Operation: Normal (19 page)

What would Dad do in this situation? I wondered. The next second I realized he'd do a
lot more than I possibly could. He was a trained Interpol operative, after all.

So what would Buffy do? I braced myself so I wouldn't roll around like loose change in
a purse.

Purse.

I frowned, wondering what they'd done with mine, which had my cell phone in it. If I
could just get my hands on it.

Yeah, right, I thought. As if that was going to happen.

My right leg suddenly cramped, a major charley-horse. It made me yelp.

I shifted position and tried to stretch out the muscle. That's when I felt it. Something
hard pressing against my thigh. I put my hand down and patted my pocket.

My phone!

Holy shit! I had my phone.

That meant I must have picked up Mom's as I left the apartment and stuck it into my
purse.

What to do? What to do?

I pulled the phone out of my pocket, tempted to try it right then. But I couldn't see the
numbers with the stupid bag over my head, and my cell was set to make noises as keys were
punched. I didn't want these guys to know I had it. I tried to think where to put it so that if they
patted me down, they wouldn't find it.

I thought of several interesting places, but didn't think it'd fit in any of them even though
my cell was one of the newer, petite ones. Finally, I stuck it inside my sock and pushed it all the
way into my shoe, next to the arch of my foot.

I'd probably limp like crazy, but I could always say I injured myself when they threw me
in the trunk. If they happened to ask that is, which they probably wouldn't. They clearly didn't
care about my welfare. They just wanted to get at Dad.

But that didn't make sense I realized, now that I had some time to think.

Shouldn't the threat letters have been sent to Dad, the Interpol guy investigating
something they obviously didn't want investigated? And were they now going to send him a
ransom note? One saying he could have me back if he stopped doing whatever he was doing? Or
would that just prove Dad was onto something? And where would they send a ransom note,
anyway? Mom's apartment, where he didn't live? Nothing made sense.

Dad, where are you?
I focused on him as totally as I knew how. I waited for his
voice inside my head. I mean, he'd talked to Zach. Why couldn't he talk to me, his own flesh and
blood? I needed to know what to do.

But my mind stayed blank, at least as far as Dad was concerned.

So I focused on Zach. He was in our calling circle now, right?

Zach? Help me! Please.

I thought of how he'd looked when he left the apartment, angry at me for not letting him
help face down my mom. Maybe I should've. Maybe together we could have convinced her that
simply avoiding the problem, as she'd done when she left home and when she had Seth sign that
stupid contract, was really no solution at all.

So what if things weren't storybook perfect? So what if they weren't what the world
considered normal?

Normal.

All at once I couldn't breathe, and it wasn't the gas fumes that now made me queasy. It
was that word.
Normal
.

It's what I wanted all my life for myself and now for my sister. Or so I'd believed. But
was there really even such a thing?

Wasn't my liberated Mom with her hateful father, her illegitimate children, and her
amazing career, normal? Wasn't my dad, the spy, also normal? And what about Great Aunt
Adele, the psychic? I'd never met anyone more normal than her.

Then there was Zach, with his slang collection, and me with my stupid lists. Weren't we
normal, too?

I barely noticed when the car turned. But the sudden crunch of wheels on gravel got my
attention and told me we'd left the asphalt. I guessed we'd be stopping any time now, and just the
thought of that made my heart start jack hammering again.

Too soon we rolled to a halt. The driver killed the engine. I guessed we'd been traveling
a good hour. I heard the doors open and felt the car shift as my kidnappers got out. Tensing, I
waited for the trunk to be opened again. I wasn't disappointed.

The fresh air felt good, but damp. Someone grabbed me by the arms, pulling until I sat
up, then lifted me from the trunk and set me on my feet.

"Who are you?" I demanded. "What do you want with me?"

No one said anything, which was even scarier than their answers might've been.
Abruptly shoved from behind, I almost tripped over my own feet. The creeps should've served as
guides to wherever we walked since I couldn't see a thing. But no. They just kept shoving
whenever I stopped moving, which left me groping the air in front of me. Though no one
actually laughed, I felt sure they got a sadistic kick out of my efforts not to slam into
anything.

I thought about trying out some of the self-defense moves I'd learned, but gave that up
for the moment, since I couldn't see squat.

I felt a subtle change in the ground beneath my feet. Gravel no longer crunched beneath
my shoes. Instead, the terrain felt smoother, like dirt. My toe bumped into something, almost
tripping me. I felt around with my foot and realized I'd run into a step. I climbed it. Instantly the
scent of hay and manure assaulted my stuffy nose, and I sensed a slight rise in temperature. I
heard the soft whinny of a horse and another rumble of thunder.

A barn maybe? I walked slowly, feeling along with my toe.

Suddenly someone grabbed my shoulder, nailing me to the spot. I heard some swishes,
the creak of a rusty hinge. Hands engulfed mine and set them on something wooden. A ladder I
realized as I automatically explored what I now touched.

"You're going down now."

Down? Down where? I pulled my hands sharply back.

"Just push the bitch in."

In
what
? I suddenly remembered horrible stories about kidnap victims who'd
been buried alive.

Once again my hands were placed on the ladder. By feeling all around, I determined that
it stuck out of some kind of opening in the ground. I managed to get my feet on the rungs and
began to slowly descend into an unseen hell. When my feet touched solid ground again, I
released the ladder. I heard the scrape of wood on wood as someone pulled it out of reach. Hay
and dirt rained on my shoulders as the trap door banged shut above me. I heard the sound of
footsteps, leaving. I stood absolutely motionless for long moments just listening, but heard
nothing else.

"Hello?" I called, my voice sounding a little nasally and a lot scared.

Eerie silence was my only reply.

Time to get the blindfold off. I tested the fabric, which felt like denim or canvas too
thick to tear. So I found the knot again and fumbled at it, breaking a nail but finally loosening the
cord enough to work it loose. With a cry of relief, I pulled it over my head and threw it on the
floor.

I turned slowly, assessing my surroundings with the aid of a single light bulb, screwed
into a socket on the wooden ceiling. Mounted next to it was a surveillance camera, which slowly
rotated three-hundred-sixty degrees to cover the entire room.

What is this place?
My frantic gaze jumped from the hay-covered floor to the
rough wooden walls to the trap door, way out of reach. I also saw a bucket. My bathroom, I
guessed.

I walked along the edge of the room, testing the rough-hewn wood walls by pounding
them with my fists. They felt solid, unmovable. Careful to stay behind the camera, I slipped my
phone from my shoe and checked out the signal. No bars. Not even a half of one. Damn. I left it
on and stuck it back in my shoe. That's when I saw it. A pair of glasses, one lens cracked.

So I wasn't the only human who'd been locked in that hole. Impulsively, I kicked at the
straw beneath my feet and found other things: a child's barrette, a single earring.

Goosebumps raced up my arms.

What Is. This. Place?

Knees suddenly wobbly, I sank to the ground and leaned against the wall. My head felt
light; my stomach churned.

I might die here.

But not before I puked.

I sat like that a really long time, too scared to move and sick as a dog, before logic and
my will to live reasserted themselves yet again. I might be going to die, but I wasn't dead
yet.

And I wasn't going to go down without a fight.

But what could I do?

I tipped my head back to look at the trap door, so high above the floor that it would take
two and a half of me to reach it. My gaze next landed on the camera, still slowly rotating. What
if I avoided it? I wondered. What if I stayed behind the lens so that it looked like I wasn't in the
room anymore.

Deciding any plan beat no plan, I waited until the lens rounded on me and sprang to my
feet like I was really excited about something. I then ran out of camera range and began to
slowly circle the room, always staying out of view so that whoever watched--assuming someone
did--would not see me anywhere. At one point, I snatched up my blindfold and blew my runny
nose on it.

I don't know how long I walked. It felt like forever. But no one came.

Now what?
I glared at that stupid camera, which might not be working for all I
knew. It didn't have any blinking lights on it or anything. If I just had something to knock it
down--something fairly substantial, since the camera appeared to be mounted securely against
the ceiling. I could maybe use it as a weapon.

Yeah, right. To shoot my kidnappers.

Frustrated, I shifted my focus to the bare light bulb. Could I hit it with something? I
wondered. Surely if the room went black, someone would come running. And if no one did, I'd at
least have bats, bugs, and rats to keep me company. They loved dark damp barns.

But what should I throw? My sneaker? My cell? The bucket? Eeuw. Scratch the bucket.
I chose my phone because I figured it might actually go where I intended it to. If I used my shoe,
I might step on glass or something worse.

Digging the phone out of my sock, I started to throw it, had second thoughts about
losing the light, then found my nerve again. I took aim and tossed the phone. I missed. I tried it
again; another miss. On the eleventh freaking try, I hit the light bulb, which shattered and went
out, bathing the room in darkness. My cell landed soundlessly in the hay, giving me no clue as to
exactly where.

I choked back a whimper of fear and waited.

A forever later, I heard the heavy thump of feet overhead and knew I'd been watched,
after all. I ducked back just behind and almost under the trap door, which opened. I saw the
shadow of a man's head and shoulders in the square of light on the hay at my feet. Someone
directed the beam of a flashlight into the hole, but couldn't see me where I stood plastered to the
wall.

I heard a curse. The wooden ladder shot down and hit the floor with a thud. I saw one
foot, then another appear as someone--a man--descended, muttering under his breath. I waited
until those two feet were about head high to me, one of them in mid-step, then grabbed one ankle
in both hands and pulled with all my might.

If he'd been really big, wearing a shoe with a heel, or taking his time, that would never
have worked. But he wasn't. So his foot slipped into the space between rungs, hanging up at his
knee. His flashlight hit the hay. I heard another curse as he tried to untangle himself, and dashed
around the ladder to grab his other foot, which I struggled to pull off the rung. It didn't budge,
probably because his full weight was now on it.

Naturally, he tried to catch me. I ducked and grabbed his flashlight from the
hay-scattered floor, then attacked his shin and knee. He let go and hit the floor with a crash. As he
struggled to get up, I threw the snotty blindfold bag over his head from behind and tightened the
cord. I wrapped my arms around his neck, pressing as hard as I could on his Adam's apple.
Coughing, he reached back to pry me loose. That's when I bit his thumb to the bone.

He immediately fell back, this time taking me with him. A quick rolled-over later, I
found myself weighted down and winded. I tried to squirm free. Before I could manage it, he
caught my neck in a stranglehold. I fought like crazy to peel his thumbs from my windpipe, to
bite him again or kick him.

Nothing worked. Desperate, I went limp, pretending to be stunned. When he shifted his
weight off me, I rolled away and jumped up. He staggered to his feet, tugging off his
blindfold.

I grabbed the flashlight and managed three whole steps up the ladder before he caught
my foot. That's when I swung the light and hit him in the nose as hard as I could. I heard a
sickening crunch, and he fell back with a curse, blood spurting from his face.

Just as I turned toward the ladder again, I caught sight of my cell phone in the bouncing
beam of the flashlight. I scooped it up, then scrambled up the ladder, exploding out of that hole
and straight into the midriff of my other kidnapper.

"Oomph!" he grunted even as I opened my mouth to scream bloody murder. He slapped
his hand over my lips. "Ally! It's me!"

Zach!

Here?

Now?

How...?

"Go!" Zach shoved me hard toward the back of the barn. I stumbled badly then caught
myself, hauling butt halfway to what looked like a tack room before I realized he'd stayed behind
to pull up the ladder.

"Zach! Come on!" I motioned wildly for him to join me as I stuffed my phone into my
jeans pocket.

"I said run, damn it!"

I didn't budge. How could I? Instead, I turned and ran back.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm not leaving without you."

Cursing between gasps, Zach tossed the ladder into a stall. While I covered it with hay,
he lowered the trap door, then spun around and raced to the back of the barn, taking me with
him. We skidded into the tack room and shut the door behind us. Zach wedged an axe under the
knob, then raised the glass on the only window and boosted me through it. I dropped to the
ground, about five feet down. He followed, landing in a crouch. Once again he caught my hand
in his, and, together, we charged for the woods that lay a half a football field away.