Читать книгу Eleven Hours - Paullina Simons - Страница 15

Didi and the man sat in the car for ten minutes, moving a few feet a minute. The man seemed increasingly anxious. He kept turning on his right blinker and then turning it off again. Didi suspected he would get off the highway as soon as he could. She thought she heard her phone ringing, but the radio played too loudly to be sure. The phone was buried deep inside her bag. She listened carefully again but heard only the radio. Must have been my imagination, Didi thought.

Now the car wasn’t moving.

It was time.

She grabbed the handle and swung open the door.

Didi had been right. The door was too close to the divider. It opened no more than a foot. The man immediately swerved to the right, scraping the divider and pushing the door shut.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ he yelled, pulling her by the neck away from the door. Didi cried out as he yanked her down on the seat, pressing his hand on her head to keep her down. She struggled to get up and bit his hand. She heard him muttering as he fiercely pressed her into the seat.

The car soon started moving, but in stops and spurts. It turned one way, then another. Didi tried to keep track of the direction, to no avail. She tried to sit up half a dozen times before the man told her to give up.

‘Stay down, please,’ he told her. ‘You’ve caused enough trouble already. Stay down.’

Did I cause trouble? Didi thought, uncomfortably scrunched up below window level on the bench seat. Have the police come? Have we been stopped? Am I with my husband? No, I don’t think I caused much trouble at all.

Her eyes, level with the radio controls, darted past the glove compartment to the floor. She thought she heard the phone ring faintly again, but she couldn’t hear above the country music.

Were they off Central Expressway? Didi thought so; she could see the tops of trees and houses. He must have got off and was driving through the side streets. Where was he taking her?

‘Can I get up?’ she asked.

He said nothing, but lifted his hand from her head, and she took that to mean yes. She got up.

‘So what were you doing back there?’ he asked. ‘What were you thinking?’

When Didi didn’t reply, he said, ‘Look, I don’t blame you. I’m not even mad.’ He smiled as if to prove that. ‘See? But you have to understand, it’s useless.’

She rubbed her head where his hand had been.

‘Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear. You have to behave. We’re going for a little ride, that’s all, but you’re carrying a baby and you have to be careful. Do you understand?’

‘Please let me out,’ Didi said dully. ‘I have a husband…children.’

From the corner of her eye she saw a slight smile. He wasn’t touched. He was just bemused.

Turning down the music, he said, ‘Look, I’d prefer not to argue with you. Don’t get out of my car anymore. I want us to be friendly, but you have to show me I can trust you.’

‘Friendly?’ she repeated, thinking she’d misheard. ‘Yes, of course. Friendly. Sure.’

‘Don’t you think falling out of my car would have hurt the baby?’ he asked.

‘I wasn’t going to fall out of the car,’ said Didi. ‘I won’t do it again, I promise.’

‘Good. Then we won’t have any trouble,’ the man said. ‘Now be a good girl and let me drive,’ he said. ‘We’ve lost over an hour because of the work on Seventy-five.’

‘Where are we headed?’ Didi asked carefully.

‘Mazatlán,’ he said.

Didi said nothing. She didn’t want to know.

‘Mexico,’ the man said.

He told me anyway, Didi thought, shuddering.

Didi again thought she could hear the phone ringing.

Soon she recognized the stark warehouse clubs and tattoo joints that defined Deep Ellum – the funky, loud, slightly dangerous boozing and dining section of downtown Dallas. There were a couple of interstates they could take from there. Interstate 30 to Houston, or Interstate 20 to Shreveport, or Interstate 35 to Waco, Austin, San Antonio, and eventually Mexico.

No one would ever find them – find her – in Mexico. Not Rich, not the police, no one. Mexico was where people went to disappear.

The prospect of disappearing – disappearing with him – dried up Didi’s throat. She licked her lips and realized she had no spit in her mouth. For the first time since the mall she acknowledged to herself that she was thirsty.

Didi was about to ask him if the air-conditioning was on, and then she looked over at the dashboard. There was no air-conditioning. Oh, great, she thought, and for the next silent fifteen minutes, she obsessed about the fact that there was no AC in her kidnapper’s station wagon.

No air-conditioning was an immediate problem. Didi was hot. Her own minivan had a gauge that told her, among other things, the outside temperature. However, his old car was not AC equipped. The dash clock was broken. The vent inside the car was blowing hot air, and the windows were closed.

Didi watched him get on Interstate 35E going south to Waco.

‘We’re going to Waco?’ Didi asked.

‘No,’ he said, his tone losing some of its earlier courtesy. ‘I told you where we’re going. Now don’t ask me again.’

Didi sighed tensely, looking away from him. The road was hypnotic. It usually was so easy when Rich was driving to let her mind go blank and disappear into the road. However, not today. Not when she was this hot, this short of breath, this scared.

Didi reached over to roll down the window, and the man immediately lost his temper, shouting, ‘What are you doing?’

She gasped, stunned by his outburst, and said, ‘I’m hot. I was going to roll the window down.’

‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘No windows. Don’t want you screaming again, do I?’

‘Who’s going to hear me here on the highway?’

‘I said no.’

‘I won’t scream,’ she said. ‘I’m just real hot. I need air.’

‘Yeah, well, you should have thought of that in the mall. Didn’t need air then, did you?’ he said coldly.

What was he talking about? And what’s happening to him? Why did he sound so angry?

‘I’m real hot,’ Didi repeated.

He swirled one of the central vents on her. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Here’s some air.’

Didi sat back against the brown vinyl seat and closed her eyes. She wiped her sweating head, opened her eyes, and said, ‘Couldn’t we stop for a drink? I’m thirsty.’ She was hoping to bring some of his earlier politeness back.

‘No, we can’t stop for a drink,’ he snapped. ‘What do you think this is? A trip to Disney World? Sit and be quiet. Please,’ he added, composing himself.

Didi had no choice about sitting, but she did shut up. He’s moody, she thought. Is this ma’am and please thing just a facade? God help me if it is.

After a few moments, he said, ‘Look, I’m sorry, but we have to make tracks. I have to concentrate, okay? Don’t want to go too fast, don’t want to go too slow. We’ll stop soon.’

Oddly comforted by his courteous demeanor, Didi nodded and then said, ‘Don’t you want to call my husband?’

‘No!’ His nasal voice was shrill. ‘Why would I want to call him?’

Beads of sweat ran down her cheeks. ‘To ask him for money?’

Shaking his head, he leaned toward her and touched her gently on the arm. ‘You’re so naive. That’s what I like about you.’

Didi wiped her face and then licked her fingers. Ten minutes later, the salt in the sweat made her crazy for a drink, but she didn’t talk.

What was her Rich doing? He must have realized by now she wasn’t coming to the Laredo Grill. Where was he? Was he trying to call? Then she remembered her cell phone. She’d left it on standby at Warner Bros after she called him. Could he have called already and she hadn’t heard? Or was that the phone ringing?