Curse (Blur Trilogy Book 3) (7 page)

CHAPTER TWELVE

FRIDAY, JUNE 14

10:22 P.M.

No blurs since Wednesday.

No reason yet to use the camera on my phone.

However, Mom’s questions about suicide have been bothering me.

Was it possible that I’d run out in front of that truck because, somewhere in the back of my mind, I wanted to take my own life, like Grandma had? Like that distant uncle of mine had?

Mom mentioned that things like this sometimes run in families.

That’s not something I want to consider, not even
remotely.

Though my parents are clearly not on the same page as far as being cool with me going to Georgia tomorrow, this afternoon Mom finally gave in and I agreed to be extra careful with my shoulder and ankle.

Nicole’s dad has the most reliable car, so he’s letting us use that for the trip. We’re scheduled to leave their house at seven in the morning.

I toss my clothes and my journal into my duffel bag.

When I lie down to go to sleep, I turn on m
y
side so I’m facing the wall with Nicole’s sketches rather than the place on the floor where that pool of blood collected on Wednesda
y
afternoon.

ATLANTA, GEORGIA

11:41 P.M.

Petra Amundsen had just left work at the hotel where she usually stayed late on Fridays balancing the books, and was on her way to her car when it happened.

She’d parked under a streetlight just like her father had taught her to do five years ago when she was first learning to drive.

It was closing in on midnight, so the street was basically empty. A dog somewhere down the block barked and someone yelled for it to
Shut up!
Other than that, and the sound of a few cars on a nearby road out of sight, it was quiet.

Okay, so the hotel wasn’t in the best part of town, but since graduating from college in the spring, Petra had wanted some independence.

So, although she didn’t by any stretch of the imagination need the money, she’d taken the job. The trust fund she’d received when she turned eighteen was great, but she would rather use that to make a difference in other people’s lives than just indulging herself. Added bonus: the accounting allowed her to pursue one of her biggest interests: math.

As she came to her car, she noticed that across the street, a woman in her late twenties with sandy-colored hair was standing beside a minivan, holding a bundle of blankets, shushing it with baby talk.

Petra couldn’t hear the child crying, but the woman looked extremely upset.

As soon as she saw Petra, she called out, “Please, can you help me? I locked my keys and my phone in my car. I need to tell my husband we’re okay and see if he can come get us. I was supposed to be home by now. He’ll be terribly worried.”

“Oh. Um, sure.”

Petra crossed the road and drew her cell phone out of her purse.

“Can you hold my baby while I make the call?”

“Yeah. Okay.”

The woman carefully handed the bundle of blankets to Petra and accepted the phone, but when Petra looked down, she realized that it wasn’t a real baby wrapped up in the blankets after all. Just a doll.

“What’s going—?”

But before she could finish her sentence, a man threw open the side door to the minivan, leapt out, clamped his hand over her mouth, and dragged her backward.

Petra tried to scream, but his thick hand muffled her cries.

Struggling to get free, she dropped her purse and the doll, then clung to the edge of the door, but he yanked her back hard enough to break her grip and get her inside.

The woman picked up the items and closed the door.

There weren’t any seats in the back of the minivan so there was room for him to wrestle her to the floor. Then he whipped out a roll of duct tape, and covered her mouth with a strip of it.

After making sure she couldn’t call for help, he ripped off more tape and bound her hands behind her.

Frantically, she tried rolling to the side to get out from under him, but it was useless.

He wrapped the tape around her ankles and then around her legs just above her knees, securing her so that she could barely move.

When he was done, he leaned down and peered closely at her face in the dim streetlight that filtered through the window. She attempted to turn away, but he pressed her head roughly against the floor.

His chiseled face was all creases and shadows, and he had only a thin slit for a mouth.

When he grinned at her, his rancid breath made her feel like throwing up, but with that tape over her mouth, she didn’t dare, so she gulped and tightened her throat and managed to hold back.

He brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes. “Daddy’s little girl. The famous Brad Amundsen’s only child. Well, let’s see how valuable to him you really are.”

He patted her cheek twice, climbed into the driver’s seat, rolled down the window, and called to the woman, “Get rid of her car. I’ll meet you at the house.”

“Alright. I’ll see you there.”

Then he started the engine and guided the minivan onto the street.

Petra tugged against the duct tape, but it seemed like the more she struggled to get free, the more constricting it became.

Though she tried to keep track of how long they drove, she was too scared to really have any idea how much time actually passed. Besides, for all she knew, the man might have been driving around extra just to fool her.

She told herself that they’d just taken her for ransom and nothing more.

That’s what they want. Ransom. Nothing’s going to happen to you.

Dad will pay it. They’ll let you go. It’s all going to be okay.

Finally, after what seemed like hours, they slowed and she heard a garage door open. They drove inside.

Parked.

The door clattered shut behind them.

The thin-lipped man turned off the engine.

Scared of what would happen next, Petra stared nervousl
y
at the minivan’s side door, tr
yi
ng to keep herself calm.

Calm, calm, calm.

Just keep calm.

She could hear the man and the woman talking in hushed voices outside the minivan, but couldn’t make out much of what they were saying. However, at one point, she did hear him say something about Monday night and refer to the woman as Deedee, and when she replied, she called him Sergei.

When the door slid open at last, Deedee was standing there holding Petra’s phone. “Oka
y,
m
y
dear,” she said. “Let’s get
yo
u read
y.
We have a ver
y
important video to shoot.”

PART II

DESCENT

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

SATURDAY, JUNE 15

6:51 A.M.

Mom stays home while Dad takes me to Nicole’s house to drop me off.

“So, you have that debit card for gas?” he says as we pull into the driveway.

“Yes.”

“Check.”

“I’ve got it, Dad.”

“Check.”

I pull out the preloaded card that the camp’s registrar had sent us from the anonymous donor who’d paid for my scholarship. He didn’t tell us how much money is on it, but he assured us it would be enough to cover my travel expenses.

“And some cash, just in case, for emergencies?”

“I’ve got everything. I’m good.”

“And what are the ground rules?”

“Check in every day. No drinking. No drugs. Nothing stupid.”

“Okay.” He raps the steering wheel once, definitively, and I take that to mean the questions are done. “Be safe. Have fun. Be careful. And do well at the camp.”

“I will.”

“And don’t get re-injured.”

“I won’t.”

“And as far as your mom goes, don’t worry. I know things have been a bit tense this week, but she’ll be alright—we’ll be alright.”

“Okay.”

I climb out and grab my basketball and duffel bag from the backseat.

The trunk of Nicole’s dad’s sedan is open and has her suitcase in it, so even though she’s not out here at the moment, I figure I’m good to toss my things in there.

It’s possible that Mia might have stayed the night here because, though her car is here, it has dew on the windshield.

As my dad is pulling away, she comes out of the house.

She’s wearing black leggings that match her inky black hair and make her look even skinnier than she really is. Pierced lip. Studded tongue. Her tank top leaves her red bra straps visible across her bare shoulders.

Her arms are loaded with five jumbo-size bags of Fritos and a camo military rucksack that she once told us was her dad’s back when he was in the Army.

“What’s up, Daniel?”

“Nothing. How’re you doing?”

“Smokin.”

She tosses the pack and Fritos into the car. “You ready for this camp thing?”

“I think so.”

“So your mom eased up on it all?”

“She agreed to let me go—so, I guess so. You think you have enough Fritos there?”

She assesses her Fritos stockpile. “Good point. We can always stop for more if we need to.”

“Right.”

Nicole appears in the front door wearing her pajama bottoms and one of my T-shirts that I left over here a couple weeks ago.

She’s clutching an armload of pillows that she stows in the backseat where she and Mia are planning to lounge for the first part of the trip.

When Nicole sees my basketball in the trunk, she looks at me quizzically. “Are you really bringing that along?”

“I might want to shoot around when there’s free time.”

“It’s a basketball camp. They’ll have, like, a million basketballs there.”

“But they won’t have Alfie.”

Mia blinks. “You named your basketball Alfie?”

“Yeah, I know.” Nicole beats me to a reply. “It’s a little troubling. That and his football.”

“Fred,” I tell them.

Mia speaks as if I’m not standing right in front of her. “Hashtag: hemightverywellbealostcause.”

Kyle and his mom pull up, he hops out, and we collect his things.

I offer to drive first, but he shakes his head. “How are you supposed to do that with one arm in a sling?” Then he holds up an enormous travel mug. “Besides, this is my special brew. Guaranteed to keep me awake and alert for at least the next half hour.”

“What is it?”

“
Red Bull, Dr Pepper and two bottles of 5-Hour Energy.”

“That’s going to do more than keep you alert for half an hour,” Nicole says. “It’ll probably keep you up for a week.”

“My record is thirty-eight hours. You should have seen the song lyrics I was writing at the end of that.”

“I can only imagine.”

The girls get situated in the back, and then Nicole, who has burned some CDs for the ride, hands them up to me.

“Okay, so this car actually does have a jack for your phone,” she explains, “but it also has a CD player—which is cool, even though CDs are a little old school.”

As she goes on, she sounds slightly philosophical. “It sort of straddles two ages. Like those cars they used to make that had both cassette players and CD players.”

Straddling two ages.

Hmm.

Interesting.

“Like Janus,” Kyle says, “that Greek god that had two faces. One to look at the past. One to look toward the future.”

“So this trip is officially in honor of Janus then.” Mia rips open a bag of Fritos and dives into them. “I eat this corn chip in honor of Janus.”

I shuffle through the CDs, which Nicole has labeled
Awesome Tunes
,
Road Trip Mix
, and
Chill
. “I wonder what cars will be like twenty years from now, what kinds of things they’ll include along with the phone input.”

Kyle takes a long gulp from his mug as he pulls onto the road. “Probably wireless signals to cranial implants that pump tunes directly into your brain.”

“Well.” I hold up Nicole’s CDs. “I think I’ll stick with these for now.”

“Ditto.”

Since we all have pretty different tastes in music, we make a deal that the driver gets to choose the tunes and no one else is allowed to complain about the music or strangle the driver, but we all have earbuds or headphones, so we should be able to handle things either way.

Nicole is into techno and trance—anything with a driving beat but no words. Kyle goes for the alternative indie bands you’ve never heard of, but that seem to always make it big about six months after he starts listening to them. It’s uncanny.

For Mia, it’s grunge and for me, Rush. My dad had all of their albums back when I was a kid and I used to listen to them when I was going to bed. Geddy Lee sang me to sleep through the years. All those rock anthems got lodged in my mind and I’ve never really been able to get them out.

Not such a bad thing, actually.

“Seriousl
y
though,” Mia sa
ys
. “I can’t believe it’s June and we’re driving to
Georgia
. We’re gonna die from the heat.”

“That’s what air conditioning is for.” Kyle blasts it, even though there’s no need for it yet.

“No, don’t do that,” Nicole insists. “The Freon’s bad for the ozone.”

“Oh, that’s just an urban legend. Like the one about the people who wedge razor blades in waterslides.”

“Ew! What? No, it’s not like that at all!”

“Why did you have to say that, Kyle?” Mia punches his arm. “Now I’m never gonna wanna go down a waterslide again in my life.”

“That’s not as bad as the one about the AIDS-infected hypodermic needles they found in—”

“Don’t,” Mia says. “I don’t want to know.”

“—those little kids’
climby ball pit things.”

“Kyle!” both girls exclaim.

“Okay, okay.”

“And turn off the air conditioning,” Nicole tells him firmly. “Save the planet.”

He does.

And we head south.

Petra Amundsen pounded on the narrow window in the basement room where the people who’d abducted her had left her.

Had imprisoned her.

It was useless.

She ran her fingers along the sill for the hundredth time, searching for some way to get it open, but of course, found nothing.

Well, ninety-eighth time, but who was counting.

She didn’t really expect to find anything, but it was sort of like when you misplace your car keys and you know they have to be
somewhere,
so you check your purse, and then you look around your room and when you don’t find anything, you come back to your purse and look in it again.

You know the keys won’t be there, but you look anyway.

Just in case.

Just to be
sure
.

And now, Petra still found no way to open the window.

And no way to break the glass.

Sergei and Deedee had provided her with food and water, as well as a wire-handled five-gallon bucket to use for a toilet. But besides that, and the cot and blanket, her room was empty.

They’d been down to check on her a couple times, but mostly left her alone in this sparse, cement-block cell with that single, thick-glassed window.

When she stood on the cot and looked outside, she could see trains rocket past just a hundred yards or so away.

So close.

Yet so far out of reach.

Every couple of hours they passed by.

There were a lot of things she didn’t know, but from the video her kidnapper’s had filmed when they brought her here, she did know that the ransom they wanted from her dad didn’t involve money but had to do with one of the committee hearings he was in charge of.

Money would have been no big deal.

Yeah, to put it plain and simple, her dad was filth
y
ric
h—a
nd with her trust fund, so was she. He came from famil
y
mone
y,
but also made smart investments and had a knack for choosing the right stocks. B
y
the time he was fort
y,
he’d more than doubled the inheritance he’d received.

But what these people wanted was a different matter altogether.

Their ransom demand involved something her dad had told her about, something vital to stopping off-the-books government research that could hurt a lot of people. So, although Petra obviously didn’t want to die, she also didn’t want him to give in to the blackmailing.

They’d stipulated that he comply on Monday night at exactly nine o’clock.

Going that long without her medication was not going to be good.

Not at all.

You’ll be okay. With Dad’s connections, there are probably a thousand cops out there right now looking for you. They’ll find you before Monday night. They’ll find you for sure.

That’s what she told herself as she stared out the window that would not open, through that glass that was too thick to break.