Beachcomber (27 page)

If he had to, he could probably spring the trunk, drop with her to the ground, then throw her dead weight over his shoulder and make tracks for the nearest phone, he calculated. Christy wasn’t heavy, certainly not so heavy that he couldn’t carry her to safety. The difficulty arose in getting her out of the trunk without either of them getting hurt. A limp body was notoriously difficult to handle, and dropping from the open trunk of a tilted, moving vehicle with her in his arms would be tricky, to say the least. Not that it wasn’t doable, but it would be a lot easier on both of them if she was conscious and cooperating.

But whether she was conscious or not, he was going to have to make a move soon. At the speed they were now traveling, they were going to get wherever they were going way too fast for patience to be an option.

“Christy, I need you to wake up.” His tone urgent
now, he lightly smacked both cheeks. He was rewarded by a deep, shuddering indrawing of her breath, and then a kind of incoherent murmur. Inwardly cursing the darkness because he couldn’t see, literally, his hand in front of his face, he felt something brush his cheek which, given their respective positions, he thought—hoped—might be her hair. Was her head moving?

“Christy, can you hear me?”

She responded with another of those incoherent little murmurs.

“Christy, it’s Luke. I need you to wake up right now.”

She stirred against him.

“L—Luke?”

Her voice was weak, a mere thread of sound, but he’d never been so glad to hear anything in his life. Luke let out a breath that he hadn’t realized he had been holding.

“Yeah. Look, do you feel any pain anywhere?”

“Pain?”

Unsurprisingly, she sounded more than a little disoriented. But she was conscious and moving, and that was the main thing. He could feel her weight shifting, feel the nudge of her knees as she sought and failed to find room to stretch out her legs. Her head was resting on his chest, and he could feel the tilting of her chin as, he thought, she tried to look up at him, fruitlessly because of how dark it was. He was now every bit as wet as she was, thanks to the puddle that had dripped off her and that he was now lying in, but where their bodies touched, instead of him having grown cold, she seemed to have absorbed some of his warmth.

“Where are we?” She was clearly groggy.

“In the trunk of your car. Christy, listen to me: are you hurt?”

He could hear her breathing, feel the rise and fall of her chest against his. A beat passed. Her body tensed in his arms.

“Oh my God, he ran me off the road! The white truck—he bumped me on purpose. And then … and then when I wrecked, he chased me.” Her voice was thin and shrill and agitated. “He pushed me down in the mud and”—she shuddered—“he shoved something into my neck. I thought he was going to cut my throat like … like …”

“Shh.” She was breathing hard, shaking. Luke tightened his hold on her, cradling her against him. He was lying almost on his back with his legs bent at the knee, while she was draped across his chest with her legs curled up on top of him. His legs really were beginning to cramp now. He tried to stretch them out, to ease them, but there simply wasn’t enough room. Grimacing, he ignored the twinges that warned of coming severe pain. “You can tell me all this later, okay? What we need to do now is get out of here as fast as we can. Can you take a quick inventory and tell me if you’re hurt anywhere, please?”

He waited, arms wrapped around her, feeling the weight of her against him, listening to her breathing. It was too fast, too shallow, uneven. She lifted a hand to the side of her neck, felt it, and shuddered again.

“I … don’t think so.” She shifted and let her hand drop so that it was once again resting on his chest. Her
voice quavered. “He’s still here, isn’t he? That man. He’s got us trapped in the trunk of my car.” A beat passed as she seemed to struggle to take in the rest of the situation. “We’re moving. What’s happening?”

“As far as I can figure out, he knocked you unconscious, dumped you in the trunk and now he’s towing the car somewhere.”

“Oh God.” She shivered violently. Stark fear laced her voice. “He’s going to kill us.”

“That seems to be the plan. Do you have any idea what kind of weapons he has? Does he have a gun?”

Christy took a deep, shuddering breath. “I don’t know. I didn’t see a gun. He … stuck something in my neck. I—now I think it might have been a stun gun.”

That would explain both her unconsciousness and the lack of an obvious injury.

“Sounds right.”

“Luke.” There was something in the tone of her voice that warned him what was coming. “How did he get you?”

At the moment, he didn’t have time to think fast.

“Tell you later,” he said. “What we need to do right now is concentrate on getting out of here.”

The car changed position, providing a welcome distraction. A big jolt, followed by a slower pace and a seriously bumpy ride, made Luke think they’d gone off the road again. Not a good thing. Adrenaline surged through his veins as he realized that their journey was most likely nearing its end. He felt for his Weatherman, which he had returned to his pocket before repositioning Christy. He didn’t have to search for the flashlight.
He could feel it wedged uncomfortably against his thigh.

Time to go.

He kept his voice deliberately matter-of-fact. “Look, here’s the plan: while he’s busy towing the car to wherever, we’re going to break out of the trunk and run like hell. Okay?”

A beat passed. Luke was just wondering if what he had said had sunk in when Christy said, “Okay.”

It didn’t take a psychic to figure out that she was still wondering how the hell he had wound up in the trunk with her. Well, a plausible lie would no doubt come easier when he wasn’t preoccupied with keeping them both alive.

“Can you scoot off me a little, do you think?”

“I’ll … try.” She shifted, easing her weight away from him as best she could. It was a nice effort, but the small space and the angle at which the car was tilted kept the results from being impressive.

With both Weatherman and flashlight in hand now, Luke struggled to change positions so that he could get at the lock. It wasn’t easy with a hundred twenty pounds or so of woman pressing down on top of him and no room for his legs, but the urgency of the situation was such that he managed to get his body wedged around so that he was facing the right way at last. She was now basically crouched on his back. It occurred to Luke that his task would be made infinitely easier if she held the flashlight while he worked the tiny Weatherman screwdriver. Once again he weighed the possibility that the faint glow might be able to be seen beyond
the trunk. That would be good news if the driver of another vehicle should spot it and wonder at it enough to call for help; on the other hand it would be bad news if the killer should spot the light, say, through his rearview mirror, deduce from it that something was up with his victim and decide to check.

Forget the light. The risk wasn’t worth it. Yet.

“What are you doing?” Christy asked after a moment, apparently unable to make sense of the sounds of him trying and so far failing to open the lock.

“Doing my best to pop the lock so we can get the hell out of here.”

“Why not just use the trunk release?”

“You have a trunk release?” He felt like smacking his forehead with his palm.

“My mother made me get one installed in case I ever got kidnapped and someone locked me in my trunk. She’s got a thing about things like that.” Christy sounded marginally more together. He could feel her moving, feel her knees pressing down into his back as she apparently reached up behind her. “It’s right up …
here.”

19

“W
AIT
.” Luke’s voice was sharp. So sharp that Christy, who was in a major hurry to exit the premises, stopped short in the very act of wrapping her fingers around the lever.

“What?”

“Just hang on a minute, would you?”

“You’re not ready to go?”

“Nope. Shh.”

Shh, huh? She was dizzy, nauseated, and not, she was well aware, quite at the top of her game either mentally or physically. But the urgency of the situation was crystal clear to her nonetheless. She was alive, and she wanted to stay that way. Getting out of the trunk before her attacker could return for her was key. She’d never thought that she would live to be grateful for her mother’s tendency to see the dark cloud in every silver lining, but she was. The trunk release really might, as her mother had insisted when she’d nagged her into getting it installed, save her life one day. Like today.

But only if she used it. She wanted to yank that puppy in the worst way. Before, claustrophobia had always
been an abstract concept. But she was starting to feel as if she were suffocating. She could barely move, barely breathe. Luke’s big body took up almost all the available space. Curled into what was basically a fetal position against his back, she was starting to gasp for breath. Was she on the verge of a panic attack? she wondered desperately. She’d never had one, but she’d seen them, and if ever there was an occasion for her to become personally acquainted with what one felt like, this would be it. What little air there was in the trunk was stale and smelled of mold. To make matters worse, her neck was stiff and sore, her entire right side felt like it was being rubbed raw as she was jostled up and down over the scratchy carpet, and the hard plastic edge of her suitcase stabbed painfully into her spine with every bump. The car rocked from side to side and bounced up and down at the same time, which was making her want to lose her lasagna. But the physical discomfort she was suffering was nothing compared to her fear. She was so terrified she could taste it. The sharp vinegary tang that rose up from the back of her throat like bile was nothing but pure terror reflux, she knew.

“What are you
doing?
” she hissed after what felt like an eternity had passed. She could sense him moving, feel the muscles in his back bunching, hear a series of strange little sounds that sounded vaguely mechanical, but what it all added up to she had no clue.

“Shh.”

“Listen, I don’t mean to rush you or anything, but you’ve got about a second and then I’m out of here, with you or without you.” If there was more than
a touch of sarcasm underlying that, then so be it.

“Shh.”

Christy swallowed an urge to tell him to take that
shh
and shove it. Whatever he was doing, it couldn’t be important enough to keep them where they were so much as a moment longer. There was no time to waste. Even as woozy as she still felt, she knew that. They had to get out of the trunk before her attacker could do whatever it was he was planning to do to her. She didn’t know precisely what that was, but she did know what the end result was supposed to be.

At the thought of how very close she’d already come to dying, her breathing quickened to the point where the thought of having a panic attack had to take a backseat to the worry that she might be going to hyperventilate.

“Luke… .”

“There.” Luke grunted with obvious satisfaction. Then, to her, “I cut some wires so that the interior light won’t come on when we open the trunk.”

“Oh.” Okay, so maybe that
had
been worth waiting for. She took a deep, cleansing breath, trying to force out both fear and excess carbon dioxide. “Good idea.”

“Yeah. Listen. I’m going to count to three, then you’re going to hit the trunk release. When the trunk opens we’re going to jump. Roll when you hit, stay low, then run for whatever cover’s available. If for some reason I’m not right with you, don’t wait for me.”

“Yes, okay.” No worries there, mate. Her one thought was that once she hit the ground she wasn’t going to stop running until she was clear back home in Philadelphia.

“One. Two. Three.”

Christy yanked the trunk release. There was a click, but the trunk didn’t open. Panic knotted her stomach, tightened the already achy muscles in her throat.

“I said
three.”

“It didn’t open,” she said, her voice reedy.

“Shit.” She could feel him shifting position. “I heard it unlock. Something probably got damaged in the wreck. Okay, hang on.”

She felt his body surge upward, heard a thump as he apparently shoved hard against the lid above their heads. Just like that the trunk popped open. The lid swung up, then down, then bobbed with every bump. The rain had finally stopped, but the smell of damp was suddenly strong—and welcome, oh so welcome. Just like the warm rush of air that now blew through their little space, it symbolized freedom.

“Ready? Jump.”

Tumble was more the word for what Christy did. With his hand locked around her wrist, Luke leaped, and, since her legs had proved surprisingly weak on the push off, she was more or less yanked out behind him. She fell like a brick and hit hard, landing on her hands and knees in inches-deep mud that at least served to cushion the fall. Little droplets of mud splattered up over her even as the shock of the landing shot through her shoulders and hips. She ignored the pain in favor of a quick, terrified glance over her shoulder. It told her that the truck, with her car attached like a laboriously wagging tail, continued on, its headlights cutting twin swaths through the darkness,
its taillights staring back at her like small, baleful red eyes.