Guardian (6 page)

Though their lifestyle was to spend the little they made on themselves, my parents didn’t usually miss paying the bills. Maybe they knew better than to invite those kinds of complications, or maybe they knew it could make more trouble for them where we kids were concerned. Whatever the reason, if the bill hadn’t been paid, it meant there was no money left to pay it. It would fall to me, just as it had once before.

I darted into my bedroom and crawled under my bed, pulling out the metal safe box I kept there and unlocking it with the key I wore around my neck. I’d learned the hard way that my parents were not to be trusted with valuable things, even if they belonged to me. I thumbed through the money I had there, saved over the last year from odd jobs and random babysitting when I could bring Colton and Grace along with me. I had fifty-two dollars. I was thirty-seven dollars and eighty-six cents short. I closed my eyes and sighed, knowing what I was going to have to do in order to make pay. The only problem was the pawn shop where I had gone last year, near our house, had closed. I would have to go to a different one, probably in more unfamiliar territory.

I spent the rest of the day poking around my house, gathering things I could probably sell. The problem with getting money this way was that it took a lot of ordinary house items to raise enough cash to make an impact, and we had precious little to begin with. I gathered a backpack full and was just getting Colton and Grace back into their shoes and jackets when the phone rang.

It was Natalie once again, and she immediately dived into conversation, first asking me what the calculus homework had been, then if I had finished already, and then in a wheedling voice if she could possibly take a look at it tomorrow.

I allowed her to go on for a little while, taking anxious glances at the clock on the kitchen wall. Finally, I could stand it no longer. If I wanted to get all the way over to Sullivant Avenue – the nearest pawn shop that would take the junk I had to offer – and back before dark, I needed to get going.

“Nat, I’ve got to go,” I finally interrupted. “I’ve got something to do.” For just a moment, as I looked down at Colton and Grace, I had a flash of worry. Maybe it would be best to see if Natalie could come and get them, watch them for me while I went to the pawn shop. Then we could study together, since she already said she was having trouble with calculus. Did I dare actually ask someone for help?

“Okay, no problem,” Natalie chirped. “I’ve got to go re-do my hair anyway. I told you that Brian asked if he and I could go get pizza, didn’t I? What do you think that means? I mean, pizza? Do you think that’s like a date, or like an unofficial kind of-”

“Natalie,” I said on an exasperated laugh. “I’ve got to
go
. You can tell me all about it tomorrow, or call me tonight after.”

“Okay! Bye!” And she was gone.

I looked down at Colton and Grace, torn for a moment between two choices that seemed equally bad; better to take them with me, or leave them home alone? They were young, but Colton was already so responsible. They’d lasted for short periods of time in the past, like the night of the youth group kick off…

No. I shook my head and made up my mind. Better to keep them with me. At least then I could have my eye on them and wouldn’t worry about what my parents might be doing to them. If they even came home. Undoubtedly, they would see the electricity was out and head off to a bar or a friend’s house rather than stay here.

Maybe this was just a sign, proof that I needed to handle this on my own. I didn’t
need
help with Colton and Grace. They didn’t need someone else to rely on when they had me to care for them. We were doing fine on our own.

I walked out into the bright, sunny day, glad we were having a nice warm fall. It was always harder to get around on foot when the weather was poor and snowdrifts blocked the sidewalks. Colton and Grace tagged along behind me obediently, and it was a pleasant walk. Cars whizzed by beside us, the sidewalks were dotted with people, and I was just beginning to think my fears were completely unfounded when I turned the corner onto Sullivant Avenue, and I knew I had been rash.

It was as if the whole street was covered in night. Darker than the rest of downtown, no cheerfully reassuring cars drove on this street, no kindly stranger was walking here, ready to lend a helping hand. No, the only people I could see were a group of men a few blocks ahead, loitering on a street corner and smoking. Graffiti ran rampant here, much scarier, menacing, and exceedingly more vulgar than anything on my end of town.

I instinctively reached for the small hands of my siblings. “Don’t let go of me,” I cautioned, blanching at the tremor in my own voice.

Grace buried her face into my hip. “Sissy, I don’t think I want to go in there,” she told me.

In the farthermost recesses of my mind, I was railing at myself for not leaving them at home, or possibly with Natalie’s mom. But what was done was done, and another secret part of me was very glad that I was not alone. Although the more rational part was saying Colton and Grace were not much protection.

Swallowing the gargantuan lump in my throat, I tried to squeeze their hands reassuringly. My fingers felt oddly weak, my lips a little numb as I said, “We’ll be in and out in just about two minutes, I promise. Come on, the sooner we get in there, the sooner we can get out.”

I began walking quickly down the sidewalk. Colton and Grace had to trot to keep up, and the hairs on my arms and legs had stiffened to attention, while my whole head felt alive and tingly. While we only had to walk two blocks, it seemed we attracted every single eye in the whole vicinity.

I wasn’t an idiot, I knew why; my figure was stylishly reed thin, though it was more from lack of proper food than effort, and my long dark hair had garnered me unwanted attention in the past. I wasn’t hideous, after all. But sickest of all, I knew Colton and Grace were absolute prizes, with their identical, ethereal, cherubic looks. I breathed a sigh of relief when we reached the shop at last and were safely behind the tinkling door.

“Stay close,” I warned. “Don’t touch anything.”

I made my way to the back of the store, to the counter where a seedy, smelly man sat, eyeing us speculatively. I conducted my business as quickly as I could, while Colton and Grace explored the dingy shop. I had to argue vehemently, but in the end I got enough to cover the electric bill with ten dollars to spare. Smiling a little at my haul, I was placing the money safely in an inside pocket of my jumper when I turned and bumped into a man standing behind me.

“Sorry,” I muttered. He was very tall and filthy, the hands he used to steady me coated in oil and grime. He smelled of cars and sweat, and his five o’clock shadow had come early in the day.

“Excuse me, little lady,” he said. I tried to shrug his hands off my shoulders as his bloodshot, milky blue eyes scanned me up and down.

“I always did like a lady in uniform,” he commented.

My eyes must have gone round as dinner plates, for he threw back his greasy head and laughed crudely.

“I have to go,” I mumbled, and tore away, walking very fast down an aisle filled with ticking clocks and watches. Then I was faced with a much more serious problem:
where
were Colton and Grace? I looked wildly all around the store, aware of the seedy owner following my every move.

They knew better than to leave without me. I refused to think otherwise. But if so, where had they gone? The shop was small. As horror began to take over my previous calm, rational thought, I realized they were absolutely
not
here. I glanced at all the ticking clocks. My time was running out. I had to find them.

“Colton? Grace?” I said loudly, ignoring the clerk.

There was no answer. And that was when I realized the strange man had also left the store without my even noticing. I choked on a sob as I pushed wildly out the door, so hard the bells fell off behind me. The door slammed closed on the clerk’s outraged cry, and I looked down the street each way, fighting tears. They were gone. Nowhere to be seen. All because of my stupid pride and reluctance to accept that someone could reliably help us, even for a few hours.

I began running down the street at random. They couldn’t have gone far. Colton and Grace wouldn’t have gone quietly – but then, why couldn’t I hear them? Were they gagged? Unconscious? Was the filthy hand of that man covering their mouth? My heart hurt a little, and I felt cold sweat coat my entire body, chilling me in the hot day. I ran harder, faster.

A car whizzed by, blurred by my sudden bout of tears as I realized they could have simply been thrown into a van and already be miles away. I slowed and began sobbing hysterically, leaning against the graffitied brick wall for strength, when I heard it.

“
Lyl
-”

Someone cut off Gracie’s thin shout, but I would have known my sister’s voice even from the deepest recesses of hell. The alley broadened as it came out into another street, and at the end of it, I saw my two siblings, my babies, cornered by four men. Colton held a brick he must have found on the ground, and even as I watched, he pitched it clumsily at one of the men, who howled in pain as it hit his hand, clearly knocking a finger out of joint.

Atta boy,
I thought as I sprinted toward them, breathing in great gasps of air.
That’s my Bub.

But his retaliation only made them angrier. The man he had hit lunged for Colton with a growl. “I’ll get you, you little-”

“Colton!” I shouted desperately. “Run!”

All the men turned to look at me, and I thought I had surprised them enough to allow Colton and Grace to get away, but in the end I was the stunned one, Colton and Grace the ones to gasp in shock when a pair of arms reached out from behind the alley corner and grabbed me. Caught so firmly in mid-run, my legs flew up before me, the air knocked solidly from my chest.

I wheezed loudly, and in the oxygen deprived, dreamy haze that now surrounded me, I heard my captor speak in a gravelly voice, “Looks like we’ll be taking this one too. She’s pretty enough, Eddie might take her.” I felt sickly sweet breath sting my nose as I tried to suck in air, felt the disgustingly hot words on my neck. “I did tell you I liked a woman in uniform.” And then louder, “Let’s get moving.”

I held back the tears as I watched them throw Colton and Grace, who fought the whole time, through the side door of a blue minivan. This was it. I had cheated Fate, cheated God’s will for me by being rescued the night Austin had attacked me. What was meant to be would always find its way. Clearly, this was meant to happen. I couldn’t escape it for a second time.

Or so I thought.

Behind my captor and me, there was a loud
thump
, followed almost simultaneously by cracking and crumbling noises. All of us, kidnappers, my siblings, and me, turned as one, only to see a small crater had appeared in the black top behind us, a man standing inside it. It could only have been formed by the man’s feet when he jumped down from a great height. And that man, kneeling slightly inside the crater, was Rafael.

He slowly straightened, his aura of danger full force, radiating out, purging the alley with its strength. That was all it took to send the men spurring into action. The ones who had thrown Colton and Grace in the van jumped in after their captives and sped off. This only served to infuriate my own captor, who proceeded to curse wildly and hold a gun up to my temple as he stared at Rafael.

“One wrong move and your girlfriend gets it in the head, pretty boy,” he warned.

One corner of Rafael’s mouth lifted upward in a superior, somewhat impish way. It was a dangerous, lethal smile that somehow made him appear even more beautiful.

“I mean it,” said the man. The cold barrel of the steel pistol had been a shock at first, but now it had warmed from contact with my skin. I felt his hands shaking, which did not seem to bode well for my head. That was when I began to pray.

“Don’t worry, Lyla,” Rafael said soothingly.

In my dim fog of fear, I had the sudden, irrational thought that I had no idea how this man had learned my name. And the location of my house. He had taken me home last time. How did he know these things?

“Shut up!” the man cried.

Rafael smiled impishly once again. “All right,” he said. And that was when he moved.

He was just a blur, so fast that if I had blinked a split second later, I would have completely missed it. Even so, I was hard pressed to tell if that dark blur of a shadow had really been Rafael moving at superhuman speed. But it had to be, because in an instant, there he was, suddenly in front of me, snatching the gun from the man’s hand and smashing him squarely in the head with it.

While the single blow knocked him out cold, tossing his neck back with an ugly snapping noise, its purpose backfired. My captor toppled forward, not backward, his arms still clenched around me. For the second time, the wind was knocked out of me, this time by a solid two hundred-plus pounds landing atop my back.

“Ooomf!” I cried out in pain as the air rushed from my lungs once again.

It was only the wait of a second before the heavy, dead weight was rolled off of me, and Rafael’s voice was whispering harshly in my ear as he pulled me up, “Idiot girl! Don’t you know human trafficking is
rampant
in Ohio?”

Yes!
I wanted to wheeze.
I most certainly do!
But the only noise I could make was a sort of “Uhhhhnnnnhhh,” that reminded me of a broken vacuum cleaner.

“Lyla, did he hurt you?” Now Rafael was concerned, checking my body for real injuries.

I only made the vacuum cleaner noise again, and that was when he frowned at me a little. Then, before I could realize his intent, he had smacked me sharply between the shoulder blades. I was sure that it was only because of the distraction at the resulting pain I felt at his incredible blow that I was able to gasp in some air at last. Once I got my heaving chest under control, I was able to push out in a gravelly voice, “Colton… Grace!”

“Oh,” Rafael said, not appearing as concerned as I was beginning to be, at the fact that the van had left a good five minutes ago. The fact that they were
gone
. “Wait here,” he told me, pressing the man’s gun into my hand. “I’ll bring them back.” And he ran off, so fast I wasn’t entirely sure he had even been there in the first place.