Ransom

by Lois Duncan

  “But fifty thousand more …” Rod tightened his grip on the receiver.

  “Can you get it?”

  “Yes. Yes, I can get it.”

  “Today?”

  “Yes, today. Where shall I bring it, and when?”

  “There is a village,” the man said, “about two hours away from Albuquerque. It is a small settlement, in the mountains. There is one road leading to it. You are to drive there alone. If anyone follows you, he will be spotted on the road. You are to bring the money—all the money—with you.”

  “All right,” Rod said; “but Marianne had better be there. I’m not handing you one penny until I see her.”

  “There is a church. You will go inside. I will meet you there.”

  “With Marianne?”

  “I will meet you at the church tomorrow at one o’clock, Mr. Donavan. I repeat, you are to come alone. If anyone is with you or follows you, you will never see your daughter again.”

  “I’ll be there,” Rod told him. “Give me directions.”

  When he finally replaced the receiver, he raised his eyes to find his wife standing in the doorway.

  “I heard,” she said softly.

  “Yes. Well, it’s all right, honey. It’s going to be all right.”

  He got up from his chair and went over to her. Marian Donavan moved to lean against him. He put his arms around her and said, “You’re shivering.”

  “I heard what you told him. You said you could get an extra fifty thousand dollars for someone else’s child. Rod, you can’t.”

  “No, I can’t.”

  “We don’t even have our own share of the money. We can’t pay our own.”

  “Don’t shiver,” Rod said softly. “It’s all right. It will be all right.”

  “You’re going to meet him, and you don’t have the money. What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know,” Rod told her. “But at least I will see him. I will see Marianne. And I will do something. I don’t know what it will be, but I will do something.”

  His mind moved swiftly to the collection of firearms in the trunk in the basement, the trunk that Jack Paget had not yet bothered to send for, but that sat there, awaiting his instructions, whenever he decided to take up a permanent residence.

  I will do something, Rod thought determinedly. And when I go, one of those pistols is going to go with me.

  Chapter Ten

  TO JESSE, THE SOUND of the pistol shot was inevitable, like the ending of a bad movie. It was the thing for which she had been waiting, the climactic finality of terror which she had known, from the very beginning, was to come.

  For the others, it had not been so. Cushioned in the comforting stability of their conventional upbringings, the idea of a kidnapping had held for them the unreality of a television drama. She had seen it in their faces and in their reactions. They were startled, upset, confused, each in his own way frightened, but intrigued as well, as they would have been with a well-plotted story in which, for some mysterious reason, they were pinch-hitting as characters.

  Glenn with his blustering, Marianne with her bright bravery, Bruce with his small-boy confidence in the indestructibility of his older brother, Dexter with his dramatic escape plans—none of them had a true doubt about the certainty of a happy ending. The ransom would be paid, of course, or escape would be achieved. Tomorrow or the next day or, at any rate, the day after that, they would be home again, sitting at the family dinner table, reciting the details of their exciting adventure.

  They were nice people, all of them bright, normal, above-average teenagers from good backgrounds. They brushed their teeth and said their prayers and made good grades in high school and would go to college and marry and enter various professions. Dreadful things did not happen to people like this.

  It was Jesse who knew that they did happen: Jesse, the dreamer, who read European history, read about peasants who rose in violence against the serene and self-satisfied ruling classes; Jesse, the realist, who had stood in the ruins of German ghettos and marked the paths the Jews had taken as they were herded to their execution; Jesse, who had been brought up in the sharp, blunt service life in which husbands who left in the mornings did not always return in the evenings and the pilots of planes that crashed were more often than not one’s friends and neighbors and in which widows continued to buy their groceries at the base commissaries.

  From her first glimpse of Juan’s face behind the gun, Jesse had seen something there that the others had not. Her eyes, shifting to Buck’s, had observed the same look reflected there. And in the conversation she had overheard between Buck and Rita, she had found it again: a cool note of determination, devoid of compassion. This was no game, and these men were not the clumsy, clownish villains of television dramas who turned nervous in a crisis and had a secret sentimental weakness for dogs and children.

  There would be no breaks for commercials, no carefully contrived happy endings.

  At the sound of the pistol shot she began to move forward.

  “Buck shot him,” she said thinly. “He shot Dexter.”

  “Don’t!” Marianne threw out a restraining arm to block her. “Don’t try to go out to him, Jesse. Buck will think you are trying to run with the others. He’ll shoot you too!”

  “He shot Dexter,” Jesse repeated numbly. She stood, pressed against Marianne’s arm, shivering in the cold from the open doorway. Twenty yards away the figure in the snow was not moving.

  “What’s happened?” Disheveled and heavy with sleep, Rita emerged from the back bedroom to shuffle across the living room and crowd in behind them. “What’s happened? What was that explosion?”

  “Your husband shot Dexter,” Jesse told her. “He may have killed him.”

  The terrible meaning of the words came through to her then with a thrust of such sharpness that it was as though it were her own body which the bullet had entered.

  “He may have killed him!”

  With a sudden twist she broke free of Marianne and began to run out across the snow, her own terror deserted in a sense of overwhelming urgency.

  A man’s voice shouted behind her, and she could hear Marianne crying, “No. Don’t. She’s only going to him!” and Rita’s voice screaming something equally meaningless.

  The shot that she half expected did not come. She reached Dexter and dropped to her knees beside him and was no longer conscious of anything else.

  He was alive.

  Oh, thank God, Jesse thought, thank God for that much.

  He was breathing hard, deep, dragging breaths, and then he raised his head and she saw that he was conscious.

  “Dex!” She reached to touch him. “Where did he hit you?”

  “Don’t!” He gave a little gasp as her hand brushed his arm, and she jerked away, horrified at what she might have done.

  “Is that the place? Is it your arm?”

  “My shoulder. Oh, blast it. The car was finally started! We almost made it!”

  “Buck woke up,” Jesse told him. “He came out to the kitchen. He was there when Bruce came back to get Marianne and me.”

  “Is Bruce all right? Glenn—”

  “They got away. Buck fired only once. Does it hurt terribly? What can I do?”

  She leaned closer, helpless, afraid to touch him or even to brush against his clothing, conscious suddenly of the depth of the cold which pressed about them.

  “We’ll have to get back inside. Do you think you can walk?”

  “Sure. I was hit in the shoulder. You don’t have to walk on your shoulder blades.” He made a movement as though to get up, leaning on his left arm and struggling to get his legs underneath him, and then he sank back again with a little moaning sound. “I don’t know what’s wrong. I seem to be so weak.”

  “Here, let me help you. You can lean on me.”

  “I’m no lightweight. You can’t haul me around like a sack of potatoes.”

  “I’m stronger than I look,” Jesse said firmly.

  S
he moved around to his left side and crouched there, bracing her own arms against the ground as the boy gripped her shoulder and began, slowly and painfully, to pull himself to his feet.

  They had almost reached a standing position when the flashlight appeared in front of them and Buck said, “You didn’t make it, did you?”

  When Dexter did not answer, the flashlight drew closer. It rose to shine directly in their faces.

  “You thought you were pulling a cute one, didn’t you, getting out of the storeroom, revving the car up without the key, taking off on me! What did you think you were, anyway, a bunch of kid wonders?”

  Jesse closed her eyes against the blinding brightness. She was shaking with cold. The sound of her own teeth chattering against each other seemed to fill the night.

  Dexter’s weight increased as he sagged against her.

  “Please,” she said, “we have to get indoors.”

  “Indoors, nothing! You were in such a hurry to get out here to your boyfriend, and he sure went to enough trouble to get out of the cabin.” There was controlled fury in Buck’s voice. “Now you can both sit out for a while and see how you like it.”

  “Stay out here?” Jesse could not believe he was serious. “But we can’t! We’d freeze to death!”

  “That’s real tough, isn’t it? You should have thought about that sooner.”

  “Please,” whispered Jesse.

  Dexter moved against her, trying vainly to shift his weight so as not to lean so heavily.

  “Jesse didn’t do anything,” he said weakly. “I’m the one who had the idea about starting the car. I was the one who was running. You don’t have to punish her for that.”

  “It’s all one to me,” Buck said, “what happens to any of you. All you are to me is your cash value. Fifty thousand each is what you’re bringing, and so help me, you’re making me earn every cent of it.” Abruptly he lowered the flashlight. “Rita,” he called to the woman in the doorway, “you let these two wait out here until I get back. Let them cool their heels for a while, and maybe they’ll realize how well-off they were as our guests.”

  “Where are you going?” Rita sounded worried. “You’re not going off someplace—”

  “I’m going to chase down those other two. They can’t have got too far. There’s only one road down, and they’re going to have to take it.”

  “Let them go, Buck,” Rita urged him. “They can’t get as far as the village in this cold. They’ll have to come back to the cabin soon anyway.”

  “That big kid might make it,” Buck muttered. “At least there’s a chance of it. We can’t afford to take chances.”

  “What are you going to do?” Rita asked anxiously. “Buck, you promised—it’s Juan who does the strong-arm parts. We discussed that in the beginning. You and I are keeping our hands clean of it.”

  “Well, plans change. We didn’t count on something like this happening.”

  Without further comment Buck turned and crossed the clearing to the van. The motor was still running. We could have been in it, Jesse thought achingly. We could have been halfway down the mountain by this time.

  Buck climbed into the vehicle and slammed the door behind him. The sound of the engine rose to a roar as he clamped down on the accelerator. The headlights came on in two glaring beams, reducing the moonlight to diluted darkness.

  “We can’t let him go!” gasped Jesse, and Dexter said ruefully, “There’s not much we can do to keep him from it.”

  They stood in silence, watching the car as it backed, straightened, and rumbled forward out of the cabin clearing onto the twisted dirt road.

  The headlights disappeared behind the thicket, and darkness closed in upon them again. Rita’s squat figure filled the width of the cabin doorway.

  Marianne’s voice was clear and sudden. “You are going to let them come inside, aren’t you? They’ll freeze out there. Jesse doesn’t even have a coat on.”

  “I can’t,” Rita told her. “Buck just now said for me not to.”

  “He couldn’t have meant it! He might not be back for hours! People can’t stay out in cold like that unless they are dressed for it!”

  Jesse, listening, let Marianne do her arguing for her. The cold had settled through her now like a gigantic weight, filling all of her being. She was no longer conscious of shivering, just of a kind of numbness without beginning or ending.

  Suddenly Dexter’s weight upon her shoulders increased in such measure that she stumbled beneath it, catching herself with a violent effort to keep from falling.

  “Oh, no,” she exclaimed, “no!”

  Her stomach lurched in fear, as she felt his head fall limply to settle upon her shoulder.

  “Help me!” she cried. “Please, come help!”

  “I’m coming!” Marianne shoved her way past the uncertain woman in the doorway and ran out to them. She reached for Dexter on the other side and slid her arm around him, shifting part of the burden of his weight to her own shoulders.

  “Be careful,” Jesse warned her frantically. “That’s the bad side. That’s where Buck shot him.”

  “He’s bleeding like mad! No wonder he’s fainted!” With a sound of horror Marianne began to struggle forward. “Come on, start walking. Even if we have to drag him. We’ve got to get him where we can take care of him.”

  “But Rita won’t …” Jesse choked down a sob.

  “She’ll have to.” There was steellike determination in Marianne’s voice. “Rita, you’ve got to let us in. We have to get Dex in where we can stop the bleeding.”

  The older woman regarded them uncertainly. “You heard Buck. He wants these two outside until he comes back. What will he say if he comes back and I haven’t done what he told me?”

  “What if he comes back,” Marianne asked harshly, “and Dexter’s dead? What if he’s bled to death out here in the snow?”

  “Dead?” Rita eyed the unconscious boy nervously. “He’s not dead. You can see, he’s breathing.”

  “Juan is supposed to do the strong-arm parts. I just heard you say it. Juan wasn’t the one who shot Dexter. If Dexter dies, it’s your husband who’ll get the blame for it! It’s Buck, not Juan, who will be a murderer!”

  Numbly Jesse listened to the words the other girl was speaking. Shot. Dead. Murdered. Fantastic words, yet real—horribly real. He is not going to die, she told herself frantically. It is just a shoulder wound. People don’t die from shoulder wounds. It’s cold. Oh, Lord, it’s cold.

  “Buck’s all you’ve got,” Marianne was saying. “You told me yourself. You can’t let him do this thing. You can’t let him kill somebody.”

  “He’s going to be mad, he is,” Rita said hesitantly. “He’s going to raise Cain when he gets back.”

  But despite the words, she was moving sideways.

  She is letting us in, Jesse thought incredulously.

  They were moving forward, through the doorway. Warmth flowed out to meet them, blessed warmth, lapping about them.

  “This better not be a trick now,” Rita said cautiously. “He better be really hurt like you say he is.”

  But somehow, with the departure of Buck, her voice carried no authority. It was Marianne who, ignoring her, said firmly, “We better get him into the bedroom.”

  Wordlessly Jesse followed her directions. Slowly, slowly, a million miles across the living room. A sideways struggle through the narrow bunk room door. Another million miles across the tiny room to the closest bed.

  “Let’s get him flat. Do you know anything about first aid, Jesse? Oh, my God …” Marianne’s face went suddenly white. “Look at the blood! The bullet must have severed a vein or something—he’s bleeding all over everything!”

  “It’s not as bad as that. It looks more than it is, I think.” Jesse eased the boy gently onto the bed, eying the punctured jacket through which the dark liquid was rapidly seeping. “We’ll need hot water,” she said, “and bandages.”

  “I’ll get them.” Marianne’s assurance seemed to
have deserted her. “I’ve never seen anybody bleed that way.”

  “I took a course in first aid once. All the service kids had to take it.” To her surprise, Jesse found that their positions were suddenly reversed. Now it was she who was steady, she who was issuing directions. “Go get the water and anything we can use for bandages. I’ll get the jacket off so we can see exactly how bad a wound it is.”

  The boy on the bed moaned softly, turning his head to one side. “They never knew …”

  “What?” Jesse leaned forward, straining to catch the words. “What is it, Dex?”

  “They never knew.” The boy opened his eyes and said quite clearly, “My parents are dead. They never knew that I loved them.”

  It was such a strange statement that Jesse stared at him in bewilderment, until she realized that he was still not fully conscious.

  “Of course, they did,” she said soothingly, hoping that her response was the right one.

  “The way I acted. They never knew …”

  “They knew,” said Jesse.

  Marianne came back into the room, carrying a bowl of hot water and the torn pieces of a hand towel.

  “Is it okay if I don’t stay and watch?” she asked nervously.

  “I can manage,” Jesse assured her.

  “That was Marianne, wasn’t it?” Dexter seemed clearer now. He started to lift his head, caught his breath, and lowered it again quickly. His eyes were focused. “Where is Buck?”

  “He took the car back down the mountain road.” Jesse did not tell him the purpose behind the departure. “Can you help me, Dex? I need to get your jacket and shirt off.”

  “Why?” He looked suddenly suspicious.

  “To bandage your shoulder, of course.”

  “It’s all right. It doesn’t need to be bandaged.”

  “But it does!” She regarded him with surprise. “We have to stop the bleeding.”

  “It’s just a nick! I’ll take care of it!” There was real panic in his voice. “I’ll bandage it myself!”

  “You can’t reach it, Dexter! At least, let me help you.”

  “I said, I’ll take care of it.” He raised his arm in a violent gesture, and gasped as the sudden bolt of pain shot through him. His face drained of color, and for an instant Jesse thought he had fainted again.