Forbidden

by Caroline B. Cooney

  They stopped, and one man released his side, turning his grip over to the other. She heard the unmistakable metallic thud of heavy chain links collapsing against each other. A lock turned and a door opened.

  Wonderful. Once she was on the inside, they would chain it again.

  They tucked her fingers around paper. “Hold this.” A whisper, revealing nothing of the speaker. Not the slick decorative paper bag of department stores, but the heavy paper of grocery bags.

  They set Annabel inside the door, closed it, locked it, and chained it.

  She dropped the bag and ripped off the mask.

  She was in complete and utter darkness.

  She could see nothing.

  She knew nothing about her prison, except that one step behind her was a door. She moved backward to the door and felt the familiar push rod of door openers in schools and institutions. She felt all over the door. There were two doors. They fit well. There were no cracks. She pushed the rod down but nothing opened. Her eyes tried to adjust to the dark, but it was too dark in there for Annabel to see her hand before her face.

  Annabel had never minded the dark.

  Now she minded.

  Who knew what was out there?

  What pit—what trap—what fall of stairs—what hungry rat or spinning spider?

  The silence was complete.

  She heard no doors slam, no steps leave, no car drive away. Had those things happened, or was the place she was in too solid for her to hear?

  She remembered the bag. Probably a bomb, she thought. They made me carry my own death inside.

  She found the bag. Reached down. Jerked her hand back.

  Inside was slithery and slippery.

  Her hair prickled. Her skin crawled. She tucked her hands safely under her arms and even curled her toes up closer to her arches. She pressed her back against the door. At least she knew what it was.

  After a while she slid down to the floor and sat.

  She wanted them to come back. Those horrible silent men in their Halloween masks—she wanted them back. Any human was better than no human. How long would they be gone? Would they feed her? Take her to a bathroom? Bring her water?

  How long would this last?

  A night? A week? Until death?

  Who had hired the men who put her here?

  She had a taste of where Daniel had been for ten years: Who hired them?

  She thought of Soraya. The icy doubts penetrated her mind again. Was she, too, under a father’s control here?

  Or did this have something to do with Daniel? With Jade?

  The arrival of two such demanding people in her life had to be linked with her kidnapping. But what could either of them have to do with it?

  She forced herself to touch the contents of the bag again.

  Fabric, she thought. It’s cloth. Small pieces of cloth. It’s—changes of clothing. And—a bottle. Plastic one liter bottle. Unopened. How reassuring. It can’t be poisoned.

  She ripped off the flimsy cap and sniffed, and then sipped. Bottled water. Deeper in the bag she found jelly sandwiches.

  Well, she was not meant to starve, die of thirst, nor wear dirty clothes.

  That meant she was not intended to fall into a pit of knives among which rabid rats ran. So she ought to explore her prison. Find out what she was up against. Make sure that the other doors and windows were locked. Find a secret passage. Get out through the air-conditioning ducts.

  Right.

  She explored on her fanny, scooting forward an inch at a time. The floor was very solid yet it seemed to slant. Down toward what?

  With the soles of her shoes she felt around to gauge what lay in front of her in the dark. She was afraid of getting disoriented, getting lost from the door and the bag. She tried to go in a straight line. Twice she backed up to reassure herself she knew where the door and the bag were.

  The room smelled. It smelled old, mostly. Unused. It wasn’t an unpleasant smell, as if something had died or rotted. It wasn’t even a dirty smell. It smelled like an attic.

  Her foot hit metal. She sat for at least a full minute before she could bring herself to put her bare fingers on the metal and feel it. A curved piece of metal, bolted to the floor. It was indescribably hideous to use bare hands to touch things she could not see. If only she had gloves! What if something trapped her fingers or bit them or scraped—

  It was a seat. A seat whose velvety bottom flipped upward at the touch of a hand. An auditorium seat. Annabel stood up. Felt along the curved metal rim of the chair back. Found another next to it, and a row behind it.

  They were keeping her in an auditorium.

  Auditoriums had lights. She need only find the stage. That was easy, because now she knew why the floor slanted. Hanging onto the rows of seats, she worked her way forward.

  By the tenth row she was less terrified of the unknown and could move her hands ahead, grip the next seat back, and walk her feet up to herself. That way, she thought, if there’s a pit in the floor, I’ll be hanging on and I won’t fall in.

  What’s this pit obsession from? she wondered. Some long-forgotten television episode?

  Her advancing shoe hit something. Not a hole. The sloping floor was no longer smooth. Somebody’s hands, she thought, fingers, things reaching for me, grabbing my bare ankle—

  She stopped moving. Waited for it to move first. Her hands slithered over the seatback and she swallowed a whimper.

  But the whimper did not go down her throat. Sobs overtook Annabel. If anything or anyone was out there, it knew that she had come apart. How weak her crying was. Like a small animal, wounded and waiting for the end. She stopped crying because it prevented her from hearing if the things in the dark were getting closer.

  Swallowing, brushing her tears from her eyes, tightening every muscle to pull herself back together, she strained to hear.

  Nothing happened.

  There was no sound except her own convulsive breathing. She felt the edges of the obstruction with her foot. It was in pieces, whatever it was. She could shift it. If only she could see! She knelt, hanging onto the known safety of the seat-back and felt with her hands. Broken pieces of things, pieces that came apart in her hands, flakily turning to dust … pieces of ceiling? Pieces of plaster?

  Was the auditorium falling apart?

  Maybe I really do have to worry about falling into pits. Maybe the floor is caving in like the ceiling.

  She worked her way over the pile of plaster. The auditorium was immense. Thirty-two rows. At last the rows ceased. She would be in that flat, open area before the stage. Wetting her lips, heart pounding so badly she wanted to yell at it, she walked across the absolute blackness, little baby steps until she found the stage. She clung to the edge of it as if to a rescuer.

  She had figured out the first problem—where she was. Good guess, Annabel, she congratulated herself. She worked along the stage rim and sure enough, found exit doors. No exit light gleamed above them. Their push bars were also locked. Flattening her hands, she patted every inch of wall and finally located the light switches. Yes! She flipped them upward.

  No lights went on.

  She jerked the little tabs back and forth, back and forth, as if repetition could bring electricity into the switches.

  I’m in an auditorium without electricity. What does that mean?

  She found the stage steps and sat on the second.

  She was filthy, hands covered with dust and grit. The place hadn’t been vacuumed or swept in years. Where, in rural Connecticut, would there be an enormous, abandoned auditorium?

  Annabel thought she would never find her way back to the paper bag and the drink of water. She had explored the backstage. She had found a small light panel behind the stage curtains. No lights went on from that, either. She bumped into all manner of frightening things in the wings, presumably props and pieces of wood. She did not bump into anything she could use as a weapon against her kidnappers or as a force against locks. She found half a dozen piles
of ceiling fallen on the floor. She just hoped none came down while she was walking underneath.

  Three doors opened off the stage wings. They were not locked, but they did not lead outside, either. She decided to go back and get the water and sandwiches and then find out what else was in the building. The auditorium probably did not have windows. But maybe the rooms behind it—music rooms? dressing rooms? bathrooms?—did.

  When the kidnappers come back, they can’t turn on the lights, either, Annabel reasoned. They’ll have flashlights. So the thing is to get to know every dark inch of this place. Hide. Make them come after me, then run for the door.

  It wouldn’t work. One of them would stay at the door. Or they’d lock it behind them.

  Still, it was something to do.

  She returned on the opposite side of the auditorium.

  For a building without electricity it was full of wires. She found them with her feet and with her hands. They were on the walls and the floors, winding under the chairs, looping across the aisles.

  At the last row, when she met both wires and fallen plaster, it occurred to her to follow the wires with her hands. The wires traveled up a big support beam and buried themselves in something that felt like Play-Doh.

  She was back at the paper bag, lifting the plastic bottle, unscrewing the cap, eager to feel water sliding down her dusty throat, when she understood.

  Nobody was coming back. It didn’t matter where she hid.

  The building was not only abandoned.

  It was going to be blown up.

  Sixteen

  HOLLINGS JAYQUITH JERKED UP the receiver. “Jayquith here.” His breath came in shallow spurts. His eyes glazed as he silently gripped the phone. He touched the wall to keep himself upright. His skin went gray, a man about to have a heart attack.

  Very slowly he set the phone down, as if it contained a bomb. He continued to stare at it. “It was the woman’s voice you described, Daniel. She said the same thing. They have Annabel. They don’t care about money. They want no investigation. They want silence.”

  Daniel pointed. “You want silence. The facts don’t change, Mr. Jayquith. You still killed my father. And somebody out there knows it. Somebody who has to be on your team, Mr. Jayquith, or they wouldn’t care.”

  Mrs. Donavan said, “Perhaps Jade’s arrival has something to do with this. The timing is convenient.”

  “I just spoke to Theodora in New York,” said Mr. Jayquith. “Jade’s with her. She couldn’t be making phone calls. I can’t believe … I don’t know what to believe.” He looked up, his eyes filled with pain.

  But he was Hollings Jayquith and he pulled back immediately. “Except,” he said harshly, glaring at the young man who had invaded his home, “I certainly don’t believe Daniel.”

  The yellow dress really could have been a painting on the wall for all the attention it brought Jade.

  Annabel Jayquith had been kidnapped.

  Nobody else mattered.

  Even the broadcast did not matter.

  People were thrilled. Usually they dealt with news by wire. News by long distance. They talked about it, but they didn’t make it. They saw films of news, but they weren’t actually there.

  Here at last, for these newspeople, was news in which they could participate.

  “Absolutely not!” snapped Theodora. “Nobody here will say one word to anybody. We cannot have publicity. That’s the point of this. The kidnapper is trying to stop publicity.”

  “How much money have they asked?” said a reporter, his eyes glowing.

  “The tabloids had a photograph of Annabel crying because of Daniel Madison Ransom,” said another. “Does he know about the kidnapping? Can we get a statement from him? That would be great, having their pictures together. Good story. Let’s—”

  Theodora would have crunched these people beneath her shoe if they had had the decency to get down where she could accomplish it. But where news was concerned, nobody had decency. That was not part of the news code.

  “Theodora,” said the incredibly thin man who seemed to be the producer of her show, “it is imperative that we announce the kidnapping. We’ll interrupt the current programming. People out there may have seen something! You need fifty million people to know about this!”

  “No!” She was not shouting but she wanted to. “We have to wait for the kidnappers to call back! They’ll have more demands. No publicity! Do! Not! Put! This! On! The! Air!”

  “Theodora, news is news. You cannot censor it. I’ve given—”

  “Announce this,” said Theodora evenly, “and you will be the murderer of my niece.”

  Television screens hung on every wall, silently and continually broadcasting. There was nothing exciting happening in the world. Mild weather, dull elections, stationary economy. But if Annabel’s kidnapping hit the air, the nation would sit up and take notice. Another exciting crime! And this one would have all the glamor, beauty, and wealth a voyeur could ask for.

  Ranks of phones littered every desk. It was not enough to have several lines per phone. They must spend their lives on the telephone the way Jade had spent her life in school.

  Behind Jade, men and women were murmuring to each other. “I wonder how much money they’ll ask.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Jayquith has it.”

  “Did you see that fabulous photograph of Annabel?” breathed a woman.

  “Isn’t she gorgeous? What a family! Tragedy always stalks families like this.”

  Nobody looked at Jade. Twice people moved her, as if she were a bookcase that needed shifting. She was in the way. Annabel, kidnapped, mattered more. Theodora, once more, had totally forgotten Jade. Theodora, once again, had put a niece far far ahead of a daughter.

  Somebody brought trays of food and coffee. There were sandwiches of every kind, dark, white, or rye bread, big fat yummy rolls and skinny diet slices.

  People moved in and out, swiftly, importantly, every one of them busy and urgent, although what they could be doing, Jade could not imagine.

  Nobody would kidnap me, thought Jade. Nobody would even bother to get me a sandwich.

  Theodora was making a dozen phone calls. She was staying calm. She was showing great courage. She was made of stern stuff. Jade knew this because that’s what everybody was whispering. But Theodora did not look stern to Jade. The perfect hair was in disarray. She’d yanked out the magnificent earrings and thrown them on the desk so they wouldn’t get in the way of the telephone she’d glued to her ear. Instead of eating, she tore her sandwich into little pieces.

  Once, Theodora did look at Jade. But did not see. Anything other than her fear for Annabel was blurred and meaningless. Her eyes had never blurred for the newborn she left in a hospital for somebody else to bring up.

  Kidnapped? thought Jade. I wonder. Her own chauffeur got Annabel’s clothes: There’s no kidnap. Annabel sneaked off with Daniel. The only other possibility is that Mr. Jayquith was so mad at her he decided he’d really lock her up.

  I could tell you that, Theodora Jayquith. I could rat on Mr. Jayquith and you could stop worrying and we could go home together.

  But you didn’t offer me a home. Not eighteen years ago and not now. You don’t want to be my mother. You want to be Annabel’s. You’re getting ready to cry. I can see it in your eyes. And all your admirers here, they’re getting ready to forgive the lapse of courage, because it’s about a beautiful rich girl we’re supposed to love right along with you.

  Well, not all of us love Annabel, Theodora.

  And not all of us love you, either.

  I was willing to forgive you when we got off the helicopter. New York was so spectacular and I wanted it so much I was willing to shrug just the way you shrug. Now I hate you again. I’m in the room with you and you still don’t know I’m alive.

  You’ll know I’m alive pretty soon. I can make phone calls, too. You’ll suffer, Theodora.

  Jade was enjoying herself.

  When she heard of girls dying young, Annabe
l always romantically thought how awful it would be to die before you knew true love.

  I have been loved, she thought. It was only for a few hours. And by a man who hates my family. But he loved me. And I loved him back.

  I loved him at the Egyptian Wing. I loved him that whole long, lovely week waiting for the wedding. I loved him at Tanglewood.

  She counted on her fingers. Nine days. That was all. How many hours? She decided not to count them. What did minutes mean, anyway?

  She probably did not have many minutes left. She wanted to spend them thinking of Daniel.

  Nobody else mattered. That surprised her. The aunt whom she revered and imitated—Theodora was nothing. The father whom she adored—Hollings was nothing. The nannies and teachers, dorm supervisors and riding instructors—they were nothing. Her friends, from half-forgotten girls with whom she’d shared a class or a locker to Emmie—they were nothing. Even her mother in the grave was truly in the grave—and nothing.

  Daniel was everything.

  She let herself melt into the memories, as, lying on the beach in the sand, she could melt into the sun and the salt air.

  Daniel.

  I will be in the grave before long, thought Annabel.

  It would be no traditional grave. There would be no satin-lined casket. No prayers. No flowers.

  A building would be her grave. Its beams and rafters, its heavy plaster, its two-story walls. They would cave neatly in on her. Crawling beneath a seat would not protect her from the velocity and weight of the walls and ceilings. Eventually a bulldozer would arrive. She would be just another broken piece.

  Her beauty and her money, after all, could protect her from nothing.

  Mama’s beauty and money had not protected her from death, either, and Mama had been underground half Annabel’s life. Annabel tried to wrench her mind from the horror of being underground, and think again of Daniel.

  But now that she had started to think of her own death, even Daniel receded from her mind.