Constant Fear (13 page)

CHAPTER 20

T
he darkness was total. Whoever had blindfolded Andy had done a fine job of it. He couldn’t move his arms or his legs except to wiggle them back and forth a little. He still had circulation in his limbs, but those were starting to throb. The fear became something Andy could actually taste: sour, acidic, all-consuming.

Where he was, Andy couldn’t say. He was seated on a hard-plastic chair somewhere in the school. Even if he’d had the forethought to count his steps, Andy didn’t know which direction they had walked, or the precise distance between the Terry Science Center and any of the surrounding buildings.

The speed at which everything had happened bent Andy’s mind. Space and time seemed to fold in on each other. One moment, Andy and Ryan were squared off, ready to go at it, and the next he was tied to a chair.

He called out for help, but a gag in his mouth silenced those cries. The blindfold covered his ears, and Andy could hear his own muted grunts as if they were coming from inside a seashell.

Andy thought back to the moments before his abduction.

When the man wearing protective chemical gear appeared in the abandoned second-floor hallway, Andy figured the fight with Ryan was over. He lowered his arms. Ryan, with his back to the stairs, kept a fighting stance. The man tapped Ryan several times on the back and pointed to the stairs. Maybe he couldn’t be heard through the protective hood covering.

Get out,
his gestures conveyed.
Get out now.

Ryan hesitated, but the man pointed at the stairs with added urgency. Ryan held his ground. He wanted to be left alone to finish what he had started. The man stepped into the hallway, spun Ryan around, and shoved him hard from behind. Ryan stumbled toward the stairs. The man took a few threatening steps toward Ryan, who turned—no hesitation now—and bolted down the stairs as though the hallway were on fire.

What got Ryan so spooked?
Andy wondered.

Andy went to join Ryan, but the man in the suit reached out and seized him by the shoulder as he passed. He held Andy in place, watching the stairs. Waiting. What was he looking for? No one was there. They were alone in the hallway. Andy tried to pull away, but the man held on.

Without provocation, the man unleashed several quick jabs into Andy’s gut. Andy’s mouth opened wide. His face writhed in pain, but the screeching alarm swallowed every bit of his scream.

The attacker shoved Andy down the hall in the opposite direction of the stairwell. Andy regained his balance and whirled around, thinking only of escape. He juked left and went right, but the man wasn’t fooled. Inside a breath, he clinched Andy in a crushing embrace. Instinctively, Andy pushed his hips back to try and create some space from his attacker. The key, he knew, was not to panic, but Andy was caught by surprise and reeling from those punches to his gut. He executed the move properly, giving a little bend at the legs before he unleashed a powerful strike to the face. The blow struck hard against the man’s face shield and caused no damage. Panic had got to Andy after all. He had done exactly as his dad taught him, but failed to account for all of the variables. A fight with Ryan Coventry was one thing, but a real life and death struggle proved to be something else entirely. A second later, the man had his hand wrapped around Andy’s throat.

The pressure on Andy’s windpipe was excruciating. He kicked his legs frantically, but had no leverage. The man pushed him back into a wall.

Andy wasn’t entirely sure what that meant. He’d studied Latin in school, and while it helped with translation, the gun pressed under Andy’s chin made the order terrifyingly clear. The weapon seemed to have materialized out of the ether. With quick, fluid motions, the man wrenched Andy’s cell phone from his back pocket and shoved him into a nearby classroom. The man slammed the door shut.

Andy went to the windows. From there he could see students piling into waiting buses. Andy was about to open a window to scream for help when the man returned.

“Aléjate de la ventana,”
the man said.

The man spoke Spanish.
Who was this man? Where had he come from? What did he want?
The hood made it hard to hear his attacker’s voice, but Andy understood the man’s gestures just fine. He moved away from the window.

The attacker removed Andy’s backpack; then he wrapped rope around Andy’s wrists. How could he say “too tight” in Spanish? Instead, Andy said it in English. No adjustments were made. The man knotted a blindfold over Andy’s eyes and slipped a gag into his mouth. Pressure on Andy’s shoulders settled him to the floor where he waited perhaps thirty minutes, maybe more. He didn’t dare try to escape. He couldn’t tell if the man was still in the room or not. He was helpless to do anything but wait. Then he was on the move. Escorted down a flight of stairs.

He felt cool air against his skin and figured they had gone outside. He had never heard the campus so quiet. Even weekends had some commotion, but now it was just birdsong and distant sirens.

Soon he was inside again. He was led down a hallway and into a room, up a short flight of stairs, where a chair was waiting for him.

Andy pounded his feet against the floor. It made a hollow sound. He thought the floor was made of wood. Hard to tell. He concentrated. He had nothing to focus on but his fear. The tightness in his chest could snap his ribs. His heart rattled about as if it had broken free.

Andy hollered and again made only unintelligible grunts. The gag made breathing difficult, and his lungs felt like they couldn’t get enough air. Andy inhaled a bit more oxygen through his nose, but the ache in his chest remained. He fought against his restraints, but managed only to chafe the skin. So Andy settled into his seat and he waited. If they wanted him dead, he would already be dead, Andy told himself. Something would happen.

It did.

 

Laura didn’t know these woods at all, but she wasn’t concerned about getting lost. The kid she spoke with at the regional high school told her about the path. According to him, it was a couple miles long, easy to follow. It had been easy to find, just as he promised. She was told the cross-country team used the path to train, and it was the fastest way from The Pep into town for anybody riding a bike.

The entrance to the path was nothing but a weed-strangled pullout on the side of a single-lane road several miles from where the chemical truck had crashed and spilled. Laura had seen where police had blocked off the access roads to the school and surrounding area, but a path through the woods was not worth guarding.

After she parked, Laura locked the car doors and set off on foot. The flat ground made it possible to walk quickly, but she was badly out of shape and could not keep a pace. Almost immediately Laura’s lungs began to ache. She regretted every stupid cigarette she’d ever smoked. She also regretted every major life decision she had made. She had left her home, her husband, and her son in search of a better life, only to find broken promises, lies, and missteps all along the way.

There were men, slick charmers or even worse, abusive men. There were hangovers, no shortage of those. And plenty of highs—coke, pot, Ecstasy, magic mushrooms. For Laura, avoiding heroin and meth had felt like a commendable display of willpower. When she got clean, she got clear and she could finally taste the ruin of her life. Her friends were people of convenience who went to the same parties, hung out at the same bars, and screwed the same guys. Take away the drugs and booze, and everybody in her life had the staying power of a lit cigarette.

She’d come east looking for Andy and Jake, ready to embrace them in whatever shape that took. She had no grand vision of a happy family reunion. In this way, Laura was not naïve. Maybe in time she could establish a meaningful relationship with Andy. It would start there, with her son. And there was no denying her feelings for Jake. Even so, it made her sad to be with him, causing her to focus on all the “what-ifs” of her life. It was a dangerous game to play.
What if I didn’t leave? What if I weren’t so angry with Jake?

That was what had pushed her away. He had been selfish. He drank away their future. Her answer was to make a clean break from it all. Start over. And so she left on a multiyear walkabout, and was now on an unfamiliar path based solely on a hunch that her son was still at the school.

That was what he wrote in his last Facebook message to her sent yesterday.
I’m looking forward to seeing you
. Those few words meant so much to Laura. Men had told her they loved her. Friends had confided in her. But their words, which at the time had seemed so personal and intimate, paled in comparison to Andy’s simple six-word message. Andy’s words brought meaning to her life. Real meaning. She’d turned her back on her son. She vowed never to do it again.

The path narrowed. The clear and crisp morning had given way to afternoon cloud cover, and a misty rain fell and thickened the muddied earth. Her footing slipped as she quickened her strides.

Laura’s imagination dictated her pace. In one scenario, Andy was facedown in a hallway. He had inhaled too much of the chemical and was frothing at the mouth. Nobody was there to save him. His heartbeat was fading. But Laura would come to him. To protect against the chemicals in the air, Laura would wear the painter’s mask she bought at the hardware store. Perhaps it wouldn’t fully safeguard her from the fumes, but she could at least get Andy to safety. Her cell phone worked. She could call for an ambulance.

In another version, Andy was roaming the empty school with his pals like a pack of wolves. It wasn’t like he forgot about his meeting with her, more like he had to take advantage of the opportunity. No faculty. No other students. He and his friends would have the run of the place. Andy would be playing Frisbee on a quad, Laura imagined. Laughing with his friends. Laura would be able to hear him from the woods. She would emerge from the forest path, and Andy would see her. She’d be dirty, soaking wet, looking like a lost hiker.

She wouldn’t be upset with him. No, this was a demonstration of her commitment to their nascent relationship. She and Andy had made a plan to meet and she was damn well determined to keep it. And Andy would smile at her. At least in her mind, he would. He’d come to her, and they would actually hug. And he’d say, “Laura, what are you doing here?” Of course he’d say, “Laura,” not “Mom”—not yet . . . anyway. And she’d shrug and tell him nothing was more important to her than being with him.

“How’d you figure out where I was?” Andy would ask.

“I thought about what I would do when I was in high school,” Laura would say.

And then they would share a laugh.

At least in her mind they would.

The path widened, and Laura entered a wide clearing. The grass was dewy from the rain. In the distance, Laura could see the brick buildings of Pepperell Academy. She could see The Quad, too.

Nobody was outside playing Frisbee.

CHAPTER 21

P
owerful hands gripped Andy’s shoulder, but he couldn’t tell if the person—a man, it had to be a man—stood in front or behind him. Perhaps not long ago those same hands had been wrapped around his throat. A moment later, someone escorted Andy down a short flight of stairs.

Completely blindfolded, Andy could see nothing. He was led to a cushioned seat, and Andy thought he knew where he was. He couldn’t ask because the gag was still in place. Andy heard a door open somewhere to his left. His ragged breathing drowned out most every sound, but he might have heard footsteps, many sets of them. Shuffling feet mixed in with grunts and dulled cries.

Andy slowed his breathing. Now he heard it distinctly. Scraping sounds. Chairs being pushed around perhaps?

“No te muevas. No te muevas,”
a man’s voice said. He repeated that command several times.

Andy focused. With concentration, he could pick out the sound of footsteps. They seemed to come from the same short set of stairs Andy had just descended.

He felt a sudden and strong tug on the back of his head. Someone loosened his blindfold. The fabric fell away and light flooded Andy’s eyes. He blinked to clear his vision. Shapes came into sharp focus. He recognized the Feldman Auditorium, located on the first floor of the Academy Building. The Academy Building was the largest on campus, a gateway to The Quad and surrounding dormitories and classrooms. It was used mostly for history, art, anthropology, and religious studies.

The auditorium, named for one of the school’s most prominent benefactors, seated three hundred people and provided a stately environment for performances and assemblies. It was a modern theater with balcony seating. Andy sat in the center of the front row, facing the stage.

Onstage, lit as though they were part of a school production, were his five closest friends: David, Pixie, Hilary, Solomon, and Rafa. Each was seated on a classroom chair. Their wrists were restrained with rope. Their school uniforms were wrinkled, torn in places, dirty in others. They wore blindfolds and had gags made of the same thick cloth that was stuffed in Andy’s mouth.

Fear poured out from the five as sweat. Andy called out to them, but that gag—that damn gag.

More horrifying were the men who stood in a line onstage behind his friends. There looked to be a dozen of them, but Andy was too rattled to count. These men were armed to the hilt with shotguns, pistols, assault rifles, and large knives. They flashed their weapons like peacocks showing off feathers.

They came in all shapes and sizes: tall men and thin men, some with long, dark hair and some who kept it short. Some of them had bushy mustaches; others had scruff; a few displayed beards; the minority were clean-shaven. One had red hair and stood next to a man with a prosthetic hand and a claw attachment. They looked relaxed, and why not? Andy was nothing but an unarmed sixteen-year-old boy.

In front of the stage, Andy saw his backpack among some of his friends’ belongings.
Thank God!
Andy had to have access to his glucose tablets if his blood sugar dropped. He had some food in his system, so the danger wasn’t imminent.

Andy felt a hot breath against the back of his neck.

“I don’t speak English perfectly,” a man said into Andy’s ear. He spoke in a thick Mexican accent. “But I will do my best. Nod if you understand me.”

Andy’s body heated as if ravaged by fever. The man stepped over the second-row seats to confront Andy directly.

He expected to see a monster, but this was not the case. The man had a handsome face and long hair like David’s, which he tied into a thick ponytail. He wore a fancy silk shirt decorated in a paisley pattern, jeans, and polished work boots. It was not the most threatening attire, but he smiled and Andy recoiled. The man’s golden mouth horrified him. The intricate designs cut into the metal were reminiscent of crop circles.

“My name is Fausto,” the man with the metal mouth said. “You must think of me as a friend. I am here to help you. If you do as I say, you may live. It’s simple. Do you understand me?”

Andy nodded.

“Good. I’m going to take away the gag,” Fausto said. “If you scream, I will hurt you. Not that anybody will hear you. The school is empty. No people. We know this for certain. The campus will stay this way for some time. The roads are blocked. We hear things on the radio. But my ears are very sensitive to noise, so I don’t want to have them hurt. Again, nod if you understand. Damn my English, huh? Should have studied more. You study hard in school? I hope so. Very important.”

Andy nodded several times, all in quick succession, and the gag came free. He would have agreed to anything to get that gag out of his mouth. His throat was dry and raw.

As if he could read his mind, Fausto produced a bottle of water. Andy drank thirstily.

“Now here is the deal,” Fausto said. “You are going to describe what you see to your five friends onstage. I keep the gags on them, and the blindfolds, too. Now talk.”

Andy started to hyperventilate. It was difficult to get out any words.

“Cálmate,”
Fausto said. “
Tranquilo, hijo.
You’re not dead yet.”

Slowly Andy began to piece this together. These men spoke Spanish. They had stolen bitcoins from Javier Martinez, and Andy knew from Gus that the Martinez family had come to the United States from Mexico. He didn’t have to solve complex math equations to understand the significance. This was all about the money. Whoever had come for the money had probably orchestrated the evacuation of the school. It was a smoke screen of epic proportions. In the chaos, their targets would be easy prey. Somehow they knew Andy was involved, which is how they knew about the others as well.

Andy tried to settle. He needed to be brave for his friends.

“Guys, it’s Andy.” His voice came out in a warble. “You’re onstage in the Feldman Auditorium. You’re all here. You know who you are. It’s all of us.”

Andy didn’t want to say their names out loud. There was a good chance these men already knew everything about them, but it still felt like a significant reveal. Andy would hold on to every piece of information until he was forced to share it.

“Tell them more,” the man said.

“There are many men in here with us. Standing behind you. They’re all heavily armed.”

“Good!” Fausto shouted. His booming voice reverberated up to the balcony level. “You’ve done well. By now, you must know or suspect why we are here. Can you tell your friends why we are here?”

Andy didn’t respond.

“Andy, I speak to you. You tell them.”

A shiver cut through Andy. Fausto had said his name.

“You . . . you want the money back?”

Fausto’s face brightened. His smile was broad and authentic. The gold-metal mouth caught the reflection of some overhead lights and glinted for a moment like paparazzi flashbulbs.

“You got it! You know! Good! We get someplace quick.”

Onstage, Hilary started to sob. At first, just her shoulders heaved up and down, but it quickly became a whole-body shake. The noises she made sank into the gag, but were loud enough to be heard by the others who joined her onstage.

Contagious as a yawn, everyone began to cry. Bodies convulsed. Andy had never felt so desperate, so afraid.

“Now, Andy, we know you have our money,” Fausto said. “So let’s make this easy. Okay? Easy. Give it back now. Right now. If you don’t, I kill one of your friends. Ready? Seriously, are you ready? Because here we go.”

“I—don’t have it. I swear.”

“Armando, coge el cuchillo más grande que tengas y ven al frente del escenario,”
Fausto said.

The man with many facial scars produced a twelve-inch carbon-steel hunting knife from a sheath latched to his ankle and came to the front of the stage.

Efren came forward and stood beside Armando. He had short hair and a long knife, just like Armando, but he was built like a pro wrestler.

A man with a head of untamed long, frizzy hair, appropriate for any metal band, and these wild, hate-filled eyes came forward with a knife dangling by his side. A dark presence swirled about him like a funnel cloud. The rest of the men took five steps back.

“Each of you go and pick a kid to stand behind,” Fausto said. “I don’t care which one. You decide.”

The English was for Andy’s benefit, but the men understood and they did as ordered. Efren stood behind Pixie, Armando took up position behind Solomon, and “El Tornado,” called so because of his wild hair and temper, went up behind Rafa.

“Pónganles los cuchillos en la garganta,”
Fausto said.

Up came the hunting knives, each big enough to bushwhack through a field of sugarcane. One at a time, the men leaned forward and set the razor-sharp blades against the throats of the three who were chosen.

“Now, don’t move, kiddies,” Fausto called out. “You don’t want to cut yourselves.”

Armando put Solomon’s head into an arm lock just to hold it still.

Fausto pulled a case from underneath an auditorium seat and withdrew a PC laptop. He flipped open the cover and set the computer on the floor in front of Andy. The computer was already booted up.

Fausto said, “Now, here’s what happens. I give you five minutes to transfer the money to someplace we can get it. I don’t know how to do this, but you do. You took it—you can give it back. So go. Give us the money. After five minutes, if I don’t have the money, I will point to one of your friends, and one of my friends will slice open his throat and spill blood all over this stage. Is that clear? Do I make sense?” Fausto seemed genuinely concerned that he might not have been well understood.

“Please, no,” Andy said. His voice shook like Solomon’s body. “You don’t understand.”

Fausto fiddled with his watch. “Time has started—now!”

“I can’t!” Andy shouted.

Fausto touched his ear. “Careful, young one. Remember my ears are sensitive to sound. I might do something to cause blood, out of frustration.”

Andy sank to his knees with the computer in front of him. “You don’t understand. We don’t have it.”

“Ticktock . . . ticktock . . . ticktock,” Fausto said, pointing at his watch.

The computer had automatically connected to the school’s WiFi network. Andy looked to the stage. The men behind his three friends stood like trained Dobermans ignoring a slab of meat while awaiting their master’s order.

“I can’t give you the money,” Andy pleaded. “We don’t have it! I swear. I’ll show you. The money is on the bitcoin exchange. It’s out there. Somewhere. But we don’t have the key to access it. It was taken from
us!
Someone stole it from us, same as we took it from you!”

“That’s one minute down. Four to go.”

Andy’s fingers shook so violently he could barely type, but somehow he managed to access the website blockchain.info. In another browser window, Andy opened his e-mail and with a few clicks found the bitcoin address. It was a long string of letters, a mix of capital and lower case, and numbers.

Andy copied the address from his e-mail and pasted it into the search box on the block chain website. Another webpage loaded. This one had summary information, transaction history, and entry upon entry of meaningless-looking numbers. He turned the laptop so Fausto could see the screen.

“The private key is connected to a bitcoin address,” Andy said in a rushed and panicked voice. “Gus’s dad didn’t safeguard the key, and it was easy for us to steal. But then somebody took the key from us. We can only see the money, but we can’t get it back without the new key that accesses it. Do you understand?”

Fausto seemed to be contemplating what Andy had told him. The silence was interminable.

“So you’re telling me we’re going to kill you all?”

Tears pricked the corners of Andy’s eyes. “No, please . . . please.”

“Please what?” Fausto said, sounding frustrated more than angry. “‘Please’ means nothing to me. We are here for one thing only. So if what you say is true, then you will all die.”

Fausto turned to the stage and dramatically extended his arm.
“De tin marín de dos pingüé,”
he said. With each word Fausto uttered, he pointed to one of the three being held at knifepoint. The cadence of his voice reminded Andy of “eeny, meeny, miny, moe,” and he guessed this was the Mexican version of the children’s rhyme.

“No!” Andy screamed. “Don’t!”

Fausto snapped his arm like a whip and cracked Andy’s face, using the back of his hand. Knuckles hard as lead shot slammed into the orbital bone of Andy’s eye socket. The searing pain dropped Andy to the floor.

“My ears,
idiota
!” Fausto scolded. “I told you to be quiet. Now, where was I? Oh yes, I remember now.
Cúcara, mácara, títere fue.
”

From his perch on the floor, Andy said, “Wait.” His voice came out soft as the flapping of a butterfly’s wing.

Fausto opted to ignore him. Instead, he spoke as he pointed:
“Yo no fui, fue Teté.”

“One of them might have the key,” Andy said, whimpering. He’d all but given up hope, but he got the words out anyway. A chance. Just a chance. “Maybe one of them stole it from the rest of us.”

“Pégale . . . pégale,”
Fausto slowed down his rhythm. Each word came out elongated and he appeared to take notice of what Andy said.

Andy locked eyes with Fausto. He had found a way in. It might only prolong their misery, or worse, but it was a glimmer of hope. “One of them might have the key,” Andy repeated, breathing hard. “If you kill whoever has it, you’ll never get the money.”

Fausto fell silent as he took it in. Andy filled the void by repeating what he had said. “If you kill whoever has the key, you’ll never get the money.”