M.L. Gamble - Trust With Your Life

“Drive.”

She jerked her eyes straight ahead. The light had turned green. “Where to?” she asked, keeping her foot on the brake.

“Drive home. That’s where you were going, wasn’t it?”

He was Australian. The Crocodile Dundee inflection was there, though all the wit and “g’day, mate” humor were ominously absent.

“I’m not taking you to my home.” Molly knew she sounded insane, but even terrified, she had no intention of driving some maniacal murderer to her front door.

For a moment, it was quiet. Another car passed on her left, the driver peering in his mirror to get another glimpse before pulling his vehicle in front of her. The light ahead changed to yellow, then red again.

Molly realized she was holding her breath. Then she heard the gun click. Suddenly the man in her back seat jerked her head back by the hair. “Drive to your house or I will. I know the address, Molly, and I know Mission Verde. You have three seconds to decide what happens next.”

Tears stung Molly’s eyes from the pain of his grip, as well as from sheer physical terror. The fact that he knew her name scared her much worse than when she thought she was a randomly chosen victim. Some bell of recognition was ringing in her brain, though through the fog of fear she couldn’t tie it to a specific piece of information.

With no other alternative, Molly eased her foot off the brake and hit the gas, sending the car rushing through the red light.

A half mile from her home, Molly’s heart rate slowed down a bit, and anger joined forces with hysteria as a leveling force. Most people she knew would agree that she wasn’t a tough person, but she also did not allow anyone to push her around.

If a waitress was snooty, Molly asked to see the manager. If she paid eighty dollars for a silk blouse and the seam popped open the first time she wore it, Molly took it back. So, now that it appeared she had been kidnapped, she decided to be what her nephew, Tyler, would call a “hard case.”

Her passenger had made no further comment the past few seconds, but she could hear his breathing. She thought he must be injured and wondered if he’d been a passenger in one of the wrecked cars. Molly kept picturing the gunshot wound in the one man’s back.

Was the guy in her car the shooter?

Clenching her teeth to stay calm, she let the car coast as she rounded Isabella Avenue, weighing if she should call the guy’s bluff and go straight instead of turning on Plaza Viejo, where her town house was. She stopped at the light two blocks from her house, slanting her gaze to the mirror again.

“You can turn right on red in California, doll. I suggest you do it.”

“I need to get gas.”

“If you run out, you’ll wish you hadn’t.”

Someone else knew all about being a “hard case,” she decided.

One minute later, Molly turned left into the steepest driveway in town, cursing the fact that she hadn’t seen one cop or one burly trucker.

The car groaned as it usually did at the incline, and Molly shifted into low. Her home was one of sixty, ten rambling groups of blocks cut into terraces in the hilly countryside of Mission Verde, fifty-six miles south of Los Angeles. It sat at the edge of some of the last undeveloped land in the area, where skunks, raccoons and rabbits poked around on the patio where Molly sunned herself.

Killing the headlights, Molly heard the coyotes bragging out loud about their night’s catch of slow house pets, and a shiver of empathy for their furry prey ran down her back. She reached for the door at the same moment her passenger again grabbed her hair.

“Take it nice and slow, Molly girl. I wouldn’t want to wake up your neighbors.”

“Stop pulling my hair,” she replied, surprised when he let her go. Slowly she stepped out of the car. Her skirt caught on the edge of the door and she tugged at it quickly, unable to place the weight in her pocket. Then she remembered.

Holy night, Molly thought as her scalp prickled with fear. I’m armed.

She turned toward her captor and got her first look at him as he stepped out of the car. He was big. Well over six feet, he had shoulders like some lumberjack and longish blond hair. He wore jeans and cowboy boots, a red T-shirt with an Aussie flag over his heart and a tiny gold earring in his right ear.

“Oh my God,” Molly gasped. “It’s you.”

“Hello, Miss Jakes. Long time no see.” Despite the words, he didn’t smile.

Impossible as it seemed, standing in front of Molly, gun in hand, was the man she’d met briefly in the office of Inscrutable Security, the night Frederick Brooker was alleged to have shot Paul Buntz. Molly felt her stomach flip as a rushing, ringing noise rattled through her brain. My God, she thought, as her face flushed with embarrassment and anger, I fantasized about this guy! Talk about poor judgment!

She stared at the big man. He was sporting handcuffs this time. Or handcuff, if the singular is correct, Molly silently corrected. His right wrist was encased in one metal circle. The empty one hung down like a punk rocker’s bracelet.

The gun was big, too, with a long, black barrel.

She met his eyes. “Who the hell are you and what’s this all about?”

“Let’s go in. Then we’ll talk.”

“Oh, sure. I’ll make coffee,” she snapped.

The man’s deep blue eyes narrowed. “I’d rather have tea. Or don’t you Yanks ever drink the stuff?”

“I’ve got tea. I save it for invited guests.”

“Yeah, well consider me invited or we’ll finish this right here.” He moved the gun slightly, his face deadly calm.

The weight of the pistol in her skirt felt enormous, and Molly wondered if he could see the outline of it against her leg. The last thing in the world she wanted to do was close herself in her house with this maniac, but she couldn’t think clearly enough to decide what else she could pull off.

Molly nodded toward the path winding around the parking garages. “We need to go that way. Should I go first?”

The man seemed to detect something in her eyes that racheted his anxiety up a notch, because he reached out and grabbed her arm. “Who’s in there?”

She could smell the fear on his skin and began to panic. He had kidnapped her, for heaven’s sake! What was he so afraid of? “My marine husband and six Dobermans. So why don’t you take off now?”

Molly regretted her smart answer but not the look on the man’s face. He looked shocked. But the shock quickly turned to arrogance. “Nice try. Get going. I’ll take my chances.”

“I don’t think so,” she replied. “Not until you tell me what’s going on.” An obvious answer to her question suddenly occurred to her, and she felt weak. “Does this have anything to do with Brooker?”

His grip on her arm tightened and he waved the gun in her face. “Shh. I don’t want you waking anyone, understand?”

When he drew closer to her, Molly realized with a shock that she had memorized his features from their last meeting. Up close she saw deep fatigue lines in his face. But it was the same firm chin, the same aggressively curved nose, the same pale eyebrows, silky above eyes a clear sea blue. He had a tiny, uneven cleft in his chin, which she did not remember. He was as tanned as when she saw him months ago, as if he worked outdoors, and his teeth glimmered white in the light from the security lamp next to her front door.

“I understand. But don’t you see how ridiculous this is for me? I can’t let you in my house. I’m afraid,” she added, the very real sentiment coming out without her thinking it.

“Yeah, well, I’m sorry about that. But I’m not standing out here in the open with you. Now get going!”