Page 137 of Putting Out
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Her head hurt. The back hurt worse than the front, but the front hurt pretty bad, too. Her forehead was bumping against something rattling beneath her cheeks. Reilly knew the only way to put the pieces of the puzzle together was to wake up, but she held back. A hunch told her there was no good reason to wake up.
But the rattling wouldn’t stop and the throbbing pain wasn’t going anywhere and whatever she was afraid of wasn’t going to go away in her sleep.
Reilly opened her eyes carefully and allowed herself to adjust to the faded light inside what was t he back of a big car. A van. A Volkswagen van.
How did she know that?
Memories replayed themselves. She kicked ass on the back nine today, she finished fifteenth overall. There was press. There were girls with copies of her hat. There was Mark. He wanted to show her something. It was about Neville.
Then he hit her on the back of the head. Why did he do that?
Still groggy, but more curious than anything now, Reilly tried to push herself up into a sitting position but her arms were dead asleep. No not asleep, pinned behind her.
The loss of mobility pushed a surge of adrenaline through her bloodstream and had her blinking her eyes open wide. She was lying on her side with her shoulder and face pressed into the metal floor of the van. Rolling onto her back, with her hands underneath her she relied on her stomach muscles to pull her up into a sitting position. Behind her she could see the back doors rattling together creating a clanking noise. A dark cloth was draped over the windows.
Reilly could see the outline of his arm and head behind the wheel.
“Uh… Mark. Please tell me this isn’t some kind of crazy government conspiracy to do away with women golfers.”
A dull overhead light blinked on in the back of the van forcing Reilly to close her eyes against the intrusion.
“Hey, you’re up. Really sorry about the head but it was the easiest way.”
“Right,” Reilly sighed, moving herself slightly to take the pressure off her butt bone. She opened her eyes and scanned the contents of the van floor for some kind of weapon she could use, but it was empty except for a blanket curled up in the corner, and a pillow on top of it.
The interior of the van was lined with paper. Paper that flapped with the wind pushing its way through the small break in the doors.
Reilly turned her head to get a better view of what was on the paper and saw herself. They were pictures of herself. Pictures swinging a club, pictures with celebrities at pro-am events she’d played. Pictures out of magazines and newspapers. Personal pictures taken with a zoom lens. On different courses. Walking the streets of her hometown.
It was obsessive. It was madness.
Bile rose in Reilly’s throat but she swallowed it down. She wanted to scream. Scream her goddamn head off and not stop until all this was over, but she knew it wouldn’t help. She thought answers might.
“Who are you, Mark?”
“You figured out I’m not an agent,” he said over his shoulder with a flash of a smile.
I’m slow,” she admitted. “But not that slow.”
““You can’t blame yourself,” he offered. “I’m very good at what I do. Although this was my first time impersonating a federal agent. I have to tell you it was worth every penny for the badge. People see it and are immediately enthralled. No one questioned me once. Not you, or Luke, or the security at the event. Hell, even the cops who arrived on the scene bought it and let me walk out of there without so much as taking me in for further questioning. It was like having a golden ticket.”
There was a lot she wanted to know. Where one obtains a fake badge? How he knew about Luke’s friend, Bob? But something he said stuck in her head and made her want to whimper with fear.
“Your first time, huh? What were you all the other times?”
“Let’s see. My last lover was Carol. I told her I was a Hollywood agent. She was a very pretty weathergirl on a local news station. I had her convinced I was going to make her a big star.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No,” he said slowly. “When I finally took her, she didn’t like being with me as much as I had hoped. Our relationship ended… badly. That’s not going to happen between us. We are going to work. You’ll see. You’re not like Carol.”
Reilly figured that was as much as she wanted to know about Carol.
“Why take her? Why take me? You’re a handsome guy. Charming. If I wasn’t with Luke and you had asked me out I would have said yes.”
She could see him bobbing his head.
