I tried to fight back the terror that surged through me. Where was he taking me? Why had he grabbed me in the first place? I squirmed and struggled, and then panicked again when the rope around my neck got tighter. I forced myself to lie still. I pushed my arms up my back as far as I could to release some of the pressure on the rope. It worked. But I still felt panicky. The hood over my head made it hard to breathe, and the air in the trunk was hot and stale. I began to worry that the trunk was airtight and I would use up all the air before I got wherever we were going.
I remembered that I had Mrs. Ashdale’s cell phone in the pocket of my shorts. I tried to reach it with my hand. But that just tightened the rope again, and I had to reposition my hands and arms so that I could breathe.
At first the car stopped and started a lot. That had to mean we were still in the city; he was stopping for red lights and stop signs. I twisted myself onto my back. Every time the car stopped, I kicked the lid of the trunk as hard as I could with both feet, over and over again. I yelled for help. I prayed that someone would hear me and call the police.
Then there were no more stops, and I knew we were on the highway. I tried to stay calm. Maybe someone had heard. Maybe someone had called the cops and given them the license number of the car. Maybe someone would come to my rescue.
The car kept moving. It seemed to be going faster and faster.
Panic crept over me again.
After what seemed like an eternity, the car slowed down a little.
Then it turned onto a bumpy road, and I heard pebbles ping against the hubcaps.
The bumpy road turned washboardy, and I was jarred and jostled inside the trunk.
Finally the car stopped. I held my breath. Now what?
I heard a car door open and then close again. The trunk popped open and cool fresh air flooded in. Rough hands grabbed me, yanking me out of the trunk and dumping me onto the ground. The hood was ripped off my head.
I felt like I was going to throw up. Blood rushed to my head, and my knees wobbled. I stared at the man who had hauled me out of the trunk. I was sure I recognized his cold, hard eyes and small, mean mouth. I was sure he was the same man who had held me up in the alley. But why? And why had he brought me here?
He pushed me over to a birch tree and forced me down into a sitting position. My tailbone landed on something sharp. I let out a yelp. The man ignored it and tied me to the trunk of the tree. When he had finished, he unbuckled my fanny pack and opened it. He pulled out my camera and turned it on. He scrolled quickly through the pictures. He must have come to one that interested him, because he stopped and stared at it. Then he dropped the camera onto a rock and started to stomp on it with one booted foot. He stomped and stomped until my camera was smashed to pieces. Then he went back to the car and got a shovel out of the backseat. He started to dig a hole. This couldn’t be happening to me. It just couldn’t.
“Why?” I said. The word came out of me the way it might come out of a frog, like a croak.
The man didn’t even look at me. He just kept digging.
“Is it because I wouldn’t give you my backpack?” I said.
He paused in his digging and looked at me.
“You should have handed it over like you were told, Ethan,” he said. I stared at him. He knew my name. “If you had, we wouldn’t be here right now.”
“But there was nothing in it,” I said.
He started digging again.
I looked at my smashed-up camera. Is that what he had been after the whole time? I glanced at him again.
“It was you who went by the youth center asking about me, wasn’t it?” I said.
He didn’t answer. But it must have been him. He’d asked DeVon about the program. He’d asked to see my pictures.
DeVon had told him I never backed my pictures up.
Sara had told him I always had my camera with me when I ran in the ravine on Sunday morning.
“You shot at me outside the Eaton Centre too,” I said. It had to have been him. “How did you know I would be there?”
He shook his head. “I do my homework, Ethan,” he said. “I always do my homework.”
“But the Nine-Eights,” I said. “How did they know?”
Then I remembered Mrs. Ashdale’s fridge calendar. It had been on the floor after the break-in. Whoever had trashed the house must have seen it. My dentist appointment had been on it. So had the Eaton Centre.
The man’s mouth turned up into a smile. “Someone must have told them,” he said.
Someone? He meant himself. He had put the Nine-Eights on me.
I sat there, my brain reeling, watching the man dig. He was going to kill me. I was sure of it. But why? What had I ever done to him? And what did my camera have to do with anything?
While he dug, I tried to untie the rope around my wrists. It was tight. And my butt was sore from whatever I had landed on when he pushed me down. I shifted positions as much as I could and felt behind me. No wonder my butt was sore. I’d been sitting on a sharp piece of rock.
A really sharp piece.
I maneuvered my wrists so that they were against the rock’s sharpest edge.
I started to move them up and down, up and down, carefully so that the man wouldn’t see what I was doing, but firmly so that maybe, with some luck, the rock would bite into the rope.
Up and down.
Up and down.
Sweat started to pour off me.
I’d never been so scared in my life.
The man dug and dug. He hummed while he worked. He was enjoying himself. He wasn’t the least bit worried that he would be interrupted. He had chosen this spot well.
Up and down.
Up and down.
The hole got deeper and deeper. It got longer too. Just the right size for a person.
For me.
Up and down.
Up and… I could feel the rope starting to give, but not nearly enough. The man climbed up out of the hole.
“Please,” I said. “Let me go. I won’t say anything. I swear. Please just let me go.”
The man’s cold, hard eyes peered at me.
“Really, Ethan,” he said. “How stupid do you think I am?”
He planted the shovel into the pile of dirt he had dug out of it and went over to the car. I continued to rub the rope against the rock while he opened the car door and leaned across the front seat. My eyes were burning. I felt like I was going to cry. I felt even worse when the man backed out of the car. He was holding a gun in his hand. I froze up. He tucked the gun into the back of his pants and started toward me.