Page 13 of Sting

“Cut it out.”

The unexpected command from the driver’s seat startled her, and for a moment she lay perfectly still. Then she said, “Go to the devil,” and renewed her tug-of-war to work her hands free.

But after five minutes, she was bathed in sweat, which the car’s AC rapidly turned to ice water. She conceded that no matter how strenuously she worked at it, the struggle was futile and would result only in exhaustion and raw, bleeding wrists. She forced herself to lie back on the seat, took several deep breaths through her mouth, and willfully tamped down her panic.

Thinking more calmly, she tried to isolate a single advantage that she could exploit, and soon realized that whatever was binding her feet was softer and more giving than the hand restraint.

Lifting her head, she looked down the length of her body and was forced to swallow rising gorge when she saw the dark spatters on her white top.

Dried blood. The dead man’s blood.

She shuddered but didn’t allow herself to think about how he’d died. If she did, fear of meeting the same fate would paralyze her mentally and physically.

Steeling herself to look beyond the grotesque stains on her clothing, she saw that a camouflage print bandana had been knotted around her ankles. She began grinding her feet together, trying to stretch the cotton cloth and create enough give in it so that she could possibly free her feet, and then—

Then what?

The backseat door would still be locked and inescapable.

She could kick her abductor in the back of his head. A well-placed, surprise kick might stun him for a precious few seconds.

And cause him to crash the car.

Or provoke him into killing her sooner rather than later.

Perhaps she could distract him somehow. If she made a noise, maybe pretended to choke, or did something that would force him to stop the car, and then if he opened the backseat door to check on her, she might stand a chance of getting out and running if—

There were a dismal number of ifs, and none of the options held much promise of success. But, dammit, she wouldn’t just lie here to be dealt with when he felt like it. She wouldn’t make it as easy for him as his previous victim had. She wouldn’t be dispatched without giving him a fight.

However, she also knew on an instinctual level that this man wouldn’t be easily tricked or overtaken physically.

When she’d left the bar, the parking lot had been dark and, she’d thought, deserted. Rushing footsteps over gravel had alerted her to the approach of her two attackers. In the nanosecond between her spinning around and the pistol being fired, she’d recognized both from having seen them in the bar just a few minutes before: the heavyset man who hadn’t made any kind of memorable impression on her; and him, who had.

As he’d walked past where she sat at the bar, they’d made brief eye contact. She remembered his above-average height, an unhurried but somehow predatory stride, a severe face, and eyes sharp enough to cut diamonds. She’d had a visceral reaction to that incisive gaze and had quickly looked away from it.

She should have heeded that intuitive warning of danger, but at the time, she had mistaken it for another type of reaction, another kind of danger.

Any sudden movement of her head caused the throbbing to sharpen, so now she gingerly angled it in order to get a clearer view of him. Above the driver’s-seat headrest, she could see a swirl of hair on the crown of his head. She remembered it being long and untidy. It looked darker in the blue ambient light of the dashboard than it had beneath the amber, smoke-fogged fixtures inside the bar.

Visible through the space between the two front seats was a portion of his right arm, sleeved in blue chambray. She recalled that the shirt had pearl snap buttons. The cuffs were rolled back almost to his elbows.

He hadn’t impressed her as being particularly muscle-bound, not a body builder type, but evidently he was strong enough to carry her to his car, because she certainly hadn’t made it here under her own power.

Reluctantly, she admitted how difficult it would be, if not impossible, for her to physically overcome him.

No, in order to survive, she must somehow outwit him, and in order to do that, she couldn’t operate in a vacuum. She needed information, and he was her only resource.

She cleared her throat. “Congratulations. You have me. Who are you?”

For all the response she got, he could have been deaf.

“Do you have a destination in mind, or are we just putting distance between us and the scene of the crime?”

He remained silent, registering no reaction whatsoever.

“How long was I out?”

Nothing.

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