Edge of the Heat 2 (Westwood Harbor Corruption)

by Ladew, Lisa

  Emma opened her eyes, her tongue thick in her mouth. She wanted to breathe hard and suck in great gasps of air, but her lungs wouldn’t respond. The room above her pressed in on every side, dark, so dark, except for a pinprick of light to one side.

  “Em, I’m here, can you hear me?” a whisper came from the dark.

  Vivian’s voice! The room slammed into place, but it wasn’t a room at all. They were in the compartment under the bed in RV, which swayed and rumbled beneath them.

  Emma opened her mouth and purposely drew in as much oxygen as possible, still feeling like she was suffocating.

  “Shhhhh, it’s ok, it’s the drug he gave you. It’s going to make you feel like that for a few more minutes until it clears.”

  Emma tried to relax. She couldn’t, she still felt like she was drowning.

  “It’s called Lofentanil, it’s like Heroin, but 100 times more potent and it lasts for 2 days. He already pulled over and came back to check your breathing once, so I figured it was safe to wake you up.”

  “Wake me up? How?” Emma whispered back sputtering, trying not to gag on her own tongue.

  “He has Narcan too, in case of an overdose. I gave you the Narcan.” Emma knew what Narcan was. They carried it on the ambulance. If someone overdosed on an opioid like heroin or morphine, most likely it would depress their breathing to the point where they might stop. An injection of Narcan would kill their high and get them breathing again within a few minutes.

  “How, h-how,” Emma tried to ask something, but her mind lost it.

  “How did I get the Narcan? I’ve been working on getting out of my handcuffs since he first brought me in here and I finally did. My hair tie has a long metal piece on it and I used that. I knew how to do it because we got some handcuffs stuck on my friend Theresa at a bachelorette party last year. Then I was able to break out that board at the top and get out into the room. The Narcan was in the same drawer as the other drugs. He’s got a ton in there.”

  Emma rolled her eyes towards Vivian, her hands still handcuffed and her muscles as heavy as lead.

  “So that’s your ex-husband huh, nice guy. If you don’t mind though, let’s not invite him over for Christmas this year.”

  Emma couldn’t believe her ears. Was that a joke? Norman had kidnapped both of them and had God-knows-what plans for them and Vivian was joking about it? A short giggle shot out of her in spite of herself, but it quickly dissolved into tears.

  “Shhh, shhhh, Emma I’m sorry, I didn’t meant to joke.”

  Emma pulled herself together, and dragged in more deep breaths. “No, I’m sorry. You’re right. Norman shouldn’t come for Christmas this year.” Emma tried to smile but only grimaced. “Did he give you the drug too?” she asked her sister.

  “Yep.” Emma could barely make out in the dim light that Vivian was smiling.

  “Then how come you aren’t unconscious? Were you faking earlier?”

  “Yes, I was faking. Remember my tumor? Well I take a medicine every day that competes with opioids like Lofentanil for receptors in the body, so they don’t affect me. When he injected me I wasn’t sure what he expected to happen but I thought pretending to pass out was a safe guess. When you passed out and your breathing was so slow I figured it must be an opioid. I was so happy to find the Narcan, although Norman seemed to think you were breathing fast enough.”

  “Maybe I need some more Narcan, I still feel really out of it.”

  “I don’t think so, it just needs another minute or so to work fully. But you will need more in an hour or two maybe. I’m not sure how long Narcan lasts, but Lofantanil can last for 2 days.”

  “2 days!”

  “Crazy, I know. We could be deep in the heart of Mexico by then.”

  “Do you think he’s taking us to Mexico?” Emma whispered frantically?

  “Oh yeah, after he injected me he said ‘I sure hope you can speak Spanish,’ and laughed.”

  “Oh man, we gotta get out of this bus. If he gets across the border with us, who knows what he’ll do with us! And Craig will have a harder time getting to us in Mexico too, I bet.” Emma tried hard to think. “Can you get these handcuffs off of me?”

  “Yeah, but maybe we should have a plan first. If the RV stopped right now, I would put mine back on and pretend to be passed out,” Vivian motioned to her handcuffs above their heads, still fastened to the metal ring.

  “Where is the empty syringe?”

  “I ripped a little hole in the carpet next to the board and shoved it in there.”

  “Good thinking.” Emma was a little in awe of her sister’s ingenuity. And very glad for it. If they were going to get out of this mess, they would need all the good ideas they could come up with. As much as Emma would like to imagine that Craig was hot on their heels and about to swoop in and save them, she knew the reality was probably very different. She took a moment to hope that he was OK, where ever he was, and then she turned her mind back to their problem.

  “Ok, how about the window at the back of the RV, just over the bed. Can we get out it? We could wait until Norman had to slow down or stop for something and then jump out and just run.”

  Vivian thought for a second. “Maybe. I didn’t look closely at it. Should I go look, or should I get you out of the handcuffs first?”

  “You should get me out of the handcuffs. Just in case.” Emma was starting to feel a bit better. Her muscles felt lighter, like maybe she could stand and lift things.

  Vivian fished a hand into her pocket and came out with a heavy duty purple hair tie with a small metal clip holding it together. Or at least it had been a hair tie. Vivian had pulled it apart so now it was just a piece of fabric with the clip at one end. She stuck the metal clip in the keyhole of Emma’s handcuffs and levered it up just a bit. After a few tries, she was able to pull first one cuff off, and then the other.

  “Ok, I’m going to go look at the window, stay here.” Vivian low-crawled to the top of the compartment, near the metal rings and pushed the board she had broken fully out of the way, then levered herself out, pushing with her feet on the metal rings.

  Emma watched her go, then brought her arms down to her sides and massaged them, her ears alert for any sign that the RV was slowing.

  After a minute, Vivian crawled back in, feet first, and wiggled down to lay next to Emma again. The excitement on her face gave Emma hope.

  “It’s an emergency exit. There’s a big red handle to pull and the whole window pops off. That’s our plan. He’s going to have to stop and get gas soon. We pop that window off and run. We’ll have to be quick though, because only one of us can fit through it at a time.”

  “Ok, that’s the plan then, let’s get out of here.”

  Vivian crawled out first and Emma followed. Her legs didn’t want to support her at first, they felt weak and rubbery. But boy did it feel good to stand up! Sunlight streamed through the windows. It was hard to believe they had just been handcuffed to the floor under a bed by a madman.

  Emma stretched a little and bounced up and down on the balls of her feet, trying to get some circulation going. She eyed the window. It was very small. She put one knee on the bed and read the instructions on how to get it open, and then tried to see how far the drop was on the other side. She thought maybe she saw a ladder that they could climb down but it was hard to tell from this angle.

  Vivian reached past her and pulled the little dresser drawer open. Inside was a red drawer organizer, with over 20 syringes inside.

  Emma’s eyes grew wide. She lifted a few syringes to read the labels. Lofantanil, Heroin, Narcan, Oxycontin. What was Norman doing with all of these? Remembering what Vivian said, she slipped a couple of Narcan syringes into her left pocket. As an afterthought, she grabbed a handful of Lofantanil and slipped them into her other pocket.

  Emma looked around the room for anything else they could use. The door was closed tightly, so there was no way Norman could know they were up, as long as they didn’t make too much noise. She got up
on the bed and opened the cabinets above it. They were full of Norman’s clothes. She started pulling clothes out and feeling through them, looking for anything that could be a weapon. If she knew Norman, he probably had a full cache of guns and knives hidden somewhere.

  Finding nothing, she moved on to the small closet on the side of the bed. More clothes, shoes, boots, empty holsters. Emma checked every holster and felt every piece of clothing. She even got down on her hands and knees and looked for secret compartments in the floor of the closet, but came up empty. If only Norman had stored a gun back here. She was pretty sure she could shoot him if she had to.

  She cast her mind back to the open area behind the driver’s compartment. Would Norman store his guns in one of the cabinets up there? Likely the big one next to the fridge? Or was there a secret compartment somewhere else in the big vehicle.

  She looked out the window. Dry, flat land flew past. One car was behind them far off in the distance. Occasionally a car passed them going the other way. Were they on I-5? This stretch of road didn’t look very heavily traveled. If they were on I-5 they must already be south of all of the big cities.

  She craned her neck, trying to see a street sign or something that would give her a clue as to where they were. Vivian got up on the bed next to her and whispered “I’m just going to get into position here. As soon as we pull over or start slowing way down I’m going to pop this window.”

  “Ok.” Emma kept watching out the window. For miles and miles it seemed like she saw nothing but flat, dry, empty land. The signs on her side passed too quickly for her to see what they said, and the signs on the other side were too far away on the divided highway. She felt sleepy and dull, the swaying and constant noise of the RV lulling her into a relaxed state. She tried to fight it but found herself wanting to lay down and curl up on the bed…

  Vivian pinched her arm, hard. Emma sat straight up, alarmed. They were slowing down! She jumped up and crammed her face against the side window, trying to look in both directions at once. No sign of civilization, just miles and miles of empty, dry land like before. Were they coming up on a gas station?

  The RV took an exit ramp, turning onto a side road, then an immediate hard right onto a dirt road. Dust flew everywhere, partially obscuring Emma’s view. No gas station this way for sure. Norman kept slowing. Oh no! If he just pulls off onto the side of this road and comes back here there will be nowhere to hide! No cover, no people, no nothing. It was at least 3/4s of a mile back to the freeway where there would hopefully be cars zooming by. He could pick them off easily if that’s what he decided to do. He probably could even catch one of them and pull her back here. But what could they do? They didn’t have time to get back under the bed. They had to go for it. He couldn’t catch them both. Emma was determined to give her sister a fighting chance at getting out of this mess.

  “Do it, open it!” she hissed to Vivian. Vivian pulled the red metal bar, putting all of her weight into it. It gave, and the window popped right off, falling onto the bed. Vivian stuck her head out and looked around.

  She pulled back in. “We can climb down the ladder, it’s on the far side but we can reach it.” she whispered to Emma. The RV was slow enough now that there wasn’t any road noise to mask their voices.

  “Go, go.” Emma made shooing gestures with her hands. Vivian turned around and stuck her feet out the window first, holding on to Emma to steady herself.

  The RV came to a full stop.

  She felt for the ladder with her foot, finding it and reaching a hand out to grab the ladder with. Emma flipped her feet around and poked them out the window. She could hear Norman’s footsteps in the RV. Frantically, she felt around with her right foot for the ladder. She couldn’t find it. Screw it, she didn’t have time for this. She pushed with all her might, trying to heave her body backwards out the window as the door opened. Norman’s placid face erupted, eyes going wide as he saw her almost all the way out.

  Emma wiggled her hips and pushed harder, raking her shirt up and bruising her breasts on the window. But she got it, her head was out, she was falling to the ground. Ooooph, the air was knocked out of her lungs as her legs collapsed beneath her. A sharp pain shot through her left ankle. Puffs of dust exploded around her. Vivian was there immediately, helping her up. They ran around to the side of the RV where Norman couldn’t see them. Emma didn’t see anything to run towards except the highway. “Vivian, the road, we have to run to the road.” She could hear Norman pushing his way out of the window after them.

  They ran. Emma ignored the pain in her ankle as long as she could, but it did slow her down. Vivian pulled her. “Come on Emma, hurry”

  “Go Vivian, go, get help. Flag down a car. Tell them to call the cops, go. I can’t run any faster. You have to go or he’s going to catch both of us.”

  “No, Emma, I -”

  Emma interrupted her, terror in her voice. “Vivian GO, you have to run! You have to tell Craig where we are!” She gave her sister a little push, still running herself.

  Emma saw the regret already in Vivian’s eyes, but she did as Emma wanted. She turned to the road, tucked her head and arms in and ran. Emma couldn’t have kept up with her at that speed even without a hurt ankle. Heck, Norman probably didn’t even have a chance of catching her. She was fast.

  Emma ran too, landing on her hurt ankle as lightly as she could. She could hear Norman behind her, gaining on her. Well at least he didn’t stand at the RV and mow them down with bullets. At least Vivian still had a chance.

  Emma felt a hand entwine in her hair and jerk her to the ground. Norman landed on top of her, driving all the air out of her lungs for the second time in a few minutes. She felt more pain in her ankle, but it was no longer as important as the crushing pain in her ribs.

  “Bitch,” Norman spat out, trying to catch his breath. Emma squirmed beneath him but couldn’t dislodge his hold on her.

  Hurry Vivian, please get help, she thought as she writhed in pain in the parched, baked dirt.

  Chapter 22

  Craig sat in the back of the helicopter, scanning the roads for the large dark RV.

  “Hawk, they must have turned off, they had to have, or we’d be on them by now.” His voice sounded tinny and strange to himself inside the headset.

  “Yeah, I think you’re right. If we don’t come on them by the next bridge we will backtrack and check Highway 99.”

  They were less than two hour’s drive from the Mexico border. The team on the ground was coordinating with border patrol to stop all RVs and arrest Norman on sight, but Craig was afraid Norman had other plans. They all knew there were plenty of places to cross illegally. Or what if something went wrong. What if he were changing vehicles right now. The bridge cams hadn’t picked him up for an hour, and the state police hadn’t found him yet either, even though they had the urgent APB.

  If Norman slipped through to Mexico their chances of finding him would instantly drop in half or maybe less. Especially if he already had a support team over there. Or Heaven forbid if he had a contact at the border who would just wave him through and claim not to have gotten the message.

  Craig’s mind ran down a list of a hundred things that could go wrong, a hundred ways that Emma could be stolen out of his life forever. He squeezed his fingers to the back of his neck, trying to calm the pounding in his skull.

  The pilot broke through his thoughts. “Call on the radio for you Agent Masterson, I’m patching it through.”

  Craig sat up straighter, the road temporarily forgotten. “This is Agent Masterson,”

  “This is officer Thompson of the State Police. We’ve got units headed out to Piers Road just outside of Bakersfield to meet with a woman who claims she was kidnapped. The vehicle description she gave matches your APB.”

  Craig felt the helicopter bank a hard left and looked up at Hawk. He was listening intently, but gave Craig a thumbs up and a nod.

  “Is she OK Officer?”

  “We don’t know yet sir, we haven’t go
tten to her. Apparently she flagged down a motorist and he called it in. Officers are 5 minutes out.”

  Craig looked at Hawk, a question on his face. Hawk held up 4 fingers.

  “Ok Officer, tell your guys we are going to beat them there. We are coming in hot. Anywhere to land around the area?”

  “Oh ayuh, take your pick. It’s nothing but a big, dusty landing pad.

  “Thank you Officer.”

  Craig heard the radio switch off. His heart beat in his throat. Normally he would take a few minutes to calm himself, but he didn’t know if it would work today. Not till he found Emma and knew she was OK.

  His eyes scanned the ground again, looking for any sign of that RV.

  Chapter 23

  Norman struggled to his feet, still panting hard, sucking in lungfuls of dirt and coughing them out again. He tried pulling Emma back to the RV by her hair but his grip kept slipping. He leaned down, digging his fingers into her armpit cruelly, intending to stand her up and make her walk.

  Emma relaxed her body, trying to make herself dead weight. He stood up and aimed a boot at her ribs. “Bitch, get up, now!” He punctuated the ‘now’ with a kick and Emma scrambled to her feet, doubled over in pain. She couldn’t take another kick. He grabbed her under her left arm and dragged her back towards the RV, moving fast.

  Emma coughed and sputtered, tasting blood in her mouth. She felt along her right side with her fingers, wondering if her ribs were broken. Anger blazed in her eyes. She was not going back to that RV with Norman. Something in her pocket grazed her hand. Oh yeah. She pulled the syringes from her pocket and uncapped them all with one motion, jabbing all of them into Norman’s neck with every ounce of strength she had left.

  He tried to scream, but sounded strangled.

  He dropped her arm and bent over, tearing the syringes out of his neck one at a time.