Don't Say a Word by Andrew Klavan

Author:Andrew Klavan [Klavan, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781429933148
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2001-10-14T07:00:00+00:00

The Kid

They had left Jessica lying on the bed. They had taped her hands behind her back. They had taped her ankles together. They had taped her mouth shut. They had left the television on. “It’ll give her something to do,” Sport had said. The room was dark except for the TV’s flickering light.

The little girl lay on her side. She was trying to keep her eyes open. They kept sinking half closed though. The blue of her eyes seemed foggy, as if the light in them were going out. Her face, her round cheeks, were mottled, red in patches and then chalky. Her mother had braided her hair to keep it from getting tangled at night, but the braid had started to come undone.

Jessica felt sick and bad. The chloroform had made her stomach hurt. She was scared of vomiting. She thought she would have to swallow the vomit because of the tape over her mouth. She had peed on the mattress too and she felt bad about that. She couldn’t help it. She had held it in as long as she could, but it had finally come out. Now she had to lie there on the wet bed. And there was pee all over her valentine nightgown, her favorite. After a while, she started to cry again. It felt like she was suffocating. It made her feel dizzy. Sleepy. She closed her eyes.

She slept, but even then she felt hot. When she woke up, there was sweat on her forehead. It felt like the time she had had chicken pox, like that bad fever she had then. It made her want to sleep again, but she was too sick.

She stared at the TV. There were two men talking there. She hoped her daddy would come soon. He had told her on the phone: You’ll be home soon. She thought he must be coming to get her now. She thought he would knock on the door very loudly—so loudly that the bad men would be scared and have to let him in. And then the bad men would see him and they would be really scared because he would be very, very mad. He would look all dark and growly the way he did that time she stood up on the big rock in Central Park when he’d told her not to. And Daddy would hit them. (Daddy did not think hitting was right—that’s why he never hit her—but he would make an exception in this case.) He would punch the bad men right in the nose. He might have to hit the big one with a stick or shoot him with a gun. And then Jessica would go over and hit them too.

Oh, but now she felt sick. She felt so sick. She really was going to throw up. The tape over her mouth seemed to be choking her. Tears sprang to her eyes. Mommy! she thought. Suddenly, in a fit of frustration, she tried to pull her hands apart.

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