Gardner pulls my Beretta from my front pocket and presses it to my skull. With my face mashed against the ground, bits of gravel imbedded in it, I don’t see Lindsey, but I hear her running towards us.
Gardner backs off. “Stand up.”
I stumble to my feet and he orders Lindsey to check my pockets. Her slender fingers extract my keys, my wallet, my camera, and my phone interceptor. She hands them to Gardner, who examines the interceptor and presses Play.
“How’s the diary coming?”
“I just have a couple of entries to go.”
He tosses his keys to Lindsey. “Get my car.”
She disappears. Two minutes later she rounds the corner in a white Buick and pulls up beside us.
Gardner opens the trunk. “Get in.”
As I push aside the jumper cables, I consider grabbing the tire iron and taking a swing, but I’m pretty sure Gardner would fire faster than I could bash in his skull. I fold myself into the trunk, which smells of stale marijuana and motor oil. Its worn carpet feels like it’s full of sand fleas.
Gardner slams the trunk, plunging me into darkness. Moments later the Buick backs up, turns, and lurches forward. As we pull out of the parking lot, the trunk heats up faster than an oven set on broil. Sweat trickles into my eyes, soaks through my shirt, my jeans, my underclothes. By the time we’ve put the stop-and-go traffic of the city behind us and hit the open road, the air has grown so thick I can hardly breathe.
I run my hand along the side of the trunk until I find the wires leading to the brake lights. Making a fist, I punch them out. Air and light stream in.
Through my peephole, I watch the asphalt unwind behind us. Eventually we turn onto a steep dirt road. Or maybe it’s a driveway. Rocks and ruts scramble my insides as we bounce over them.
When the ground finally levels out, we stop. I glimpse Gardner’s legs as he approaches the trunk and tells Lindsey, “I’m heading back to town for some Xanax and this guy’s vehicle. We’ve got to make it look like an accident.”
I think about the local canyons. Is he planning to drug me, strap me into my own driver’s seat, and send me flying? I tell myself it will take him all day to match my key to my van. Then I remember my proof of insurance, folded inside my wallet. If Gardner sees that, he’ll know the make and model and will be back in no time.
The trunk pops open. The sunlight is so bright it bleaches the color out of the sky.
“Get out.”
Stiff as a prizefighter who’s gone one round too many, I straighten my arms and legs and climb out of the trunk. The sweat around my mouth instantly evaporates, leaving behind a thin crust of salt.
I look around but have no idea where we are. A ranch house overlooks the driveway. Three horses, in the pasture to our right, crowd beneath the shade of a single cottonwood tree. The desert stretches for miles in all directions.
“Let’s go.” Gardner waves my gun towards a wooden shed, unlocks it, and escorts Lindsey and me inside. Clay pots, a wheelbarrow, and collapsed lawn chairs crowd the windowless interior. Gardner hands Lindsey my gun, takes an extension cord from the wall, and binds my wrists so tightly behind my back, I fear my shoulders will pop out of their sockets. Then he turns over a bucket, orders me to sit down, and ties my ankles together with twine.
He takes the gun from Lindsey. “I’ll be back.”
She waits until his car has pulled out of the driveway before she tries the door. It’s locked.
“Where are we?” I ask.
“A ranch Gardner takes care of. The owners live in Dallas.”
“If you untie me, I can get us out of here. You don’t think I’m the only one who’s going to suffer an accident.”
She stares at me, her eyes two smoldering coals unearthed from the ashes of an abandoned fire. “Gardner wouldn’t kill me. He needs me.”
“All he needs is your story. Think about it. He’ll plant your diary in my apartment and tear out the blank pages to make it look like someone else got to it first. He’ll tell the tabloids that you and I were lovers, that I talked you into suing Marble, and that we offered him a cut if he testified that he saw Marble touching you. The story will be worth more with you dead than alive, especially if he hints that Marble was behind our accident.”
Lindsey frowns, looks around, then unties my wrists. The blood stings as it rushes back into my hands. As I rub my wrists, she kneels down in front of me and struggles with the knot that binds my ankles.
“There’s a pair of pruning sheers on that wall.”
She retrieves them and cuts through the twine.
“Where are we?” I ask again. “What road?”
“We took 54 out of El Paso, then we turned onto a side road.”
“Marble lives off 54. How far are we from Sidewinder?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t been there since I was a kid.” She makes it sound like it was ten years ago instead of three.
“Do you have your cell phone?”
She pulls it from her pocket and hands it to me. I dial Marble’s number, get his voice mail, and leave a message. Then I remove an axe from the wall. “Stand back.”
I swing at the wall and the wood splinters as the head of the axe imbeds itself in one board. I yank it out and swing again. The board cracks in half.
Three minutes later, I’ve created a gap large enough for us to slip through sideways. We climb out, scan the horizon, and hike downhill.
The afternoon sun casts a watery mirage on the asphalt. We keep our distance from the road. If Gardner returns, the occasional cactus won’t provide us with much cover.
We’ve walked a couple of miles before we spy a marker: Route 117. As we pass a fenced goat pasture, Lindsey’s phone rings.
I recognize the number. “Marble, it’s Jason. Are you home?”
“What’s wrong?”
I tell him how Gardner caught me spying on Lindsey, how he forced me into his trunk, how he locked Lindsey and me in the shed, and how we escaped.
“Where are you now?”
“Route 117, off 54. We’re outside a small ranch. There’s a beige trailer set back from the road and a goat pasture with a lean-to in the middle.”
“Stay there. I’ll come get you.”
I hand the phone to Lindsey. “He’s coming.”
I notice that her cheeks have turned a painful shade of pink. “Let’s get out of the sun.”
We walk towards the pasture, lie flat on our stomachs, and drag ourselves beneath the barbed-wire fence. The goats scatter as we scramble to our feet and approach their water trough. I turn on the faucet and pass one finger through a stream of scalding water. I give it a minute, then test it again. “Go ahead.”
Lindsey bends down, twists her head, and drinks, oblivious to the water streaming sideways off her face. When she’s done, I take a drink myself. Then we duck inside the lean-to. Lindsey leans her head against one post and closes her eyes.
Fifteen minutes later, we hear a car approaching. Lindsey’s eyes snap open. “Marble?”
I peer out and spy my own van cresting the hill. “Gardner.”
We press ourselves against the back of the lean-to. Instead of passing us, the van stops. How could Gardner possibly know we’re there? Then I remember that he took my interceptor, still programmed with Lindsey’s number. He must have picked up Marble’s call.
I yank Lindsey’s hand. “Let’s go.”
The driver’s door slams as we run towards the back of the pasture. This time we drag ourselves too quickly beneath the fence. Lindsey cries out as a barb draws a bloody line along the back of her left calf. The fence tears my shirt, punctures my right shoulder.