Page 13 of The Lost Heiress
After a while, she could hear a car approaching from behind, and she glanced back. It was a blue convertible with its top down and a solitary driver—a man. She looked forward again and pulled herself upstraighter, bracing herself for a humiliating encounter. Perhaps he would honk or whistle at her, and she would flip him the bird.
But the car didn’t honk. In fact, as it got closer, Ana heard it slow to a crawl. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up, and she thought longingly of the gun hidden uselessly back at the house, near the fireplace in her room. Why hadn’t she brought it with her? She’d heard of the I-5 Killer, who’d raped and killed women all along Interstate 5, all the way from Washington down to California. They’d caught him last spring, but still, there were bad people out there, and right now, she was an easy target.
When the car reached her, it stopped, and Ana felt real, hot panic pulse in her chest. She glanced to her left, but there was nothing but cliffside—a steep drop-off, maybe twenty-five feet to the water, and it was probably too craggy and shallow to jump. She looked forward toward the house on the hillside, but it was still so far away—too far for Ana to run if she had to. Besides, this man had a car, and Ana didn’t even have shoes. She couldn’t possibly outrun him. She was trapped. She wondered if she screamed, if anyone in the house would hear her, and if they did, if they would come to her aid.
Ana swallowed and reluctantly looked over at the car—a sleek robin’s-egg blue convertible. The driver was a young man—late twenties, early thirties—and he was jeering at her.
Ana hugged her arms across her chest, trying to cover as much of her bare skin as possible. She couldn’t let him know that she was afraid.
“Get a good look, you fucking pervert?” Ana shouted. “This isn’t a free show, you know. Get lost.”
She started to walk again, at a brisker stride this time. The car started to move, too, keeping pace with her. Ana could hear her heart thudding in her ears.Fuck.She needed a way out, but she couldn’t think of one. She willed another car to drive by, but she could see a good way in either direction, and the road was empty.
“My apologies,” the man said. “I promise, I wasn’t laughing at you; it’s more the situation. Let’s just say you’re not the first young woman I’ve picked up on this road dressed only in her underwear.”
Ana stopped cold. She looked over at the man. What was he talking about? He made a habit of picking up young women in their underwear on the side of the road?
“You must be Saoirse’s new caretaker,” the man went on, by way of explanation. “She’s done this sort of thing before. You didn’t drink the tea, did you?”
The fear that had filled Ana only a moment ago was gone in an instant, replaced by white-hot anger.
“She put something in my tea?” she asked.
“Benadryl,” the man said. “Hardly lethal, but it will knock you right out.”
“Fuck,” Ana muttered.
“Count yourself lucky. The last girl got a snake in her bed,” the man said. “I’m Salvador Santos, by the way. Saoirse’s tutor.”
“Ana,” she said. “Ana Rojas.”
“Well, Ana-Ana Rojas,” Salvador said, “here.”
He reached into the back seat of the car and grabbed a jean jacket that was lying there. He tossed it to her.
Ana caught it reflexively.
“Thanks,” she said. She slid one arm in and then the other and pulled it tightly closed over her chest. It was far too big for her, running past the tips of her fingers and halfway down her thighs, and she was glad for the cover, to no longer be nearly naked in front of this complete stranger, kind though he may be.
Salvador reached across the car and unlocked the passenger-side door. “Get in,” he said. “I’ll give you a ride to the house. I’m headed back there myself. I just borrowed the car to run some errands in town.”
Ana crossed the street quickly and climbed into the front passenger seat.
“Thanks,” she said again as she buckled her seat belt.
“Don’t mention it,” Salvador said. He winked at her. “Us help have to stick together.”
He had a kind and attractive face. Almond-colored skin; dark, wavy hair; warm chocolate eyes, with swirls of gold around the edges. She couldn’t fathom what Ransom had been thinking, hiring a tutor for his sister who looked like that.
“I can’t believe I fell for her nice act,” Ana said, pressing the back of her head into the headrest. “They warned me what she would be like—and still! I feel like such an idiot.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Salvador said. “Saoirse puts everyone through the wringer.”
“Yeah?” Ana said. “What’d she do to you? Whoopee cushion on your chair? Frog in your desk?”
“Something like that,” Salvador said with a smile as he turned down the drive to the Towers home.
His English was very good, but there was something about the intonation of his voice, how he sometimes stressed the end of the word instead of the first syllable, and a slight, almost undetectable roll of hisr’s, that betrayed that English was not his first language.
