Willing Hostage

  Burning juices surged up her throat and lay rancid on the back of her tongue. She choked against the gag in her mouth …

  … and felt it being loosened … and then removed.

  “No screaming.” The gun proded emphasis at her forehead. “When your friends come, Sheila, you’re my hostage. When were they supposed to get here? I saw you talking to Charlie.”

  The candle reminded her that it was her birthday, probably her last. Her tears cleared and the flame narrowed, undulated. Leah opened her eyes and saw two flames.

  “Sheila?” His voice sent both flames into a frenzy.

  “Maalox. The bottle on the table that was … in my purse. Please!”

  Her stomach gurgled dangerously in the silence. The cat lifted its head and looked at Leah’s middle.

  The candle moved closer until she could feel the heat of the flame. “Are you on something?” he asked.

  “No. I’m sick. Oh, please.”

  The flame and the cold metal moved away. Now was the instant to scream … and to be shot while helplessly tied to a bed. At least her mother had made a play for dignity by doing it herself.

  The man and his candle returned with the Maalox. He tasted it and spit, cleared his throat, put the bottle to her lips. The candle and the gun were in the same hand.

  Leah drank the last of the thick chalky fluid. The cat lay warm across her stomach.

  The man sat against her again. “Now—”

  “I’m not Sheila. I don’t have any friends coming. My name is Leah Harper.”

  “I know. And a damned poor cover. What’s happened to old Welker? He could have done better.”

  “I don’t know any Welker. I’m—”

  “An innocent bystander, I know. We don’t have time for this, Sheila. When’s Charlie due? He couldn’t have been far behind me.”

  A car on the road behind the cabin, its headlights brightening chenille. He lowered the candle and she could see the scratches her nails had left above the stubby beard line.

  His head turned with the sound of the car’s passing, his eyes in shadow because of the slight overhang of his forehead, the thickness of his eyebrows. Something desperate in the tense way he sat listening to the car. It made him seem all the more dangerous.

  “We’ll just wait then. I’ve got you, at least.”

  “You won’t have me much longer if you keep me tied so tightly.”

  He bound the wet gag across her mouth, felt her hands and feet, and loosened the bonds. He’d used her clothes for ropes. Her feet were tied with a blouse and a button clanged against the metal bedstead as he worked.

  Leah moved her hands and feet up and down and around to warm them. She lay in that degrading position and watched him blow out the candle and sit on the other bed to wait for “her friends.” The cat left her stomach and crawled up beside him. He stroked it automatically.

  Rain pelted the roof, dripped somewhere on the floor. The cat purred.

  Leah drowsed because she didn’t dare to, fought it off, drowsed again, slept, dreamed of her mother in her bloody bath.…

  She awoke to dim light. The rain had stopped. The man and the cat and the gun slept together on the other bed, the man’s feet still on the floor. He’d fallen over where he sat, a mass of black ruffled hair curling around his face, a long black sideburn blending with the stubble on his jaw.

  The fire had gone out and it was cold.

  Birds sang in the trees around the cabin and the Siamese raised his head to listen, stood to stretch and yawn.

  Still the man didn’t awaken. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if he’d died in the night? But the steep slope to the massive shoulders rose and fell peacefully.

  Even asleep he exuded an aura of strength. Leah was surprised by a sudden memory of another tousled head she’d seen asleep in the dimness of dawn. But sleep had robbed Jason of his strength. It was with Jason that Leah first realized her attraction to strong men and the dangers inherent in that attraction.

  But the danger presented by the man on the other bed was obviously more serious. The danger here was death.

  Leah lay staring at a sign on the wall beside the bed. NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR FIRE, THEFT, ACCIDENT OR PERSONAL INJURY.

  The cat padded to the door, yowled, and turned to look at Leah.

  As if she could get up and let it out.

  Her companion must be very tired if he couldn’t hear the commotion at the door.

  She wiggled her wrists in their bonds. Her opponent was good at knots. She slid her hands up the metal, bent her head back till she could see them. They’d been tied with two of her belts.

  The man spoke clearly in a foreign language. He hadn’t moved.

  Leah and the cat stared at him. There hadn’t been a trace of an accent in his English.

  He muttered a phrase that sounded like Spanish and rolled over to face the ceiling, the hand of his gun arm slapping the wall on the other side of the bed, leaving the gun where it lay beside him.

  He grunted and opened his eyes.

  The Siamese called a request again and the man sat up and shook his head, stared at the cat as if he’d never seen it before, gazed around the cabin with a bewildered look, and gave a start when his eyes fell on Leah.

  Wouldn’t it be wonderful if he’d had temporary insanity last night?… If he suddenly regained his senses and released her, apologized for his behavior?

  But he blinked, then seemed to get it all together. He picked up the gun, moved to the door, opened it slightly and looked, then widened it to let the cat out.

  He didn’t appear Spanish. His size, his manner, everything about him seemed American. He checked the view from both windows, gobbled a slice of her Velveeta, used the giant gravy ladle to dip water from the pail into the metal pan and washed his face in cold water.

  There was no towel and he still dripped as he reloaded her purse, put the groceries back into the paper sack.

  Lifting her suitcase onto the bed, he pulled out a pair of blue jeans and a yellow jersey top.

  Working quickly, roughly, but expertly, he untied her feet, pulled off her pajama bottoms, slipped on her jeans, untied her hands, ripped off her coat and pajama shirt, slammed the jersey over her head, and slid on her coat and shoes. Leah had never been dressed so fast in her life.

  “Pick up your purse and the food,” he ordered and threw everything that wasn’t on her into the suitcase, removed the gag and stuffed it into his pocket.

  Leah tried to stand. She fell but he jerked her upright. It hurt to walk and she staggered to the table. “I’m not Sheila, you know.” Her mouth was so dry from the gag that it was painful to speak.

  “If you’re not, I don’t need you alive, do I?” Again he peered through a crack in the door. Then he pulled the covers on the bed aside to make it look as if she’d left them that way as she crawled out.

  Leah shivered in the dawn’s cold. Those four wool blankets would have been heaven.

  “Now, walk out to your car and get in on the driver’s side, start the engine.” He handed her the keys. “I’ll be right behind you. Just open your mouth once.” He waved the gun in her face.

  He’d thought of everything. The cabin would look normal. Nothing left behind to warn anyone of the danger she was in. If she could just leave one little thing as a clue. But what?

  There was no time. The gun prodded her out to the car. With muscles aching from the rack he’d made of the bed and the chop he’d given her neck, Leah slid into the driver’s seat and put the key in the ignition.

  No one stirred in the other cabins.

  When her captor placed her suitcase in the backseat, the Siamese jumped in to join it.

  The three of them pulled out of Pair-O-Dice in the yellow bug.

  “Left,” he said.

  Leah turned left and no one saw them leave. At least she was headed toward Walden.

  Would she get there?

  Chapter Six

  “What are you going to do with me?”

  “
I don’t know.”

  “May I have some food?” She hated the meekness of her tone. He’d stripped her dignity as easily and as surely as he’d stripped off her pajamas.

  “Ulcer?” He handed her a slice of Velveeta and one back to the cat. Surprisingly, the animal seemed to be eating it.

  “What do you care?”

  “I don’t. Just asking.” He sounded defensive.

  Had she found a soft spot in this hard man? She dared a glance in his direction and decided she hadn’t. He looked tired, sagging, somehow hopeless. But the gun did not.

  His legs and shoulders filled the Volkswagen to suffocation.

  A high plain stretched ahead to distant mountains. Vast herds of cows and their calves grazed behind fences. An occasional ranch building brightened in the rising sun. The sky was cloudless now, but puddles glistened beside the road as scavenger magpies cleaned up the grisly remains of small animals, the night’s work of automobiles.

  “If you’re not Sheila, you’ve got yourself involved in a real mess.” Was that doubt in his voice? But the gun still aimed its barrel at her head.

  Leah allowed herself a twinge of hope.

  Chartreuse-yellow weeds, bushy and lacy, misty with raindrops, filled the ditches. A tiny brown animal stood on its hind legs at the road’s edge.

  “Welker would have used a professional.” A heavy sigh, and he slapped his knee. “You could have had me twice.” There was a cleft in the middle of his chin where the whiskers didn’t grow.

  “What do you mean? I was tied to the bed.” Leah could have bitten her tongue. Why couldn’t she keep her mouth shut? His thinking was going in the right direction.

  “Before and after that.” This time his fist hit the dashboard, his growl like that of an animal. He reminded Leah of an animal, hunted, cornered. What did she know of animals? He was just a dangerous man, with a gun. She was the one who was cornered.

  If she pretended to be Sheila, he would keep her alive as a hostage, but he would keep her. As Leah Harper she wouldn’t be needed as a hostage or alive either. Was she dangerous to him alive? Wouldn’t it be easier, less messy, to just let her go?

  A rumbling noise behind them. Leah checked the rear-view mirror, but the road was empty.

  “And then again, you could be a clever trap … but.…” He talked more to himself than to her.

  The rumbling grew louder. He swiveled to look through the rear window, then to the sides.

  But the sound came from above. A shadow darkened the Volks and spread to each side, as if a giant scavenger bird was about to pick them off the highway. The shadow of a small airplane gradually moved onto the road ahead.

  Her companion swore. Leah slowed the car. The plane appeared behind its shadow, rose, banked, and turned to buzz them, flying dangerously low.

  “Keep going slower,” he ordered. “But don’t stop.” He hid the gun. “I’ve decided to buy your story. I’m dead anyway.”

  The sound of the plane was distant behind them.

  “See that culvert ahead? Slower.…” He opened the door. “You’ve got a great cat and a great body. So long.” He jumped from the car.

  Leah slowed more now in reaction to her surprise than because she wanted to. She looked back but couldn’t see him in the ditch. Reaching across to slam his door, she stepped hard on the accelerator.

  He’d gone from her life as quickly as he’d come. But the small plane had not. It came behind to buzz her again, so low that she automatically hit the brakes. She’d had no time to let down after her encounter with the stranger and the fear of death that had gripped her for hours. She accelerated in panic just as the car had almost come to a standstill.

  She turned to look at the one remaining occupant of the car. “Kitty, what do we do?”

  The stupid cat was asleep!

  Leah looked back to find the plane coming toward them, head on, swooping at the last minute. Its sound on top of the noisy Volks was deafening and more than her beleaguered nervous system could stand. Leah watched as the poor bug shot ahead when she’d meant to stop it. The plane was trying to stop her, her disrupted judgment was trying to kill her, and the end result was a phenomenal burst of speed from the old secondhand Volkswagen.

  Eventually she regained enough control to take her foot off the gas pedal and steer to the right-hand lane. Leah was suddenly alone on the endless road.

  She pulled over and stopped, stepped out to look at the sky, her heart jumping, her ulcer demanding that she vomit, her knees so shaky that she clung to the door to keep upright.

  The little plane was flying away into the sun. And there was a lonely car coming up behind her. Why had the plane flown off when she’d finally stopped?

  And then she saw the answer in the approaching car. Its top bore twin gum-ball machines.

  Leah let go of the Volkswagen to wave it down, almost fell into the road in front of it. She saw the insignia and COLORADO STATE PATROL lettered on the door as it stopped in front of her. Leah ran toward it, and fell into the arms of the uniformed man who stepped out.

  “I’ve been attacked, Officer! Please, help me.”

  “Take it easy.” He seated her gently in the patrol car, then sat beside her. “Now tell me everything.”

  He was so young-looking. Leah could have used a daddylike figure. That dark stranger wasn’t so professional either. “He really should have killed me,” she thought with a jolt, “because I’m about to rat on him.” Professional what? Gangster? Murderer? Bank robber? Indian chief?

  Leah shrugged off the dark memory of the man who’d said hopelessly, “I’m dead anyway.” She told her story to the patrolman, who looked stern and military in his uniform, but whose questioning was gentle.

  And she did fine, had him with her all the way, until she described the attack by plane. That was the point where he smiled and blinked at the same time and had to work his tender young face back into an official mold.

  “Have you left out anything?” he asked when she’d finished and he pulled the speaker from the radio set in the dashboard. “I mean, were you molested?”

  “I was punched in the stomach, chopped in the neck, and tied to a bed all night … if that’s not molested—”

  “But were you sexually assaulted?”

  “No. But—”

  “Are you sure?” His eyes followed her from shoes to hair, softened with understanding. “Do you want a doctor?”

  Leah groaned inwardly. This kid’d had the new training women’s lib forced on the law. “I’m thirty years old. Old enough to know if I’d been raped. I have been attacked, but not sexually. No permanent damage. I do not need a doctor. But I could use some breakfast.”

  He replaced the speaker and smiled soothingly. “So could I. I was headed for the best breakfast in Walden when I met you. But first, let’s check out that culvert.” The patrol car made a U-turn.

  Leah sat inert, while he checked the culvert … and found no trace of her attacker.

  “Let’s get that breakfast,” he said when he returned. He drew up beside the Volks. “Can you follow me in? It isn’t far.”

  Minutes later they’d both parked in front of a clapboard building in a tiny treeless town. The patrolman reached in the window to pet the Siamese, asleep on top of her suitcase. His hand came out crossed with bloodied scatches.

  “He prefers murderers,” Leah said dumbly.

  The patrolman laughed and guided her into a building pulsating with wonderful morning odors. “Order me a number one with ham and have them hold it for ten minutes. Order for yourself. I’ll be back.”

  “Where are you going?”

  He wrinkled his nose and grinned. “I’m going to look up the local fuzz. Couldn’t get him on the radio.”

  Leah felt human for the first time in a week. Even law and order had a sense of humor in the West. She picked up the menu stuck between the napkin and the salt and pepper holders. The café was worn and dingy, but obviously patronized by the locals.

  Knowing h
er ulcer would have ordered a poached-egg-on-milk-toast, Leah ordered the number one with bacon and hot chocolate. She deserved a binge. The gregarious waitress didn’t seem to mind the hold on the patrolman’s order and brought Leah’s hot chocolate right away.

  Tempted to human kindness by the comfort of her hot drink, Leah stopped the waitress as she came by with a tray of dirty dishes. “Do you have doggy bags?”

  “‘No. Do you have a doggy?”

  “There’s a stray cat in my car and he—”

  “Oh, poor starving thing.” She set the tray on the table.

  Leah blinked. “If you can imagine a blimp starving, you’ve a better imagination than I have.” She felt foolish to have brought up the subject.

  “Fur,” the waitress said and sat down across from Leah.

  “What?”

  “Well, some cats look fat because of their fur. Had a good feel on this cat? Probably all ribs under that fur. What does it like to eat?”

  “Anything.”

  “Honey, no cat eats anything, even if it’s starving. I know. I’ve got three. Hubby hates them but.…” She rose and lifted the tray. “All kinds of scraps around here.”

  “I don’t have much money.”

  “Forget it. They’d be thrown out anyway. Any cat lover is a friend of mine, honey.”

  Leah finished her chocolate and pondered the cat. Having one opened strange doors.

  She remembered having an insane desire for a dog when she’d had to leave New York and return home. She’d met a dog once who would have been perfect. He was a large bony red, with a tail in constant happy motion and soft amber eyes.

  Leah read his tags, took him home, and called the owner. That was how she met big, strong Jason, who always asked after scraps for his “Mutt” when he visited a restaurant and who invariably left with a doggy bag.

  The relationship was Jason lasted about three months. Leah discovered that he wanted her on a leash as tight as Mutt’s. When it was over, Leah missed Mutt more than she did Jason.

  She’d finally begun to tremble with delayed reaction and letdown when the number one with bacon arrived. Two beautiful fried eggs, hash-brown potatoes, three strips of bacon, two pieces of buttered toast, and a huge mug of coffee. Leah hadn’t tasted a fried egg or coffee for two years. She stopped only once, to reflect on whether or not her dark attacker would have any breakfast. A body the size of his would demand a lot of it.