Prodigal

Chapter 2

2

The girl looked at him with wide, scared eyes, the white sclera visible even in the fading light.

He twisted in his seat, his sleeve making a synthetic whisper against the seat cover’s cheap, gray fabric as he stretched past the girl for her backpack. She recoiled from him, curling into a fetal position as best she could with her hands and feet secured, while whimpering through the gag.

“Relax,” the man said.

Not that it made a difference.

There was no one to see her, or hear her, for miles. Nothing but silent trees, as far as the eye could see. Well, almost nothing.

He reached into the girl’s backpack, only to quickly jerk his hand back with a gasp.

He carefully pulled out the offending item—a spiral notebook. The sharp, bent end of its coiled wire had caught his finger. With everything else they were paranoid about, how was it that parents never saw the dangers in front of them?

He emptied the rest of the pack on the bench seat next to him—a couple of thin, hardcover textbooks and a zipper pouch full of goodies. There were the usual pens and pencils, a plastic compass she might use once all year, a tiny ruler, a key ring, and some kind of school ID card. He looked at the ID card… twisted to look at her… closed his eyes… looked at the ID card again.

And then he howled.

No other word could describe the inhuman, snarling frustration that tore from his throat while the girl trembled in the seat behind him, unnoticed. He slammed his hands into the steering wheel, then squeezed it hard, imagining it was someone’s throat. Imagining it was his throat. But he would come later.

The man took a deep breath, then sighed it out. It didn’t matter. Who the kid was didn’t matter. What mattered was that he had her. He returned the girl’s belongings to her pack, except for a couple of items. These he took outside, and placed strategically in the spot he’d chosen earlier. The echo from his slamming door had barely faded when he finished.

Perfect.

Back in the vehicle, he hardly spared a glance for the girl, except to wonder how much she weighed. They had a long way to go. The engine started on the first try, as he’d known it would, and he reversed until he felt his tires hit asphalt again.

A long way to go, indeed.