Sandra Brown - Smoke Screen

“Suit yourself.” He groped some more. Finally finding the other half of the seat belt beneath her left breast, he clicked the latch and moved off her. She heard him fasten his own seat belt, then he started the car.

“It’s a ride from here.”

The road was rough. The vehicle jounced along over potholes and bumps. Several times she would have fallen out of the seat were it not for the seat belt around her. If he’d planned on killing her, at least right away, he wouldn’t have taken the precaution to fasten it. Would he?

Who was he? Why her? Ransom?

She was a celebrity, of sorts. Was he a nutcase trying to make a name for himself before taking her life and then his own in a dramatic final act? Or was this a completely random abduction?

Horror stories, some of which she had reported on herself, flashed through her mind. Sometimes psychos treated their hostages kindly, even lovingly, before slaying them by the most brutal means.

Damned if she would go down without a fight.

But how to fight? Unfortunately she didn’t know how long she’d been unconscious before he’d stopped to switch vehicles. It could have been minutes or hours. She could detect nothing of where this switch had taken place, knowing only that the road to it was unpaved.

Identifiable sounds hadn’t given away the location. She hadn’t heard the swishing noises of cars speeding along a nearby freeway, or the slapping of water against a shore, airplanes taking off and landing, or anything else that gave her a clue. Nor could she determine the direction in which they were traveling now.

However, now that she was conscious, she could keep track of time to approximate how far they traveled. She began counting out a fifteen-minute interval.

Before she reached fifteen minutes, the vehicle turned off the rough road onto one that was much smoother.

It was hard to keep count. He’d tuned the radio to a country music station that played its repertoire without commercial breaks. But she focused her mind on her counting and tried to tune out the beats of the various songs.

The first fifteen minutes passed. Then another fifteen.

Well into the third segment, she lost count. The effort of holding herself perfectly still had caused her muscles to cramp. The seat belt buckle was gouging her. Her head hurt. Her hands and feet were numb from lack of blood circulation.

When she thought she couldn’t stand these discomforts any longer and was thinking about wiggling to let him know she was conscious, the vehicle went into a sharp turn that tightened the seat belt around her. They were on another bumpy road. But they didn’t go far before they slowed, then came to a full stop.

Her whole left side, from shoulder to ankle, tingled from lying in the same position for so long, but still she didn’t move, not even when he slid his hand beneath her again to release the seat belt.

He got out. Besides his footsteps, she could hear a loud chorus of insects and amphibians. He opened the passenger door. “Want to sit up now?”

She didn’t respond.

He sighed, then grabbed her around her right biceps and hauled her into a sitting position. Her head teetered as though it were about to roll off her shoulders. Nerve endings screamed in pain. She bit into the gag to keep from moaning.

He lifted her from the vehicle and carried her up a set of three steps. He had to juggle a bit in order to open a door, then with her still in his arms, went through it sideways like a groom carrying his bride.

The air inside was hot and stuffy. The floor beneath his footsteps sounded as though there was hollow space beneath it. She heard something being dropped with a thud. Then she was deposited ungently into a hard chair.

“You can sit up, or play dead and fall out onto the floor. Where you’ll lie till Doomsday, because I’m not lifting you again.”

She remained sitting up and heard a snuffle of amusement, along with the soft snick of a light switch. The hood was suddenly pulled off her head. The light pierced her eyes. Reflexively she squeezed them shut, then slowly opened them and blinked her abductor into focus.

He stood directly in front of her, unyielding and unsmiling. “Long time, no see, Ms. Shelley.”

AT FIRST, THE BEARD THREW HER OFF. THEN, LOOKING PAST it, she recognized the face. Putting a name to it took a moment longer, but finally one emerged from distant memory. Gannon. Raley Gannon.

Identifying him didn’t allay her fear. In fact, when he extended his hand toward her, she recoiled, which caused him to frown. He hesitated as though waiting to see just how spooked she was, then reached around to the back of her head, untied the gag, and removed it.

She moistened her lips. Or tried. Her tongue and mouth were dry. When she tried to speak, her voice was a croak. “Have you lost your mind?”

Saying nothing, he turned his back on her. With his sneaker, he moved aside a small black duffel bag, which must have been what she’d heard drop after he carried her inside. Walking beneath the ceiling fan, he yanked on a string hanging from it. The motor hummed, the blades began to turn, stirring the warm air and cooling it slightly.

They were in what appeared to be a cabin with a living area and kitchen combined into one room. Britt assumed that the open interior doorway led to a bedroom, but it was dark beyond the door. The furniture was old and mismatched, but the place was clean and neat. All the windows were opened. Insects batted against the screens, trying to fly into the light. Beyond the screens, the darkness was absolute, impenetrable, unrelieved by moonlight or man-made lights that she could see.

She was still wearing the camisole and boxer shorts she had gone to bed in, but she also had on a nylon windbreaker that belonged to her. The last time she’d seen it, it had been hanging in her closet. He must have put it on her while she was unconscious.

He took a bottle of water from a vintage refrigerator, uncapped it, and drank thirstily, emptying the entire bottle, which he then tossed into the trash can beneath the sink.

He glanced at her, then got another bottle of water from the fridge and uncapped it as he walked across the room. The ceiling fan fluttered his hair, causing her to notice another distinctive change in his appearance. He used to wear his hair short, almost in a military cut. Now it fell an inch past his collar and over his ears to blend into the beard. She detected a few touches of gray among the wavy, dark strands.

He extended the water bottle toward her mouth.

“You’ll have to untie my hands.”

“Fat chance.”

“I can’t-”

“You thirsty or not?” He pressed the top of the plastic bottle against her lips. She took it, gulping until the water began flooding her mouth. She tilted her head back to signal she was finished.

He stopped pouring, but not soon enough. Water dribbled over her chin and onto her chest. Some trickled from the lip of the bottle and splashed onto her bare thigh. She looked down at the spot where several drops beaded on her skin. When she looked back up, she caught him staring at that spot, too. Then his eyes connected with hers.

He moved so quickly, she jumped. “Will you relax?” he said. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“You already have.”

He reached toward the back of her head again and dug his fingers into her hair, then tentatively moved them along her scalp until she winced. “You’ve got a goose egg.”

“What did you expect?”

“I expected you to have a goose egg. Because you didn’t do what I told you to do. If you’d been quiet and cooperative, I wouldn’t have had to clip you.”

She started to say that she would be sure to remember that the next time an intruder snatched her from her bed and carried her off in the middle of the night. But she held her tongue.