Swerve

by Vicki Pettersson

  God, I love those hands.

  My attacker has left me this phone for a reason. It tethers me to him. It keeps me yoked. Thing is, it’s not just a harness . . . it can be a lifeline too. I’m alone in the car, but I can still call for help, right? Despite what I was told? There’s continual police presence along this bleak, Wile E. Coyote stretch of road. ­Radar-controlled cameras hover over the entire 221-mile stretch leading to San Bernardino, and police helicopters canvass the flat road in throbbing intervals, clocking speeding cars and tagging them for the highway patrol.

  And no police.

  I don’t doubt Daniel will be hurt if I defy whoever this is . . . but how would he really know? I can use the speaker feature to call 911, even though he warned me not to. No phone for someone to see pressed against my ear. I could report the location and time that Daniel was taken and relate it to where I am now. The police would set up a blockade on each side of the highway, a pit of hell for other travelers, but a net for Daniel’s captor. They’d triangulate him before the day burns out.

  Then he’ll have to run.

  He’d be the one being driven.

  I nod to myself and reach for the phone—

  The tritone message alert peals through the silent car. “Jesus!”

  I jerk my hand away, and the Beemer briefly sails into the fast lane, the Honda next to me bleating disapproval. Ignoring the driver and his limited use of sign language, I grope for the phone, and this time it feels like I’m plunging my hand into an ice bucket. It’s a test of endurance. How long can I keep it submerged? How much willpower do I really have?

  Car again steady, I force myself to look down.

  Buffalo Bill’s. Text back when you arrive.

  You’re thinking 911.

  Don’t try it or he’ll be sorry.

  Adrenaline kicks at my heart, but so does slight relief, and I slump back against the leather seat. Buffalo Bill’s is a casino in the tiny border town of Primm, Nevada. The man is clearly driving me toward money, most likely one of the casino’s ubiquitous ATMs. Once I text back that I’ve arrived, he’s going to order me to empty my bank account and bring the cash to him somewhere in the parking lot. Then he’ll release Daniel.

  These instructions make sense. Greed makes sense.

  I suck in my first full breath since leaving the rest stop. Desperate people do desperate things—I’ve seen enough proof of that in the OR. For someone poised on a financial cliff, perhaps terrorizing an unsuspecting, unarmed couple at a deserted rest stop is easier than holding up a casino, where cameras and security personnel threaten to foil escape.

  Yeah, if terrorizing a young couple already comes easy to you.

  That’s the thought I have to push away as I increase my speed. It’s only ten miles to Primm, and for Daniel’s sake, I can hold off calling the police for another eight minutes. Because now I know exactly where the stranger is.

  He’s on the way there too.

  Maybe it’s just wordplay?

  Most state borders are invisible crossings—unseen, unfelt, and insignificant—yet the line separating California from Nevada is stamped atop the earth in neon by not one but three casinos. Buffalo Bill’s is the largest, partly because of the outlet mall that sprouts from the property’s south side like a randomly attached limb, but mostly because of the bright red roller coaster tracks that soar like unearthed dinosaur bones high above the barn-style roofline. The spine of the ride curves forward, its tethered tracks clacking high before it dives into a dizzying series of impressive sidelong loops.

  I am not here for the entertainment, so I ignore both the mall and the roller coaster and keep my eyes on the road as I swing into a parking lot so large that, with a packed casino, it’s still only half-full. I search out a space as close to the entrance as possible, knowing the casinos train their security cameras on a property’s exterior as vigorously as they do the interior. Daniel’s abductor should know this too, though, and that makes me swallow hard.

  Why doesn’t that seem to worry him?

  An elderly couple is backing from a spot just as I round the second row of cars, and I wait for them to clear out before pulling in. I’m hemmed in on two sides this way, but the main entrance stretches out wide before me, and so does the feeder road leading from the highway. Shifting into park, I immediately pick up the phone and text:

  I’m here.

  A readied reply pops on the screen.

  What’s another name for bandit, outlaw, cutthroat, gangster, villain?

  “You?” I mutter, then glance around, instantly worried that he has somehow heard me. Straight ahead, a family of four hurries past a life-size diorama of a miner pouring coal into a cart. Beyond them, three parking attendants sweat it out at the valet stand, no longer interacting with each other, boredom undisguised. Two teen girls, wearing what would only generously be called Daisy Dukes, sashay across the lot. Not one person looks at me.

  So why do I feel watched?

  The trio of bells again.

  Desperado.

  Impatient, the stranger has answered his own riddle. Unfortunately, I have no idea what it means.

  I wait, but there’s no follow-up text, and I realize I have to leave the car. It’s now 4:50 in the afternoon and the desert sun is practically crackling, so when I climb out I have to shield my eyes with both hands just to scan the lot. There’s no one in the surrounding cars, no faces or binoculars pointed my way. I study a senior husband and wife as they pass behind me, but the man is wearing loafers, not boots, and the woman is busy digging into a nylon pack tied around her waist.

  Desperado. Maybe it’s just wordplay? Maybe it simply means desperate, because right now I am most certainly that.

  I’m sliding back into the coolness and relative safety of the car to ask for a less ambiguous hint, when I see it. The sign is attached to the soaring vertebrae of the roller coaster, and I follow its arc, craning my neck up, up, up, while Daniel’s phone drifts, forgotten, down to my side.

  THE DESPERADO, it says.

  “No.” I shudder as my eyes trace the coaster’s enormous spine. But I get it now. The man is buying time. After all, he had to secure Daniel somewhere without being seen, and now he needs to catch up to me. A hot breeze blows a wisp of hair across my face as Daniel’s scream ripples again through my mind. I have to do as ordered . . . but I still wonder: does this man know that being hurtled forward, completely out of control, is my personal idea of hell?

  I bite my lower lip and think. No, he’s only human. And, if he’s still driving, how will he know if I just remain in the little bubble of my car and canvass every vehicle that enters the lot from here? Or what if I stand just inside the casino doors, and then flag down security when he does finally arrive? I can tell them—

  . . . what?

  I have no idea what my attacker looks like, or what kind of car he drives, and if he doesn’t show up at all, I’ll be stuck trying to explain how I left my beloved fiancé alone at a rest stop and just drove away.

  Is that what I’ve done?

  The events occurred in that order, yes, but surely they’d believe me.

  Would I believe me?

  And what happens when Daniel’s captor finally does show up and spots security patrolling the lot? What will keep him from just performing a quick U-turn and fleeing right back into the desert to deal with my fiancé?

  Daniel’s cry scissors again in my mind, but this time it’s drowned out by half a dozen mine carts shooting overhead, and the car door is suddenly burning the back of my legs as I sag. I close my eyes and smell blast powder and raw ore. I see a lit cavern filled with matted furs and tattered silk and the Coal Man pointing to a mine cart.

  Sit.

  Mine carts.

  “God.” I give my head a violent jerk and blink hard. That’s it; I’m going inside. I have to get out of this heat,
even if I don’t know what I’m going to do beyond that. Ducking back into the car, I use the last of Daniel’s bottled water to clean off the blood crusting my face. Then I lock up and knot my long hair atop my head as I limp toward the entrance. Worst-case scenario, I get on the roller coaster. They’re not real mine carts—it’s just a ride, and Daniel is the one stuck with the stranger. I can endure a silly amusement ride if it means Daniel and I will be back together soon.

  I mean, I can endure anything at all for that.

  Right?

  He wants me to know it.

  The roller coaster’s ticket booth is located at the far end of the casino, flanked by a sprawling food court on one side and a clamorous arcade on the other. I follow the decorative rail tracks that sweep the casino’s ceiling to wind past a cashier’s cage renamed JUSTICE OF THE PEACE. I know I’m close to my destination when the smell of grease and cheese knots up my stomach.

  Linking myself to a line already twenty people deep, I have to work not to snap at those milling aimlessly around me. I’m surrounded by humanity, and even interacting with others—I buy a ticket, I thank the vendor—yet in reality, I’m as alone and helpless as when I was first forced to flee the rest stop.

  “How long is the ride?” I ask the pimple-faced boy who rips my ticket at the height of the loading dock. It’s fashioned to look like the exterior of a Wild West saloon, weathered pine boards creaking underfoot as I shift my weight.

  “Just under two minutes,” he answers, not even looking at me as he gestures toward the loaders.

  I make a quick calculation as another teen, a girl this time, directs me to my cart. Two minutes on the coaster plus the seven spent in line. Another one or two to buckle everyone in. That makes over ten minutes. Add that to the time I spent scouring the lot, and the stranger has given himself plenty of time to catch up.

  Or pass right by, I realize as the safety bar clicks in place over my lap. A jolt that has nothing to do with the ride somersaults through my gut.

  The man who has been directed to sit next to me feels my shudder and turns his head. “Exciting, huh?”

  I can’t help but glance down at his feet. Hairy legs clad in Bermuda shorts, two scuffed tennis shoes. No blue cotton coveralls, no boots. I give a short nod, then grip the safety bar with both hands as a piercing whistle sweeps over the platform.

  Down into the mines.

  I close my eyes as the carts begin ticking forward. The girl attendant waves cheerily, and then heat pounces, announcing our emergence into the sun. The coaster tips up toward its first apex. I want to remain frozen, I want to pretend this sky-bound ride has nothing to do with me, but I feel like I owe it to Daniel to look, and so I force my eyes wide.

  The sun stains the western mountains purple, distance filing their rocky edges smooth. A dry lakebed unfolds to the south, the buff expanse spreading over the land like a stain, and the black scar of the interstate slices right through its belly. Daniel and I would be well past everything in sight, if only we hadn’t stopped.

  The coaster continues its upward tick, the vertical climb so steep that I’m forced to recline. I’m as helpless as a patient on a gurney. Worse, each time I think the ascent will stop, it continues on. The man next to me giggles, and I look at him sharply, but he’s staring straight ahead like an enormous child.

  This isn’t happening, I think, mind beginning to spin as we finally reach the top. People don’t attack others in broad daylight. They don’t abduct the male half of a couple and leave the female alone.

  They don’t say ride a roller coaster when they mean give me money.

  The front of the coaster drops from view, leaving only the mountain ranges in the distance and me, for an instant, suspended above it all. Then the first anticipatory squeals pivot into raw, curling screams. Pulled by gravity and the weight of the carts, I’m whipped over that invisible edge and hurtled forward so violently I’m sure the safety bar will come loose. I’m in a free fall, and with the vast space of the arid desert around me, it’s like being flung into a burning void. When the ground is too close but still rising, the coaster suddenly swerves, the vibrations of the new angle rattling my teeth and spine.

  My seatmate throws his thick arms in the air, his weight crushing mine as we pivot and twist, and I wonder if he’s bearing down on me on purpose. Then we’re flung in the opposite direction, and I level him in turn. We careen around a series of corners and I squeeze my eyes shut. I can’t help it, I’m desperate for it to be over. Finally, the machine slows, and I open my eyes again to find the faux train station sliding into view.

  “Fuckin’ A!” the man yells as we pull even with the platform, and I can’t agree more. I have to wait for the bar to release me, and then for the man to clamber out, but I’m pulling myself onto the platform and thinking, never again, when I hear, “Ma’am Ma’am!”

  The voice, I realize, has been going on for some time, and I turn to find myself facing the girl who loaded me onto the coaster. I glance at her nametag. AMANDA. Okay . . . so why is Amanda reaching for my arm?

  “Not so fast,” Amanda says, corralling me back the other way. “You stay. You get to go again.”

  “What?”

  But Amanda suddenly freezes. Pointing to her nose, she says, “You have something . . . here. You didn’t get that on the ride, did you?”

  I realize my disheveled hair can be explained away by the ride, but the blood I feel crusting the side of my nose? “Nope. It’s nothing.”

  The girl’s toothy grin widens. Hey, as long as I’m not going to make problems for her, right? “Anyway, a man in line gave up his ticket for you. Said you were enjoying yourself so much that he wanted to treat you to ‘another little ride.’ ”

  I spin to search the faces of those waiting behind the stanchions.

  “He was just here,” Amanda says, seeing my stricken face, but only shrugs when I stare at her. “Probably went to buy another ticket.”

  He was just here. He’d been watching me the whole time, likely to make sure I followed his cryptic instructions. That means he was closer than I thought . . . and he wants me to know it.

  I swallow hard. “I don’t think I know him. What did he look like?”

  “Um . . . dark hair, fit, but not, like, roided out, you know? Tall.” Amanda lifts her hand just above my head. At least six feet, then. “I couldn’t really see his face. He had on a trucker’s cap and shades, and one of those mechanic jumpsuits, I think.”

  “You think it was a jumpsuit?”

  “I mean, I think mechanics wear them.” Amanda smiles. God help me, she’s playing matchmaker. “There was some weird name on it. Malthus. He made me repeat it.”

  So that she’d remember. So she’d tell me.

  “And brown boots?”

  Amanda shakes her head, sending her blond ponytail swinging. “I dunno. But either way, I think he likes you.”

  No. He doesn’t like me at all.

  “I’m not going on the ride,” I tell Amanda, and whirl toward the exit. If this man—this Malthus—is here, then so is Daniel.

  “But then you don’t get your prize.”

  I freeze mid-step, and back up to face Amanda. The girl can’t seem to stop smiling. “He made me memorize that too.”

  Daniel’s handsome face flashes in my mind: the bright smile and blue eyes; the smooth, dark hair; and the mole that both mars one eyebrow and makes him perfect. He is—and always has been—my prize. And somehow Malthus knows it.

  I square up on Amanda. “How much?”

  The girl blinks like an owl.

  “How much,” I repeat, voice lifting high, “did he pay you to send me back on this ride?”

  “Geez. A bill, okay?” Amanda’s gaze darts over the platform to see if anyone else had heard she’s taken a hundred dollars to send me on “another little ride.” But that’s not why my mouth falls open.
If this guy has a hundred dollars to pass along to some random minimum-wage casino-ride attendant, then he hasn’t sent me here just for ransom money.

  But I think a part of me already knew that.

  “Well, just . . . get on the ride, you know?” Amanda finally says. “Or don’t—I don’t care.”

  Yet if I don’t, I won’t get my prize.

  This time, I’m loaded up in the very first cart, and I’m placed there alone. As the coaster begins its slow tick forward, I feel the hot wind like a breath on the back of my neck. A woman knows when she is being stalked, after all . . . especially one who’s been stalked before.

  And now I am trapped up here—out here, I think as we swing into the sun—while this Malthus-man plans to . . . what?

  My gaze whips to the dry lakebed where I almost expect to see Daniel being hurtled away from me, but we’re slowly gaining the apex, and suddenly I’m surrounded on all sides by aching blue skies.

  I see only what Malthus wants me to see.

  My body plummets. Screams rise and fall behind me in shrill notes whipped away by the wind, but I’m mute and tense and as immobile as one can be while being flung around in space. It feels like the rushing wind is a part of Malthus’s plans too, because it’s burying every cry inside of me, shoveling that and my terror atop growing despair until it all bulges in my throat. I don’t know how I keep from vomiting.

  Do not shut down, I tell myself. Keep going. Because if I stop like I did the last time I felt all these things, I might just let go entirely.

  So I grip the safety bar with white knuckles and try to think of something else and snag onto the first happy memory that whips past on the fiery air.