You live, you learn, unfortunately, all my life, I’d always learned the hard way.
* * * * *
It seemed like we were driving forever, maybe it was half an hour, maybe longer, when we finally started to do some turns, obviously coming off the highway. The car slowed, there were streetlights then there were none. Then, we hit a gravel road, drove for a few minutes and we stopped.
I was yanked out of the backseat by my ankles and thrown over a shoulder in a fireman’s hold. I didn’t see much, it was late, dark and we were well out of the city so dark meant dark. I could tell we were in the mountains though.
Shit.
I was carted into a cabin and thrown on the couch, then arranged in a seated position.
When the new goon moved away, I could see Terry Wilcox was sitting opposite me in an armchair.
It was a nice cabin, very swish, the kind of rental for upper, upper middle class Texans to hire when they felt like a change of scenery. Two guys were with us, both steroid-fuelled, like Goon Gary, Terrible Teddy and The Moron but I had never seen these guys.
“Take off her gag,” Wilcox ordered.
Both of the guys were dark-headed, one darker than the other and taller and maybe hitting the pharmaceutical websites a little too hard. He came forward and took off the gag. The minute he did, I realized how tight it was because my cheeks hurt. I opened and closed my mouth to exercise my cheek muscles.
Then I glared at Wilcox. “That hurt.”
“I’m sorry, India. Precautions. We can’t be too careful, can we?”
Was that a dig at my idiot act of walking out of my house and into the clutches of the villain?
My eyes narrowed.
I knew I was an idiot, I didn’t need this guy rubbing it in.
“Excuse me?” I asked.
He ignored me. “Don’t worry. We don’t have to wait too long. The plane will be ready soon and we’ll be leaving.”
Uh-oh.
Did he say “plane”?
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“You and I are going to disappear. We’re taking a long vacation.”
I stared at him.
I wasn’t getting a good feeling about this.
“I don’t want to go on vacation with you,” I informed him, I thought, unnecessarily.
“You’ll enjoy yourself.”
My eyes got wide. “Enjoy myself?”
“Shopping, eating in the finest restaurants. I’ll get you anything you want. We’ll go wherever you want. I’ll show you the world.”
Wow, Lee wasn’t wrong. This guy was nuts.
“Maybe you didn’t hear me. I said, I don’t want to go on vacation with you.”
“We’ll spend time together. You get to know me, you’ll like me.”