“Over two hundred and fifty, actually,” Paul said.
“So how’d you find me?”
“I’m thorough.”
When the other two men returned, Paul turned off the emergency button allowing the car to descend. Then he passed the brooch to one of his partners, a pudgy man in a crumpled plaid suit. He examined the brooch with a jeweler’s glass, and verified the object’s authenticity with a nod of his head. The third man, evidently a native, stared at her with undisguised lust.
Paul maintained the perfect distance from her, out of reach yet in complete control. Leaving the hotel by a side door, the small group entered a black Cadillac limousine. Pudgy drove, Paul shared the front seat and Felicity sat in the back with number three. Paul’s automatic stayed on her the entire time.
“We have a long drive ahead of us,” Paul said. “We must meet a large yacht on the East Coast, somewhat south of Mexico. If you cooperate we shall leave you alive in a, er, rural area somewhere along the way.”
At the edge of the city, the limousine pulled up behind a large four by four type vehicle. Paul guided her to the new vehicle with his gun. Her three captors assumed their prior seating arrangement and they drove away, apparently abandoning the Cadillac. Before long, they were cruising smoothly down the asphalt road. The tires whined on the highway but it did not last long. Soon the asphalt faded to gravel, then into dirt.
They continued rolling, on into the night. In the darkness she knew there was very little chance she could remember the route. With few useful alternatives available, no information on which to build a plan and apparently no immediate danger, she did the only thing that seemed useful and reasonable. She closed her eyes, settled her breathing and went to sleep.
8
She awoke when the Trooper pulled to a stop. She knew instinctively that four hours had passed. Pudgy and the Mexican each took a rest stop behind a tree. Pudgy returned to the car, but his partner stood beside the vehicle when he returned.
“Would you like to go into the woods to relieve yourself?” Paul asked her.
“I’d go just for a moment of privacy, I would.”
“Sorry,” Paul said. “I will have to watch you, of course.”
“In that case, never mind.”
Four hours later, soon after daybreak, they stopped again. The Mexican took down one of the three ten-gallon gasoline cans on the rear of the Trooper and emptied it into the gas tank. Paul repeated his offer to her and this time, she grudgingly accepted. She took fifteen long paces away from the narrow lane and found a spot between two healthy trees. Flashing defiance, she stared into Paul’s eyes while she hiked up her dress, slid off her panties and lowered herself. It was not the first time Felicity ever squatted in tall grass, but she viewed Paul’s presence as an invasion. He kept the gun trained on her, but handed her a roll of paper when she was in position. And when he heard the sound watering the ground he turned his eyes away. It was a small gesture but somehow it had value to her.
When they returned to the vehicle, Pudgy stood at the back opening a cooler on the tailgate. He distributed breakfast sandwiches and bottles of water. Back in the SUV, the kidnappers returned to their original seating plan.
This routine continued throughout the day and into the next evening with little to occupy Felicity’s mind except to count the minutes and try to guess where they were going. She slept a lot, but her body would only accept so much of that. So she sat, twenty-five hours and forty minutes after her abduction by Felicity’s flawless reckoning, trying to catch a glimpse of the world outside the vehicle. It was deep in the night again, a dense field of stars and a sliver of a moon lighting the sky. It was the Mexican’s turn to share the back seat with her. Leering, he reached out to stroke her arm with a sweaty hand.
“We could have some fun with this one,” he said, grinning through crooked yellow teeth. His accent was a chilling cartoon caricature.
“You wouldn’t enjoy it,” she said evenly, continuing to stare straight ahead. “I’d just lay there still. Be like having a dead body, it would. And just before you finished, I’d reach underneath, sink my nails in deep and rip your balls out.” She smiled pleasantly.
“Bitch!” His sweaty palm arced over, slapping hard across her face. Paul signaled with his gun for the Mexican to back off. She turned back toward him in slow motion, looking up from beneath a rumpled mass of red hair. Her emerald eyes glowed out from the shadows. Her voice was polar ice.
“What’s your name?”
“Paco,” the Mexican said, grinning. Then he saw her frozen smile.
“Paco,” she cooed, “You’re a dead man.”
At that point Paul signaled to the pudgy driver. The four by four vehicle pulled over into the trees. Vegetation blocked the left side door, next to Paco. Felicity’s only looked that way because the tropical grass grew so high.
“I believe this is your stop, Miss O’Brian,” Paul said, pointing for emphasis with his gun. “Take some advice. If you’re smart, you’ll accept this loss maturely and move on to other projects.”
She stepped out of the vehicle with her head high, her jaw jutting forward. She slammed the door hard, and the sound echoed through the emptiness. As the Isuzu pulled away, the night noises closed in on her. Darkness held no terror for her, and she recognized the sounds of crickets and frogs from her youth. But without knowing what other wildlife might be around, traveling at night would be stupid. Knowing only a couple of hours separated her from daylight, she found a thick, squat tree and climbed into its branches. There she curled up as best she could to wait for dawn.
“We will meet, mister mystery man,” she muttered to herself, “And you’re going to regret double-crossing this girl.”
9
The baked sand of the narrow road burned into the soles of Felicity’s feet. It was a pain she accepted. She could not have walked another step in those damned high heels.
She had shivered through the night but fear had kept her awake. When dawn finally came she had started walking. Within an hour she was barefoot. That was no big deal. She spent most of her youth that way anyway. An hour or so later she discarded her hosiery. Soon after she tore off her gown to just above her knees. Thai silk gowns, she soon discovered, do not rip easily. Just getting a hole started cost her another fingernail. It hurt, but the gown was too restrictive for walking. She needed the mobility.
She ached everywhere. Hunger gnawed at her belly. Not the first time in her life for that, either. She was very thirsty too, but she ignored it. Hatred, gleaming in her eyes, was all that sustained her.
She had no idea if she was even pushing on in the right direction. She saw no landmarks, and the scenery was totally monotonous. She felt as if she was walking on a monstrous treadmill, a lone, lost hamster spinning her wheel, expecting somehow to make progress. Yet she continued.
She made it ten twenty-six a.m. when she first heard the new sound. An engine, she thought, and it seemed to be getting louder. A vehicle, heading her way! For a brief moment, she reflexively tried to straighten her dress and touch up her hair, before realizing what a hopeless effort that would be. Her chance for rescue would most likely turn out to be a simple local farm boy approaching in an old pickup truck. He would probably beat her, rape her, and dump her in the next jungle.
Then again, maybe that was not the worst possibility. As the vehicle approached she identified it as an aging, green army jeep. A big black man in camouflage fatigues was driving. He stared stonily ahead, keeping the vehicle centered on the bumpy road.