by Rachel Rust
I kicked with all my might at the back of the trunk where I knew the taillights should be. We started to move. Down the gravel. Then onto a smooth highway. Faster and faster we went and I continued to kick. Maybe I could smash a taillight or at least mess with the wiring enough that it went out and they’d be pulled over for only having one light.
When the taillight maneuver didn’t work, I rubbed my hair and face into the carpet. I’d watched enough TV and movies to know if the car was found by authorities they’d take Q-tips and tweezers to search for my DNA. I needed to leave behind hair and skin.
When exhaustion got the best of me, I stared into the blackness, and fear was replaced by numbness. I was bound with duct tape. And even if that was undone, I wasn’t a fighter. I wasn’t a runner. And no doubt there’d be guns where we were going. Guns and big guys with muscles, plus guys with concoctions to make me sleepy and compliant.
No one knew where I was, not even me. And I knew that from here on out, my life was going to be one of delirious confusion and fear and longing to go home. If I was even kept lucid enough to remember home.
How long would it be until I forgot what my dad sounded like, what he looked like? As years went on, how would he and Josh deal with not ever knowing what happened to their daughter and sister? The pain was too much to bear. My mind blanked them out.
The car slowed. We turned left, then we stopped.
Maybe they need gas, I thought with a small spark of hope. Even bad guys had to get gas, or take a leak. There’d be other people at a gas station. Other people to hear me scream, even muffled through tape, and hear my feet pounding at the inside of the trunk.
But when the trunk opened, Pretty Boy smiled down at me, and I knew we weren’t at a gas station filled with people. The big red-faced guy replaced the pillowcase over my head and lifted me out of the car … with very little effort it seemed. I kicked and bucked my body, but he was far too strong to be affected by me.
He carried me away from the trunk and a second car pulled up.
Shit, another change in location.
Another way for my trail to be lost. But with this new car, I wasn’t put into the trunk, I was shoved into the backseat, shoved across the wide leather seat until I hit up next to another body. I flinched away from it, and then kicked and screamed, but the body next to mine put arms around me, holding me firm. Another body slid into the seat from the direction of the open door and, by the smell of him, I knew it was Pretty Boy. The car door shut, and I was now squished between two people in the backseat.
We bumped slowly along a pitted section of ground with the tires falling into and gripping their way out of shallow pot holes. No one spoke, and my thumping heart beats seemed to fill the space of the car—so loud that everyone must’ve heard it.
One hopeful thought sprang to mind: If I was in a backseat, there was a door on either side of me. Two escape options.
Carefully and discretely, I positioned my feet against the floor, ready to spring my body toward the door to my right, out of the unknown arms around me. In my mind, I discerned where the handle to the car probably was … about forty-five degrees to my right, shoulder height.
I took a deep breath. I counted down from five. Four. Three. Two. One. My feet pressed down on the floor, and my leg muscles tensed and then propelled the top of my body forward. The arms around me tightened, but not before I rammed my shoulder into the door. My fingers splayed out against the smooth leather interior until they hooked around the door latch. I yanked on it and the door popped open.
Voices yelled at me, and each other. The car came to an abrupt stop—which was helpful because the sudden stop made the door fly open all the way. But the arms around me latched on tighter and the body they belonged to yelled at me to stop.
The arms yanked me back, and I heard the door slam closed again. “Stop!” the body—a man—said again. And I froze. Not of fear but of confusion.
I knew his voice. I fought against his arms around me, not understanding what was going on. How could this be happening? Why am I hearing his voice?
“Natalie, stop!” he said again, this time grabbing my upper arms and giving me a stern shake. “It’s me!”
The cloth over my head was ripped away. In the darkness of the car, I could barely make out his brown eyes cloaked with thick, black lashes. The eyes of Eddie Martinez.
“It’s me,” he said again, this time softer. “Look at me. It’s okay … you’re okay.”
He peeled the tape from my mouth, and a gurgle bubbled up from within me—a mixture of a laugh and cry.
“Keep going,” Eddie told the man driving the car. Once again, the tires bounced along the pot-holed ground, and then straightened out onto a smooth road where the soft engine roared to a fast speed.
I stared at Eddie, as if the second I looked away he’d disappear and it would all end up being a mirage. Or maybe that’s exactly what was happening—maybe my mind was warped with fear, imagining my rescue, when really I was unconscious in the trunk of the other car. Maybe I had died and being rescued by Eddie was my own personal heaven.
My duct taped hands flew to Eddie’s face, fingers touching the rough pricks of a beard pushing through his skin. He was real, not a mirage. His hair was shorter than it had been two weeks ago, but not by much. Cleaned up but still shaggy and wild. The wound on his temple from where he had been hit with the butt of a gun had healed into a pink scar. His black eye and scratches from being beaten around that night had faded. He looked like he always had … except a million times better because he was real and he was right next to me.
“You’re really here,” I whispered, running my fingers down his face. I grabbed his left forearm. On the inside of his wrist was his 22 tattoo—the one he had gotten after his FBI training at Quantico. It was proof that it really was him.
Eddie looked at the tape on my wrists. “Cut ’em.”
Seated on the other side of me, Pretty Boy produced a small knife from his front pocket. I flinched.
“Han Kim, FBI,” he said. “Don’t worry. You’re safe.” But his voice was terse, as though he really didn’t give a shit whether I was safe or not. With two flicks he had the tape between my wrists sliced apart. Then he freed my ankles and ripped the tape away.
My ankles weren’t so bad because the tape had been around the denim fabric of my jeans. But my wrists were another story, burning painfully under the tape. Eddie pulled the tape off my flesh in small, slow motions, half-watching the tape, half-watching my face grimace in pain. The skin underneath was raw, oozing, and bloody in places.
Behind us, out the back window, a pair of headlights pulled out onto the road and drove away in the other direction. The same car I had just been in the trunk of.
But a second car was directly behind us, several car lengths back. When we turned right onto another highway, it turned right. When we sped up, it sped up.
“I think we’re being followed,” I said.
Eddie glanced out the back window. “We are being followed. That’s the plan.”
“But what if those are the people who kidnapped me?”
“That’s exactly who they are. The payment we sent was bogus. They’ve figured it out by now, and they’re probably pissed. They either want their payment, or they’ve been ordered to take you back. Maybe both.”
My stomach leaped into my throat at the thought of Brandon or his men still being so close to me, trying to reclaim me like merchandise. “Why would we want them to follow us? That doesn’t make sense.”
“Trust me, it does,” Eddie said. “You’ll see.”
Chapter Nine
Eddie’s body was warm against the cool air-conditioned interior of the car. I didn’t understand what was happening, but he seemed confident in our situation, and I was too mentally drained to worry. My exhausted frame leaned against his as I stared at his face. He hadn’t ignored me or my phone call. He had listened to his voicemail message about me being in the parking lot of the mall … and he h
ad acted on it. Now he was here. Next to me. He had come for me.
I wasn’t being sold. I wasn’t going to be drugged and taken away from my family forever and made into someone’s play thing. I was going to go home to my own safe bed, and I was going to see my dad and Josh again.
My face squished as my tear ducts sprang into action. Tears and sobs flew out of me faster than I could possibly hope to control them. Relief exited my body in every way possible—my muscles slumped, my mouth cried, and my mind shut down until I was nothing more than a pile of flesh and bones, weeping into Eddie’s shoulder.
My emotional meltdown was interrupted by Eddie’s hands taking mine in his.
“Natalie,” he whispered. “Look at me.”
I glanced up, aware of how messy my face was, covered in dirt and tears. Eddie removed a strand of hair that had stuck to my wet cheek. His thumb caressed under my eye, clearing away new tears. His eyes closed for a moment and when he opened them, he looked like he might kiss me. Or maybe that was just my tired, warped mind.
“You’re okay,” he said. “I promise.” He inspected the raw skin of my wrists. “We’ll get them cleaned up, okay?”
I nodded, laid my head against his shoulder, and closed my eyes. I didn’t sleep, I just listened to the fabric of his shirt shifting under my ear with every little move, and the silence of his protective presence.
We didn’t travel long before the car turned onto a smaller road, through an opening in a tall chain-link fence with razor wire looped on top. We drove onto an expansive concrete surface surrounded by enormous airplane hangars.
Small planes lined one side of the concrete.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“Johnson County Airport,” the driver responded.
I looked at Eddie. “Which is where?”
“Buffalo, Wyoming.”
I had been right. The van had driven me into Wyoming.
“Why did they take me into Wyoming? Why are we at the airport? Where are we going? Back to Rapid City?”
Eddie gave me a lopsided grin. “Still asking a lot questions.”
“And you’re not going to answer any of them, are you?”
“In time,” he replied. “But right now, you just need to trust me.”
I stared at his eyes—his beautiful eyes—and his words bounced around inside my skull. Trust me. While undercover, Eddie had asked me to trust him countless times. I had waffled in that trust—sometimes clinging to it as a life preserver, and other times flicking it away as a deceitful façade—but in the end, he had proven himself trustworthy. He really had been looking out for me that night.
“I trust you,” I said.
The driver stopped the car next to a small plane that had a set of stairs leading down to the tarmac. On either side of the stairs, men stood with straight backs and hands clasped in front of them. Their polo shirts stated FBI on the upper left corner, so this was obviously not an undercover operation, and if Brandon or one of his men were in the car that had followed us, they’d know for sure that I hadn’t been sold to anyone. They would know I had actually been rescued, not purchased.
Confusion plagued me, not understanding what was going on or how this was all supposed to work. Why would the FBI want to be so open about my rescue?
Han exited the car and grabbed my elbow to have me follow him. He and Eddie walked me to the stairs, which were steep and narrow. Inside, the plane was larger than I expected. It had the white plastic lining of a commercial jet, but there were only single seats on either side, creating a wide walkway down the center of the plane.
Toward the back stood two people: A woman of about fifty dressed in a dark suit, with short white hair and a kind smile upon sight of me, and a woman of about thirty with a thin build like mine, and shoulder-length brown hair under an FBI hat.
Han nudged me to walk to these people who were waiting for us. The older woman greeted me first and said, “Good to see you here, Miss Mancini.” She held out her hand. “Special Agent in Charge, Emily Thatcher. Glad to see you’re okay.” She had an easy smile and a soft southern accent.
I shook her hand, assuming ‘Special Agent in Charge’ meant she was the boss.
The younger woman shook my hand as she introduced herself. “Special Agent Samantha Baker. Looks like you’ve had one hell of a night.”
I let out a single laugh, finding zero humor in her words.
“Agent Baker, will you take her in the back, please?” Thatcher ordered.
Yep, the boss.
Baker motioned for me to follow her. I glanced back at Eddie, who gave me a reassuring nod.
At the back of the plane, Baker showed me to a tiny bathroom which barely had room for a sink and toilet. “It’s not much,” she said. “But you can wash up a little. Splash some water on your face, and there’s a travel pack with a small toothbrush and toothpaste.”
“Thank you.” The water against my tired face was a cool splash of relief, washing away some of the emotional grime of the night. And the bristles of the toothbrush and mint of the toothpaste revived my spirits a bit. I almost felt a little normal.
Once finished in the bathroom, Baker led me back to the other three.
“Are we ready?” Thatcher asked.
Baker nodded and turned to me. “I need your clothes.”
I glanced to Eddie, but his expression didn’t change. All of them stared at me blankly, as though stripping a girl of her clothing was all in a day’s work at the FBI.
I had imagined undressing for Eddie before, but not exactly in this kind of situation. In my head, we had been alone—maybe at his apartment in NYC—with low lighting and mood music. Not surrounded by other people in a small plane in Wyoming.
“Why do you need my clothes?” I asked.
Baker removed her FBI ball cap and then removed her hair. I gasped. The brown hair was a wig and from under it fell long, straight black-brown hair like mine. And that’s when I realized what was going on: She and I were trading places.
“Take these,” she said, handing me the hat and wig. “Now the clothes.”
Eddie, Han, and Thatcher turned their backs as Baker and I undressed. Even though his eyes were not on me, my skin tingled with the realization that I was in my bra and underwear just feet from Eddie—just feet from his lips, his hands, his everything. I wondered if he was thinking the same thing. I rather hoped so.
Baker dressed in my skinny jeans and black tank top. I cringed a bit, watching her put them on, knowing they were grimy and sweaty from all the shit I had been put through in the past several hours. But she didn’t seem to mind. All a part of the paycheck, I guessed.
I dressed in her khakis, blue FBI polo shirt, and chunky brown boots. Not exactly pleasing to my figure, but comfortable. She handed me a ponytail holder and told me to put my hair up. She then placed the brown wig on my head, tucking up all remnants of black-brown hair. I placed the FBI ball cap snuggly over my new head of hair, and she gave me a thumbs up.
Looking at her wasn’t exactly like looking in a mirror. She was older, with a smaller nose. But my clothes fit her well and her hair was nearly an exact match. She would fool anyone from a distance who didn’t know me well.
Baker cleared her throat and the other three turned around. Eddie’s lip curled up at the sight of me.
Thatcher gave an approving smile. “Very good, very good indeed.”
“Oops, one more thing,” Baker said. Before I could react, her hands flew around my waist, securing a belt. A belt holstering a black handgun to my right side. My right arm raised up a bit, unwilling to touch the gun. I stared up at Eddie and Thatcher, wide-eyed.
“Do I have to wear this?” I asked.
“You’ll be fine,” Eddie said. “It’s no big deal.”
“I can’t move with this thing attached to me. What if I shoot myself in the foot?”
“The safety’s on.”
“What’s that?”
“Oh, good Lord,” Han said with a sneer.
Eddie shot him a dirty look and then looked back at me. “Trust me, the gun’s not gonna go off.”
“It’s not even loaded,” Baker added.
Thatcher smiled and clapped her hands together with a fair amount of enthusiasm. “I think we’re ready.”
Chapter Ten
The plane took off just after one in the morning, headed for Denver. Or so I was told.
I wasn’t on it.
Agent Baker and my old clothing had stayed on the plane. Thatcher, Han, Eddie, and I—my fake FBI agent self—had piled into a black Ford SUV and driven away. Leaving Fake Natalie in the plane.
Sitting next to Eddie in the backseat of the SUV, I finally realized why he had wanted us to be followed by the kidnappers. The plane and Agent Baker were a decoy. Fake Natalie was headed to Denver. So the kidnappers were now headed to Denver. It was perfect—lead the kidnappers away from me, and lead them to Denver … probably straight into an FBI trap.
But all I cared about in that moment was that they were no longer following me. I was safe, riding in a comfortable car, with Eddie by my side. I wanted my house. My bed. A hot shower.
The three-hour drive to Rapid City felt much longer, but eventually we made it to the rolling hills littered with small city lights. We exited the interstate and ended up downtown. Which was not at all near my house.
“What are we doing here?” I asked Eddie.
Thatcher answered. “Keeping you safe.”
“Can’t I go home?” I whispered to Eddie.
Pain and kindness flashed through his eyes. “Not right now. It’s not safe. And until our operation in Denver contacts us, we don’t know that people won’t be back here looking for you.”
“People? Like who? That guy with the accent, or that Brandon guy? Who are they?”
“We’ll explain it,” Eddie said. “But let’s first concentrate on getting you somewhere safe.”
