall, I didn't move another muscle except for those around my eyes. Sent them darting in every direction looking for another escape. I could dive through the picture window, but that probably only worked in the movies. The front door was farther away, but I could make it if I ran now, now,
now
 . . .

The kitchen door opened. Closed.

Rebane cleared his throat. Hummed a foreign tune. Maybe a hymn.

Coming this way.

Of course he was coming this way. Where else was there to go?

Please don't see me,
I prayed as if to Rebane.

Please just don't see me and I'll go right back out the way I came and we'll forget this ever happened okay just please don't see me oh my God please don't see me.

Rebane walked into the living room. Definitely the man from the café.

He jingled his keys.
Jang, jang, jang.

Lots of people jingle their keys,
I thought.
Hundreds. Thousands. That was your evidence? Your proof? You're going to go to prison over a noisy key ring?

Rebane turned left. Away from my corner.

He bounded up the stairs, carrying a white plastic drugstore bag. Pretty good shape for an old guy. From where I stood trembling, the stairs turned Rebane's profile to me as he climbed. Surely he'd see the cowering girl in the corner of his living room, surely . . .

His head, chest, legs, feet—one step at a time he disappeared upstairs.

Thank you thank you thank you.

But I couldn't run.

I wanted to. Knew it might make too much noise. Also, I just
couldn't
. The adrenaline in my quads locked them in place, and it was a miracle I could even walk. My feet felt like they were being sucked down by playground sand. If he caught me, I would go to jail. Period. The end. I thought being on a school campus would be hard? Imagine me in prison . . .

I shuffled into the kitchen, unable to pick my feet up off the floor. I considered hiding in the pantry. Discarded it. The pantry door had a padlock on it, slipped through a hinged bracket lock. Probably kept his booze there.

My eyes offered only tunnel vision of the back kitchen door. They seemed to zoom in and focus on the window-shade drawstring. It swung faintly back and forth from Rebane's entrance moments ago.

The door is unlocked,
I told myself.
Just open it and slip out and you're safe—

Upstairs, Rebane cleared his throat again. I heard his full ring of keys land on a table. The sound triggered my muscles. I moved.

I quick-stepped back into the short hallway. Past the washer and dryer. Reached the kitchen door. Grabbed the doorknob. Twisted.

The knob didn't move.

Footsteps on the staircase.

Oh God. Oh God. Please. Stop. No.

Pushed my fingers dumbly against the doorknob lock. Gloves still on. Slipping off the lock. Couldn't get a grip.

The living room floor creaked behind me. A moment later I heard Adam and Jamie on
MythBusters
talking about blowing something up.

I peeled off my glove. Managed to get a grip on the lock. Tried the knob again. It turned easily.

I pulled the door open halfway. Pivoted through the doorway. Shut it behind me as carefully as I could.

Then I sprinted for the back wall, crashed through the bushes where I'd come out, and somehow managed to jam one foot in between a couple of thick branches and launch myself at the wall, the impact jarring my held breath out of me in a hack. I hadn't breathed for several minutes.

I jumped down into the alley and took off at a run for the street, praying I wouldn't throw up or wet my pants or die or all three, in any order. I followed the curve to Rosemont in no time at all, coming onto Rebane's street just as David was about to knock on the front door.

“David!” I wheezed.

Somehow he heard me in the drifting snowfall and rushed toward me. I collapsed into his arms.

“You okay?” he said quickly.

I groaned into his chest, “Go.”

Without a word, David picked me up in his arms like a
baby doll and practically skied down the street to the truck. He put me in the passenger seat, then ran around and climbed in beside me.

“What happened?” he said. His eyes were wide and wild.

Panic crawled up and down my spine with hypodermic legs, piercing each vertebrae. Comparing it to a heart attack wouldn't do it justice. There were the day-to-day attacks I'd had for the last six years, ever since Tara was taken. This was not that. This was worse. So much for my big recovery.

My entire body shook as I curled up on the passenger seat. My eyelids froze open, staring senselessly at the dashboard but not seeing it. My jaw wrenched shut, my breath wheezing from between the spaces in my teeth. I may have been muttering, I may have been screaming—no way to know.

“Pelly?”

David's voice came from a mile away. When he touched my arm, I screeched and shrank farther into myself, covering my head with both arms. After that I was paralyzed. Couldn't move if my life depended on it.

“Okay,” David said. “Okay, we're going home. Pelly? I'm gonna get us home, okay?”

I hated him. I hated David like fire consuming the snow.

“You were supposed to tell me he was coming,” I hissed at him, my teeth still tightly clenched together.

“I did!” David said. “I called twice.”

My muscles relaxed enough for me to pull out my phone to show him how wrong he was.

It wouldn't turn on. I tried again and again, and even took the battery out and put it back. Nothing.

If he'd caught you,
I thought,
he'd have called the cops, and kept you there till they showed up, and you wouldn't even have been able to call anyone. You stupid idiot.
My rubber band wouldn't be enough to change my intrusive thoughts this time. It wasn't punishment enough. Maybe a good flogging would come closer. Maybe a tumble down a mountain.

David looked at my dead phone. He sighed, shut his eyes, and leaned against the seat. “Jesus, that was close. He could've caught you snooping around his yard.”

“He almost did,” I whispered. “He came in while I was in the living room—”

“Living room?” David squeaked. “You went
inside
the house?!”

“The kitchen door was unlocked.”

David stared hard at me. For a second I was reminded of my dad when he was pissed.

“Are you crazy?” David said.

“Yes. I tried to tell you that.”

David plowed ahead. I don't think he'd heard me.

“You are absolutely
freaking
insane!” David said. “Dammit, Pelly! You want to get your ass thrown in jail, that's fine, but I'm not coming with you. I cannot believe you broke into his house. Did you find Tara? Huh? Did you?”

That strange hate I'd just felt toward him disappeared. Replaced by guilt.

“No,” I said. “No, she's not there, it's not him—”

“Oh, it's not?” David snapped. “The old man in that house isn't a kidnapper? Really? Gee, ya think?”

“I'm sorry,” I whispered.

He looked like he wanted to say more. Instead he sat back in his seat and looked out his window. His right hand grabbed the steering wheel. Gripped it hard, relaxed. Gripped it again. Relaxed.

After a minute David said, “How did you not notice your cell was dead?”

“I'm sorry,” I said again, staring blankly at the dashboard. “I'm so dumb, I'm sorry, I didn't think, I just wanted her back to make it all stop and instead it didn't and look at me, David, look at how stupid I am—”

“Hey, hey,” David said, turning. When he touched my arm again, I didn't flinch. “Stop. It's all right, Pel. You're safe. I shouldn't have yelled at you.”

“Yes, you should,” I said. “Everyone should.”

“Pelly, don't.”

“It's my fault.”

“What's your fault?”

“It's my fault Tara's gone. He should've taken me. It should've been me—”

“What are you talking about?”

I wanted my meds back. I wanted a pill, something to take to put me out, put me down. I'd hidden this part of the story so far away, for so very long, it had spoiled and turned
rotten. It had burned a hole in me somewhere that nothing could ever fix.

I pulled out my cigarettes and lighter, my fingers grazing my pillbox during the procedure. I really felt like bleeding but couldn't do that now. Smoking would have to do. I lit the Camel and rolled down my window about halfway. Pretty little snowflakes darted inside. David said nothing.

“He talked to me first,” I said.

David folded his arms, putting his hands under his armpits.

“I was watching Tara from behind a rack of skirts,” I said. “And someone came up behind me and said, ‘Excuse me, do you like dogs?' I didn't even turn around. I just waved my hand and said no. And he said . . . he said he just bought a cute little puppy from the mall pet store, but he'd jumped out of the car and was loose somewhere in the parking garage, and he needed help to find him. Well, I could see Tara looking for me. You know, all cautious? And I laughed. And I told the guy I couldn't, because I was busy, I was hiding. Then Tara ran for another rack of clothes and I lost sight of her. The guy said, okay, well, thank you anyway, I hope you don't get caught.”

“So, you think that's the guy who took her.”

“I'm positive.”

“And you never got a look at him?”

I practically spat out a breath of smoke. “I was irritated,” I said. “I was focused on the game. I wasn't thinking about stranger danger or anything like that. I was ten. I was a big girl. No. I never got a look. But it was him.”

“How do you know?”

“Haven't you ever heard of that trick? The lost dog? Bad guys use it all the time. I guess it still works. Trust me, it was him. What I don't know is . . . I don't know why . . . Jesus, why wasn't it me?”

I took another drag. David shifted in his seat to get a better look at my face. So I turned away. Let the snow freeze my cheeks.

“That's what this was all about,” David said. It wasn't a question. “You think it should've been you he took. Or you think you could've stopped him somehow.”

“If we hadn't been playing that stupid game, or if I'd just turned around and looked at this guy, or—”

“No, no, Pelly,” David said. “God, no. You can't do this. You can't live like that. Tara is gone because some creeper asshole took her. And you want to know why? Because that's what creeper assholes
do
. That is not your fault. Then, now, or ever.”

“It sure feels like it.”

“Pel, listen,” David said. “I'm going to say this because—well, I guess it doesn't matter why, but I have to say it. You understand that it's almost certain you imagined this whole thing, now, right? I mean, seeing Tara at the Hole?”

I inhaled smoke. Held it. Blew it out.

“I mean, the
chances
,” David went on. “Just the math of it. It's virtually impossible. I mean, you get that, right?”

Inhale. Hold. Exhale. At least I had no intrusive thoughts. I had no thoughts at all.

After another minute, since I wasn't responding to David, he pressed his lips together and started the truck. “We're out of here,” he said. “We're going home.”

I didn't say anything. Just flicked my smoke out the window and rolled the window back up. I sat, and shook and hoped to someday be able to speak again.

David drove a little fast out of the neighborhood, and once, the truck skidded a bit on the wet street. I didn't care, and David didn't appear to either. But that minor fishtail did pull me back to the present, to the now, and right now I needed him to slow down.

“Easy,” I muttered.

“What?”

“Go easy,” I said. “Slow down some.”

Immediately the truck slowed. “Sorry.”

I shook my head. “S'okay.”

We said nothing more for at least a couple of minutes. Outside, snow fell and with it, silence, a cloud of it, draping the entire landscape. It never snowed at home.

“So, since you did go in,” David said at last, “what'd you find? Anything?”

“No,” I said. I pulled myself up, slowly, into a sitting position and pulled on my seat belt. My voice sounded monotone and splintered. “The garage was locked. The kitchen was normal. Living room was normal. He's the blandest person on earth.”

“Hmm,” David grunted, but that was all.

I rubbed my eyes. “I don't have anything else.”

And for the first time in a while, so long they were like foreign objects piercing my corneas, tears formed in my eyes and burned like acid.

David must've seen them even though they didn't fall. He put a hand on my shoulder. “Hey, Pel,” he said. “You did more than any person would be expected to. You followed your gut—your
heart
—and you risked a lot to find out. Maybe too much, honestly. You shouldn't have gone in there. I mean, I get it, I would've done it too. I'm just saying, you went above and beyond, Pelly. The cops'll still look into it, like you said. There's nothing else for us to do.”