Free The Girl in the Woods by David Jack Bell Page A

sorry to hear that."
    The girl didn't get off the bike, though. She stood there, straddling it, while she gave Roger's face a longer look. Roger knew what was happening. He had seen it many times before. The girl was figuring something out about Roger, something that was also going to work in Roger's favor. The girl was deciding that Roger "wasn't quite right." But she wasn't thinking that he wasn't quite right in a bad way, in the way that a person—especially a girl—would want to avoid at all costs, but she was deciding that he wasn't quite right in a safe way, in the way that made a person want to help him. Sort of like the pretend dog that Roger hoped she really thought was lying under his van wheels.
    Roger knew that the less he said the greater the likelihood she would think him special, so he pointed back toward the van and said, "The dog..."
    "Right," she said. She gently set her bike down in the road. "Do you want me to come and look at it?"
    Roger nodded, and the girl came toward him but stopped ten feet away.
    "Is it over here?" she said, pointing toward the side of the van.
    "Yes."
    "Is it moving?" she said.
    "A little."
    Roger turned away, heard the scrape of the girl's shoes against the gravel, but when he went around the side of the van and looked back at the girl, he saw that she remained in place, having decided not to come farther. Roger saw that her lips were slightly parted, as though forming a question she didn't really want to speak. She seemed to be giving her next step a great deal of thought.
    "You know, I should probably be moving on," she said. "It's getting late."
    Roger looked at the still bright sky. He knew what the girl meant. She didn't trust him. But if she moved on, the plan was dead, and if the plan died today, without the girl coming with him, he had no idea when or if he could ever try again. This was the best chance, perhaps the only chance. And the longer they waited, the greater the chance a car would come driving by and ruin everything once and for all.
    He just needed to get her to the side of the van, the side away from the road where the big door was open. If he could do that, he could make the rest of the plan happen.
    Roger said the first word that popped into his head.
    "Please?"
    The girl looked back at her bike, then at Roger. She smiled.
    "Okay," she said. "I'll take a look."
    "Just look and tell me what to do," Roger said.
    The girl came forward, toward the side of the van.
    He knew the plan was going to work.

CHAPTER TEN

    The new girl had surprised Roger by fighting with him.
    He had managed to get her into the van easily. He outweighed her and could easily outmuscle her, but once she was inside, on the dirty, rough floor of the van's cargo area, she started thrashing and biting and scratching, and Roger again found himself with no choice but to punch her.
    He hit her once, but she kept fighting. So he hit her again and then again, a little harder each time until she stopped moving, and Roger feared that he'd gone and killed her. She lay still in the van, her eyes closed, and Roger began to panic.
    "No, no, no," he said.
    Then he saw her chest move and heard her moan.
    "Oh, yes," he said. "Yes, yes, yes, yes."
    He grabbed the tape and the ropes and the gag and started working. And before he left, before another car came by and saw the van sitting there on the side of the road, Roger jumped out of the van and grabbed the girl's bike. He carried it back and threw it in next to her and drove off.
    The bike was the most important part of the plan, and the plan was working.
    He knew the girl wouldn't be happy in those first few hours in the house. He remembered how the other girl had cried for hours, begging him to let her leave until Roger felt ready to do it, to just drive back into town and shove her out the van door. He hated to listen to her crying. But he remembered something his father had told him, part of that long talk they'd had right before his dad