Ransom

by Lois Duncan

  “Hold it!” he shouted. “Hold it where you are, kid! You come here to the car, kid, and don’t make funny business while you are about it!”

  In the excitement of the moment his accent deepened, and turning sideways, Rod saw that his right hand was no longer in his pocket but was raised and directed at the boy on the road ahead of them. At the same instant he realized that the man’s full attention was upon the boy, and without stopping to contemplate the possible result of his action, Rod made a quick and desperate lurch for the rip in the seat. Bending forward, he thrust his hand into it wrist-deep, until his fingers closed around the butt of the pistol and with a violent wrench pulled it upward, past the springs. He straightened. It had taken only seconds. The boy was still standing there. The man seemed not to have moved from his half-standing position.

  With the gun in his hands, Rod hesitated for an instant. Marianne was still not with them. Until he saw Marianne, he could not afford to do anything that might leave him stranded, unable to find her.

  With a second quick motion he dropped the pistol into his oversized overcoat pocket and placed his hand back upon the wheel of the car.

  For a moment he had thought that Glenn was going to bolt for cover, but the moment was past, and the boy seemed to know it. His eyes on the pistol in Juan’s hand, he came, slowly and resignedly, to the car.

  Looking past Juan, his gaze settled hostilely upon Rod. “What are you doing here?” he asked tersely.

  “I’ve come to bail you out,” Rod answered, fighting emotion with brusqueness. “Where is Marianne? Where did you leave her? Is she all right?”

  “She’s up at the cabin.” Glenn’s face was dark with anger. “What did you have to come for? I was away. Free! None of the others could do it, but I did! Another couple of miles, and I would have been at the village. I could have called the police from there. I’d have saved us!”

  “I couldn’t know,” Rod said helplessly.

  “You didn’t have any right, coming, bringing the ransom! I didn’t want anybody paying ransom to get me out of anything! I could have done it myself. Saved all of them. It would have been in the paper, all about it.”

  His voice was thick with bitterness. Looking at him, Rod thought, he is just a boy. He is exhausted. He doesn’t realize what he is saying.

  “Get into the car, son,” he said gently. “I’m sorry. I could not have known. All I wanted was to get you all home safe.”

  “Safe!” the boy muttered. “Sure, you did. And I came all this way, twisted my ankle, practically froze to death, for nothing. Nothing.”

  Juan swung the car door open and stepped out, his hand secure upon the pistol. Wordlessly he motioned Glenn into the front seat and then opened the rear door and climbed in behind them.

  I should have fired, Rod thought, when I could have. I should have shot him here, right here in the snow, with the gun in my hand and his attention elsewhere. Because now he is behind us, and I can’t turn. As the boy says, I am fouling up everything.

  “How did it happen?” Juan asked the question quietly. “How did you get away from the cabin? Are the others free also? Come, tell me. I will find out soon anyway.”

  “We ran,” Glenn said lifelessly.

  “The rest of them, they also ran? They are outside in the snow someplace?”

  “The girls are back at the cabin. Dexter—I don’t know. Buck shot at him.”

  “And the other boy—your brother?”

  “He went back to the cabin.” Glenn’s voice was shaking with weariness and frustration. “I got away! I was the one, the only one! I should have been the one to rescue them!”

  “It’s all right, son,” Rod said gently. “You tried.”

  The full irony of the situation was heavy upon him. Here they were on the way to the hideout, the cabin from which Glenn had fled a matter of hours before. If he had not come at all, Glenn would have completed his escape to the village and from there would have called for help without Juan’s knowledge.

  But what was done was done, and they were on their way to the cabin, and in a short time he would see Marianne again, for whatever help his presence could be to her.

  If I only had the money, he thought helplessly. If I could only open the trunk and hand it out to them and take the children and go!

  But he did have the pistol, and if necessary, he would use it. This knowledge alone was strong within him. He was a gentle man and he had never fired a pistol in his life, but with Marianne’s safety at stake, he would not hesitate to do so.

  Whatever was to come now, he would do what he could. Somehow he would see to it that Marianne got away and home again. He would do what he could and pray to God that it would somehow be enough.

  They started slowly up the road down which Glenn had just come.

  Chapter Thirteen

  THE CABIN WAS QUIET.

  A strange quiet. A stillness of arrested motion, of things unfinished, of branches bent almost to the breaking point.

  What is to come next? Marianne asked herself. What can possibly come next? For the quiet was of waiting and a final acceptance of the helplessness of their position. Whatever happened next would not be of their doing. It would come from someplace outside themselves. They could only wait.

  “He is dead,” Bruce had told them. “Buck is dead.” He had spoken the words slowly, in an emotionless voice. “The car went off the road.”

  Rita had not believed him. “You are lying. Nothing can happen to Buck. What do you hope to do by saying such things, you rotten little liar?”

  Was it that she did not believe, Marianne wondered, or that she would not let herself believe? Bruce had not answered. He had gone instead to the fire, and Jesse had brought a blanket and put it around him and then had left the room again to return to Dexter. Bruce had sunk to the hearth, and he was there now, crouched in the same position, his eyes closed against the pain as feeling returned to his half-frozen hands. He was rubbing them slowly up and down against his trouser leg. His head bent forward, resting against his knee.

  Marianne went over to him and knelt beside him. “Are you okay, Bruce? Can I do anything?”

  “No.” He did not raise his head.

  “Do you want some soup? Coffee? Something hot?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “How are your hands?”

  “Okay, I guess. I mean, they hurt. I guess the bad thing would be if I couldn’t feel them.”

  “What happened to Buck’s jacket?” Marianne asked him. “You were wearing it when you left.”

  “I gave it to Glenn.” His voice was oddly blank as he spoke his brother’s name. “He needed it. He was going to try to hike all the way back to the village.”

  “Do you think he can do it?” Marianne asked.

  “I guess so. Glenn usually manages to do anything he sets out to do.”

  “And Buck?”

  “I told you.”

  “But you’re sure? That he is dead, I mean? Rita doesn’t believe you. She is in the bedroom now with all those paperbacks of hers, reading and waiting for him to get back.”

  “He won’t be coming back,” Bruce said.

  For a moment he was tempted to describe it, the blazing wreck at the foot of the cliff, the hissing sound of the orange gasoline flames as they leaped like living animals against the snow. He had drawn as close as he dared, feeling the scorching heat reaching out to him, straining to see past the blazing inferno, into whatever dark recesses lay beyond in the twisted blur of blackened metal, repeating to himself, frantically, the words that Glenn had uttered on the road above: … that man was trying to kill you! That’s why he went over the cliff. He was trying to kill you! … you don’t owe him one blasted thing!

  But the words had held no meaning. Somewhere in that hell of fire there was a man. No words could make that fact less dreadful.

  He had stood watching, hypnotized by horror and helplessness, until finally some innate sense of self-preservation had told him to move away before
there was an explosion. It took him half an hour to climb back up the cliff, clutching with frozen and gloveless hands at rocks and bushes, wondering how he had managed to make the descent so quickly. And all the while he climbed he waited for the explosion. It never came.

  When he reached the level road and turned to look down again, the flames were gone.

  For a moment he struggled with the temptation to tell her, to share the experience and by so doing to make it less terrible, more like a story to be exclaimed and gasped over. But the reality was still too close to him. The words would not come.

  “He won’t be coming back,” Bruce said, and left it at that.

  He was shivering. He had been there by the fire for a long time now, but still he was shivering.

  Marianne reached to straighten the blanket over his shoulders and then, impulsively, put her arms around him, as she might have around Jay or Jackie, saying, as they all had said so often during the past days, “It will be all right. Everything will work out all right.”

  “No,” Bruce said. “Nothing will ever be all right.”

  “But if Glenn makes it to the village, and you said yourself that you think he will, he will call for help. With Buck gone, there isn’t any danger here. Rita certainly won’t do anything to us. We’ll just sit and wait until help comes.”

  Bruce shivered again, drawing a little away from her. He did not want to be touched or comforted. The ache within him was not fear; it was deeper than fear. He felt a million years old.

  Glenn, he thought. Oh, Glenn, Glenn.

  There were footsteps on the wooden floor behind them, and Jesse came to join them by the fire. She looked tired but oddly peaceful.

  “How are your hands, Bruce? Do you think they’re all right?”

  “I’ve got some feeling back in them.” He was still rubbing them up and down against his trouser leg. “What about Dexter? Do you think he’s going to be okay?”

  “He has lost a lot of blood, but I don’t think the wound itself is too serious. We have the bleeding stopped now. He’s sleeping.”

  Her face grew soft as she thought of the dark head against the pillow and remembered the way he had stared up at her in stunned bewilderment.

  “What was that for?” he had stammered.

  “I don’t know.” Jesse had been as startled as he was. “I—I guess I—I just felt like kissing you.”

  “I hope you don’t make a business of going around doing that to everybody.”

  “No. Oh, no,” she assured him quickly. “Actually I don’t think I have ever kissed anybody in my life before. Except, of course, my parents.”

  He regarded her in astonishment. “Why not? A girl as pretty as you are!”

  “I don’t know. I guess I just never wanted to.”

  “But why now?”

  “I don’t know, I tell you.”

  “You’re sorry for me, is that it?” His voice began to harden. “You don’t have to be. If you think you’re going to play the fairy princess, going around kissing cripples to turn them into—”

  “What an ugly thing to say!” Jesse interrupted. “What a perfectly horrid, mean little thing to say!”

  The anger in her voice startled Dexter into silence. He lay gazing up at her, amazed by the violence of her reaction.

  “Just because I haven’t dated a lot, because I’m not the popularity queen that Marianne is doesn’t mean that I’m going to settle for any halfway kind of man, Dexter Barton! I wouldn’t take a cripple on a silver platter! I’d rather go through my whole life without ever loving anybody than be stuck with somebody who wasn’t fine and strong and solid! Maybe I haven’t spent my life doing the kinds of things kids do, but I have known people, fine, interesting people. I knew a Russian countess who had her land and her jewels and her money taken away from her, but she was still every inch a countess! I knew a man in Switzerland who was an amputee. He lost a leg in Iraq. And do you know, he skis! On one leg, using the poles for balance!”

  Her normally pale face was flushed with emotion.

  “I’ve heard symphonies written by blind composers and seen cathedrals designed by dying artists, and none of them was a cripple, none of them! It’s bitterness that makes a person a cripple, bitterness and meanness and smallness! It’s an emptiness inside them, not anything to do with their bodies!”

  For a moment, when she finished, there was silence. Then Dexter said, “Whew! I guess I can consider myself told off!”

  “I guess you can.” Jesse dropped her eyes, embarrassed by her vehemence. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what got into me. I didn’t have any right to say those things.”

  “You sure didn’t. Just like a woman, always trying to make a guy over. One kiss, and she thinks she owns him, body and soul.” The words were brusque, but the dark eyes held a hint of teasing. “If the lecture is over, do you think you might, please, bandage up my shoulder?”

  “Of course. I said I’m sorry.”

  To her surprise, she saw that he was smiling. “Say, Jesse, when you’re finished …”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, you don’t own a guy, body and soul, after one kiss. It’s just possible, though, that after two of them …

  He was sleeping now. Jesse sat quietly, thinking about him, the hard, unhandsome face, the stubby lashes dark against the pale cheek. He had gone to sleep holding her hand. She liked the thought of his sleeping with his hand in hers, his face gone soft and vulnerable with all the bitterness eased out of it.

  Somehow, as she sat there beside him, the tension had eased out of her as well, leaving her peaceful and unfrightened.

  What will be will be, she thought now, as Marianne had, as Bruce had. There is nothing more we can do but wait.

  It was not she who first heard the approach of the car. It was Marianne who, lifting her head, said, “Listen.”

  And even then it was a moment before the others heard it, the grinding, straining sound of an automobile mounting the last steep curve of the road to the cabin.

  Chapter Fourteen

  FROM THE FRONT BEDROOM Rita also heard the car engine.

  She must have been sitting there listening for it, Marianne thought as the heavyset woman came hurrying into the living room.

  “It is Buck!” Rita exclaimed, throwing an accusing glance at Bruce. “I knew you were lying! Nothing could happen to Buck! Now you will get yours, you lying little boy!”

  From his place by the fire, Bruce did not make the effort to contradict her.

  It is Glenn, he thought tiredly. He got help. We all will be going home now.

  There was no particular joy in the thought. He was glad for the others. He had become fond of them during the time they had spent together. He wanted them to get home safely. For himself, however, the prospect was a painful one. The thought of seeing Glenn again, of returning with him to their home to pick up their lives as always, encumbered by his new and disillusioning knowledge of his brother’s true character, was more than he could bear.

  I wish I could go away, he thought. Just pack up and go somewhere far away, to boarding school perhaps or to a job of some kind, it wouldn’t matter what it was as long as it was a long way off.

  He was not surprised when he heard Marianne’s voice exclaiming, “It’s Glenn!” Of course, it was Glenn. Glenn, the conqueror, returning with the police for the dramatic rescue.

  Then she added, “And Rod and …” Her voice changed. “Oh, no!”

  “What is it?” Bruce raised his head.

  “It’s the other man. Juan!” Jesse had risen and gone to stand beside the girl at the window. “The one who got on the school bus with the pistol!”

  “Bolt the door!” Bruce began to scramble to his feet. “Don’t let them in! With four of us here, we can have control of the house as long as we keep Juan outside!”

  But he was too late. Rita had already reached the door and thrown it wide and was shouting out to the approaching three, “Where is Buck? Didn’t Buck come back with you?” />
  They entered the cabin, scuffing snow across the rough boards of the floor.

  Rod’s eyes flicked quickly about the room, finding Marianne in her position before the window. Automatically he moved toward her.

  “Marianne, are you all right? They haven’t hurt you?”

  The girl’s face was blank with amazement. “What are you doing here, Rod? Did Glenn reach you? But that man? Juan. How did he—”

  “Where is Buck?” Rita demanded harshly. Her voice was beginning to take on a note of hysteria. “Why isn’t he with you?”

  “How should I know where Buck is?” Juan returned. “Isn’t he here? This is where he is supposed to be. This was his part of the job, keeping the kids under control. Here I find this boy”—he gestured toward Glenn—wandering down the road almost to the village! I, too, would like to know where your husband is gone!”

  Glenn regarded the others defiantly. “I almost made it! I would have made it if your stepfather”—he nodded at Marianne—“hadn’t decided to give in and bring the ransom. I ran into him and Juan at the bottom of the hill almost to the village.”

  “You brought the ransom?” Marianne asked in bewilderment. “You brought it, Rod? But how? I didn’t think—”

  “Of course, I brought it,” Rod lied. How long, he wondered, would it be before Juan turned to him, demanding the impossible? The money. And there was no money.

  He glanced quickly about, assessing the situation.

  Apparently there was at the moment only one man in charge here, Juan, the one who had driven up with him. The woman must be part of it, and there was another man, this Buck, but according to the shreds of conversation between Juan and the woman, he was not here at the moment. Where was he? Coming back at any moment perhaps? Did he have a gun? Did the woman? How many firearms were there in the picture besides Juan’s?

  It was impossible to tell. His own pistol was heavy in his pocket. He resisted the urge to reach for it, to press his hand against the outside of his overcoat pocket, to feel through the cloth the reassuring hard shape.