Don't Lose Her (6 page)

Chapter 12

D
iane didn't know how long she'd been asleep or how long she'd been dreaming. She'd tried to stay awake; had felt her eyelids fluttering, and resisted. She jumped several times when her head bobbed forward. But in the end, she failed.

She'd tried to be brave.
I'll fight these bastards. I'll kick someone in the balls and escape. I'll scratch
someone's eyes out
. Instead, she lay down on the mattress. She'd tried to cry, conjured a face for her baby, pulled a vision of Billy and his smile, and then squeezed her eyes tight to force the glands to produce moisture so she could feel the tears run down her cheek. That failed, too.

Instead, in exhaustion brought on by anxiety, she slept and dreamed. She'd gone back to the time when she was a child, to the first time she'd felt vulnerable and alone, unloved and scared. She might have been six, maybe seven. She'd had a fight with her parents, both of them at the same time, which was rare.

While on a vacation in southwest Florida, she'd been left in a rustic cottage with a babysitter while her father the judge and her mother had gone to some exotic Florida dinner at the nearby Rod and Gun Club and denied her even the possibility of being left alone. She'd argued she was old enough to be left on her own. She'd thrown a tantrum, replete with tears, and declared loudly that she was no baby.

She'd stalked to a room and closed herself in, refusing to even meet the sitter. Then she'd snuck out through a window and onto the grounds of the old Everglades City hotel. She'd bumbled about near the docks and boats and marshland that surrounded the near-century­-old place in the half-dark, and had become frightened by the unfamiliar calls of night birds and insects and the moonlit splashes of feeding fish and the underbrush rustle of nocturnal hunters. She'd found misguided refuge in a worn, wooden boathouse and cowered there until she was found by a collective staff of anxious searchers and her frantic parents.

The dream seemed so real—the sensation of wet tears on her face, the fear of being abandoned, the exhaustion from searching the darkness for a way back, hunger from a missed meal, the smells of damp canvas and caustic oils, and the shouts of unfamiliar men's voices calling out her name. Why had her parents abandoned her? Why had they not protected her? Why was she all alone?

When Diane jolted out of the dream, she blinked open her eyes and was met only by the darkness and the cloying feel of the hood still over her face. She could feel the moisture of tears against her cheeks and realized she'd been crying. Choking against the close air, she began grabbing at the cloth, wrenching at it to pull it from her face. In frustration, she cinched it tighter around her throat instead. Strong hands suddenly clamped onto her wrists, and Diane began screaming for help.

She may have let loose two, maybe three cries before the sound of a door bursting open was followed by three heavy steps and a clap of thunder in her right ear. The blow spun her. Her body reeled, the creaking bed frame screeched, and the heaviness of her belly swung a fraction of a second behind the rest of her body, sloshing behind the force that sent her hard against the wall.

Silence, or maybe deafness, followed. The flashes of light she saw were from the slap to her face, not the removal of the hood. She squeezed her eyes shut against the pain, saw more swirls of light and color behind her eyelids. Then through her undamaged ear, she heard the first words since being in her court chambers—guttural, threatening, deep, but controlled words:

“If you cannot control her, we will find someone who can.”

She heard the door slam. Then the stunning quiet took over again.
You're still conscious,
Diane thought. The pain at the side of her face was humming, and there was a ringing in her ear, like a high-pitch tinnitus. She curled her back and bowed her head.
Does trauma to the mother cause damage to the fetus?
she wondered.
If you go unconscious, maybe it does, and if you stop breathing, definitely. End of heartbeat?
Stay alive, Diane, no matter what.
She again listened to the silence.

Then she concentrated, tuned her good ear: Was the captor still there? The one who had obviously been upbraided for letting her scream? She stilled her own heart rate and breathing, and settled herself, then listened intently to the air—to the vibration of it, the movement. Maybe the electric air of the disturbance itself made it hard for her to get back to the acute listening she'd been trying to cultivate. Was she alone, or not? Was her guard still here? Was he pissed because she'd gotten him into trouble? Was it possible to hear anger?

She made a tactical choice.

“I'm sorry,” she said.

No reaction.

“I'm sorry I screamed and got you into trouble. I panicked. I won't do it again.”

Nothing—no response. No “shut up, bitch,” or “It's just a job for me.” No scraping of chair legs. No sliding open of a shut window, just to change the air and take a breath.

Diane listened closer for the breathing she'd detected before. Certainly, any human being would be feeling something after the threat from that guttural voice that had just berated her overseer. Anger like that raises the blood pressure and increases the respiration. No one could not be affected.

Then she heard it: a ticking, a wispy
click, click, click
-ing. She knew the sound of texting. She made it herself when she used her phone while court was in session. She thought of it as a quiet, incognito way to communicate even when you weren't supposed to be doing it.

My guard is texting someone, reaching out, outside of this room at least
, she thought. A connection to the outside was something, she told herself—a possibility.

“You can understand that I'm afraid, can't you?” she said aloud. “I'm a pregnant woman grabbed off the street and stuck in this room with a bag over my head. You can understand that I'm scared, for myself and for my baby.

“You were a baby once,” she said, taking the chance, making the calculated move, working the only possibility for compassion that she could think of.

“You have a mother, too. Wouldn't your mother be afraid for you?”

Chapter 13

W
hen she was sure the woman was asleep, Rae carefully, so carefully, slipped out of the room to pee, to see Danny, and to bitch. On the landing outside, she looked out over the open expanse of high empty ceilings, crisscrossing rafters, and caged industrial light bulbs hanging just above her level and casting an orange glow over the space below. On the ground floor, she looked first to her right, at the pile of metal and destroyed upholstery and stacked tires that had once been the white van Danny and the others pulled up in when they'd arrived with the woman. Danny was sitting there alone on an intact removable backseat. The cutting torches and gas cylinders and safety mask were beside him, standing as if his only friends.

He seemed to sense her presence. When he looked up, she could see the flash of alarm in his widening eyes and his palms came up to warn her back. She thought, Fuck it, Danny, I got to pee, and crossed her legs and frowned in a pantomime of need.

Then she followed his eyes across the room and saw the other three men sitting at a square card table, corralling a pile of bills in the middle, each holding a fan of cards in their hands. Geronimo the asshole looked up from his cards when Danny stood, and read that something in the air had changed. He turned his face up to where Rae stood, then followed her sightline back down to Danny.

Danny shrugged his shoulders once, grabbing at his crotch and then gesturing up to the landing. The Indian dipped his chin and with an almost imperceptible nod, gave his permission.

While Danny moved to the staircase, Rae moved down so that they could meet at the bottom step. She sneered at the “What the fuck you doin'” look on Danny's face and pushed past him to the only bathroom in the place, in the corner next to a half-glassed-in office. Danny followed, and when she stepped in through the bathroom door, he came in, too. She didn't try to stop him
.

Rae let him close the door and then spun in front of the old-style porcelain commode, pulled down her shorts and panties in one motion, and squatted, all without once looking him in the eye. Elbows on knees, she sat there—waiting, knowing him. He couldn't stand the silent treatment. Danny hated when she wouldn't talk to him, refused to argue out a disagreement, flat-out stoned the idea of discussion. He'd get frustrated, angry, then come back pleading.

She knew this was her power over him. It wasn't long before she felt him come over and stand in front of her. She was looking at his jeans, the old cowboy belt buckle, the plain gray T-shirt he always wore, eschewing anything with a print or logo or insignia, and then she felt his curled index finger under her chin and she let him lift her face to his.

“I'm sorry, baby. But it's not going to be long,” he whispered, knowing he was breaking Geronimo's rule against talking.

“There's been some kinda glitch. One day, babe, maybe two. Then we're done, we get the money, we're outta here,” he said, kneeling down.

Fucking Danny, she thought. She looked straight into his cornflower blue eyes, the ones that few girls in Leelanau County could ever resist. She was no exception. But she also knew that he never said he was sorry to anyone else in this world.

“Goddamnit, Danny, is that woman a federal judge?” she hissed. “Is that a kidnapped federal judge up there you got me watching?”

She kept her eyes on his, using her advantage, turning the blade of guilt. Danny put his finger to her lips, even though she was barely whispering and knew the unbreakable rule, and he inched forward and crouched down, pressing in between her knees, opening her thighs with his chest and forcing her elbows off. Then his face came forward, and she lost contact with his eyes and felt his lips on her forehead.

“She's bullshitting you, Rae. She ain't no judge. It's gonna work, Radar. You know it's gonna work. You just gotta hang in, do your part, and we're golden.”

She let his lips lay there, their cool touch actually tingling with the perspiration of her forehead. He was using her nickname, Radar, what friends had called her from childhood, spinning off her given name, but also recognizing her uncanny ability to know when something was going to happen before it happened.

Early on it was simple things, like her announcing the arrival of an ice cream truck long before anyone else could hear its music. Later, it was her correct predictions about her girlfriends' romances, and her uncanny ability to intuit classroom pop quizzes. The crowning event was her impromptu warning while joy riding in the blackness of night on abandoned railroad tracks in Dave Knowlton's old-school Dodge convertible.

It had been a teenage joy ride thing for years. Knowlton had figured out how to ease his daddy's junker car onto the abandoned tracks using the crossing at Kimberly Road. The wheelbase of the car was the exact same width as the track, and he would pull up parallel on the crossing and drive his wheels carefully onto the rails. He'd let a little air out of the tires so the weight of the car would make them sit securely over the iron. Everyone would then pile in the back and onto the hood of the Dodge.

All Knowlton had to do was slowly accelerate down the track. You didn't even have to steer. The rubber wheels hugged and followed the rails and hummed in the darkness of the woods. It was like flying. The effect was even scarier when Knowlton turned the headlights off. Thirty miles an hour felt like ninety.

One night, they were “rail sliding,” as they called it, when Rae sensed something even she could never explain. The hair on the back of her neck started tingling. An anxiety rose into her throat.

Finally, she couldn't stand it anymore and screamed, “Turn on the lights, Dave! Goddammit, turn on the lights!”

Knowlton spun his head around. “Come on, Rae, you scaredy-cat …”

But her next “Goddammit, Dave!” caused him to give in and flip on the headlights. And there it was: a dormant, hundred-ton flat car squatting thirty yards in front of them that would have surely sheared the heads of everyone in the car. Knowlton yanked the wheel, and they jolted off the rails and came to a bouncing stop on the railway ties.

“Radar,” they called her. The name and reputation was set. You better listen to that girl 'cause she knows what's going to happen.

Yeah, Rae used that, too. She learned how to count cards at the blackjack tables at the Indian casino at Peshawbestown
 
and because she used that new talent in front of her friends, it bolstered the image that she could somehow look into the future. Who was she to dissuade them?

But now Danny was using it to mollify her.

“You know it's gonna work out, Radar, 'cause you always know.”

With his left hand over her shoulder, he inched closer, forcing her thighs farther apart and pulling her into him, her chest into his, her butt sliding on the seat, her exposed genitals opening. She knew what he was doing and let him.

“The damn woman's pregnant, Danny—you can't bullshit that,” she whined, using her little girl voice. “I'm alone up there watching her and they got her arms tied behind her and she's hungry and thirsty and I'm hungry and thirsty and what the hell? Did you know it was gonna be like this? 'Cause if you did, I'm gonna kick your ass.”

By then, Danny had moved his lips off her forehead and brushed them over the curve of her ear. She felt his warm breath tickling her there and she knew that he knew the effect it always had. Then consciously she slid her butt even farther forward on the toilet seat until her moistness touched his cowboy belt buckle; the shock of cold metal against her broke the spell.

“Goddamnit, Danny,” she hissed as she pushed him away. “What the hell is going on with the freakin' cutting torch and the van all in parts!”

Danny backed off and just shrugged his shoulders.

“Geronimo said get rid of it,” he said. “The tools were already here, and I was bored. It ain't the way I'd get rid of a stolen car, but what the hell? I don't know a damn thing about Florida, and the places I'd dump it probably don't even exist down here. It's not like I got anything better to do while we're hiding out in this sweatbox anyway.”

“Chop it into little pieces and get rid of it? Was that Geronimo's idea?” Rae said with a tone in her voice that sounded both knowing and ominous at the same time. It made Danny turn.

They locked eyes for a moment, and Rae knew Danny had picked up on her meaning and that they were thinking the same damn thing.

The kids back home may have made fun of Geronimo behind his back, but the rumors about the big Indian kept those jokes to a whisper. Everyone knew Alvin worked for the casinos. Danny said he was just a leg-breaker for the bosses when some dumbass bettor got in over his head and needed to be convinced to pay up. But when a group of kids sitting around at a fire pit on a September evening started telling ghost stories, the rumor always came up that Geronimo had done away with more than one missing casino problem by cutting up the bodies with a big old frontier bowie knife and hiding the pieces in the woods around Kalkaska County.

“You know that's bullshit about him dicing up bodies, Rae,” Danny said. Rae turned away as if she hadn't even heard and changed the subject.

“You gotta get us some food and something to drink besides fucking Coke, Danny. Because that woman's gonna get sick and she's right about that baby, it needs some damn nutrition.”

She was lighting into him and ignoring the rise in her voice when a knuckle suddenly cracked sharp on the door and brought instant silence.

Danny looked up into her eyes and blinked once. Then he nodded. Rae mouthed the words, “Make this right.” He nodded again and stood and left.