Getting Away, an excerpt

It was an unquestionable terror that she knew should have been hers. But instead, a cool certainty left her awash with calm. Beth could do nothing except stand in silence, wondering if this was how she would meet her death. Until then, she’d tried to live a life of some meaning if not accomplishment, of love if not happiness and with the knowledge that it may one day end suddenly. Was there room for dignity at the end? What faculties could she still grasp? Where did the control and machinations truly lie? The kidnapper forced her with a grip at her shoulder to her knees, seeming to expect sobs and pleas for her life. He waited for a beat to hear them. None manifested upon her lips — her mouth locked recalcitrantly, her expression closed.

He sighed from behind and slid the end of a cold barrel up the side of her neck. There was instruction in another pause. Theists would tell you in that moment that her death and her person belonged to God. Pragmatists, perhaps, that whomever so happened to have the weapon had control. Beth waited for the click before the darkness and knew this death was hers. It had to be.

Then, it simply never came. 

A ringing prematurely filled her ears with a soft echo, quieting a shuffling in the dirt beside her. She saw it only from the dust kicked up. Then, the loud turnover of a truck’s engine, as the kidnapper left her kneeling and drove erratically away. 

GCE15P.

Beth clocked his license plate, immediately filing the combination of digits to the front of her mind. She repeated them several times aloud before pausing to think. Her arms remained joined tightly at the wrists behind her back, and she had no conception of how to free them even as she stood up and began an apathetic jog into the woods — her shoulders hunched and wobbling to keep her balance. They had driven 30 minutes, including some time on a state highway before coming to the wilderness where the man had left her. Accounting for the changes in speed and direction, she thought she must have been at least 20 miles outside the city. Her upper abdomen ached sharply. And her head was fuzzy. She couldn’t remember why.

The low-hanging sun told her they’d likely gone north, and the soft crashing of waves nearby told her how far. She was somewhere south of Lexington and an enclave of vacation homes beside Lake Huron couldn’t be far. She had counted to sixty roughly nine times when she emerged from the woods, dragging her feet tiredly to the edge of a treeless, fenced-in property, and rattled the metal with a knee. A shirtless, lithe man was slouched in a worn-out lawn chair a few yards away seated before a small grill, smoke emanating from its seal. He sat up sharply, his ribs contracting noticeably, and turned toward her. A mask of shock drew across his scruffy face. 

His wordlessness pushed her on. “Hi, help me!” Beth said, the words breaking dryly in the back of her throat. She hadn’t spoken in hours and choked back all the fear she’d felt.

He shook off the stunned expression and stood up, seeming to look toward the low-lit cabin nearby. “Wha — “ he exhaled. “What happened to you?”

“Someone took me and dragged me up here but left.” She nudged the edge of a gate in the fence, and the shirtless man propelled himself toward her, laxly opening it and ushering her in.

“Where? Nearby up here?” His concern took a tone of confusion, and he shouted toward the cabin. “Ann, a little help! Annie!”

A small mousy woman sauntered out drying her hands in a kitchen towel, dropping it at the flap of the cabin’s screen door. Slack-jawed, she replied, “What’s going on out here?”

“This woman just came up to the fence like this. We have to help her.” His arm escorted Beth forward at her lower back as he fingered at the twine around her wrists. “Please, Annie, some scissors.”

Annie shot back into the cabin, emerging aghast with something silver flashing in her hands. She stumbled off the porch and handed the man the scissors. He held them delicately before Beth, pivoting deftly as if to assure her they weren’t an instrument of harm. She nodded. It took several cuts to make his way through the twine, gently jerking her backward from the pressure. When the final piece snapped, her arms floated forward in relief, and she rubbed the raw patches encircling her wrists. Annie had found her way to her other side, lightly gripping Beth’s upper arms to guide her toward the cabin. She flexed her heels to stop the motion, and Annie sensed the hesitance. 

“You should sit down,” Annie said, coaxing her on. “Let us have a look at you, maybe call for some help.”

Beth shook her head sharply, her survival facade finally softening into emotion. 

“We need to make sure you’re OK. The police need to find who did this to you.” The man shifted his stance beside Annie. They looked similar around the eyes and in the shape of their nose. They probably aren’t married, Beth thought. 

“My brother is right,” Annie piped in. “People with some authority should look at you.” 

The pair stood in silence, blankly looking at her for a reply. Beth wrapped her arms around herself and looked toward the ground. She hadn’t had a moment to calculate what’d happen beyond immediate next steps. Step one, run, step two, get out of her binds, and she’d done them. There’d been a pride in what she thought were her final moments and that they weren’t raught with violence and anger. The man who had taken her had so many questions, and she answered none of them. But now, she was feeling the reality of the previous half hour melt over her for the first time like a rancid butter. Being afraid was ugly. Annie and her brother could see it on her face. 

“I just—” she began. “I just needed help out of the ties. … I’m OK now. I just need to go home.”

Annie squished her face with concern. “No, I’m sorry,” she started, lightly tightening her grip on Beth. “Something has happened to you. We need to get you looked at.” Annie turned to her brother, “Jack, call Cam at the sheriff’s office. We don’t have to call 911, but we should get someone down here. Or maybe get her to the hospital.” 

The shirtless man named Jack bounded into the cabin on the balls of his feet, disappearing around a dark corner. Annie shifted herself to find Beth’s line of sight. “You could be injured. Let us take you down to McLaren.”

Beth waved her arms and broke Annie’s hold near her shoulders, taking several steps back. Annie straightened her stance and calmed her face. The idea of doctors and police officers poking and prodding her filled her with an uneasy tension, and she could feel her chest tighten. It was hard to breathe. She wasn’t injured. She was fine. She just needed a ride home. Clutching herself, Beth turned back toward the fence before a light grip folded over her shoulder. It felt gentle but still too familiar, and she fell to her knees again — this time without more provocation. She saw tears fall and hit the grass. 

“It’s OK.” Annie was kneeling beside her. “We’re not going to hurt you.” The gentle hand moved, and a loose embrace wrapped around Beth’s shoulders. “Nobody is going to hurt you.”

Several minutes seemed to pass as Beth regained a slow pace to her breathing until Annie guided her to stand, shifting into a tighter hug. She smelled like flour and sweat with a sweetly scented bead rolling down her neck. Beth’s abrupt arrival seemed to fill this new person with a hot rage she was stifling down in favor of cautious caretaking. The stiffness in Beth’s body loosened, and she was calm again. She was still. 

They separated at the sound of a crack as the cabin’s screen door closed loudly behind Jack, emerging with a phone in his hands. “Cam said he could meet us down in Port Huron if we can get her there. Maybe we could bring some of your clothes for her to borrow, Ann, so she’s something to change into. But we can’t clean her up until she’s looked at.”

Annie sighed and looked down at Beth’s feet. She hadn’t noticed she’d lost her shoes in the woods, and her bare feet were caked in dirt. “So, can we at least put some sandals on her?” Annie said. Jack nodded. 

He walked a little closer, and Beth could hear the grass squish under him. “I don’t even think we caught your name. What can we call you?” His tone was terse but concerned. 

She was silent, her mind blank. She’d lost herself in her escape as assuredly as she lost her shoes. Closing her eyes, Beth reached into the back of her mind for what to tell them.

“G-C-E-1-5-P.” The siblings stared blankly at her. 

“Your name, hun.” Annie said. 

Beth found her name, but blurted out again. ““G-C-E-1-5-P!”

“OK. It’s OK,” Jack lightened his face to calm her. “G as in girl?” 

Beth nodded. 

“C as in cat? E as in elephant?” She nodded again. “And then the number fifteen and P, as in pudding?” 

Beth shrugged, holding her gaze on Jack. He’d put a shirt on, loosely-buttoned. He continued, “Maybe we could say that in a different way.” He seemed to be trying to figure her out, as if she’d given him a code. He knew it couldn’t be related to her name but grasped it was something she wanted to remember. Something she thought was even more important. 

Annie nodded in agreement, bouncing slightly in place. “Yeah, like an acronym. What do the letters stand for?”

Jack waited, and then, began again at Beth’s silence. “Girls can … what?”

“Girls can eat fifteen … pounds!” Annie clapped with a resounding triumph at the puzzle.

Jack paused and raised an eyebrow. “No, girls can’t eat fifteen pounds.”

Beth opened her mouth, a squeak seeping out. They looked at her, waiting. “Pizzas,” she mumbled. 

“OK. Girls can’t eat fifteen pizzas. G-C-E-1-5-P,” Jack said. “We’ll remember that.” He leaned forward slightly. “What else should we remember?”

“Beth,” she said. “My name, it’s Beth.” 

“I’m so glad to know that, Beth,” he said. “I’m Jack. Short for Jackson. This is my sister Annie, or Ann. Short for Maryann. This is our family’s cabin. We’re in Worth Township, Michigan.” He looked at Annie. “Can you tell us where you’re from?”

He was assuming she’d come a long way and seemed to be instructed in how to approach her, how to reassure her of her safety. The fuzziness that’d filled her head was subsiding. The stomach ache was still there. “I live in Port Huron,” she stated with a clarity that seemed to shock them. 

“Oh,” Jack replied. “You see, then, this will be easy. Nothing to worry about.” 

Annie had seemed to vanish but came back from the cabin after a few seconds with a pair of dark blue flip-flops and a jean jacket, plopping the sandals in the grass and draping the jacket over Beth’s shoulders. She pushed her feet into the flip-flops, as the siblings guided her around the side of the cabin. A Jeep sat parked in the dark shade of an elm tree, speckled with patches of rot. It had a fungal disease that appeared to be killing it. Jack lowered himself into the driver’s seat, as Annie shifted a small pile of papers to make room for Beth. She took the seat, and Annie climbed into the back.

The Jeep shuttered with a turn of the key, and they rolled over gravel, backing up slowly to the edge of what looked like M-25 and waiting for a break in a line of passing cars. Jack drove backward onto the highway with a quick swerve and shifted the gears forward before speeding south. Wind rushed through the Jeep’s unzipped window flaps, the cooling summer night air softly reddening the color of Beth’s cheeks. Austere riffs of guitar music screeched out on air of a modern rock station, but Annie leaned forward to turn the radio off with a twist of a knob on the center console. Wooshing, silent air enveloped her, and Beth’s face finally fell into an aching sob.