YOU HAVE TO GET YOUR HANDS DIRTY
GRIFFIN
Griffin watched the barn door slide back into place. He had bought Cheyenne some time, but in the long run—or even the short run—it wouldn’t matter.
“Griffin? Griffin, is that you?” Cheyenne’s voice was raw. “Please, you have to let me go.”
“I can’t.” He started to explain, but her words crowded out his.
“You must really hate me, then.” Her face contorted. “You lure me out here, and now you’re just going to let them kill me?”
“Would you listen for a second? I’m handcuffed to a post, just like you. And until about five seconds ago, I had duct tape over my mouth.”
“Wait—what?”
“All these months, I’ve left you alone, just like you wanted. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t think about you every day. Especially once I got to Portland and knew you were only a few miles away. I could have done what Dwayne did, figured out some way to contact you. But I didn’t, because I was trying to keep my word, no matter how much I wanted to break it. I was doing what you said you wanted me to.” Griffin’s voice cracked, but he didn’t care.
“But Dwayne said—”
“And you’ll listen to him and not me? He was just messing with both of us, making you think I betrayed you, and driving me crazy since I was gagged and couldn’t talk. I don’t know what Dwayne told you in those messages, but it was him that wrote them, not me.”
After a long pause, Cheyenne said, “He said you—or he or whatever—were going to kill yourself rather than testify against your dad.” Her throat moved up and down as she swallowed. “And I couldn’t let you do that.”
“I’m not looking forward to testifying, but I would never kill myself over it.” Maybe Griffin had flirted with the idea in his darker moments, but now he realized how much he wanted to live. He wanted to live so much. Too bad he was figuring that out when he was just about to die. “And what you said to TJ is right. I’m sure once he has the money, Dwayne’s going to kill all of us. Even TJ. It’s the one way he’ll know for sure that we’ll never testify.”
“He won’t kill you,” Cheyenne said, but her voice wasn’t as certain as her words. “You’re Roy’s only child.”
“Yeah, but remember, my dad burned me and put me in the hospital for weeks when I was a kid. He killed my mom. Being related to Roy is not exactly a guarantee you’ll be okay.”
“But those were accidents.”
Griffin couldn’t believe Cheyenne was defending Roy. “Maybe my dad wouldn’t kill me, but my uncle’s not my dad. And he thinks I’m a traitor.”
She lowered her voice. “Then we have to get out of here.”
“I know that. But it’s impossible.”
“All I need is a thin piece of metal.” Cheyenne walked her legs partway around the pole so that she was sitting at a different angle, and now he could see more clearly that her fingers were sweeping over the ground. “Like a piece of wire or a bobby pin, something like that.”
“How will that help?”
“Because the lady who’s been my bodyguard taught me how to get out of handcuffs. Wait”—her face lit up—“what do you have in your pockets?”
A flash of hope shot through him and then died. “Not much. Gum. My wallet. Maybe five bucks and some change.” After a pause, he added a little reluctantly, “And a lighter. But no wire.”
“Then look on the ground for something.” She was still keeping her voice low. “It doesn’t have to be very long. Even an inch might be enough.”
“But it’s dark. The flashlight’s pointing at you. I can’t see anything.”
She made a raspberry sound. “That’s what your hands are for. Make them be your eyes. That’s how I can tell if I’ve wiped a counter off or swept the floor clean. I touch it. You have to get your hands dirty. Just make sure you overlap, so you don’t miss anything.”
Griffin remembered now how Cheyenne had been able to know things he didn’t. It wasn’t that she had superhuman senses, but that having her eyes turned off allowed her to pay attention to what everyone else felt, touched, tasted, and smelled—and ignored.
As Griffin began to run his fingertips over the hard-beaten earth, Cheyenne said, “How did you end up here?”
“Dwayne threatened me after my mom’s funeral. He said he’d have TJ hurt Aunt Debby if I didn’t get in the van. So I got in. A little bit later, they handcuffed me and threw me in the back.”
“Was Octavio’s body back there then?” Cheyenne’s voice broke when she said the man’s name.
Griffin sighed. “Yeah. Only I didn’t know who it was until later, when Dwayne told me. I just knew things were bad and going to get worse.” Under his left ring finger, something rolled. It was thin, stiff, and a cylinder. His heart thrilled. But when he plucked it up and twisted his head, he saw it was yellow. Just a stiff piece of straw.
There had to be another way. Was there something on him that wasn’t in his pockets but still made of metal? No metal on the tips of the laces of his dress shoes. He still had a hole in one ear, but he hadn’t worn an earring for a couple of years.
His belt!
“Cheyenne, my belt has a metal buckle,” he whispered hoarsely. “Could you use that?”
Her voice changed. “Maybe? How thick is that part you put through the holes? As thick around as a bobby pin?”
He had to contort himself, the cuffs cutting into his wrists, until he could rest a finger on it. “No. It’s pretty thick. Like three or four times that.”
“That’s too big.” She took a breath. “Keep looking.”
If he didn’t have something on his clothes, maybe she did? “Don’t some bras have, like, underwires in them?”
“They do, but I’m not wearing that kind.”
It was hopeless. But what else could they do? Reaching back as far as he could, he trailed his fingers along the ground, slowly scooting around the post.
Just when Griffin was beginning to despair, he touched something right at the edge of where he could reach. He stopped breathing, concentrating on slowly scooting it in by curling his finger.
Finally he had it. “I’ve got something, Cheyenne. A piece of wire, about four inches long. And I think it’s the right thickness.”
“Can you toss it to me? Or by me?”
The seesaw of emotions continued as he contemplated how far away she was. “I don’t see how. We’re, like, twenty feet apart, and it’s not like I can really swing my arm.”
“What if you pushed yourself to your feet and tossed it high?”
He shook his head, forgetting again that she couldn’t see him. “I think the chance that it would work is about zero. Can’t you walk me through how to do it? And quick, before one of them comes back here?”
“I’ll try. You just need to do it right once, then you’ll be free and can bring me the wire. Okay, let me think. Is it flat or round? If it’s round, you can make it act like a key. If it’s flat, you can shim it between the teeth and the cuff.”
He rolled it between his fingers to be sure. “It’s round.”
“Then we’re making a key. Are you right-handed?”
“Yeah.”
“First twist your wrists so they’re nearly parallel and throw your elbows out to give yourself as much room as you can. Then you have to find the keyhole on your left cuff. It will be on one edge or the other, not in the middle. Be careful not to press the cuffs against anything, or they’ll ratchet even tighter.”
Griffin did as she said, sliding the tip of his right index finger over both sides of the cuff until he located a small hole. “Okay. I found the keyhole.” The corner of the post was digging into his back, but he ignored the pain. His focus had narrowed to the tiny keyhole. If he could just do this, he could save them. That was all he asked, that they be allowed to live. Or at least that Cheyenne would.
“Now put just the tip of the wire into the keyhole and bend it over until the wire is parallel with the cuff.”
“Which direction do I bend it?”
“That part doesn’t matter. Handcuff keys aren’t complicated. You’re going to end up with a bend of about forty-five degrees, but the end piece is going to be really short, like a quarter of an inch long. You don’t want it to be too long, or it won’t fit into the keyhole right.”
Gritting his teeth in concentration, Griffin put the tip of the wire in, pushed it down to bend it, pulled it out, and then traced it with his finger to see if it felt right. His palms and even the tips of his fingers were slick with sweat. He kept looking at the barn door, willing TJ to stay away.
“Okay, I’ve got it bent. I think it’s right.”
“Now stick it in the keyhole so that the long, straight piece of the wire runs from one side of your wrist to the other, right up the cuff. Then lift it up so that it moves straight back. When it’s standing straight up from the cuff, slowly turn it away from your wrist. You’re going to be angling that bent tip in toward the body of the cuff. And at some point, it’s going to catch like the key would.”
Griffin pictured it in his head. Even though he had trouble reading, machines and mechanical things always made sense to him. Once he had taken apart his alarm clock to see how it worked. When he put it back together, he had had one tiny leftover plastic part, but the clock still told time.
Closing his eyes and holding his breath to help him concentrate, he put the wire back in the hole again, oriented the way Cheyenne had said. Slowly, he lifted it up until it was at about a ninety-degree angle to the cuff. He began to turn it.
And then he felt the piece of wire spring away into the darkness behind him.
Tears stung his eyes. He had failed her. Again. “I’m sorry, Cheyenne. It jumped out of my fingers when I was turning it.”
“Just pick it up!” Her whisper was sharp with anxiety. “Try again!”
“I can’t.” He hated having to spell it out. “It was under so much tension it kind of flew. I heard it land, and it’s way too far away.”
“Just start looking again. If there was one piece of wire, there must be more. I’ll keep looking, too.” Then Cheyenne lifted her head. She sniffed hard. “Do you smell smoke?”