Chapter 4

The sack over my head muffled everything, but I could hear the murmur of voices.

Brenda' s, falsely sweet, "Billy, son, how nice of you! Come on in, if you can stand the mess."

Then Billy' s voice, younger, a little hesitant, "Just dropping this off, Ma said you all might be needing it."

He was close, so close.

I thrashed wildly, trying to make a sound, any sound, through the sack and Cletus' s crushing hand.

A muffled grunt was all I managed.

Cletus pressed down harder, his knee digging into my back.

Pain shot through me, but I kept struggling.

I had to reach Billy.

I heard Billy' s footsteps on the porch, then inside the house.

"Smells good, Billy," Brenda was saying, "Your Ma' s a saint, always looking out for us."

Liar. Grandma Betty looked out for everyone, but she wasn't naive about the Millers.

I could hear the clink of a pot being set down.

"Can' t stay long," Billy said, "Got chores back home."

He was going to leave.

No!

With a surge of desperate strength, I bit down hard on Cletus' s hand.

He yelped, his grip loosening for a fraction of a second.

It was enough.

"Billy!" I screamed, my voice raw and distorted by the sack, "Billy, it' s Sarah! Help me!"

Cletus slammed his hand back over my mouth, cutting off my cry.

But had Billy heard?

There was a sudden silence from inside the house.

Then Billy' s voice, confused, "Did you hear something, Mrs. Miller?"

"Hear what, dear?" Brenda said smoothly, "Just the wind, probably, this old house groans something awful."

"Sounded like... like someone called my name," Billy said, uncertainty in his tone.

My heart pounded. He heard me!

Brenda laughed, a little too quickly.

"Oh, that' s just... that new girl I took in, Jessica Peterson' s friend, a runaway, not right in the head, poor thing, mumbles all sorts of nonsense, thinks she knows everyone."

She was so quick, so convincing in her lies.

"Best to ignore her, son, she gets agitated."

I could imagine Billy, young, a bit naive, easily influenced by an adult' s confident dismissal.

He wouldn't know me like this, a muffled voice from under a sack.

He probably hadn' t seen me in a year or more, not since the last big family get-together.

"Oh," Billy said, sounding awkward. "Okay then, well, I best be going."

Footsteps receded. The back door closed.

The sound of his truck starting up, sputtering away down the dirt road, was the sound of my hope dying all over again.

Tears of frustration and despair burned my eyes under the suffocating sack.

Cletus finally removed his hand, panting.

"Damn near bit my finger off, you crazy bitch," he snarled, then hauled me to my feet.

They dragged me to the shed.

It was cold, damp, and smelled of mildew and rat droppings.

They tied my hands tightly behind my back with a piece of rough rope and shoved me onto the dirt floor.

"That should hold you for a while," Brenda said, her voice tight with anger.

"And if you make another sound, I' ll gag you for real."

They left, bolting the flimsy door from the outside.

I was alone in the dark, cold, and terrified.

My wrists were already chafing from the rope.

My whole body ached.

The attempted assault earlier, Cletus' s leering face, flashed in my mind.

They' d be back.

I had to do something.

I struggled against the ropes, but they were too tight.

My fingers fumbled behind my back, searching for any give, any way to loosen them.

Nothing.

I scanned the dim shed, lit only by thin cracks in the wooden walls.

Piles of junk, old tools, cobwebs.

My eyes landed on a small, grimy window, high up.

Too high to reach, and probably boarded up from the outside anyway.

Escape seemed impossible.

But I couldn' t give up.

I thought of Grandpa John, his quiet strength, his refusal to ever back down from a fight when he knew he was right.

I thought of Grandma Betty, her fierce love, her resourcefulness.

I was their granddaughter.

I had to be strong.

Hours passed. The cold seeped into my bones.

I was hungry, thirsty, and my hope was dwindling.

Then, I heard Jeb, the younger son, outside.

He was whistling, coming closer to the shed.

Maybe he was sent to check on me, or bring food.

An idea, desperate and risky, sparked in my mind.

I tore at the hem of my shirt with my teeth, ripping off a small scrap of fabric.

It was one of my favorite shirts, a blue one Grandpa John had given me for my birthday.

My fingers, numb and clumsy behind my back, fumbled in the dirt.

I found a small, charred stick, probably from an old fire.

Awkwardly, painfully, I tried to write on the fabric scrap.

My name. "SARAH."

And then, "GRANDPA JOHN - HELP."

It was barely legible, smudged and uneven, but it was something.

Jeb was right outside the door now.

I could hear him kicking at a loose board.

"Hey! You still alive in there?" he called out, his voice trying to sound tough, but with an underlying nervousness.

This was my only chance.

"Jeb," I called, my voice weak but clear, "Jeb, please."

He was silent.

"I need to ask you something, just... just a small favor."

I heard him shift his weight outside the door.

"What do you want?" he asked, suspiciously.

"There' s a tiny crack under the door," I said, "Can you see it?"

A pause. "Yeah, so?"

"I... I wrote a note," I lied, not wanting to reveal what it was. "It' s for... for my friend. If you could just... take it, and when you go into town next, just drop it on the main road, near the post office? Someone will find it."

I held my breath.

It was a flimsy story, but he was young, maybe a little less hardened than Cletus and Brenda.

"Why should I?" he asked, but there was a hint of curiosity in his voice.

"I... I can' t offer you money," I said, "But... my friend... she' d be grateful. And it' s just a small thing."

I pushed the tiny, folded scrap of fabric under the door with my foot, hoping he' d see it.

Another long pause.

Then, I heard a rustling sound, and the scrap disappeared.

"Don't expect nothing," Jeb muttered, his voice gruff, and then I heard him walk away.

Did he take it? Would he do it?

It was a tiny, fragile thread of hope, but it was all I had.

Meanwhile, Billy Coulter drove home, the image of the Millers' strange, "not right in the head" girl nagging at him.

She' d sounded so desperate, and she' d called his name.

How would a crazy runaway know his name?

He tried to shake it off, but the unease lingered.

When he got back to his family' s farm, he mentioned it to his parents.

"Something weird over at the Millers today," he said, "They got this girl there, Brenda says she' s a runaway, but she yelled my name, sounded scared."

His mother, Aunt Carol, frowned.

"The Millers? They' re always trouble, that Brenda' s a hard woman."

She exchanged a look with Billy' s father.

Later that evening, Aunt Carol called her sister, Grandma Betty.

Just to chat, as they often did.

But she mentioned Billy' s strange encounter.

"Betty, you won' t believe the story Billy told me, about some poor girl over at the Millers' place..."

Grandma Betty listened, her sharp intuition kicking in.

A girl, sounding scared, at the Millers.

At the same time, news had reached them through my parents that I was missing.

I' d gone on a trip with Jessica Peterson and hadn' t returned, wasn' t answering my phone.

My parents were frantic, calling everyone.

Grandma Betty and Grandpa John connected the dots.

A girl, missing with Jessica Peterson. A girl, captive at the Millers in their own county.

The timing, the location, it was too much of a coincidence.

Alarm bells, loud and clear, were ringing in Grandma Betty' s head.

Then, the next morning, the local mail carrier, a man named Earl who knew everyone and everything in Willow Creek, found a small, dirty piece of blue fabric on the side of the main dirt road, not far from the turn-off to the Millers' property.

He almost missed it, but something made him stop.

He picked it up, unfolded it.

"SARAH. GRANDPA JOHN - HELP."

Earl knew Sheriff John. He knew Sarah, remembered her as a little girl with bright eyes visiting her grandparents.

He drove straight to John and Betty' s house.

Their worst fears were confirmed.