by Rebecca York
The car bumped down the ruts of the long driveway, throwing her around in the trunk. Each time she tried to brace against the walls of her moving prison she was pitched in another direction. When the car came to a screeching stop, she decided they must have reached the road. At least the ride should be smoother from now on, she told herself.
In the distance she could hear a police siren. Not an ambulance or a fire engine. They sounded different Hope bloomed, then faded as her captor stepped on the accelerator, and the vehicle sped away from the noise of the siren.
HIS HANDS fused to the steering wheel, Ben tore down the road toward Jenny’s house. Ahead of him, he could see a dark-colored car speeding in the other direction. If he’d been in the city and if he wasn’t on another mission, he would have given chase. Now his mind had only one focus—to make sure Jenny was all right.
Turning in at her mailbox, he took the narrow, rutted drive as fast as he dared. He screeched into the parking area behind a gray van with Randolph Electronics on the back door. Gun drawn, he approached the vehicle, but there was no one inside. So he turned and made for the steps.
When he saw Jenny’s open pocketbook lying on the front porch, he cursed silently. Carefully, he opened the front door. The hall was empty. So was the living room. Then he saw a shoe protruding from beyond the kitchen doorway. His heart stopped, until his eyes told him it was a man’s shoe. Not Jenny’s. Thank God.
He was in the kitchen in seconds and kneeling beside the man. There was blood on the floor around his head and a large lump on the back of his head. A quick check of his neck showed a pulse. He called for an ambulance and Howard County backup. Then he searched the house for Jenny. Bedroom, exercise room, kitchen, basement. The chance seemed bleaker with each empty room. In his gut, he knew he wasn’t going to find her anywhere in the house. But he had to look.
TRYING TO KEEP track of the route her captor was taking, Jenny clung to the illusion that she was doing something constructive. The car turned left. Then right—almost certainly at Route I. She struggled to imagine where they were going as the sedan sped up, changed lanes, made another turn. But her head was too fuzzy for her to remember more than a few turns. So why bother? She probably wasn’t going to get the opportunity to tell anyone about it.
To tell Ben, she corrected. Oh, God. Ben. He knew she’d gone home to meet the Randolph technician. Would he call? What would he do when she didn’t answer?
She wished she believed in telepathy as she tried silently to send him a mental message. Ben, he’s got me. Find him. Find me. Please find me, Ben. Because I’ve never been so terrified in my life. Ben, please, I need you.
She said his name over and over—asked him to come to her rescue. But it was the only thing she could do to give herself a measure of hope.
The vehicle came to an abrupt stop. So did her heart. It started again in double time as she waited for whatever was going to happen. Cars whizzed past. Then a larger vehicle—a truck—shook the car as it sped by. They were on the shoulder of a road. A road with traffic. Maybe she had a chance.
When the driver’s door opened, every muscle in her body went rigid. As she heard a key scrape in the lock of the trunk, she curled her hands into claws. Before she could bring them into position, he had whipped up the lid and pressed something cold and metallic to the back of her neck.
“It’s a gun,” he growled, “in case you can’t tell.”
She braced herself for the impact of a bullet
“I don’t want to shoot you. So don’t give me any trouble,” he whispered. “Nod if you understand.”
She nodded, the barrel of the gun playing with the hairs at the base of her neck.
The wind gave a sudden shriek, finding her heated body and turning the sweat on her skin to ice.
“Come on.” His large hand closed around her upper arm, and he started to drag her from the car. Then, incredibly, she heard another vehicle coming to a stop right behind them.
She felt his body shift as he shoved her roughly back into the trunk and pulled the blanket over her. “Say a word, and I shoot both of you,” he said in a voice only she was meant to hear.
“You need some help?” a pleasant male voice called.
“No, the, uh, groceries in the trunk shifted around. I’ve got to pack them better or I’ll break something.”
“A bridge is a bad place to stop,” the stranger commented.
“Tell me about it”
There was a long pause during which she could feel tension radiating from the hand that held her fast. He wasn’t lying. He was going to shoot unless the man drove away.
Leave, she silently urged the driver of the other car. Leave before you get us both killed.
As if he’d heard her mental plea, the other man started his car up and drove off.
Her captor leaned into the truck. “That was close,” he said in a more relaxed, almost conversational tone. “Got to hurry before someone else comes along and spoils things. Hope you have a nice time.”
Confused, she didn’t struggle when he pulled her from the trunk. Was he going to let her go, after all?
Her muscles cramped painfully, and she wavered on stiff legs. Grabbing her arm, he steadied her.
“This way.” He turned her to the side and nudged her forward until she felt a curved barrier press into her middle. The railing.
Grateful for the support, she started to anchor her hand around the top. He pulled her fingers away. “I wish you could look down and see where you are,” he said. “Or maybe it’s more interesting this way. The same as when you took me by surprise with that screwdriver. Bye-bye.”
In one swift movement, he pushed her up and over the railing, and she went sailing through space.
A scream tore from her throat as she plummeted like a rock dropped from a tower.
It was over before she had time for another scream. Her feet hit first. Hit something yielding and cold. The first contact was followed by a stinging pain as she plunged into—
Into water.
Instinctively she held her breath as she rocketed down, the water rushing past her like slick, deadly silk. The momentum of her fall carried her into the depths. Terror was mixed with clinical detachment. There was no way she could make it to the surface alive. But some reserve of inner strength, some will to fight for her life, made her kick her legs and flail her arms. With agonizing slowness, the downward spiral halted, and she began to struggle up.
Kicking, clawing her way, she rose through the resisting water. But it was agonizingly slow. Too slow. Her lungs were on fire, about to burst. She couldn’t hold her breath much longer. It was going to be over soon.
Just when she was about to drag in water, her head broke the surface, and she took a thankful gulp of air before going under again. This time she didn’t sink as far. Struggling upward again, she lifted her face toward the sun. Droplets splashed at her mouth and nose. But at least she could snatch in small breaths of air.
Her sodden shoes were dragging her down. Automatically, she kicked them off, as she struggled against shock and the terror squeezing its icy fingers around her windpipe.
BEN KEPT DRIVING, broadcasting a kidnapping report and a lookout for the speeding car, angry that he could give almost no details. The best thing he could hope for was that a state trooper might catch the bastard exceeding the speed limit.
He was heading down Route 104 when he caught a snatch of traffic on the Montgomery County police frequency. A motorist had reported a suspicious incident on Route 29. A car had been stopped at the bridge over the reservoir between Howard and Montgomery counties, and it looked like the man on the bridge was about to dump something in his trunk over the side.
Something—or someone? A deep and awful panic twisted in his insides. Not Jenny. He couldn’t do that to Jenny.
There was no concrete reason to believe it was true. He didn’t even know for sure if it was the same car. Yet a picture of the dark water far below the bridge loomed in his mind. In it, a
woman was struggling frantically with no idea of which way to swim to safety. He told himself he’d conjured the image out of his own fear. No one could be sadistic enough to toss a blind woman off a bridge into deep water. Yet he’d learned a long time ago to trust his intuition. The panic clawing at his vitals threatened to tear through his flesh. The only way to ease the pain was to press the car’s accelerator to the floor. He sped down the road, siren blaring, praying he could get to the bridge before it was too late.
SHE WAS IN DEEP water. She didn’t know where. Or how far she was from shore.
Her teeth began to chatter, and tears of fear and frustration burned in her eyes. The cold water felt as if it were seeping into her body, turning her to ice.
She was going to drown. There was no way out. Then she clenched her fists in fierce determination. He’d thrown her in here because he knew she’d be terrified and disoriented. He was sure she would drown—perhaps after she floundered around in terror for a while. But she wasn’t going to let him win. She was going to swim to shore. She had a date with Ben tonight and she was damn well going to keep it.
Clenching her jaw, she stopped the chattering of her teeth and tried to think where the shore might be. At first she thought of trying to judge the current. It would flow parallel to the bank, wouldn’t it? If she swam across it, she’d reach dry land. Holding as still as she could, she tried to feel the movement of the water. But the reservoir was too still for her to make the judgment.
Despair threatened to swamp her. Her arms and legs were getting numb, and she knew that she couldn’t stay in the water much longer. Then she heard a car cross the bridge and realized there was another way.
At first she could make out nothing but the vehicles passing far above her. Then she detected the sound of water lapping against rocks. Against the shoreline. Thank God.
Her hands and feet tingled with cold as she began to swim with a modified crawl stroke that kept her head out of the water. At first she had to keep stopping and listening for the lapping of the waves. Finally the rocks were close enough for the sound of the water hitting them to be distinct above her stroking arms and kicking feet. Changing the angle of her body, she found she could touch the muddy bottom.
With a grateful sob, she clawed her way up the submerged incline, banging her knee on a boulder as she made it to dry land. Finally, she sprawled on the bank, panting and shivering, her hair streaming with water, her clothes sodden. For several minutes all she could do was lie there gasping in air.
BEN SCREECHED to a halt at the Howard County end of the bridge, where a patrol car was already stopped.
The officer looked up questioningly as he trotted along the shoulder.
“Ben Brisco, Baltimore City police,” he identified himself. “I called in the kidnapping.”
“Well, if this incident is connected, the guy’s long gone. I didn’t spot anything suspicious in the water, but it’s hard to see with the sun coming at you.”
Ben shaded his eyes and squinted at the reservoir’s surface, afraid he would see something, afraid he wouldn’t.
When he detected nothing beyond the glint of sunlight on the rippling surface, he wasn’t sure whether to be terrified or relieved.
“Sounds like the motorist who called had an overactive imagination,” the Howard County officer commented.
Ben nodded, but he continued to scan the area below. He was about to turn away when he saw a flicker of movement on the rocks above the water. His heart in his throat, he made out the form of a woman clawing her way up the hill. A woman with long, honey-brown hair.
“Jenny!” He started down the steep slope, half sliding, half climbing. “Call an ambulance,” he flung over his shoulder.
Her head rose, and she appeared to be looking in his direction. Then she was scrambling toward him.
“Jenny, don’t move” he gasped out as he barreled toward her. “I’m coming.”
“Ben!” She ignored him, her movements more frantic as she changed course toward the sound of his voice. When she stumbled on a rock in her path and cried out, his anguished cry echoed hers. But she struggled up and kept moving. They met several feet farther down the slope, and he pulled her into his arms.
She was cold and shaking, her clothes sopping, her teeth chattering and she looked half-drowned. But she was alive. And she had made it out of the water and climbed twothirds of the way up the hill under her own power.
He held her close, trying to transfer some of his warmth to her chilled body, trying to shelter her as best he could.
She reached up, running her hands over his face, stroking his cheeks, his eyebrows, his lips. He realized with a strange sense of rightness that he was doing the same thing with her, as if touch had become his most compelling way to make contact
“Ben, it’s really you. You found me.”
He cradled her close and crooned low, soothing words, as much to reassure himself as her.
“What happened?” he croaked when he had enough control to speak.
“He…he was in the house when I got there. He hit me and I blacked out. I woke up in the trunk of the car.”
“I think I spotted him just after he left your access road. But I didn’t know what was happening.”
“He threw me over the side of the bridge. Into the water. Ben, it was the man from Marianne’s house. He wanted to—to punish me for getting the better of him,” she finished with a little sob.
He curled his body protectively around hers, even as he uttered a string of curses. If it was the last thing he did on this earth, he’d get the sadistic bastard.
“I—I swam to shore,” she gasped out. “I wasn’t sure which way, then I listened for the sound of the water lapping against the rocks.”
Lord, would he have had the presence of mind to do that? “That was pretty damn smart,” he growled.
“I wasn’t sure I could make it.”
“You did it,” he whispered, amazed at her strength and endurance even as he said the words. “You did it.”
The wail of an ambulance pierced the air. Ben looked up the slope, wondering how they were going to get a stretcher down the incline. “Can you walk if I help you?”
“Yes.”
Slowly, gently he helped her upward toward the road. Then the medics arrived and brought her the rest of the way. When they started to load her into the ambulance, her face turned frantically toward him, and she stretched out her hand. “Don’t leave me.”
“I won’t.”
A DETECTIVE NAMED Glen Patton from the Howard County police department arrived a few minutes after they’d brought Jenny to the emergency room at the county’s General Hospital.
“I’d like to get a statement from her as soon as possible,” the detective said after Ben told him what he knew.
Ben bit back a sharp answer. Usually he was the guy who pressed witnesses to talk. Now all he wanted was for Jenny to get some rest, but he knew enough not to interfere.
The nurse came in and said that the doctor had finished his examination. Ben charged through the door and saw they’d taken away Jenny’s wet clothing and dressed her in a hospital gown. A sheet covered her legs. He wanted to rush to her side, but with a curious detective looking on, he contented himself with asking if she was all right.
“Yes,” she answered in a slightly shaky voice.
“Detective Patton from the Howard County police is here,” he told her. “He wants to ask you some questions.”
“I’ll do my best.”
As Patton pressed her for information, Ben decided it was good Jenny couldn’t see him, because he was so angry it took all his willpower to keep from bashing his fist against the wall.
“Was there a sexual element to the assault?” Patton asked.
“No,” Jenny answered.
Ben watched her face. He thought she was telling the truth. Thank God.
“I don’t suppose you can give me a description of the man who abducted you?” Patton muttered.
“
I can tell you some things. He wasn’t too tall. About three or four inches taller than I am.”
“How do you know that?”
“His voice came from a little above my face. It was a tenor voice, with a slightly gravelly quality. He was smoking in my house. He probably smokes too much.”
“Anything else?”
“Well, his footsteps are heavy. And when he picked me up, his arms were big and his body was chunky. I banged against his chest with my fists. It was solid. I’d say he works out. And he was wearing a knit polo shirt, if that’s any help.”
“Everything you can tell us helps.”
She thought for a minute. “His hair is straight—and low on his forehead. I tried to scratch his eyes and had to push it out of the way. And, uh, his brows are thick.”
Ben had forced himself not to interrupt, but he couldn’t maintain the professional detachment another second. “Why didn’t you wait for me?” he asked.
Her head jerked toward him. “I—Randolph Electronics was in a hurry to pick up their computer. They told me Terry would meet me there—” She gasped. “Terry—is he all right?”
“He’s in the hospital with a blow to the head. I guess that’s the perp’s specialty,” Ben growled. “When he’s not thinking of more creative methods.”
“But he’s going to be all right?” Jenny persisted.
“I can check for you,” Patton said. Apparently he’d gathered that the other two people in the room might appreciate some privacy.
When he left, Ben said, “I shouldn’t have interrupted.”
Ignoring the apology, Jenny hurried to explain what had happened. “Rich Mazel, the man who gave me a ride, had to get back to the office for a meeting. He said the Randolph van was right there, and…he acted like I was crazy hesitating about going into my own house.”
“I’ll make sure Randolph hears about that,” he snapped.
“He didn’t know. He thought—”
“Stop making excuses for him! He was in such a hurry he could have gotten you killed.”
