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knife always at my back. He held on to me with a tight grip that hurt my arm. The trail was steep around us, thick trees and rock on all sides.
    If there had ever been an opportunity, that time had passed.
    As we started climbing, I gathered courage. “Who are you?” I begged. “Why are you doing this? I have never done anything wrong.”
    He continued pushing me up the mountain.
    “Why are you doing this?” I begged again.
    “I’ll explain to you later. When we get to where we’re going.”
    We continued climbing. The night was dark. He forced me to hold a flashlight to illuminate our way. He held the knife in one hand, his arm always at my waist or shoulder.
    “Do you realize what you are doing?” I pleaded.
    “Of course,” he seemed to huff.
    He had told me that he intended to hold me for ransom, but I didn’t believe that anymore. “If you let me go, I won’t press charges. I won’t let my father press charges on you,” I said with as much conviction as I could muster.
    He huffed again. The trail was getting steeper. “You don’t need to make me any promises,” he said in a sarcastic tone. “I know what I’m doing. I understand the consequences of my actions.” He didn’t sound crazy. He only sounded mean.
    Up and up we climbed. The trail grew narrow and more difficult. Farther up, there were trees on every side. We climbed and climbed. I was getting tired and very thirsty. He stopped to drink, pulling a canister of water out of one of his bags. He didn’t offer me any. Not this time. Later he would, but I didn’t want to drink from his water anyway. He urinated, then we kept on climbing. A streambed joined the trail on our right. “Turn up the streambed,” he commanded. Though the trail continued, we left it and headed up the rocky streambed. The going became even more difficult. Boulders. So many trees. So much thick brush. Yet he was always right behind me, matching my every move.
    I thought of the story of Moses and the parting of the Red Sea. I thought, Okay, God, this isn’t the Red Sea. This is just some scrub oak. Could you please just part it so I can run away? I kept looking for an opening, for any means to escape. But the man was right behind me. He had a knife on me. And if he wasn’t right behind me, he was in front of me and always holding tight.
    So I kept on climbing.
    It got colder. It was the middle of the night. I was praying and pleading for a way to escape, but there were steep slopes along the stream bed, walls of scrub oak on each side. It was hopeless and I knew it.
    By then, I’d had enough time to consider another option that I hadn’t thought about before; something just as terrifying but not as likely to enter into the mind of a little girl. “Please,” I begged. “If you’re going to rape and kill me, please do it here. That way someone will find my body.”
    “Keep moving,” he replied.
    We kept on climbing. It was painfully slow. So dark. So steep. So many obstacles.
    “Stop,” he commanded. I stood there in the dark. I listened as he urinated once again. He mumbled to himself. “We’re going to wait here until daylight.” He seemed to be thinking to himself. Was he getting tired? Were we really just going to sit there on the rocks until the sun came up?
    I turned around to look at him. He was not very tall, with narrow shoulders and a slim chest. It was too dark to see much more than just the outline of his body, and his beard hid most of his face, but I could see his cheeks and eyes. Then it hit me. I remembered him! I had seen him once—no, twice—before. Once when I was shopping downtown with my mother. Sometime in the fall. She had given him a little money. She had given him my dad’s name and cell-phone number so that they could help him more. My father had hired him to do some handiwork. Just before Thanksgiving, I thought. I also remembered watching him from the upstairs railing that looks down on our front hall. He had looked up to see me