By the time the officer opens the door of his car, I have all my insurance and registration documents in order, and Sarah’s starting to cry now that I’ve turned off the music. Maybe he’ll give me a break because of Sarah and my arm. Against the glare of the high-beams I can see only his silhouette in the mirror with his revolver bulging at his hip. He’s short, thin, and slightly bow-legged, not the large, powerfully-built patrolman you normally see. I counsel myself to say nothing incriminating and roll down the window, but strangely he stops at the rear door and tries to pull it open.
“Up here, officer,” I say, always polite to the police, thinking he somehow mistook the rear door for the front.
He inserts his arm through my open window and around the pillar to unlock the back door, then climbs in and slams the door shut.
“What’s the problem, officer?” I ask innocently, believing there must be some good reason for his behavior. Maybe he’s afraid of being hit by passing traffic if he stands at my door.
A young male voice answers calmly: “Do what I tell you, Mrs. Wolfson, and nobody’ll get hurt.”
I look in the mirror and see a gun pointing at my head. The kid holding the gun appears to be in his late teens or early twenties, with soft, downy whiskers on his chin, pale skin, and thin, almost feminine lips. His head is shaved and he’s wearing a camouflage Army shirt. I’ve never seen him before in my life.
“Get out of my car!” I yell, outraged that he has the nerve to do something like this and not yet comprehending the gun or the reality of the threat.
A savage smile darts across his face. He points the gun down toward Sarah and there’s a loud crack and a bright orange muzzle flash. Time slows like a rock falling through water. I feel myself screaming but my ears are ringing because of the concussion.
“Sarah! Sarah!”
I try to reach back to her, but the kid slams the gun into the side of my face, knocking my head forward. The heat from the barrel stings my cheek, and the bitter scent of gunpowder fills my nose. From the corner of my eye I see the hammer cocked to fire again. It’s an oddly shaped handgun, older, like something I’ve seen in World War II movies.
“Drive the car!” he orders. “Now!”
But I’m crazed with panic, and I’m still screaming, “Sarah! Sarah!” I force my head back against the gun, scraping the barrel across my cheek like a razor. I can see her now. There’s no blood…and…yes, thank God…she’s still crying! The shot must have gone through the seat beside her. The kid slams the gun into my face again, producing a stabbing pain through my sinus and a thin trickle of blood from my nose.
“Drive!” he yells. “Now!” He rolls down the rear window and waves to the car behind us. The lights stop flashing, and it pulls out in front of us. “Follow him.”
I try to move the gear selector, but I’m shaking so badly that the stump of my right arm slips off the lever. The kid reaches up, slaps it into place with a jolt, and I pull out onto the road. We drive to a stop sign and turn left onto Route 22. With each oncoming car, the kid presses the gun against my head, warning me not to do anything to alert them. I’m searching frantically for a police car, or a gas station where I can pull off for help. All the while, Sarah’s screaming at the top of her lungs, terrified from the gunshot.
“Make her stop!” the kid shouts at me.
“Please, just let us go,” I say, trying to reason with him. “You can have my car and my purse, whatever you want; just, please, let us go.”
“This isn’t about money,” the kid says. “Keep driving.” He uses his free hand to cover Sarah’s mouth, which only makes her cries louder.
“You’re hurting her!” I shriek, hysterical that he’s touched my baby. “There’s a bottle in the diaper bag on the floor. Give her the bottle, and let her go.”
The kid finds the bottle and puts it in Sarah’s mouth. She drinks the stale formula left over from her afternoon feeding, cries out, drinks again, then finally begins to settle down.
Everything is happening so fast I have no time to think. We turn off a side road at Ardenheim and up an old dirt logging road into the mountains. The car we’re following shuts off its headlights, and I’m ordered to shut mine off too. We drive into the woods in darkness and stop. The driver of the car in front gets out; in the moonlight I can see that he’s about the same age as the kid in back but taller and more muscular; his head is shaved and he’s wearing camouflage Army clothes as well, and he’s carrying a gun in one hand and a videocassette in the other. He opens my door and yanks me out of the car, wrenching my left arm. The kid in back climbs out with Sarah and hands her to me, then takes the videocassette from the bigger kid, gets in the driver’s seat of my car, puts the videocassette on the passenger seat, and backs my car into a grove of pine trees until it’s covered with boughs and can’t be seen from the narrow dirt road. Reemerging moments later through the branches, he says to the bigger kid: “Ok, Tim, let’s get going.”
The bigger kid, whose name I now know is Tim, shoves me toward the other car.
“Please,” I plead with them, “you’ve got my car and my money. Please, just leave us here. I won’t tell anybody.”
“Shut up,” Tim says, ramming his gun into my back.
They really aren’t interested in my car, or my money, and I begin to worry they’re planning to kidnap and rape me.
“Please, please don’t do this,” I beg.
“I said, shut up!” Tim yells, slamming me against their car, crushing Sarah between me and the window. She starts crying again.
“I told you, Mrs. Wolfson,” the smaller kid says, “if you do as you’re told, nobody’ll get hurt. Now get in the car.”
How does he know my name?
“You still want me to drive, Ott?” Tim asks.
“Yeah.”
Now I know the smaller kid’s name and that he’s the leader of the two.
I climb in back with Sarah on my lap and try to comfort her. Ott sits beside us, digging his gun into my ribs. Tim takes the driver’s seat and backs the car down the logging road the way we came, switching on the headlights when we reach the highway and turning south to Route 522, then Route 322 east toward Harrisburg. Sarah calms with the motion of the car and me holding her close. I’m trying frantically to remember the next exits, and whether there are any police stations, and what I’ve heard about self-defense-how the worst thing you can do is to allow an attacker to drive away with you in a car. While cradling Sarah, I slip my hand around the door handle to be ready to leap out at the first opportunity for escape; if I were alone, I might have jumped while the car was moving, but I can’t take that chance with Sarah.