Chapter Twenty Nine #2
This was never a meeting.
This was not Cindy Sullivan helping me.
It was a setup.
I walked into a trap.
“Do not make a sound,” Cindy says.
The man’s hand shifts on my arm, hard enough to make me wince.
“Go quietly,” he says near my ear. “Or the first bullet goes right into your baby.”
I cannot breathe.
I cannot think.
I cannot do anything except move because the man’s hand is locked around my arm, his gun is pressed tightly against my side, and Cindy is walking closely on my other side.
Anyone who happens to look at us would just see three people leaving a park together.
Not a kidnapping.
Not a woman being escorted away from safety in broad daylight.
That is how easy it is.
That is how quickly ‘public’ stops being equally ‘safe’.
“Keep moving,” the man says quietly.
My legs obey because I do not know what else to do.
Because he said baby.
He said baby.
He knows.
How does he know?
My mind latches onto the question for half a second, frantic and useless, then slips off it because it does not matter how. Not now anyway. Not while the gun presses into me with every step. Not while Cindy walks beside me with her tote tucked against her body, her face calm, her eyes forward.
I am going to die.
The thought is so cold that it nearly paralyzes me.
But then another one follows.
My baby is going to die.
No.
No.
My vision blurs, and I blink hard.
Mario.
The name cuts through the panic so sharply I almost make a sound.
Mario.
I want him.
God help me, I want him.
I want his voice, his hand at the back of my neck, his impossible calm, his fury, his protection, all the things that scared me and all the things I refused to trust.
I should have told him.
The regret hits so hard it nearly folds me in half.
I should have told him everything.
About the baby.
About the articles.
About Anna.
About the sick, ugly fear I let grow until it dragged me here, to this bench, to this woman, to this gun pressed against my side.
I should have asked him.
I should have looked him in the eyes and asked about his wife instead of deciding that some stranger in a park was safer than the man whose child I’m carrying.
I am carrying his child.
And these people know.
“Relax,” Cindy says without looking at me.
I hate her voice.
I hate her stupid face and her ugly haircut.
“What do you want?” I whisper.
The man’s grip tightens. “Quiet.”
My mouth snaps shut.
We move along the path, past the people, past the benches, past the hope that someone will notice.
No one does.
A woman in running clothes passes us. Her ponytail swings. She smiles automatically when she moves around us, polite and unseeing.
Help me.
The words stay trapped behind my teeth.
Because the gun is still there.
Because the first bullet goes right into your baby.
My hand twitches toward my stomach.
My blood goes cold.
What are they going to do?
Is this a kidnapping? Are they just going to kill me?
Use me against Mario?
Who are they?
None of the answers matter if they get me to a car.
I know that suddenly with absolute clarity.
We are nearing the edge of the park. The open grass narrows into a paved path leading toward the parking area. Fewer people now. More trees. More space between bodies.
Less noise, and, more importantly, less chance.
My pulse pounds in my ears. Once they get me somewhere private, it is over. Whatever they plan to do, it will happen there.
Shove me into a car trunk, take me wherever, and do whatever. Or maybe they’ll just kill me and leave me for dead right there in the parking lot.
I cannot let them get me out of this park.
My mouth goes dry.
Think.
Think.
I took self-defense classes during college.
Not enough, damn it. And not recently enough either.
And definitely not while pregnant and terrified and nauseated and stupid with regret.
But some of it comes back in fragments.
Do not try to win.
Do not fight fair.
Make noise.
Put space between you.
Just get away.
The point is not to take anyone down permanently. The point is only to put someone down long enough to get away.
Eyes. Nose. Throat. Groin. Knees. Feet.
It all runs through my mind in a jumble, and I try to separate the thoughts.
The important thing is to commit. Once you decide, commit.
My fingers curl once at my side.
His left arm is crossed over his midsection to press the gun to my left side, while his right grips my arm. Cindy is close on my right, but she’ll have to take half a step behind because the path narrows in a few feet.
The parking lot is maybe twenty feet away.
I swallow.
Mario, I’m sorry.
I do not let myself think after that.
The moment the path narrows, I stumble.
The man’s grip shifts to keep me upright, and in that half second, I turn into him instead of away.
My heel comes down hard on his instep. At the same time, I drive my elbow back into his ribs with everything I have.
He grunts, and the gun slips away from my side for just a moment, but it’s not enough.
I wrench my arm down and twist, the way the instructor showed us, toward his thumb, toward the weak point in his grip.
Pain tears through my shoulder, but his hand breaks loose.
Cindy says something behind us, but I can barely hear her over the roaring in my head.
I can only hope she’s shocked enough not to react in time.
I shove the man with both hands, using all my strength and desperation, and he stumbles into the edge of the path.
For one second, I am free.
I turn and run.
It’s certainly not graceful with my purse banging against my hip, and my breath tearing out of me, but I run toward the park, toward the safety of the people and noise.
Toward any place that is not the parking lot.
“Help!” I try to scream, but it comes out broken.
Behind me, there is movement.
They recovered faster than I expected. Too fast.
It wasn’t enough is the horrible thought that runs through my mind. It wasn’t enough. I won’t get away.
I feel something I’ve never felt before—a sensation between my shoulder blades—and I know with certainty the feeling of a gun locked on me, prepared to fire.
He is going to shoot me.
He is going to shoot my baby.
I try to move faster, but my body simply isn’t fast enough.
I am not going to make it.
A heavy thud sounds behind me.
The shot doesn’t come, and I keep running because I cannot stop, because stopping means dying, because my mind has not caught up to the fact that I am not dead yet.
Then, a sharp, choked cry cuts off too quickly and is followed by a second thud.
A firm hand closes around my arm.
I jerk against it, terror ripping up my throat.
Before I can let the scream loose, a familiar voice is at my ear.
“Keep going. Don’t look back.”