Jones couldn’t believe what she was hearing. ‘Dom’ had introduced himself as if he were someone Jones had met socially in a bar rather than the driver of a motor vehicle taking her God knows where against her will. And, chillingly, he knew who she was.
Jones reckoned she had never felt less safe in her life, not even the previous day when she’d been clamped in irons by New Jersey’s finest. She made no attempt to reply to ‘Dom’. Instead she slumped back into the seat of the cab feeling as if she’d been hit in the face. Again.
Oh shit, she thought. Oh shit. Oh shit. Not a repeat performance. This really couldn’t be happening. Not for the second time in twenty-four hours. Was she being arrested? Was she being kidnapped? She had absolutely no idea. She just knew that once more she was locked inside a strange vehicle being taken against her will to an unknown destination by someone she’d never seen before in her life. If only she’d flown back to the UK the previous night as she’d originally planned.
She covered her face with her hands. Ultimately she could not stop herself breaking down. And in the back of that yellow cab wending its relentless way through the streets of New York to an unknown and quite probably highly dangerous destination, Sandy Jones wept tears of fear.
Nine
Minutes later the cab turned abruptly off the main drag into what was little more than an alleyway between two tall buildings. They had been driving for almost twenty minutes, but Jones was pretty certain they were still in the Meatpacking District, and had actually travelled in a kind of circle.
Jones became aware that the driver was talking into his mobile phone. Then the man slowed down and swung the cab sharply left, heading straight for a set of big metal doors, their scant coat of pale blue paint peeling away in strips, which opened as if by magic as they approached. The vehicle coasted into a double garage alongside another already parked there.
Jones had regained control and was no longer crying. But she remained in shock. It was a good thing she didn’t have a heart condition — as far as she knew anyway — or she would already probably be dead. She asked herself yet again what the hell she had thought she was doing, flying into the US of A to play amateur detective?
For a few seconds the driver sat unmoving in front of Jones, who was still locked in, and was by then far too afraid to say or do anything. Then she heard a rumbling sound behind the cab, and turned around to see the double doors slowly closing and ultimately shutting with a bang.
There was another noise to the front of the cab. Jones turned to face forwards and saw that a smaller door at the rear of the garage, the sort that normally leads into a house or an apartment, was opening. A figure stepped through the doorway. The lighting at that end of the garage was not very bright. Jones squinted into the dimness. But it was only when the figure approached the cab, moving into the more brightly lit central part of the garage, that Jones could see that it was a woman. A woman in her late fifties or early sixties, Jones guessed, spreading just a little around the waist. She had pretty pale hair, a pleasant-featured face lightly made-up, and was wearing extremely clean pale-blue jeans with sharp creases down the front, a pink silk shirt, and a multi-coloured silk scarf knotted around her neck.
Jesus Christ, thought Jones, who and what was this? The woman was the very epitome of Mrs Middle America. She should have been out the back somewhere making apple pie, taking her grandchildren to school in a four-wheel drive, or attending a suburban cocktail party on the arm of a be-suited, be-spectacled and ever-so-respectable husband.
Jones was completely taken aback. She could not believe that this person was either a terrorist, a police officer, or any kind of security agent. But then, what the hell did she know?
Mrs Middle America approached the cab, stopped adjacent to the driver’s door, and looked in the back at Jones, studying her carefully. There was something about the woman that was vaguely familiar to Jones. She remembered that she had felt much the same about the Man in Black. Perhaps she was now so knocked off kilter by events that every other person she came in contact with looked familiar in some way.
‘Hi,’ said Mrs Middle America, speaking through the glass.
Jones was dumbfounded. She heard herself say ‘Hi’ back. This is absurd, she thought, truly absurd.
There was an electronic whirr as Dom lowered the window on the driver’s side. Once it was fully open Mrs Middle America stuck her head through, and took an even longer look at Jones. Dom raised a bling-laden hand and passed her a piece of paper which seemed to be a page torn from a magazine.
‘I’m pretty sure I’ve got the right gal, but I can always drop her back off,’ remarked Dom conversationally.
Mrs Middle America grinned at him, and glanced down at the piece of paper.
‘No need, this is her for sure,’ she said. ‘Thanks, Norman.’
Norman, thought Jones. What about Dom? This great hulking creature, dripping bling, surely could not be called Norman?
Jones guessed that the piece of paper probably carried a photograph of her. Even in America, where she was not a widely recognized face, she appeared occasionally in specialist science magazines. But who was this woman?
The front door of the cab opened and out stepped Dom. Or was it Norman? It seemed to take him quite some time to stand up. He appeared to be somewhere around six-and-a-half feet tall, Jones reckoned, and built like a brick shit house, as her father would have said. If he really was called Norman it was possible, she thought, that nobody on earth had ever been more inappropriately named. Norman was a giant. Jones was glad she had not had the opportunity to even attempt to quarrel first hand with her hijacker.
‘Any time, Aunt M.’
Aunt M? Things were becoming increasingly bizarre.
‘Just always glad to be of service, Aunt M, honey.’
The big driver’s voice was pure Willard White.
‘Well, you’d better let the lady out then, Norman dear.’
This really was surreal, thought Jones. And for reasons she couldn’t explain, even though she remained locked in a cab within a locked garage somewhere in the bowels of one of the toughest cities in the world, she did not feel quite as frightened as she had only a few minutes earlier.
Norman/Dom leaned into the driver’s compartment and pressed a button on the cab’s central consul. There was a click, and Jones guessed that the rear doors had been unlocked. She turned the handle of the door nearest to her. It opened.
Dom, who had moved alongside, reached out with one mighty arm, placed a huge hand under one of Jones’s elbows, and with surprising gentleness, helped her out of the cab. Jones was quite grateful for the assistance. Her legs still felt as if they were made of jelly.
‘Sorry for the rough ride, lady. You’ve nothing to fear here, I promise you.’
Jones was not entirely reassured. She leaned against the cab, still needing support.
‘You can go, Norman,’ she heard Mrs America tell the driver. ‘I know you’ve places to be today. I’ll take it from here.’
‘You sure Aunt M, sweetheart?’ he replied.
‘Sure I’m sure, Norman. Look at the poor woman. She’s no danger to anyone, is she?’
Norman/Dom turned to look at Jones, who eased herself away from the support of the cab and tried very hard to stand up straight. Cautiously she flexed her legs, which, rather to her surprise, appeared able to hold her upright after all. But only just.
The big cabby laughed. It came from his belly. Quite friendly laughter, but mocking at the same time.
‘Guess you’re right, Aunt M, honey. But I’ll be in the neighbourhood all day, OK? You have any problems, you just holler, all right?’