by Amy Law
After a long time on a straight road, the van veered off to the left. The road became progressively bumpier until the wheels began to skip and the driver had to slow down. A couple of minutes of that and then they veered again, onto a smooth surface, and then, suddenly, into darkness.
Tiffany’s eyes couldn’t adjust. She guessed they must be inside a building. The van lurched to a stop. When the engine cut and the doors opened, she heard a big, dry echo. The two men got out of the front of the van and shut the doors behind them.
She lifted her head from the bench. Immediately the biker hit her with a slap. Her head snapped from side to side and her face stung. He rapped his knuckle once on the Plexiglas before seizing Tiffany by the throat with one hand, and held her down. With the other hand he pressed on her mound, through her panties.
He held her like that and Tiffany was alarmed at the rising tides of tingling sensation that welled up in her. She could smell her own juices. She knew that the biker must have been able to smell them, too.
She remembered from a lecture that women lubricate when they are about to be raped. The beady-eyed endocrinologist had relished his topic. “It’s evolutionary, like most of our body’s behavior. It’s believed to have been a means of self-preservation.”
She remembered his little snaky tongue flicking across his lips as he said, “It very likely goes all the way back to times when there was little or no verbal communication, before there was any discussion about consent.” Tiffany had wondered if that was the whole story.
A pair of boots clomped back the way the van had come in, twenty-eight paces. Then there was the sound of a heavy door sliding and a clang when it shut. Twenty-eight paces back. Tiffany felt better knowing that some skill had shown itself to her. She was a drummer. She could count.
Without even thinking about it, she listened to the footsteps go and come back, and then replayed the rhythm in her head. As it played, she counted the steps. She had a sense of the building being large and cavernous. It was some old warehouse or something.
The side door of the van opened from the outside, revealing the blond biker, reflective shades on and the bandana still over his mouth and nose. The black-haired biker let go of his grip on her throat. His hand dragged away from her panties, but much more slowly. Then he held a finger in front of her nose. The finger pointed to say, Don’t move, but she was more aware of it carrying her own scent.
The biker that was molesting her climbed out. The blond climbed in and slid onto the bench opposite. She couldn’t see his eyes behind the shades, but she saw his jaw muscles work under the bandana.
He reached across for her purse. She shoved her shoulder towards him to indicate that he could take it. Really, what choice did she have? When he took the purse and reached in for her iPhone, he showed her what he was doing. Then he snapped the purse shut and slipped it back under her arm.
Her iPhone went into his pocket, then he held up a narrow black cloth. As he stretched it out, Tiffany saw that it was to blindfold her. A swell of yawning dread opened inside her as she fought off the implications that a blindfold could have.
They just don’t want you to see anything that could be evidence, she told herself. Evidence you could give after they release you. Her eyes narrowed as she let him wrap the cloth tight around her head and tied it at the back.
Tiffany couldn’t keep from shivering as he laid a big hand on her shoulder. Thetrembling wouldn’t stop as he guided her first to sit up, then out of the van.
Her steps were clumsy as she still shook. With a surge of anger, she realized that she was embarrassed by her body’s show of fear. Who wouldn’t be afraid? She reasoned, and why shouldn’t the fuckers see what they’ve done? Her mind hardened. Because I won’t. Let. Them. Win.
The floor was hard and gritty, with a scrape of crunching dust like old concrete under her boots. He held her upper arm and led her along, up to a set of three metal steps. His grip wasn’t cruel or harsh. She had the sense that he was being considerate.
At the top of the steps, she was walked through a doorway. It seemed like a trailer or a camper. Something that was on springs, for sure, because she felt it move and give as she stepped in, and again as the biker walked in behind her. He took her across to a low, soft couch of some kind.
Slumped back into the couch, with her bound arms cranked up behind her, Tiffany was stuck like a turtle on its back.
The biker walked back across the springy floor and out the door. She heard it close. Now she felt panic. They couldn’t leave her like this, mouth covered, arms cramped, useless and hurting. The blond biker was walking across the concrete outside. She counted his steps. Thirteen. No more than halfway to the door.
She heard the murmur of a voice, distant and echoing. It spoke in four or five short bursts. She fixed her memory of the sound. Played it back to check she had it all and kept it for later. She might even be able to decipher some of what he said through the echo.
It was quiet again before the footsteps started back. He got to the metal steps outside and mounted them. Then he opened the door, crossed the floor, andpulled up the blindfold. There was Daddy, in front of her face, on the iPhone screen.
His face wracked in pain as he saw her. Then the biker yanked the blindfold back over her eyes. Tiffany heard and felt the couch shake as he left again, then the shudder as he shut the door behind him.
She’d had a glimpse now, and it was definitely a trailer. Not a very new one, and one with brown cardboard taped over the window. There was a small kitchen area to her right and a narrow corridor off to her left.
What else could she remember? Not much. She had an uneasy feeling that there was something, something important and right in front of her that she was somehow not seeing.
Now she listened for the sound outside. The biker had walked back across the concrete, seventeen steps this time, not thirteen. So he probably wasn’t going to a place or a thing. It wasn’t a desk, a table or a window, he was just getting distance.
It could have meant that he was getting distance from her. She hoped that was it. She wanted it to be because he didn’t want her to hear his voice, so that she wouldn’t have information to give when they let her go. It meant that they planned to let her go.
Tiffany knew she couldn’t rely on that. She also knew that, whatever it took, she had to stay positive. They could just be a really smart and professional group of kidnappers. Keeping her from any knowledge of them was the smart way to do it. It was still a real reason for hope.
There’s no use in second-guessing, she told herself. You need to be calm, and find certainties. She was confused and afraid, and she didn’t know anything about kidnapping. She knew just about as much as anyone who watches movies or sees TV shows. It was all just speculation. This is a living nightmare, she thought. You HAVE to stay strong.
Daddy on the phone, though. That must have been the first ransom call. They used her phone. Smart, but they used it here. The phone records would have the location for the call.
Either they’re not so smart, or she would be moved again, almost immediately. Something troubled her, something about her phone, but she couldn’t bring it through the confusion to the front of her mind.
Chapter 3
She remembered the footsteps across the concrete of the biker who closed the door to the warehouse or whatever it was. She guessed he was the driver, and the footsteps of the blond biker just now.
Drummer Tiffany was the steady heartbeat, the pulse of her band, The Noise of Art. The school magazine editor called her a clock-steady beat machine. She had the rhythms of two of the bikers’ walks and she would be able to replicate them perfectly.
Since Tiffany was a very small girl, lying in the dark in her room, she’d been able to identify every person she knew or met just by hearing them walk.
The way Daddy rolled up the stairs, Momma’s little tap-dance around the kitchen. Uncles, aunts, cousins and all of Daddy’s old buddies from the Marines—she could identify
their feet on the gravel outside, usually inside three steps.
Everybody except for Daddy thought that it was spooky, or that she was using some kind of a trick. Even Daddy was mystified, and he wasn’t a man to enjoy a mystery.
So, by the age of five, Tiffany learned that people--adults mainly--could react badly if you told them something they couldn’t understand or they had trouble believing. Even Daddy. Particularly if it was something you could do that they couldn’t.
So she no longer mentioned this side-effect of her whisker-keen musical ear, and she allowed everyone to forget.
The lead biker, or the one she assumed was the leader, took her back out of the trailer. As Tiffany walked unsteadily down the steps, she moved her head around to try and see out the bottom of the blindfold, to keep her balance as much as anything.
She saw gray metal steps, dirty gray concrete with red dust and not much else, followed by a flash of turquoise. Her Mini was here.
The biker’s strong arms shoved her back into the van and back to the bench. They left the blindfold on, but the same biker was in the back. Tiff caught his scent.
Might as well give them names. I have to have some way to think about them. ‘Biker 1, Biker 2? That’s not much use. Better to have something, some little characterization. Tiff thought. If I can name you, fuckers, then I start to own you.
The first one seemed to be the leader, and he had reminded her of a biker in a TV show. She’d name him--what was that guy called? Jax. She’d call him ‘Jax.’
She instinctively thought of calling the guy riding in back with her ‘Ax’. She had almost nothing to go on for the driver, but he was driving, so, ‘Max,’ like Mad Max. Jax, Ax and Max. The idea made her chuckle. Maybe there was a twang of hysteria.
‘Ax’ growled, “What are you laughing at?” As she pressed her mouth together and shook her head quickly, she felt ‘Jax’ lean back and his arm went to ‘Ax.’
Tiff got a small thrill from the tiny triumph. She’d set off a conflict between her captors. It was tiny, but real. I can get through this, she thought. Keep your head and it can work out fine.
From the sounds outside, they were lurching back into some kind of civilization. After some stop-start city driving, they parked up in a street that sounded urban, and Tiffany was hustled up some steps into a building. They forced her up a narrow stairway that creaked like it was wooden, along a hallway that sounded narrow, up more stairs and along some more hallway.
She waited while a door was unlocked, then she was shoved through into a room. She was walked across wood floor, then a carpet or a rug of some sort, and through a door to another room. Then she was deposited on a bed. The door to the room was closed and she seemed to be alone.
She heard the boots outside, some scraping of furniture, and then voices. Tiffany thought she could make out Jax and two others, but she couldn’t be sure. She’d heard him say less than a dozen words. Listening hard, she couldn’t make out any of what was said, only quiet murmurs.
A cellphone beeped a couple of times. It was a generic ringtone. Then a chair scraped as the beep stopped. Boots crossed the room as the biker stood up to take the call. Another chair scraped, there was more movement, and the other two voices.
The one on the phone, the one she thought was Jax, said, “Uh-huh,” and ‘Yup,” and then something she couldn’t make out. At the same time, there was the clatter of crockery, a refrigerator door, more movement, and feet crossing the floor. A chair scraped. I can’t sort out what matters from what’s just noise, she thought.
The door opened, and someone came in. He crossed the room, and set something down to Tiffany’s left. Then she felt the weight of someone crawling onto the bed. Jax was still on the phone, so the one on the bed wasn’t he.
The scent seemed like the one she’d called ‘Ax.’
Tiffany braced herself. She’d thought about what might happen. Again, from her expertise watching movies and TV shows, if everything went according to plan, there would be at least a day before the ransom could be met.
Even if there wasn’t a second shake-down, she was going to be a captive for twenty-four hours, minimum, maybe thirty-six. After that was where things usually started poorly. What went wrong, usually, was somebody’s nerves gave out and they fucked up.
That was always the exciting climax in the movie or the TV drama. That’s when everybody dies.
In this scenario, in her real-life predicament, she didn’t care all that much what happened to everybody, only the hostage. My prospects are probably best, she thought, if nobody fucks up.
With all the calm she could muster, Tiffany tried to be as relaxed as she could be, when the figure on the bed reached over her to the blindfold. Her body flinched. Her breath shook.
He pulled the blindfold down until it hung around her neck. Tiffany did her best to look him calmly in the eye. As she blinked and adjusted to the light, she wasn’t looking at anyone’s eyes. Instead, she tried to look Ax calmly in the shades.
It was unnerving, but the fact that she’d won her private game of guess-the-biker gave her strength. She wanted to look around the room, learn about her surroundings, but she figured that holding eye contact, or as near as she could get, was more important now.
Ax put his finger up to his bandana, where his mouth was. She understood. He was going to take off the damn tape. He didn’t want her to start screaming and yelling. She nodded.
He showed her a very large, wicked-looking knife. He held the jagged, gleaming curve of the serrated blade against her soft throat. He put his finger to his mouth again. He shook his head, slowly.
Tiffany shook her head, slowly. He put the knife away. With his hand, he indicated a table by the bed. On the table were a slice of pizza on a plate, and an open bottle of beer.
Ax got up off the bed, walked over to a door at the left of the room. He opened it. There was a small bathroom with a sink, a shower, and a toilet. He closed the door, turned a key, and dropped the key in his pocket.
Then he walked to the other door and mimed knocking, twice. Tiffany nodded quickly.
“Okay,” she said, “If I need to use the bathroom I knock on the door.”
He nodded and came back to the bed. She trembled as he climbed on beside her. Her breath was thick and heavy, but she tried not to let it show.
Her body was tingling with that thing the endocrinologist had called the ‘self-preserving fight-or-flight response.’ A lot of good either of those impulses would be to her now. She couldn’t flee, and fighting the big biker wouldn’t end well for her. The theory was that it heightened your senses. She hoped he couldn’t tell.
His nostrils flared. He could tell.
He took out the knife again, and put a hand around the back of her head. He yanked her forward. With a snap, he cut the cord that held her wrists. He pulled her back up and took hold of the tape that covered her mouth.
Once more, he put his finger to his mouth and shook his head. She shook her head in agreement.
He yanked the heavy tape off in a rapid, rasping tug. It felt like he tore off the bottom of her face. She didn’t make a sound. He patted her cheek twice with his fingers, like Daddy had when she was little.
As he pulled his fingers away, they stuck to the adhesive left on her skin. He rubbed his fingers together. As Tiffany rubbed her sore wrists and saw the red marks around them, he got off the bed and opened the bathroom door. He held out his arm, inviting her to go clean up.
Tiffany scrubbed her face with water, leaving the hard, pink soap just for her hands. Getting the sticky goo off took forever, but she wasn’t going anywhere. Tiffany took her time. She figured that making Ax wait for her was no bad thing, either. Although she doubted he had too many other engagements for the afternoon.
That was something. Tiffany wondered how her sense of time was now. She thought about how long they’d traveled in the van. The first time she figured about twenty minutes, the second time about the same. They were in the warehouse or whatever
it was for, what, half an hour? They’d been here, wherever ‘here’ was, for maybe twenty minutes.