If he could stay perfectly still, there was a good chance of going unnoticed. Take a quick look, and get back in the car.įelix didn’t need the driver not to look at the roof, just not to look very hard. Just tug at the rack, Felix thought, holding his breath. He heard the driver’s footsteps outside of the van. Shifting quickly, he spun his body to the right edge of the roof and hung it there, as far off the side as he could. Right or left?įelix began to roll left just before he heard the creak of the driver’s side door. Passenger or driver, Felix thought quickly. The voices had stopped, and soon, he felt the van do the same. He pressed his ear against the metal until he was certain. He stabilized himself and listened through the roof again, hoping the noise he’d made had gone without raising anyone’s suspicion. The van drove over a large hole in the road and Felix’s body raised into the air before thumping back down against the vehicle’s top.

But, of course, the straps he’d bought had torn almost the moment the van first accelerated, only minutes after that poor sixteen-year-old had been blindfolded and led inside. He was supposed to be safely hooked in place right, not clutching the roof rack’s sun-hot metal with bare, tiring hands. That’s why he’d brought the ratchet straps and carabineers. It wasn’t supposed to have been like this. The voice he heard was muffled, but some of the words it used were clear: dead, teeth, don’t panic. He pulled himself forward against the sixty-miles-per-hour wind and leaned his ear against the metal below him. They ran across another bump in the road and Felix’s hands tightened. Losing his grip now would mean losing the van and probably worse, his life. It had been five hours now they had to be getting closer. Felix snapped himself awake as his left hand began to slip from the roof rack.

Missing Signals by Michael Kayatta