ASHER
“You killed him, you fucking idiot!” One of the men in the ski masks yells at the other—his voice strikes me.There’s something familiar about it.
“We were ordered to break him until he gave us information, not kill him in the process!” another masked man shouts, panicked. “We have to make it look like an accident! No one can know!”
“What about the kid?” the third masked man shouts. “He has to go. No one can know what happened here!”
Grandpa’s limp, dead body is hauled from the ground by the first two masked men. They shove him into the back of his car. The third man picks me up and throws me over his shoulder. I fight, kick, scream, but he punches me in the ribs to shut me up and keep me still. My breath is knocked out of my chest.
I’m thrown into the back of the car on top of Grandpa’s body. I roll off him, screaming, panicking.What’s happening? Where are we going? Why hasn’t someone come for us?Grandpa pressed his alert button when the masked men pulled us from the car. That was a long time ago.Where is security? Why didn’t they come?
The door shuts, and the car darts away, tires squealing. Only one of the masked men is in the car. He’s driving grandpa’s long limorecklessly. The faint lights outside the dark window blur by faster than I’ve ever seen them as the driver speeds up, swerving, and I fly off the seat, landing on the floor next to Grandpa.
“You must always wear a seatbelt, young Mr. Langford,”my security guard’s words ring through my mind. Mr. Henley is always pushy about my seatbelt.
In a haze, I wriggle my way back up to the seat with my bound hands. I can’t reach the over the shoulder seat belts, but the center seat only has a lap belt. I shimmy onto the seat, grab the lap belt, and toss it, trying to throw it over my lap. I try one, two, three, four times before it works. I turn my body and grasp for the buckle with my bound hands, but the driver veers, knocking me onto my side.
I inch my way back up to sitting, frantic. Too fast. We’re driving too fast. I look behind me, over my shoulder, trying to get the lap belt into the buckle. My hands shake as I try to fit the buckle together. The two pieces clink against one another, but don’t connect. I try again, and again. Each time I’m close, the car hits a bump or swerves.Clink, clink, clink.No connection, just the two pieces hitting against each other.
The car engine revs, and we pick up more speed.
The driver begins to shout out a Catholic prayer in a hysterical, manic voice.
I try again. Finally,click.The seatbelt is fastened! I use my teeth to grab the excess length, and pull it as far as I can, tightening the belt.
The fabric of the belt barely leaves my mouth before theboomof the crash.
Everything goes dark.
The scene rewinds.I watch as it all moves backward until we’re back at the beginning.
The unfamiliar scentof strong cologne from the front seat hits me. Grandfather notices it, but not before we’re already driving.
“Who are you?” he demands.
I stop playing with my action figures and look at grandfather. His face is full of anger . . . and fear.
Then I realize what he’s asking. This isn’t Grandpa’s driver. Grandpa’s driver is older, and he doesn’t wear this sour cologne I can smell all the way in the back of the limo.
The car swerves around and drives in the opposite direction.
“Get down, Asher,” Grandpa commands me.
I see him hit the panic button hidden in his watch. He nods at me, and I do the same. I’m so scared I start to cry, but I know I have to be quiet. I’ve been trained on this. My security guards have gone over the protocol with me many times. Stay down, stay quiet, hit my panic button.
The limo pulls into an old warehouse. The door to the limo opens, and a large man in a ski mask lifts me out. Three more throw Grandpa to the ground.
The man holds me, and I thrash against him. He hits me on the head with the handle of his gun. Apoprings through my ears, and black spots pepper my vision. The man sets me down, and I teeter on my feet, still seeing stars. The man shoves fabric into my mouth from behind, then pulls it tight. He binds my hands and holds me tightly to him. I can do nothing as I watch the other men shout at Grandpa and tie him to a chair. I can’t hear what they say. All I can hear is my heart beating in my ears.
The men hit and punch Grandpa, then point a gun at his head. They kick in his knees. They yell and shout and threaten. I cry and scream and try to get free, but the man holding me is too large, too strong. My shouts are muffled by the gag in my mouth.
Finally, one signals to the man holding me, and he carries me toward Grandpa and the other men. The man holding me hits me with his gun again, slicing my skin open near the corner of my eye. Blood dribbles down my face. He shoves the gun to my forehead.
One of the men leans down toward Grandpa. “We can make this easy, or we can make this hurt.”
“Asher,”a voice says.
I thrash in bed, my mind pulling from my dream.
