Trust Me

by Abbott, Jeff

  ‘Start the car,’ Eric’s voice crackled energy, as though the exhaustion of the past several hours was forgotten. ‘Pull out into the street.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Just do it.’

  Luke started the engine and pulled out onto the street. The homeless man was forty feet ahead of them, walking on the left.

  ‘I have to be sure,’ Eric said to himself. ‘Stay close. But not too close.’

  Luke stopped the BMW at a light. The homeless man kept walking, stare fixed ahead on the buckling sidewalk.

  The light flashed green.

  ‘Go,’ Eric ordered.

  Luke drove the car, closed the gap on the homeless man. They drove past him and the man glanced up.

  ‘Drive another block then go back,’ Eric ordered.

  Luke U-turned at the next light and now the passenger side window was closer to the homeless man. Eric studied his quarry.

  ‘It’s him,’ Eric said. ‘Okay. Be cool, be cool.’

  Luke wasn’t sure if Eric was talking to him, or to himself.

  The homeless man raised his head as he walked on in his broken shuffle. He wiped at his nose with the back of his hand. Another man waited at the street corner, leaning against the traffic light, turning to watch as both the first man and the BMW approached. The second man - dressed in a leather jacket with a colorful bald eagle stitched on the back, jeans and heavy dark sunglasses unnecessary at night - seemed to sense trouble rising; he turned and ran into the shadows of an alley at top speed, glancing once over his shoulder. Luke saw naked fear on his broad, scarred face.

  ‘That guy in the eagle jacket was going to talk to the homeless man,’ Luke said. He was not sure why he said this thought aloud, but he had seen a smile of expectation rise and then fade in the second man’s face. Luke had the sense they were interrupting something - a rendezvous or an appointment. The homeless man stopped as the leather-jacketed man rushed away from the scene.

  They drew level with the homeless man and he paused as the BMW crawled to a stop, Eric lowering the window.

  The homeless man took an awkward step forward into the pool of light.

  Then he turned and began to hurry away. Walking with purpose, digging into his pocket.

  ‘Follow him,’ Eric ordered with a hard jab of the gun into Luke’s tender ribs.

  The homeless man broke into a run. He cut across the street toward the parking lot of a bank. The building looked new, the foothold into the neighborhood for the revitalized edge of downtown.

  ‘Catch up with him. I have to talk to him,’ Eric said.

  The homeless man ran toward the narrow, empty drive-through lanes, toward the soft glow of the ATM machine.

  ‘Cut him off, don’t let him get away,’ Eric said.

  Luke cut the BMW between the homeless man and the building. He glided into the ATM lane and slammed to a stop; the driver’s side was close to the ATM, the passenger side fronting the running man. The homeless guy rocked on his heels, and then lurched to retreat the other way.

  The gun left Luke’s ribs.

  ‘No!’ he yelled but Eric leaned out the window and fired. Three loud pops. The homeless man jerked, fell, collapsed in a huddle. The back of his head welled bone and blood.

  Luke lunged at Eric’s arm, at the gun; he stepped off the brake and the BMW lurched past the ATM. Eric socked his elbow back hard and Luke’s head snapped into the driver’s window. Pain lashed his nose, his face. The gun, warm from duty, pressed against the side of his throat.

  Eric turned, held up his phone with the other hand, and snapped a photo of the dead man. He closed the phone and jabbed the gun harder against Luke’s throat.

  ‘Oh, God, you shot him,’ Luke whispered.

  ‘Drive fast. Now.’

  Luke drove, his hands shivering, his whole body numb with shock. He steered back onto the road. The gun was warm against his skin. Holy Jesus. He had just witnessed a murder. Fear pounded an ache in his chest. He wasn’t sure what he felt except that he did not want to die.

  ‘Get us onto the highway.’ Eric’s voice broke. ‘Go, go.’

  ‘Which … which one?’ As if it mattered, Luke thought. Eric had just killed a man and Luke knew he was next.

  ‘Just get us on a highway, get us out of here.’ Eric flipped open his phone. Worked the keypad with his thumb. Then he punched in another number, shaking. He emitted a hard, nervous laugh - an awful mockery of a laugh - and put the cell phone up to his ear.

  ‘It’s done. He’s dead. I just emailed you the proof. So you tell me where she is.’

  Luke felt Eric’s stare come onto his skin. He drove like a robot; he tried to focus on the driving. Where she is.

  Eric closed the phone. ‘Get us to Highway 59 and head northeast.’

  ‘What, so I can drive you to kill someone else?’

  ‘No. Now we go save a life.’ And, like an old friend, the gun went back against Luke’s ribs.

  5

  They were well past the city now, past the sprawl of lights and the scattering of outer suburbs and smaller towns, into the denseness of the piney woods. Luke kept a hard grip on the wheel. He badly needed to go to the bathroom and hunger clenched its fist around his stomach. The gas needle hovered toward the red zone of empty.

  ‘We need to make a gas stop,’ he said.

  ‘You’ll pull over when I say.’

  Two minutes later they came upon a farm to market road, empty of traffic. Beyond its edges, heavy growths of loblolly pines stood like guardians.

  ‘Drive a ways down the road,’ Eric ordered.

  He’s going to kill me now. Whatever strange reason I was useful to him is over and he’s going to kill me. Terror rose in his throat.

  ‘Stop.’

  Luke stopped.

  Eric removed the keys from the ignition. ‘Get out of the car. Slowly.’

  The last movements his muscles would ever know. Luke obeyed. He’d been stuck behind the wheel, body locked in fear for hours. The night was silent, the stars mute witnesses.

  ‘You need to pee?’

  ‘Yes.’ Was this a final kindness? What did it matter?

  ‘Go on the other side of the car.’ He stuck the gun between Luke’s shoulder blades.

  Luke relieved himself. When he was done, Eric steered him toward the trunk. He popped it open with the remote.

  ‘I’m going to give you a break from driving. But if I hear one peep out of that trunk, you’re dead. As much fun as we’ve had together, I’ll just pretend you’re the guy I killed and it’s boom, you’re done.’ The shakiness was gone from Eric’s voice. He’d said earlier that breaking the law changed you, and now he had broken the greatest law of man. He had taken a life.

  ‘I know.’ Shivering, Luke climbed into the trunk. The lid slammed down. Darkness. The engine revved. The tires hissed softly on the gravel, and the car backed and pulled into a U-turn.

  Luke, alone, stretched his legs out as far as he could. You may be called upon to fight, Dad had said. The time was now. He had to think of something.

  The car stopped and Luke opened his eyes in the dark.

  He heard Eric’s soft whisper near the trunk. ‘Filling the tank up. No noise from you or I’ll kill the clerk inside.’

  Luke pressed a fist against the door.

  ‘The funny thing is … shooting that man was much harder in my mind. I’d built it up as this terrible thing but after the first squeeze of the trigger my mind turned off a little bit and it wasn’t too bad.’ He sounded almost surprised.

  I have to stop you, Luke thought. I can’t let you hurt another person. The pump clicked as Eric settled it back into its slot.

  Luke groped in the darkness. He needed a weapon. He felt a circular shape - a set of jumper cables. He groped past the cables and his fingers closed on a pile of plastic boxes. Old cassette tapes. Nothing beneath. He kept searching, turning over to face the front of the trunk. He felt the rim of the spare tire. There were tools to change it, but they lay un
der the tire, and he couldn’t get to them with the trunk closed.

  He reached out and touched the coil of the jumper cables again. Heavy plastic, like a thick braided rope, with the copper clamps on the end.

  As the car started and pulled away from the station, Luke began to uncurl the coil.

  6

  Luke lost the sense of time. He kept the jumper cables close to him and he thought, long and hard, about what he would do when Eric - the murderer - opened the trunk.

  Finally the car stopped.

  Luke tensed. He pulled the cables close to him. He practiced what he was going to do, best as he could given the tight quarters. It was insane to try but to not try was worse.

  He heard a voice close to the trunk. ‘Luke? You awake?’

  As if he could sleep. ‘I’m awake.’

  ‘I’m going to open the trunk now. You will get out and you will do exactly as you’re told.’

  The trunk opened. The dark night had become gloomier, gray clouds obscuring the stars. In the distance thunder rumbled. He could see the shadow of Eric standing centered at the trunk’s opening. The arm, cocked, holding the gun, aimed toward him.

  Luke snared the cable over Eric’s arm, one neat quick motion, and yanked down, pulling Eric toward the trunk. Then he kicked out hard, caught Eric in the chest.

  ‘Dumbass!’ Eric roared. Now Luke yanked Eric toward him, keeping him off balance, trying to scramble out of the trunk. The pistol, bound in the cables, was caught between the two of them.

  Eric fired.

  Heat. Burning. Luke heard the thump of bullets ripping into the trunk’s body. He kicked out again, suddenly afraid of a bullet smashing into the now full gas tank. The two men hit the ground, scrambling for the loose gun. Eric twisted his hands free of the cables. Luke tackled him, drove knees into Eric’s back as he lunged toward the weapon. The gun lay close to his reach, lying now on the grass, lit only by moonlight peering through the clouds. Grass and dirt clogged Luke’s teeth as Eric pushed him off.

  Luke’s fingers closed around the barrel and then the heavy rope of the jumper cables looped around his throat.

  The cables tightened into the flesh of his neck like a noose. Eric’s knee ground hard into his spine. Luke struggled to turn, to better the grip on the gun and aim the gun at Eric but he couldn’t move.

  Eric began to strangle him. The pain - from the pressure, from the lack of air - burst in Luke’s throat. ‘Let the gun go, Luke,’ Eric hissed in his ear. ‘Let it go.’

  If he let go he would die. If he didn’t let go he would die. He couldn’t turn the gun around to aim it at Eric; he didn’t have the leverage or the grip on the trigger. He released the gun, spreading fingers, feeling the cool of the grass instead of the heat of the steel.

  The noose didn’t loosen, but Eric yanked him several yards away from the gun, dragging into the dirt and grass, then pounded him with a brutal kick to the back of the head.

  Darkness, pain. Luke lay stunned, gasping, the ache in his head bright as fire. Blood oozed on his ear, on his jaw. The gun barrel nestled against his hair.

  ‘You’re not going to screw me over!’ Spittle hit the back of Luke’s neck.

  Luke, hardly able to speak past the pain in his throat, nodded, facedown in the grass.

  Eric yanked him to his feet and shoved him toward a dirt road that cut through the grass. Loblolly pines rose in thin majesty around him and the air smelled of wet earth and gathering storm. In the distance, thunder sounded, clouds clearing their throats.

  Luke and Eric moved down the road and suddenly a light flickered on, high and bright. Luke blinked at the harsh brightness. He could see a chained gate cutting across the road. A light above the gate glowed. No person stood on the other side of the gate; the light must be keyed to a sensor.

  Eric shoved Luke against the gate. It was secured with chains and the links clattered as Luke stumbled against it.

  ‘Turn around.’

  Luke did and Eric held up a cell phone.

  ‘Smile.’

  Luke didn’t.

  ‘I want that bitch to see you’re being delivered in good condition. Smile.’

  Delivered. Luke bit his lip, then smiled.

  ‘Good.’ Eric fiddled with the smartphone. He clicked buttons, kept his gaze flickering between the keypad and Luke. Luke guessed the pine forest had been cleared of a width about forty feet for the scrabble of road. Eric could gun him down before he reached the woods.

  Eric put the phone up to his face. ‘I just sent you a photo of Luke Dantry. Where is she?’

  Eric listened, said, ‘You better not be lying.’ He clicked off the phone.

  ‘You called the British woman,’ Luke said.

  Eric didn’t answer. He powered a bullet into the chain’s lock. It shattered in the quiet, sent birds flocking up from the pines. Eric unwound the chains, creaked the gate open. He produced a small flashlight from his pocket and waved Luke forward with it.

  Luke shambled along, gravel kicking under his shoes. The road looked like it had been built for quiet murder. The only noise was his footsteps, the hiss of the wind, and a low song of owls. The dark smelled dank and the circle of flashlight danced at his feet. A soft rain began to fall.

  ‘Who’d you send my photo to?’ he asked. First the dead man in Houston, now him. ‘Who am I being delivered to?’ He risked a thrust. ‘Is it Jane?’

  Eric stared at him, shook his head. ‘You are done talking, period. You don’t say a word. I don’t need you making things worse for me.’ Like Eric was the victim, more than Luke or the dead homeless guy.

  The road split and Eric said, ‘Turn left. And hurry up. Hurry.’ He prodded Luke in the shoulder blades with the gun. Ahead he saw a soft glow of light.

  Luke stumbled forward, Eric urging him into a loping run.

  Suddenly the trees on each side opened up and a small cabin stood in the clearing of the pines. A thin light shone from a small window near the front door.

  Eric stopped him as they reached the door. Eric kicked over a flowerpot filled with dead remnants of rosemary. In the puddle of the light Luke saw two keys. One large, like a house key. The other was smaller, similar to the kind to undo a luggage lock.

  ‘Open the door,’ Eric ordered.

  Luke slid the key into the lock, eased the door open.

  They stepped into a dark, short entryway. The thin framing of light came from a closed door on his right. Eric put a hand on his shoulder - almost gently - and opened the door.

  It was a small room and it smelled of cleaning fluid and sweat. A small lamp stood in a corner and in its feeble circle of light Luke saw a woman. She lay on a metal bed. She was in her mid-twenties, dark haired. She wore jeans and a thin sweater. Her hair was a tangle over her face and she smelled of having gone a couple of days without a good wash.

  She stared at Luke in complete terror.

  ‘Baby, it’s me,’ Eric said, stepping from behind Luke.

  The woman coughed a whisper that sounded like oh God Eric and she trembled. ‘Oh my God, why, get me out of here …’

  ‘It’s all okay. It’s all okay,’ Eric said. Luke could see that shackles bound the woman to the bed - a set of chains braceleting her to the cot, at her wrists, another set of shackles at her feet.

  Eric hurried toward her but stopped himself. He made sure to not turn his back on Luke and he backed away from the bed. He pressed the small key into Luke’s hands. ‘Set her free.’

  ‘Eric, who is he? Where are the police?’ the woman asked.

  ‘Say nothing more. You’re safe, that’s all that matters.’ Eric stepped back, the gun not aimed at Luke but at the ready.

  ‘Why the hell do you have a gun?’ The woman demanded, an edge in her rising voice.

  ‘Just hush, babe, you’re safe now.’ Iron in Eric’s voice, a huge relief. ‘Safe and sound.’

  Luke fumbled with the keys. He unlocked the chains cuffing her wrists and the links fell to the mattress. She slapped the constrai
nts away as if they were radioactive. The links tinkled as they slid to the hardwood floor.

  ‘Thank you,’ the woman said to Luke. ‘Thank you so much …’

  ‘Don’t thank him,’ Eric screamed. ‘Don’t say a goddamned word to him!’

  Luke unlocked the shackles on her legs. He met the woman’s gaze; she was confused, glancing at him and then Eric. She kicked the chains away and wriggled past Luke off the bed. She fell against Eric’s chest, drinking in the comfort of his touch. He kept the gun aimed at Luke.

  ‘I want to go home,’ the woman sobbed into Eric’s shoulder.

  ‘So do I,’ said Luke.

  Eric kissed the top of the woman’s head, stroked her shoulder. He eased her toward the door and turned back to Luke. ‘Get on the bed.’

  Luke sat on the mattress’s edge.

  ‘I’ve moved heaven and earth to keep you safe,’ he said to the woman.

  She nodded, looking confused, and he kissed her forehead.

  ‘But I need you to do what I say. I need to keep the gun on him. So I need you to lock this guy to the bed.’

  Luke’s throat froze and the woman mumbled, ‘What?’

  ‘Lock him to the bed. He’s taking your place.’

  ‘Eric …’ the woman began. ‘You can’t abandon a person here. No. Let’s just go to the police, please, let’s just go to the police.’

  At the same time Luke stood. ‘No.’

  ‘Sit down!’ Eric shouted.

  ‘You’re not leaving me here.’

  ‘Aubrey, please,’ Eric said. ‘Do as I say.’

  ‘I don’t understand—’ the woman started to say and Eric yelled, ‘Don’t question me, not after I’ve put everything in my life on the line for you. Just do it, goddamn it!’ Eric pushed her toward the bed and following her, put the gun to Luke’s temple. ‘Stay still. Don’t struggle.’ He swallowed. ‘He’s a bad guy, baby. Don’t feel bad for him.’

  ‘Don’t listen to him, he kidnapped me—’ Luke shouted. He stopped. If he told this woman Eric had committed murder then Eric might kill him instead of leaving him here. He shut his mouth.