Shackled (15 page)

I heard him grumble something profane as he shoved a hand into my face. The blow cranked my neck back and made me lose my vision for a split second. Just long enough for Rebane to slam the door, trapping me inside the basement. A moment later I heard the outer lock click into place.

I lifted my fists to pound on the door, but stopped. I knew it wouldn't do any good. Plus there was David to think about.

I ran back down the stairs. David, thankfully, was starting to pull himself into a sitting position.

“David!” I said, and knelt down beside him. “Are you okay?”

“Uh . . . ,” David said, his eyes half-closed. “Maybe?”

“We've got to get out of here,” I said.

“You can't,” Jody said, still curled up on the cot. “He's gonna kill us all.”

SEVENTEEN

“What do you mean?” I blurted, as if Jody had been speaking a foreign language.

“He won't keep us all down here alive,” Jody said listlessly. “He can't afford it. We'd be too much trouble. He'll kill him”—she waved weakly toward David, who glanced up and winced—“and then one of us. Probably me. You're young. Who is
this
guy, anyway?”

“A friend. Doesn't matter, we're getting out of here,” I said, trying to sound determined. Instead I sounded like a mouse in a trap.

“Help me up,” David groaned.

“Maybe you shouldn't move,” I said. “Your head's bleeding.”

David touched the line of blood running down his face and held his fingers up to his eyes. “It is dark in here, right?” he asked. “It's not just me?”

“There's just the candle, it's the only light,” I said. I turned to Jody. “Isn't there another light in here somewhere?”

She shook her head. “The bathroom isn't wired, and the ceiling bulb is controlled in the kitchen,” she said. “He only turns it on when he . . . he likes to
see
what—”

“Stop, stop,” I said, shutting my eyes for a second. I didn't want to know.

David began standing again. I tried to keep him down. “Don't,” I said. “You might have a concussion or something.”

“Doesn't matter,” David said, using the wall to help himself up. “We have to get out.”

“Where's your phone?”

“By the kitchen door,” David said. “Knocked it outta my hands.”

Shit.

I snapped my rubber band against my wrist to sort my thoughts into a logical order. Went to the cot and took Jody by the shoulders.

“Jody,” I said. “Is there any,
any
other way out of here? Or any way we can surprise him?”

Jody shook her head. Pretty much what I'd expected. The basement had no windows, no other doors. It was exactly what I'd imagine an underground concrete bunker to be: four walls, the little homemade doorless bathroom nook, and wooden steps up to the door in the kitchen. Other than the table and cot, there was no furniture. The only real hiding place was under the stairs, but it wasn't like one of us could go there and surprise him.

David pointed to the candle. “What if we burn it down?”

“He'll leave us here,” Jody said. “Let us burn.”

“Does he have a gun?” I said. “Have you ever seen one?”

“Yes,” Jody said. “I've seen it. A pistol.”

“That's not a good start,” David said, wincing.

The door opened.

Instinctively I drew back against the far wall, standing beside the cot. David backed up too, as if to shield me and Jody.

We heard Rebane messing with the combination padlock. When it clicked into place, my stomach deflated. He took the steps one at a time as if making sure we weren't going to jump him.

My limbs froze as I saw a silvery revolver dangling from Rebane's hand. Grim in the shadows cast by the candle, the gun seemed impossibly huge.

“Yooo hoooo,” Rebane sang softly. “Is everybody here?”

I found myself wishing for the days when “fear” meant not wanting to go to school, or to stay inside all day. I could've laughed. That wasn't fear. This. This was the real thing, real terror, real certainty that I was going to die. I heard myself chanting,
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry
, not knowing if it was out loud or only in my head.

Rebane reached the floor and turned toward us, carrying the pistol at thigh level.

“Leslie?” Rebane said. “You want to go first?”

“They'll hear it,” David said. His voice was desperate. “Someone'll hear the shot, and they'll come—”

“Leslie?” Rebane said. “Is that true? Will someone hear the shots?”

He'd used the plural. Jody shook her head dismally.

“No,” Rebane said. “They won't. They've never heard anything from down here. Isn't that right, Leslie?”

Someone said, “Leave her alone.”

Rebane tilted his head. He stared at me, his face incredulous in the candlelight.

I'd
said it.

“What?” he grunted.

I pushed past David. He whispered my name. I ignored it.

I got mad.

I got mad at whoever took Tara, some son of a bitch just like Rebane. I got mad at myself for letting the fear paralyze me. I was sure as hell mad at Rebane for terrorizing this girl, and for doing the same to me and David.

In the last few seconds of my life, I was free.

“I said leave her alone!”

Rebane blinked. Frowned. Then smiled. “Oh, missy,” he said. “I'm so sad we won't be able to have any fun before I plant you. But them's the breaks.”

He took a step toward me. Raised the gun to my face. I felt like I could see down the entire length of that awful cylinder to the shell beyond, primed and ready to tear my head off my shoulders.

Then Rebane shifted his aim and pulled the trigger. The room exploded, and I fell backward into Jody on the cot.

Audible pain ricocheted down the base of my skull, through my spine, and into my knees. Ten pounds of wet sand poured into each ear, heavy and damp. My ribs vibrated like a xylophone, quaking and threatening to puncture my lungs. Smoke congested the air, choking me.

I screamed,
What happened?
but the sound only echoed at the back of my throat. It was like talking underwater, heavy and muted.

I ran my hands down my body and back up. Everything was in place, as far as I could tell. I was alive.

David fell.

He dropped to the concrete floor in a heap, like his bones had been yanked out of his skin. I shouted his name, but stopped after that because the sensation of speaking while deaf made my eyes water. Jody whimpered behind me while I faced up to Rebane again. The freedom I'd enjoyed for all of three seconds was gone.

“And now you,” he said, and swung the pistol toward me.

Thoughtless, my mind blank, I took my rubber band off my wrist and pulled it against my right index finger, stretching it back past my wrist using my left hand. I pointed it at Rebane's face and let it go.

The band snapped against his cheek. Rebane's face wrinkled up, and he gave a surprised squealing sound.

Then he grinned. Carnivorous.

“All right,” he said in a low voice. “A little fight in you. I like that. I like that. C'mere.”

He tucked the pistol into his back pocket and lunged. Before I could react, he was on top of me. Pinning me against Jody, the cot, and the wall. In seconds he was straddling me, keeping my legs pinned between his own, one calloused hand around my throat. My eyes rolled crazily, my breath cut off.

Both my hands automatically flung to his arm and pulled, tore, grabbed. I pried at his wrist with both hands, wishing I had longer nails. He just grinned and continued muttering profane things, things he had done to Jody, things he was going to do to me, all my worst nightmares growing and taking awful, tangible shape as his other hand touched me, scraped at me, like some rabid beast that should be put down—

Whether it was from lack of oxygen, or that I'd remembered more of what David had said—I stopped struggling. Let myself go limp.
Don't try to beat his strength.

“Yeah,” Rebane grunted. “That's it. Yeah. Just relax. Just relax, baby.”

My hands fell to my sides and my eyes closed.

That's when I felt it. A hard square tucked into the coin pocket of my jeans.

My pillbox.

Rebane didn't release me, but his grip on my neck loosened ever so slightly. I could breathe again. Barely. My heart rampaged in my chest. My breaths were short, shallow, scarcely enough to live.

Rebane fumbled at his waist. With his belt. The sound of the buckle tinkled in my ears, making them want to bleed. I
used my right hand to dig into my coin pocket.

“Almost there,” Rebane whispered. “Almost there, baby.”

Pulled the pillbox out. Flicked it open. With the ease of years of practice, flipped my cutter into my fingers.

“Yeah,” Rebane said. “Yeah, here we
GAAAAH!
”

Mustering what remained of my strength, I reached up and dragged the blade across his wrist as hard as I could.

Blood spilled from the wound. Rebane roared and fell backward, his pants down around his thighs. I heard the pistol clatter to the floor. His right hand immediately went to his left wrist, trying to stop the blood.

Screaming, I leaped at him. Slashed at his face. Found skin. Tore the blade down his cheek, opening another gushing wound.

“You rotten bitch!” he roared. “I'm gonna—”

I rolled off the cot. My blade dropped. I scooped the gun into numb hands and pulled the trigger.

Deafness. A total vacuum. Everything in slow motion.

Rebane froze, eyes bulging in the dull candlelight. He clutched his belly. Curled over. Fell to the floor.

He was still breathing.

Not for long.

I shuffled on my knees over to him and shoved the barrel of the gun to his head. Said things, I don't know what. I couldn't hear myself. Began to squeeze that trigger to end him, make him pay.

. . . eeeee . . .

I paused.

. . . ellie . . .

A distant groan. I turned.

David, on his side, one hand pressed against his collarbone, reached out to me with his other hand. My hearing cleared up and I heard him saying my name.

“Pelly . . .”

Still alive,
my voice said.
He's still alive, got to get out of here, got to . . .

I ran up the stairs. The door was locked with a round combo lock, just as Rebane had said. But I still had his gun.

Wincing against the noise and recoil, I shot two bullets into the door around the latch, like I'd planned to do with the hammer earlier that night. It worked. The wood splintered out, and I managed to bash the door the rest of the way open.

I needed a phone. But what I found first were the keys. Rebane had unlocked the padlock, and tossed it and the key ring on the hallway counter. I grabbed them and rushed back downstairs. After a few tries I unlocked Jody's chain. She stumbled off the cot and climbed up the stairs on her hands and feet like it was a ladder. I dragged the shackle over to Rebane's feet, trying to ignore the blood spreading across his shirt. I quickly locked his ankle into the shackle.

“That's how it feels,” I said.

Then I slid over to David. “Can you move?”

“Not good,” he moaned.

“You have to,” I said. “Come on.”

Somehow I got him to his feet, and we climbed out of the basement. In the kitchen hallway David lost his footing, and he dropped to the floor.

I leaned down to haul him back up, but he shook his head. “Cops,” he grunted. “Hurry. Ambulance.”

I spun around, looking for David's phone. Nothing here. Ran into the kitchen. Found Jody already on a black wall-mounted telephone. Giving directions.

“They're coming,” she said.

“Okay,” I said. “Okay.”

And don't remember much after that.

EIGHTEEN

When I came to, Jody was beside me. She helped me sit up and lean against one kitchen wall.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“Think so,” I said. “David . . .”

“He's still in the hall, he's alive,” she said. “The cops are on their way. You blacked out, I think.”

I nodded. My lungs seemed to take up my entire torso. Everything inside me felt painfully inflated and raw.

Jody stood up and leaned against the doorway leading to the living room, looking around and blinking as if it were a sunny day and she was coming out of a cave, except it was still night and there were only two lamps lit. She'd wrapped a blanket around her waist.

“How long?” I whispered. “How long have you been down there?”

Without turning, Jody said, “Two years. I think.”

“You did say ‘Help me,' right?” I said. “At the coffee shop the other day?”

“Yes. I didn't think you would, though. No one has before.”

“Before? It wasn't the first time? Why did he take you out there?”

Her narrow shoulders shrugged up. In the distance I heard sirens.

“Part of his fantasy, his power trip,” she said. “I think it made him feel strong. He took me to restaurants sometimes, or the store. I wanted to scream, but . . .”

Something about her words formed another question for me. “Jody? How old are you?”

“Seventeen now, I think. Maybe eighteen.” At last she turned, and I saw both premature age and incredible youth in her face. “Who is Tara?”

“A friend,” I said as red flashing lights penetrated the curtains of the picture window. “Just a friend I haven't seen in a long time.”

“Your name's . . . Pelly?” Jody asked.

“It's short for Penelope. Yeah.”

“Thanks for saving my life, Penelope.”

I wanted to put a hand on her shoulder, or hug her, or something—but couldn't stand. “You're welcome,” I said, feeling inadequate.

The front door crashed open, making us both jump. Two
cops lunged into the room, guns clasped in their hands, pointed at the floor.

“He's in the basement,” Jody told the cop. “He's not going anywhere. He's chained to the wall.”

“My boyfriend's shot,” I said weakly, not aware I'd even used that particular word until a lot later. “He needs help.”

I don't know how much time passed after that. I saw paramedics coming for David and wheeling him out on a stretcher. I called to him, but the EMTs said they needed to get him out. Then another set of paramedics got Rebane out of the basement and onto another gurney. He was not conscious.

Jody and I were both led to a third ambulance. We answered ten thousand questions, half from the EMTs, half from uniformed cops. The next thing I knew, we were in the small ­Canyon City hospital being looked over by doctors.

I know that at some point my mother was called. I know that at some point a nurse told me David would be fine. I know that someone else said they thought Rebane would live. I know that Jody got whisked away by some cops, and we didn't even say good-bye to each other.

And I know I fell asleep for what turned out to be almost twenty-four hours.