Pia had no idea where she was, so she tried to size up the situation. She was cold, she knew that. She had been in a house, and she couldn’t see any other houses around, or any lights. She stared into the dark in front of the house. Was that water? Yes. A river? A lake? Was it the ocean? She had no idea. She saw the light of a midsize moon, mostly obscured by clouds, but she couldn’t tell if it was rising or setting. Pia kept low but started to move to her right, away from the van. She could see better now, and on the other side of the body of water she saw a single house showing one light. There were other homes, but those that she could see both across the water and the immediate neighbors were just dark geometric shapes.
Leading away from the house in a curve was a pea stone driveway, and Pia walked unsteadily along its edge, trying to keep off the stones. She felt like she was getting her legs beneath her now. Reaching a stretch of pavement, she didn’t know which way to go, left or right. She noticed she was somewhere out in the country, with forest all around. Pia made an arbitrary decision and turned right. On the pavement, she tried to up her speed to a jog, but she staggered along like a drunk. Pia guessed she’d been given some drug. Again she remembered the stabbing pain in her thigh.
The road was flat and straight and Pia passed driveways on her right but none on the left. The trees kept the road dark; there were no lights on in any of the houses she passed. Pia listened intently for the sound of the van back at the house starting up. Suddenly, the road stopped and split into a starburst of driveways leading off into the darkness. Shafts of moonlight had broken through the clouds and in a gap in the trees, Pia could make out water to her left. Water on her left, water on her right. She got the uncomfortable feeling she was heading down to the end of a peninsula.
Pia turned and retraced her steps, but then, to her dismay, the quiet of the woods was shattered by the raucous sound of an automobile engine starting. It was coming from outside the house she’d escaped from. The light from the headlights bounced as the van made its way quickly down the driveway. If the van turned right, she was a sitting duck. Pia swung around and ran down a driveway to her left, trying to make as little noise as possible on the gravel. Reaching the house, Pia made a detour on flagstones set into grass around the house, quickly coming upon a small sandy beach. Now she could see she was at the edge of a circular two- or three-hundred-yard-long cove with its relatively narrow neck to her left leading out to a large lake. At this point, the opposite shore was just a couple of hundred feet away and along the shore was the house with the light on.
Pia weighed her options. If she yelled, Pia knew the men in the van were more likely to hear her than anyone else. She could hide, but she would have to move eventually, and when it got light, for all she knew, she’d be plainly visible to the men who had taken her. Noticing a pile of rocks breaching the water’s surface in the middle of the narrow expanse between where she was standing and the opposite shore, Pia wondered if the water might be shallow all the way across. Although she knew the water would undoubtedly be freezing, she thought that crossing the cove represented her best chance.
Pia took off her shoes and her shirt and bunched them against her chest and stepped into the water. As she had expected, the water was numbingly cold, and Pia breathed in sharply. She looked behind her, but there was no sign of the van lights. There was sand on the bottom of the cove, then a slick mud and the occasional rock. As the water came up to her waist, there were mostly rocks and Pia slipped, exposing more of her skin to water. Regaining her balance, she continued forward. Suddenly, the headlights flashed across the water in front of her, then again, twenty feet to her right. Pia slowed as she reached the rock pile. Her legs and feet were totally numb and felt more like stilts than legs. Skirting the rocks, she had only fifty feet or so to go.
Without warning, the bottom dropped away and Pia’s feet slid down an underwater slope covered with slimy silt. In the next instant, she was trying to tread water using one hand, holding her shoes and clothes over her head with the other. She tried to swim, holding her breath in the icy water. Almost immediately she felt her muscles begin to lose some of their function. She gasped for breath: now she was numb all over except for her face. Pia gave up holding her clothes over her head; she dropped her shoes and tried to swim a few strokes. She was able to move forward a little faster even though she felt like she was barely moving.
Eventually, her right foot touched a sandy bottom. She stood up with the water up to her neck and pushed toward the shore. She was shivering so much it was hard to hold her soaked clothes. Within a few feet, the water was back to waist-deep. The lighted house was about a hundred feet to her left. She tried to call out, but the loudest sound she could make was a whisper. She staggered; her legs weren’t hers. Finally she was out of the water, on a kind of point with the shoreline falling off on both the lake side and the cove side. But the route to the lighted house along the edge of the lake was blocked by large boulders, underbrush, and numerous trees. She’d have to reach the house via the road.
Pia found a path of sorts through the uneven ground, and she saw there was a long dark driveway from the road down to the house. She made her way toward the driveway so she could reach the road. There were sharp stones under her still totally numb feet, and she was carrying her dripping wet clothes. What would these people think? She reached the pavement and turned left. Walking was difficult, but the house was getting closer.
Then, behind her, she heard an approaching vehicle. How far away, she couldn’t tell. With mounting panic, she looked behind her into the darkness, and she could see the glow of approaching headlights. She had no time to hide, and she knew she wasn’t able to run. She tried to call out, but the feeble noise was drowned out as she was bathed in bright light. Maybe it was someone else, part of her brain was telling her. Shielding her dark-adapted, squinting eyes with her free hand, Pia stared back. The vehicle braked and came to a halt within inches of her near-naked, shivering body.
Please, please, please.
Pia’s heart sank. It was a van, a blue van.
60.
SWISS HOUSE INN NEW JERSEY MARCH 25, 2011, 10:09 P.M.
Aleksander Buda waited in the parking lot of the Swiss House Inn for Fatos to arrive. It was a standing joke among the crew that the thinnest guy they knew was Fatos, although no one ever said it to his face more than once. Fatos was slender and wiry as a greyhound, with quick hands that made him very proficient with a knife. He was rarely seen without his baseball hat, worn jauntily backward like a hip-hop devotee. When Buda wanted backup like he wanted that evening, he always called Fatos.
As dependable as ever, five minutes after Buda arrived, Fatos pulled his black Cadillac sedan into an empty space next to Buda’s. Both cars were off by themselves at the back of the lot. Neither man got out. Buda barely acknowledged Fatos with a nod. They didn’t need to talk a lot.
Buda’s eyes swept around the half-full parking lot. A guy he thought might be Burim was sitting in a new Chevy Camaro in a slot facing out no more than twenty yards to his right. The driver sitting behind the wheel fastidiously ignored Buda. Then another car drove up, an Escalade, and Buda recognized Drilon riding high at the wheel. Drilon flashed his lights at the Camaro.
“Gang’s all here,” Buda said to himself.
Drilon parked, and first Burim, then Buda, then the other two men got out of their cars, met in the middle, and exchanged greetings.