Nina Wright - Whiskey Mattimoe 07 - Whiskey, Large

by Nina Wright

  “That hurt, didn’t it? Especially since you didn’t see it coming. I’ll have to use it on Chester next time.”

  “There’s not going to be a next time,” I growled. “You’re done hurting Chester.”

  “You’d like to think so, wouldn’t you? But who’s going to help you now?”

  Helen dropped the mirror to the seat and negotiated another sharper-than-necessary turn, spraying gravel. Chester’s limp body rocked in his seat.

  “Good thing that kid always buckles his seatbelt,” she said, “or he’d be bouncing off the windshield by now.”

  When she cackled, I wanted to hurt her more than I’d ever wanted to hurt anybody. I thought about lunging for her neck, her hair, her throat, but if I caused her to lose control of the vehicle, we’d all suffer. We might die.

  “Use a hankie before you get blood all over the car,” Helen told me.

  I reached for one, and found myself in the grip of pain again. Not from my nose. Baby. I lowed like a freaking cow.

  “I’m driving as fast as I can,” Helen muttered. “Just don’t push.”

  As soon as she said it, I wanted to do it. In fact, I wanted to do it more than anything except hurt Helen. Pushing sounded like a great idea. A wonderful idea. The best idea. Vaguely, through my haze of nose pain and Baby pain, I recalled the birthing class teacher saying not to push until the end. I couldn’t remember why, though, and I sure did want to push.

  I also wanted to do something, anything, to help Chester, and of course I wanted to not have my baby in the backseat of a moving car with a crazy sadist at the wheel.

  Helen mistakenly thought all our phones were gone. They weren’t gone. I could still text somebody for help, if I could just reach my smart phone that was buried inside my purse and manage to send a message without her noticing.

  Pressing the hankie to my bleeding face with one hand, I used the other hand to reach into my bag.

  “Keep both your hands where I can see ’em,” Helen said, “or I’ll hurt Chester so bad you won’t be able to live with yourself.”

  It wasn’t a risk I was willing to take. Withdrawing my hand from my bag, I obediently placed both paws on the hankie. Blood from my nose was soaking the fabric so fast I nearly gagged.

  “I need another Cassina hankie, please.” My voice sounded nasal and very nervous.

  Helen eyed me suspiciously.

  “Move real slow,” she said.

  I did as I was told, pressing a fresh wad of cloths to my face like a big bandage. The smell and taste of my own blood almost gagged me. If I hadn’t been so stressed, I was sure I would have puked.

  “Where are we going?” I said, mostly to distract myself.

  “We’re not going to CMC. You got that right,” Helen said.

  “I need a doctor. I’m having a baby.”

  “We all know you’re having a baby, Miss Whiny-Pants. You won’t get a doctor, but you will get a midwife. Sort of. I know a few things about catching babies.”

  I gulped. “You?”

  For the first time since she’d struck Chester, I was truly terrified.

  “That’s right,” Helen said. “You’ll take whatever help you can get, and the help you’re going to get is me. I’m delivering your baby.”

  She beamed a smile at me in the rearview mirror. It was nothing like Helen’s normal smile, but then nothing about this moment was remotely normal.

  “I’m delivering it, then I’m going to keep your baby.”

  My brain couldn’t process that. “What?”

  “Oh, yes, Miss Whiny-Pants. Your baby is mine.”

  30

  “Incidentally, your baby is a girl,” Helen declared. “I’ve been watching pregnant women for years, and I can always guess what sex their baby is. I’m gifted that way.”

  I stared, speechless, at her insanely smiling reflection.

  “I know a lot about babies,” she continued. “More than most women. Now, finally, I get to have one of my own.”

  Panic threatened to overwhelm me. I struggled to control my breathing. Having a broken nose didn’t help. Periodically, I had to spit into the hankie to keep from swallowing blood or throwing up.

  Mom had been right to dislike Helen, but the woman was wildly more unstable than Mom knew. Far worse than a corporate spy, Helen was a child-attacker and kidnapper.

  I had to think fast. Baby’s life, Chester’s life, and my life depended on it.

  “What will you do with a baby?” I said finally, my tone neutral.

  “What does anybody do with a baby?” Helen retorted. “I’m going to raise her. Not the way you would, of course. Your generation is terrible at parenting. Just look at Cassina. I’m going to do it right. I’ll be strict with my little girl but loving, too. She’ll learn to take care of me in my old age.”

  In your old age, she’ll be all of five, I thought. Crazy, crazy lady.

  Maybe if I could just keep Helen talking, she wouldn’t hurt anybody worse than she already had. Maybe that would give me enough time to think of a way to stop her, some plan that might actually work. If only I didn’t have this little issue called childbirth going on.

  “Where will she go to school?” I said.

  Helen pulled a face. “School? It’ll be years before I need to think about that. I’ll probably home-school her when the time comes. Why? Do you have a college request?”

  That cracked Helen up. She laughed so raucously I thought she might lose control of the car. We were traveling at a faster than safe speed on unpaved back roads. I watched the top of Chester’s unconscious head bob with the vehicle’s vibrations.

  “Actually, I do have a college request,” I said. “Jeb and I were hoping to send her to State.”

  “Well, I bet you’d like to hear me say I’ll bear that in mind,” Helen said, “except I won’t. My little girl won’t need college. She’s going to stay with me. Her mama can teach her everything she needs to know.”

  “I’m sure you’ll do what you think is right,” I said with a calm that amazed me.

  “I’m already doing what I think is right,” Helen said. “Also, whatever I have to do in order to do what is right.”

  She glanced at Chester, then reached over and shook him. When he didn’t respond, my chest tightened.

  “Still out cold,” she remarked. “I’m a lot stronger than I look. You better be careful, Miss Whiny-Pants. Hurting people is the easy part. I don’t mind doing that one bit.”

  With that, she promptly cracked Chester on top of his head with the edge of the metal hand mirror. The snap of the blow on his skull froze my blood. Blood trickled from the wound, and Chester whimpered like a child in a nightmare.

  This was a real-life nightmare.

  “You’re a monster,” I hissed.

  “Oh, no, not a monster,” Helen replied. “Just a woman who finally figured out how to get what she wants.”

  “By hurting innocent people?”

  “Innocent?” She snort-laughed. “Nobody’s innocent. They deserve what they get.”

  “Chester doesn’t deserve any of this,” I said.

  Helen shrugged. “Chester thinks he’s a lot smarter than he is, and that ticks me off.”

  “No child deserves to be hurt,” I protested.

  “My baby doesn’t deserve to be hurt,” Helen said. “That’s because I’m smart, and I deserve her. You’re dumb and selfish and way too lucky, so you deserve to get hurt.”

  Another cramp seized me, and I cried out.

  “Hurts, doesn’t it?” Helen said with amusement. “Just think, you’re going to give birth without any drugs at all.”

  Call me the Queen of Denial. Somehow I hadn’t connected being kidnapped to delivering my baby without drugs. I had read enough about childbirth to suspect that I might be too far along already for them to do me much good. Still, Helen would be the most sadistic of midwives. My only hope for mercy was that she would want to ensure the safe delivery of “her” child.

  “Wha
t about Chester,” I said, panting. “What’s going to happen to him?”

  “I’m not going to tell you,” Helen said. “I’ll just let it add to your guilt and pain. For the rest of your life, you’ll blame yourself because that little boy loved you so much… .”

  Something inside me snapped or at least opened up, way up. I yowled like a wild animal.

  “Oh, yes,” my driver said, smirking into the mirror. “I look like a sweet little old lady, so everybody assumes I am. Your mother knew better, but you wouldn’t listen to her.”

  Helen’s hand shot toward Chester, and I screamed. She simply smoothed his now bloodied hair.

  “Poor little rich boy,” she cooed. “Born with everything and nothing.”

  I must have moaned again.

  “Settle down, Miss Whiny-Pants. It’s not good for my baby if you’re stressed.”

  My entire body quaked with rage and helplessness. If only I could reach my cell phone and text for help. If I did, and Helen saw me, she would hurt Chester again, worse than ever, I had no doubt. How else could I save us?

  Wherever Helen was taking us could be even worse than where we were right now. My best hope seemed to be distracting her long enough to text for help.

  “Oh my God!” I screeched, even though I was between labor pains.

  “Don’t push,” Helen reminded me sternly.

  “Too late. Baby’s … almost … here.”

  I proceeded to make ungodly sounds, even more dramatic and atavistic than the repertoire I’d used at Dani’s. About half of them were real.

  “I’m having this baby now! In the car!”

  Helen stomped the accelerator. Chester’s limp form jumped when the vehicle lurched. I wailed.

  “Control your breathing,” Helen said. “Do not push.”

  “Can’t help it. Owwwww.”

  A cell phone rang, jarring me with its old-fashioned desk-phone jangle. That was not a ringtone I had set on my phone, and it wasn’t synched to the Town Car wireless system, either. That ring was coming from Helen’s personal cell.

  “I thought you lost your phone,” I said through clenched teeth.

  “That’s what I wanted you to think, so you wouldn’t know how to reach me. Or control me. Ball’s in my court, bitch.”

  Working the phone out of her shirt pocket, she checked Caller ID and responded with a syllable somewhere between “yeah” and “huh.”

  I could hear a man’s voice but not what he was saying.

  “She’s in the car, and she says the baby’s almost here,” Helen said.

  “I want a doctor,” I shouted. “I need a doctor!”

  “Shut up,” she told me.

  Apparently, the man on the other end had a lot to say, and I would have liked to hear it. Better yet, I would have liked to know who he was. However, I had more pressing business, literally, and I needed to text for help while Helen was distracted.

  Keeping up a low moan punctuated with occasional yelps, I used my left hand to press the hankie to my face and my right hand to grope inside my bag for my phone. When my fingers closed around it, my heart rate doubled. Now, if only I could text like a teenager, super-fast without even looking. That wasn’t possible, but I managed a different kind of miracle. I texted while controlling a bloody nose and transitioning into late-stage labor.

  As Helen listened to the guy on her phone, I fired off group texts to Jenx, Brady, MacArthur, Jeb, and Mom.

  The first one was intended to get their attention:

  HELP! Crazy Helen kidnapped Chester, Baby & me!

  The other texts were to tell them what was happening and where:

  Seriously! Helen has us in Town car. Chester hurt bad. Baby coming fast.

  Helen plans to keep Baby for herself. Won’t drive us to hospital.

  Driving us NE fr vestige on township rds. HELP!!

  “Not my fault Cassina’s kid came along,” Helen told the man on the phone. “We’ll dump him somewhere.”

  “You’re not dumping him,” I yelled.

  Poor Chester. None of this was his fault. Desperately, I tried to set aside my guilt and anxiety to focus on positive action. “What would Chester do?” I asked myself. Staring at my phone, I knew. Chester would tweet this.

  Helen was listening to the guy ramble on again. I opened the Twitter app and there was my account. I had no clue what Ben Fondgren was up to, but if he had done even some of his job—and not undone it—I should have a slew of local followers.

  I drew a steadying breath and tweeted:

  #UberSpringer = Helen Kaminski. She kidnapped Chester and me. We’re in Town Car going NE from MS. Seriously! HELP!!!!

  I closed the app and returned the phone to my purse.

  Helen was still listening to the man. Seconds later her phone pinged. Then it pinged again. And again.

  “Dammit,” she said, adding for the benefit of the guy on the line, “I got tweets.”

  I froze, suddenly recalling the Law of Unintended Consequences, otherwise known as screwing up. If Helen were, in fact, UberSpringer, as I believed her to be, her followers were re-tweeting my tweet. The next time Helen checked her account, she would instantly know I had tweeted for help.

  I winced, equally from Baby pain and chagrin. My lack of social media savvy had turned a brainstorm into a tsunami, a tsunami that could crush Chester, Baby, and me.

  31

  “I’m not stupid,” Helen snapped at the guy on the phone. “I know I don’t have time to check Twitter.”

  The dude must have assumed she would want to because everyone does. Helen’s phone pinged at least eight more times in rapid succession. She muttered an obscenity and told the guy it wasn’t directed at him.

  “Just put the blindfold on her before you get any closer,” he said so loudly I could hear.

  The man’s twangy voice sounded young, way younger than Helen. Probably younger than me. I wondered where he was, and who he was.

  “Got it.” Helen closed the phone and cursed again.

  “You didn’t tell him you hurt Chester,” I said. “You didn’t tell him you have an unconscious kid in your car.”

  Helen scowled. “Stay out of it, Miss Whiny-Pants. It’s your baby I want, not your lip.”

  She slowed the Town Car, clearly searching for a place to pull off. Suddenly, she swerved onto a disused dirt drive leading to a tumble-down barn set far off the road. I saw no trace of the original farmhouse.

  “This will work,” Helen said, but she didn’t seem pleased.

  By that point, I just wanted us to get where we were going so I wouldn’t give birth in the backseat. If she had to blindfold me first, fine. What difference would it make? Baby wasn’t waiting for anybody.

  The driveway, or the part of it that remained, was all ruts and bumps. I thought we might break an axle, or break Baby loose from my body. Arching my back in agony, I didn’t stifle my cries.

  “Don’t push!” Helen shouted, but I was way beyond listening.

  The car rounded the barn. Helen was taking us behind the structure, where no one could see us from the road. I concentrated on my breathing. If Jeb had been here to coach me, he would have kept me focused on him and his commands. Determined to block out my fears, I almost wished Helen would blindfold me. She brought the car to a stop but kept the engine running. She stepped out and walked around to my side.

  “You’ve got to get out so I can blindfold you,” Helen said.

  I laughed for the first time all day, then I cried from the labor pain.

  She seemed to recall my mobility issues. “Lean toward me so I can tie it in place.”

  I opened one eye. She moved stiffly toward me, holding out a giant Cassina Enterprises hankie as a blindfold.

  I heard a deep rumble as if a large limb had separated from the trunk of a tree, but the sound was too close. A heavy grunt followed as Helen collapsed against me.

  I believe I screamed.

  “Are you okay?” a familiar voice inquired.

 
The voice was Chester’s, and it came from the other side of unconscious Helen.

  “Oh my God! Are you okay?” I said, tears racing down my face.

  Chester’s bruised but smiling face appeared over Helen’s slumped shoulder.

  “I was faking being unconscious,” he announced, “but I’ve got a terrible headache, and I’m pretty sure my nose is broken.”

  I was pretty sure it was, too. He sounded as nasally congested as I did, but he was conscious and moving and had just clobbered Helen.

  “How did you do that?” I asked, nodding at her slouched form.

  Chester held up a rock the size of his fist.

  “The rock was an afterthought,” he said. “I was going to use the hand mirror, but I saw the rock on the ground when I popped open the car door. So I picked it up, and I think it made all the difference.”

  I agreed. The back of Helen’s head bled profusely, her silver hair turning magenta. The sight of blood usually made me puke. If I hadn’t had so many other issues, I’m sure I would have.

  Chester regarded the rock in his hand.

  “I hate violence, Whiskey, so I didn’t put all my strength into it. I just did what I needed to do. To save you and Baby.”

  “You did save us, Chester,” I whispered. “We can never, ever thank you enough.”

  He used most of his muscles to pull Helen off me. Grunting like a world-class weightlifter, he managed to drag her limp body from the car and dump it on the ground. He checked her pulse.

  “She’s not dead. Glad I used a smaller rock.”

  Removing Helen’s cell phone from her shirt pocket, he told me he was going to dial 9-1-1. I would have thanked him, but another seismic pain rolled through me, so I yowled instead.

  Mine wasn’t the only cry filling the air. Chester heard it, and stood up to scan the horizon. I tried to lean forward so that I could look, too.

  “Roo-rooooo!”

  Abra was out there, near enough that we could hear her—on a road, in a field, somewhere just out of sight, the late afternoon sun no doubt making her blonde coat shimmer. How often I had seen her in such moments of grace. Now she barked again, offering up the ghostly yet persistent call of the Afghan hound.