Page 16 of A Princess, Stolen
“No.”
For a moment, there was a hissing sound in the line and I hoped the connection would simply break because of the tunnel, but the network stabilized again.
Isaac continued. “I’ll tell you. It’s like you’re the scum of scum. The lowest filth, the cockroach that everyone likes to crush under their soles. Sometimes, the putrid stench of the garbage is so pungent that your eyes swell shut. Sometimes, rats bite you, and for days, you wonder if the wound will become infected and your fingers will rot off like your buddy’s.” His voice dropped an octave. “Have you ever watched anyone die, Willa Nevaeh Rae?”
“No,” I whispered. The last bit of courage in me sank. I unexpectedly recalled the Lindbergh kidnapping. The infant was found dead in a dumpster six weeks later even though his father had paid the ransom. What if they killed me on Staten Island? What if Dad never discovers what happened to me? I swallowed several times. He would die of grief. My gaze fell on the ring’s ruby heart and the red turned into a pool of blood before my eyes. If they killed me, his sacrifice would have been in vain. Mom would have died in vain!
“Are you not well, miss? Should I pull over?” The driver’s voice pulled me back from the nightmare, but it was not over.
“No, I…I’m fine.” I hadn’t realized I was crying. I quickly wiped my cheeks but left my sunglasses on.
“Hey, little lady! Don’t lose your nerve, got it?”
“I don’t mind, miss. I could pull over…”
“No, I…really, I’m fine. I just…I just really need to get to Staten Island.” I peered out the window and only now realized that we had left the tunnel. We were on the New Jersey Turnpike and the distant city lights flashed by, blind eyes that didn’t see me. For a few seconds, there was silence on the other end of the line even though I could still hear that breathing that sounded so heavy as if the person had been hunting me all his life and had finally caught up with me after an exhausting marathon.
“Do you know what I’m looking forward to?” he asked at some point.
“No.” I touched the ring fearfully and felt a rough, sharp spot.
“To you.”
His intimate, low voice crept into every cell of my body.To you. To you. To you. I wanted to throw the phone out the window, but I merely gripped it tighter.
“I wonder what you’re like.”
Suddenly, I thought I knew what lay beyond the concrete threat. It was a feeling of torment and being driven, of wanting to have something and not getting it. And anger. As if I had stolen something from him that he had to get back. As if he wanted to strangle me with one hand and explore me with the other to learn something about me, to find out what I had that he didn’t. For a moment, I closed my eyes to block him out, but I couldn’t. I barely noticed that we were taking the Goethals Bridge. It wasn’t until the driver stopped at a tollbooth that I awoke from my fearful paralysis. I had lost all sense of time.
“I’ll include the fee in the fare,” he said without turning around.
I nodded weakly. I caught his eye in the rearview mirror and he looked at me searchingly, but he couldn’t see my eyes because of the sunglasses.
“You’re as white as a sheet, miss.”
I wanted nothing more than for him to solve the situation for me. To see the situation I was in and refuse to let me get out on Staten Island. Then it wouldn’t be my fault if this plan failed. However, he turned his gaze back to the road and the moment was over. Besides, if something went wrong, they’d probably kill Dad no matter whose fault it was.
I briefly considered writing HELP on my skin with eyeliner since I didn’t have any paper in my purse but even that seemed too risky. What if the driver asked me what I was doing? Or maybe said HELP out loud?
No, that was out of the question.
“Where are you?”
I looked out. “Staten Island. Bradley Avenue,” I read off a street sign we passed. We had left the four-lane freeway.
“You’re almost there, little lady.”
Bradley Avenue led through a suburban-like neighborhood, and at the end of the street, the driver turned onto Brielle Avenue. My heart was pounding. Pounding and pounding faster and faster. This straight road led to solitude. Thick trees grew on both sides, but what lay beyond, I couldn’t see in the darkness and I didn’t dare ask the driver.
When he stopped at the corner I had requested, I almost started crying again and wondered when I had stopped. I didn’t want to get out because I might have allowed myself to be driven to my place of death.
“We’re here,” I stated as I dug the money out of my coat unable to control my fingers.
“He can keep the change.”
“Keep the change,” I repeated, trembling, and gave the driver the bills. Absurdly, I recalled what my dad had said about me when I was eleven.Willa is a good child. Dreamy, absentminded, but easy to control.
“Thank you, miss.” The taxi driver looked at me, surely surprised by my generosity. “Should I wait until your friend gets here? I don’t like leaving you here alone.”
