Shiver (4 page)

Time to make a move, or pack it in.

“Hey,” he said into the airless darkness. “Hey, girl, can you hear me?”

She lay heavy and inert against his back, increasing the discomfort in his cramping arms and injured hands, her weight pressing him inexorably forward. He could hear her breathing, so at least there was no doubt that she was alive. Remembering the sound of the blow that had struck her down, he figured she might be out for a while. Delicate bones, slender build—a fragile flower, if looks meant anything. Decorative, maybe, but he doubted that she was the type to bounce back fast.

Right now, he needed fast.

Danny cursed under his breath. With him in the shape he was in, she was the only hope either of them had.

“Miss,” he tried again, more politely in case that struck a
chord, his tone urgent but not so loud that it would penetrate beyond the confines of the trunk. “Miss, can you hear me? You’ve got to wake up.”

Nothing. Danny tried jostling her, but regretted it almost as soon as he hunched up his back and pushed against her. There wasn’t any room, and moving hurt like a bitch.

He did it again anyway.

“Goddamn it, woman, if you don’t wake up we’re both going to die.”

She groaned. Danny could feel her stiffen against his back. Hope stirred inside him. Was she moving? Had she heard him? It was hard to tell. The car swayed and creaked. The little space they were in tilted and rocked. The impression he got was that the vehicles were turning a corner. At any minute Torres and company might stop and then Veith would show up and then . . .

Bang, bang. You’re dead.

“Miss, can you hear me?” Tension vibrated in Danny’s voice. Keeping himself conscious and focused required increasing effort. He wasn’t going to last much longer, he feared. And if he fainted, they were done for. “Miss?”

She sucked in air, stirred a little. Something—a change in her breathing, in the atmosphere around them—made him think she was conscious.

“Miss?” He felt like a fool calling her that. “What’s your name?”

For a moment he thought he’d been wrong: she wasn’t conscious after all.

Then a wobbly voice muttered, “Sam.”

Danny felt a rush of relief.

“Okay, Sam, this is really important.” Keeping his cool under extreme conditions had saved his life before. It didn’t seem likely that it was going to make much difference now, but he wasn’t ready to give up and die yet, either. “I need you to focus here. We’ve only got a few minutes before they kill us.”

Again with the fluttery breath. “What—happened?” She sounded groggy, confused, but at least she was awake and talking.

He didn’t have time for lengthy explanations. “You ran across some bad guys, got hit in the head and thrown into a car trunk. This car trunk, with me. When we stop moving, the bad guys are going to open the trunk and kill you. And me, too, but probably you first, because they don’t need you for anything.”

“Who . . . ?” she began, still sounding out of it, but he cut her off ruthlessly.

“Doesn’t matter. There’s no time. Did you hear what I said about them killing you?”

He thought she nodded. Then, her voice scarcely more than a reedy breath, she said, “We’re in the trunk of the BMW, aren’t we? The one I was getting ready to tow away.”

“You’re a tow truck driver?” There you go: the information he’d been missing.

“Yes.”

“That’s good to know. Now listen. My hands are fastened behind my back with a zip tie. I need you to get me loose. Root
around back there, see if you can come up with something sharp.
Anything.
Use it to cut the tie.”

He could hear her breathing, feel her shifting around a little. She didn’t reply.

“Sam? Hello? Did you hear me?” His voice was tense. It was all he could do not to yell. Hell, the situation was dire.

“I heard you.”

“Okay.” His patience was stretching thin. “Could you please try?”

“How do I know you won’t, like, turn around and attack me if I cut you free?” she asked, sounding like her marbles were coming together at last. Unfortunately, they were coalescing into a configuration that wasn’t helpful. “Maybe you’re a bad guy, too.”

Any dithering on her part was as maddening as it was terrifying. He felt like he was in the final minutes of a basketball game, his team ten points behind with the shot clock running down.

“Who’s in the fucking trunk with you?” he countered. Just staying conscious was requiring increasing amounts of effort. Arguing he didn’t need. “I think that puts us on the same side, don’t you?”

Danny got the impression that she was turning the situation over in her mind. The car swayed and bounced and seemed to pick up speed. Was it rumbling through an intersection? Yes, he decided.

“Sam, look, we don’t have much time,” he said. “They’re tak
ing us somewhere remote where they can shoot us in private. Before they get us there, it would be really helpful if you could
find something you can use to cut my hands loose. Please.
”

He heard her take another deep breath, felt her tense, as if she was gathering herself.

“Okay, fine,” she said.

“You can trust me, I promise. We both want the same thing, to get out of this alive.” The trunk felt hotter and more airless than ever. It was dark as the grave and cramped as a womb. Besides the faint odors of exhaust and oil and sweat, the raw meat smell of fresh blood was inescapable. Of course, she probably wouldn’t recognize the smell, or know what it meant. When she started moving, really moving, rooting around, he let out a relieved breath. He thought, hoped, prayed that she was doing as he’d told her: hunting for something with which to cut him free.

She was the only chance they had.

“How many of them are there?” She was breathing too fast, and her voice sounded a little thin. He deduced from that that she was smart enough to be scared, but at least her thinking seemed to be clear.

“When the trunk opens? Should be two. Maybe three.” He could feel the unmistakably female shape of her pressed close against his back. Under other circumstances, he might almost have enjoyed it, but what it meant now was that there wasn’t much room for either of them to maneuver.

“With guns?” It wasn’t really a question.

“Yes.” He felt the cool touch of her hands on his forearms, sliding down to his bound wrists. Then she found the place
where his wrists crossed, where the zip ties were practically slicing through his skin, and seemed to want to explore that, too. What was she doing, checking out the restraints? Mary Mother of God, they were running out of time.

“It’s a plastic zip tie,” he explained again. It was too dark for her to see anything. Like him, she was effectively blind. “Two of them, one on top of the other. You can’t break them. You need something to cut them with.”

He felt her breasts pressing into his back, felt her knees digging into him. A soft sweet scent—shampoo?—cut through the stale air. All potent reminders that she was a woman. Who would die soon if he couldn’t find a way to save her.

If he let it, the thought would make him crazy.

“Hurry,” he said.

“Hold still.” Her fingers on his wrists tightened into a real grip. Then she bore down. Pain rocketed up his arms.

Ow.
But he didn’t say it out loud. He didn’t want to do anything that might spook her.

“You’re going to have to cut the ties,” he repeated through clenched teeth. Something sharp stabbed into his left wrist—a blade, the business end of a blade—surprising him so much that he let out a small yelp.

“Sorry,” she said. But it didn’t matter, because between the pressure and the prick of the pointed blade and the subsequent sawing sensation he was beginning to see some light.

“You found something to cut with.” Impossible as it seemed, she’d done it, and incredibly quickly, too.

“I carry a pocket knife.”

The rush of thankfulness that he experienced was devout in its intensity. “There you go. That’s my girl.”

“Hold still.”

Trying to gather his strength in preparation for what was to come, Danny did his best to keep his arms rigid while he took stock of the rest of his body. The pain was bad, so he tried to block it out. He was conscious of his heart thumping. His pulse pounded in his ears. He was swallowing air through his mouth now, drawing in what little there was in greedy gulps, trying to keep his head clear. Thanks to her, it looked like they might actually have a shot at making a stand. But even if she was able to cut him free in time, he was still going to need a miracle to get them both out of this alive. His ears were acutely attuned to the various sounds outside the trunk. They were still rolling, but that wouldn’t last forever. When the vehicle came to a stop—

She said, “You want to tell me who you are and why you’re in a car trunk?” Sawing away, she caught him in the wrist with the blade again. He needed to be free too badly to make so much as a sound.

“I’m the unluckiest son of a bitch in the country?” Danny tried, feeling the sudden release of a portion of the pressure around his wrists like a gift from on high. Then he remembered the state he was in, and didn’t know whether to laugh or howl. Unarmed, weak from blood loss, beat to pieces, with a bullet through his thigh and a possibly broken finger and countless other injuries he hadn’t even begun to try to catalog, he was going to be a hell of a warrior, for sure.

But he was going to give it his best shot. Aside from really, truly not wanting to die tonight, now he had this girl to protect.

“Is that supposed to be an answer?” Voice edgy, she was already sawing through the second zip tie. She stopped sawing as she spoke. He could almost feel her frowning at him.

Jesus, this wasn’t the moment for attitude. The close, airless confines of the trunk were zapping what little strength he had remaining to him. The thought of what was waiting beyond it scared him to the bone.

“Keep cutting that tie. If you want to have a chance of living through this, I need to be free to move before they open that trunk again.”

“Do you have a name? Or not?” But at least she comprehended enough of the desperateness of the situation to start sawing away again.

“You don’t need a name. All you need to know is that I’m the guy who’s going to keep you alive, all right?” He thought about that for a second. “At least, if you hurry and I can.”

The smallest of pauses. “Oh, wow, now I feel all safe.”

The sarcasm was absolutely deserved, and might even have made him smile under less harrowing conditions. As reassurance, he had to admit that his probably too truthful promise left something to be desired. But at least she was still working that knife against the tie.

“So can you tell me
why
you’re in this trunk?” she asked.

He’d give her this much: she didn’t give up. At the moment, he wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad one.

“You don’t want to know,” Danny said. “Believe me. The less you know, the safer you are.”

She snorted. “Like anything you tell me is going to make a difference now?”

Okay, so she was smart enough to realize that she was in deep shit however this played out.

“All you need to remember is that helping me is helping yourself,” he said. “We’re on the same team.”

She made a skeptical sound. “And I’m just supposed to take your word for that?”

“You got any alternative?”

The second tie broke, which happy circumstance he thought distracted her from answering. God almighty, his hands were free! Relief was accompanied by lightning bolts of pain shooting up his arms, into his shoulders, then firing back down into his hands, as the position into which they had been forced abruptly eased. Gritting his teeth against a groan, Danny brought his arms around in front of him, moving slowly, gingerly shaking his hands out, flexing his fingers as best he could.

The beating he’d endured before they’d pistol-whipped him senseless had done some damage to his hands, that was for sure. How much, he didn’t have time to assess.

“Give me the knife.” He thrust his hand behind him to receive it, ignoring the searing pain that attacked him as he moved.

“Why?” Sudden suspicion laced her voice.

Was it his imagination, or was the car slowing down? The swaying was definitely less pronounced.

“Why do you think? Oh, are you worried I’m going to turn around and attack you with it? I’m not, okay? I’ve got two more ties around my ankles. You can’t reach them.
So give me the knife.
”

The sound she made defied interpretation, but she pressed the knife—one of those small, Swiss-army-type pocket knives with a million gizmos attached, from the feel of it—into his palm. There wasn’t much room, but difficult as it was he managed to stretch down enough to start hacking away at the ties binding his ankles. The blade was small, the movements required to cut through the hard plastic ties accompanied by a thousand different versions of pain. Through it all, he was supremely conscious of a fresh upsurge of blood oozing from his thigh.

Got to stop the bleeding.
That was the next item on his survive-the-night list.