Worth More Dead

trunk of his car. He began to cut the leg of her jeans, apparently enjoying himself as he cut off her clothing with the razor blade that fit into the slot of the utility tool. Without thinking, she told him to stop, “These are my best pair of jeans!”
    This annoyed her captor, and he ran the blade along her leg until blood welled up all along the cut. Then he slammed down the lid of the trunk.
    April was trapped in the pitch-dark trunk, and she was bounced and jostled cruelly as the car plunged over rough roads. She could think of no way to get out or even to signal to other drivers. Even if she could have, she sensed they were in a lonely place where there were no other drivers.
    At length, the car slowed and then stopped. She waited, terrified, to see what he would do next. She heard the driver’s door open and slam shut and then approaching footsteps.
    The stranger opened the trunk, pulled her out, untied her, and barked, “Take off your clothes!”
    April Collins was an exceptionally bright and brave young woman. She knew it was futile to fight the man who held her captive, so she did as she was told, knowing that she was about to be raped and knowing that there wasn’t a thing in the world she could do about it. She hoped now only to survive with her life. He led her to the front seat and pushed her down.
    Even as she endured the sexual assault, she studied the rapist, determined to memorize everything she could about him. He was slender but fairly muscular and quite tan. She thought he probably worked out of doors. He had wild, wavy light-brown hair, light blue eyes, and a mustache and hadn’t shaved for at least a week. She thought he might be as old as 35 to 39, but it was hard for her to judge age. He was old enough to be her father.
    When the man was done with her, he told April to put her clothes back on, all but her blouse. She thought that he was going to let her go now.
    She was mistaken.
    “Stand in front of the car,” he commanded. “Now lie down right there, on your back.”
    The man sat on top of her chest, while he took her blouse and held it against her throat.
    “What are you doing?” she gasped.
    “I don’t want to get blood on me if it spurts out when I cut your throat,” he replied in a strangely flat voice.
    April hadn’t fought him until then. It had seemed utterly useless to try, but she realized in horror that he did mean to cut her throat as he actually drew the blade deeply into the right side of her neck, moving it down toward her shoulder…one inch…two inches. Suddenly, she was galvanized into action by a tremendous will to live. With every bit of strength she could muster, she knocked the knife from his hand.
    Then she began to talk, asking him, “Why? Why are you doing this to me?”
    “I have to,” he said simply. “If I let you live, you’ll be able to identify me. I’ll get caught.”
    April had an advantage over the man. Not in strength but in IQ points. When he asked her what her name was, she told him. “I’m telling you the truth,” she said. “If you don’t believe me, look in my wallet. It’s right over there. You can look in and get my address and everything. If I told anyone, you could come back and kill me. See, you’d have that power over me, so I wouldn’t dare tell.”
    He seemed to be mulling that over. April kept talking; she could see the man was getting confused. “I’m going to be sixteen next week,” she said. “I don’t want to die before I have my sixteenth birthday. I want to see what my presents are. I deserve to live that long. Can’t you see it’s not fair to kill someone who hasn’t even had a chance to live yet?”
    “Well, I don’t know…”
    April’s neck throbbed with pain, and she could feel the blood coursing down her breasts from the deep cut in her neck, but she couldn’t think about that now. She had to keep talking, keep the man off balance. She could see that he wasn’t able to think as fast as she could.
    “I swear I won’t tell,” she repeated. “I just want to be sixteen. I’ve been looking forward to it for so long.”
    He seemed to have taken the bait. “If you tell, if you even tell anyone, I’ll have this,” he said, holding up her learner’s permit from the Department of Motor Vehicles. “I know who you are and where you live. I’ll come back and finish the job. I’ll kill you.”
    “Yes, I know you will. Yes, yes, yes. See, you could do that,” she repeated. “You know I