Page 226 of Rock Chick

I got to the edge of my porch, which was where they took me down.

* * *

This kidnapping was entirelydifferent from the one before,andthe one before that.

I came to in the back seat of a car, legs bound at the ankles, wrists bound behind my back with the added dimension this time of being gagged.

With hindsight, and a lot of time to lie in the back of the car thinking, the explosion was not a very ingenious tactic of getting me to expose myself. In fact, it was kind of crude.

I’d fallen for it, though, so what did that say about me?

We drove for a long time. I couldn’t see much and I didn’t try. Cherry had been nearly exploded the day before, so the minute a call came into dispatch about a car going up in flames in front of my house, the Denver Police Department, and Lee and his boys, would be all over it like flies on doo doo.

I couldn’t imagine someone hadn’t seen me being carted away, seemingly unconscious.

I couldn’t imagine they’d be far behind.

I couldn’t imagine they wouldn’t rescue me.

You live, you learn. Unfortunately, all my life, I’d always learned the hard way.

* * *

It seemedlike we were driving forever. Maybe it was half an hour, maybe longer, when we finally started to do some turns, obviously coming off the highway. The car slowed. There were streetlights then there were none. Then we hit a gravel road, drove for a few minutes and we stopped.

I was yanked out of the back seat by my ankles and thrown over a shoulder in a fireman’s hold. I didn’t see much. It was late, dark, and we were well out of the city, so dark meantdark. I could tell we were in the mountains though.

Shit.

I was carted into a cabin and thrown on the couch, then arranged in a seated position.

When the new goon moved away, I could see Terry Wilcox was sitting opposite me in an armchair.

It was a nice cabin. Very swish. The kind of rental for upper upper-middle class Texans to rent when they felt like a change of scenery. Two guys were with us, both steroid-fueled like Goon Gary, Terrible Teddy and The Moron, but I had never seen these guys.

“Take off her gag,” Wilcox ordered.

Both of the guys were dark-headed, one darker than the other, and taller, and maybe hitting the pharmaceutical websites a little too hard. He came forward and took off the gag. The minute he did, I realized how tight it was because my cheeks hurt. I opened and closed my mouth to exercise my cheek muscles.

Then I glared at Wilcox. “That hurt.”

“I’m sorry, India. Precautions. We can’t be too careful, can we?”

Was that a dig at my idiot act of walking out of my house and into the clutches of the villain?

My eyes narrowed.

I knew I was an idiot. I didn’t need this guy rubbing it in.

“Excuse me?” I asked.

He ignored me. “Don’t worry. We don’t have to wait too long. The plane will be ready soon and we’ll be leaving.”

Uh-oh.

Did he say “plane?”

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

---