Page 16 of Cashmere Cruelty

Bingo.

“The fuck you doing, man?!” Shithead #1 yells.

“Are you fuckin’ serious right now?” Slightly Less Shithead #2 shouts back. “She’s about to give birth, dude. We need to turn back!”

“It could be a trick!”

“Please,” I babble, wishing I could send footage of this to the Academy. I deserve gold statuettes for the show I’m putting on here. “Is there blood? I can’t tell…”

“I don’t know,” stammers Shithead #1. “It’s too dark?—”

“Check,” I plead, my final gamble. “Please, check with your hand, I can’t do it with the cuffs, I can’t?—”

“She’s right,” the driver calls, seemingly oblivious to the horns blaring all around us. “You need to check for blood. The child could be in danger.”

“No way,” my kidnapper balks. “No way in hell am I sticking my hand in there!”

“Then let me!” I beg, inwardly cheering.

“Blyat’,” he spits again, fumbling with a set of keys. It’s weird, how different it sounds in this context. So unlike the wayhe’dsaid it.

The second he leans over to unlock my cuffs, I act.

Pretending to spread my legs in a panic, I kick out. My kitten heel connects with the man’s ankle. Hunched over like he is, he goes tumbling down like a tripped giraffe.

“Oh, no!” I yell for the driver’s benefit, kicking my kidnapper’s fallen gun within my reach. “Are you okay?”

Then, without a moment’s hesitation, I slam it into the back of his head.

“What’s happening?!”

“Help! I think he hit his head!”

And the Oscar goes to…

“Porca puttana.” With a yank on the hand-brake, the driver gets out of his seat. “Hold on, I’m coming over?—”

I don’t hear whatever he says next. By the time he walks around the van, I’m already out.

With my cuffed hands, I rip a cab door open and slip inside.

“Hey!” the passenger calls. “You can’t just?—”

“Drive!” I scream—and thank God, the cabbie does.

It takes me a full minute of catching my breath to realize why they’d been so quick to obey. “Oh!” I blink at the gun in my hand. “This—I’m so sorry. It’s not mine. I wasn’t?—”

“Whatever you say, Miss,” the cab driver says, his voice reduced to a squeak.

The man in the backseat next to me is positively pale. “Please, let me go,” he stammers. “I have a family.”

“I, uhh… Sure.”

He flies out of the still-moving car. It’s lucky we’re driving so slowly—my kidnappers have all but halted traffic in the crossing.

Quickly, I toss the gun out the window.

“I need to go somewhere,” I tell the cab driver, who’s still staring at me like I’ve got two heads. Which, I suppose, if you’re counting Nugget’s?—

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