Page 110 of Jessica, Not Her Real Name
She closed her eyes briefly, remembering their last conversation. How he’d said he was taking her back to Tennessee with him. Right after he’d kissed her so passionately, it had made her knees buckle.
So maybe he had developed feelings for her. And maybe because of that, he’d decided to not go through with whatever terrible scheme he’d set in motion.
Or maybe she was just plain delusional when it came to men.
You don’t really know me, he’d said. He’d been right about that. Perhaps he’d even been trying to warn her.
She glanced in the rearview mirror, saw nothing but an empty road. Surely, she had to come upon someone soon.
Glancing down at her bare wrist, she cursed. He’d thrown away her smartwatch. Its battery was nearly dead, but she could have used to contact emergency services. Not to mention, the real marshals who were trying to find her might have been attempting to track it at this very moment. Unfortunately, where they’d find it was in the middle of a swampy forest.
She swiped more tears away, squinting through the cracked windshield. Up ahead was the four-way intersection they’d passed earlier. She braked hard and yanked the steering wheel to the right. The minivan careened through the turn, rocking from one side to the other. When it regained its balance, she sped up again, keeping to the middle of the road and its strips of yellow. This road was narrow and clumped in places with thick silty mats of pines needles and debris. Her tires bounced over them, jerking her about in her seat.
To her right, she saw a wooden split-rail fence. Most of it was missing, but it was a sign of civilization. Soon, another sign appeared: a road sign, or what was left of it. There were just two wooden poles, and the bottom panel remaining. In white lettering, it read 3 MILES.
So, she was close to something. Hopefully, a town. She gripped the steering wheel tighter and kept her foot on the gas.
Up ahead, between the latticework of cracks in the windshield, she noticed a vehicle coming towards her. An SUV. Dark grey, a light bar on the top. She veered into the left lane and, as it passed, she saw the blue stripe and yellow badge of the Mississippi Highway Patrol on its side door.
“Oh, thank God.”
She slammed on the brakes. Tires squealed and skidded, and the minivan rocked to a halt. In her rearview mirror, she glimpsed the trooper had come to a stop too.
She wrenched open the minivan’s door and practically fell out of it. She heard the SUV’s door open and clunk close, heard the trooper’s footsteps crunch over the strewn pine needles.
“Boy, am I glad to see you,” she called, leaning back into the van to grab her shoulder bag off the front passenger seat. As she straightened, she felt a hard cylinder of metal pressing against the back of her skull.
“Snap,” the trooper said.
Except he wasn’t a trooper. She knew that with the same certainty she knew it was a gun aimed at her head. She could almost feel the pressure that sat waiting in the barrel, ready to explode a bullet into her brain.
Her body was dumping adrenaline into her bloodstream by the bucket load. Somehow, though, she kept her voice steady. “Who are you?”
“You don’t know who I am?” He rubbed the barrel of the gun into her hair. The sharp metal bit into her scalp. “I’m hurt,” he said right in her ear. “Seeing as how you and your boyfriend burned my whole fucking life to the ground.”
She darted a glance at him out of the corner of her eye. He was scrawny and no taller than her. Wearing jeans and an oversized singlet that showed off ropy arms. A patchy buzz-cut revealed a lumpy skull and a pale scalp. It was laced over with pink scars. He was white, with a narrow face, with a bony nose and high cheekbones. Fading tattoos covered his forehead and jawline, the most legible being the letters LMN over his left eyebrow and the number 13 over his right.
He said, “My name’s Milo, little bitch. And that’s a name you’re gonna remember. ‘Cause it’s a name you’re gonna be screaming real soon.”
She heard a loud crack, and a second later, felt a searing pain. Her vision tunneled, then dimmed, and then died out altogether.
* * *
Jessica opened her eyes, but the realization that she was still alive didn’t bring the relief she thought it would. Instead, it just brought a dull pain in the back of her head and the deep sense that her ordeal was far from over.
She was on the floor in the rear of the van, and it was driving. Fast. She could feel it rocking from side to side as it sped over bumps in the road.
What she didn’t know was what direction they were going, or for how long they’d been going in it. Nor did she know where their intended destination was, or how long it would take to get there.
It occurred to her that this guy was smart enough to have kidnapped her in the minivan and not the Highway Patrol vehicle, which would have been easier for the authorities to locate.
She doubted anyone would be combing the land for an abandoned Dodge Grand Caravan. Not in the aftermath of a hurricane. The owner might not report it missing for days or weeks. Or even at all.
Which meant she was completely on her own.
Rap music was blaring from the radio, and the scrawny guy was bobbing his head and attempting to rap along. He was terrible. Watching him would have almost been funny in any other situation than this.
This situation, though, was anything but humorous. She was lying on her front, arms pinned beneath her, her cheek pressed against the rough surface of the plywood that filled the cargo area. When she tried to move her limbs, they wouldn’t cooperate. Something bound her wrists and ankles. She guessed they were plastic zip-ties by the way they were cutting into her skin.
