He reached out a hand to Victor. The hand that was not holding Allie’s arm wrenched behind her back. In that big hand, in the spill of light from the living room, Allie saw a small manila envelope. Thick with something.
“You can count it,” the giant said. “I won’t take offense.”
“That’s okay. You work for Lassen; I trust you.”
Victor grabbed the envelope from the giant hand and swung the door shut. Hard. The slam made Allie jump.
She felt herself turned again, and marched toward the giant’s car. The pain caught up with her in that moment. It hurt. The position of her arm was painful. Apparently she had been too preoccupied with fear to notice.
The giant opened the back door of his dark sedan and pushed hard. Allie fell across the backseat, hitting her head on the opposite window. She sat up just as the door was slammed shut behind her. As the giant began to walk around to the driver’s side front, Allie seized the brief opportunity.
She tried the door. It was locked. She tried to lift the lock. Fast, desperate. Over and over. It wouldn’t budge.
The dome light came on, causing Allie to wince. The big man was in the driver’s seat now, looking back over his shoulder at her. As her eyes adjusted to the sudden, almost violent light, she was able to see his features clearly. His hair was buzzed so short it practically did not exist, his nose wide and misshapen. His thick, short neck was hardly a neck at all. More of a slope to broad shoulders. He smiled at her, exposing a row of white but crooked teeth.
“Child safety locks,” he said in that cartoonishly deep bass. “Wouldn’t want your child getting away.”
Then he started the engine, shifted the car into gear, and drove.
A thought flashed through Allie’s head, a sort of wordless emotional version of “I want my mommy.” But it was too late for all that now.
“Can you at least tell me where you’re taking me?”
Allie’s voice sounded breathy to her own ears. She had been struggling for the better part of an hour to catch her breath, but the grinding fear kept snatching it away again.
For a time he didn’t answer.
They had driven well out of the San Fernando Valley. Allie could see the ocean in the dark, a faint crescent of moon setting at the black horizon. It was beautiful, except to the extent that nothing was beautiful, because nothing possibly could be. Not at a time like this.
They might have been driving through Camarillo or Oxnard, or it might have been Ventura. In the darkness and panic, it was hard to tell.
He met her eyes in the rearview mirror, his face revealed in the faint glow of the dashboard lights.
“San Francisco,” he said.
Which didn’t answer the question. Not really. Allie hadn’t meant to ask where, exactly. Not geographically where. “To what?” would have been more relevant, but Allie didn’t ask that question. She wasn’t ready to know.
She watched the moon set over the Pacific and thought about a teacher—Mr. Callahan, her English and creative writing teacher—who taught her the Mark Twain quote “I’ve had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.” They’d had a class discussion about problems, about how they’re mostly perceived problems. Borrowed trouble. Usually the brain wandered into the future until it identified a potential problem and seized on it. By the time that future came to pass, though, circumstances would change and the problem would never materialize. Mr. Callahan had said it was rare for most people to have a genuine problem in the moment—literally, unavoidably happening.
She would have to tell him about this. If she survived.
The adrenaline had been with her too long. She felt exhausted, her nerves jangled nearly to the point of collapse.
A thought came into her mind. Suddenly. Almost as if from outside her.
Don’t just sit there. Try. Try to save yourself. Try anything.
“Do you have kids?” she asked him.
He met her eyes again in the mirror. Narrowed his own, his eyebrows squeezing downward.
“No.”
Allie waited, but he said no more.
“Don’t you ever feel . . . sympathy for girls like me?”
“Sympathy?”
Almost as though he didn’t understand the word.
“Don’t you feel sorry for the girls you take up to San Francisco? I mean, I’ve never been so scared in my life. This is absolutely the worst thing that’s ever happened to me, and I’ve had some pretty terrible things happen lately. Doesn’t that make you feel anything at all? How can you not feel sorry for someone who didn’t do anything wrong and who’s so terrified? And you have the power to change it.”
A long silence. She could see part of his face, including his eyes, in the mirror. But he wasn’t looking at her. He was watching the road. She tried to see something in those eyes, some evidence that he was thinking about what she’d asked. Or, better yet, feeling. But his face looked slack and blank.
“You talk too much,” he said.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t do it anymore.”
“Okay. Sorry.”
They drove on. Allie watched the slightest hint of dawn form over the hills to the east. The sky turned a lighter color, fading the stars. Morning was coming. The same morning Allie had thought would bring safety.
It was far too late for such an extravagant hope.
“I need to go to the bathroom,” Allie said.
They had just passed the ridiculously ornate Madonna Inn, and a freeway sign a few miles back had announced that the next few exits would be San Luis Obispo. Allie did have to go to the bathroom, but she could have held it. But still she had a mind to save herself. She was not yet beyond trying.
“I wasn’t born yesterday,” he said.
Allie didn’t speak for a time.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do if you won’t stop.”
“Hold it.”
“I can’t hold it all the way to San Francisco. That’s hours from here.”
“Try. We don’t stop.”
“Okay. But I just want you to know, I won’t be able to hold it much longer. I’m really thinking of you. And your car. This car has these really nice leather seats. And what a mess it would be to clean that up. It’ll go all down behind the seats. And the smell! But it’s your car. I was just trying to save you all that trouble.”
“I told you not to talk so much.”
Allie shut her mouth, firmly. Suddenly. She decided her best bet might be to keep it shut. The last thing she wanted was to make him angry.