Snapshot

by Camryn King

  When Kennedy came to, her wrists had been tied behind her back and Jack was quickly binding her ankles with a belt he’d obviously pulled from her luggage. It was useless, but she couldn’t help squirming and trying to pull her legs from his grasp.

  He looked at her then with eyes that telegraphed more weariness than anger. “I don’t want to kill you, Wade. But I will. If you want to live, here’s what needs to happen. No more escape attempts. No more fighting. I’m driving you back to Chicago and between here and there will try and figure out how I’m going to . . .”

  Kennedy watched his eyes dart around as his mouth continued to move with no sound, as though he were having a private conversation with himself. His gaze returned to her, intense and unblinking. Her blood ran cold.

  “One more wrong move, and it will be your last one. So is this warning. Whether you live or die today is up to you.”

  Kennedy told herself she was done with the struggle. She wanted to live.

  “Where’s the first aid kit?”

  “In the toiletry case, the flowered organizer at the bottom of the big luggage. It’s white, plastic, with a red cross on top.”

  She heard him rattling around in her luggage. As he went through her things, her anger soared. Jack Sutton, the burglar and robber, rummaging through her personal belongings yet again. Much as he’d probably done in the Bahamas, and in Chicago. He’d warned that one more wrong move and he’d kill her. He might have to. Kennedy didn’t know how far they were from Chicago, but she doubted possessing the kind of restraint that would stop her from trying to kill him first.

  He returned to the passenger side of the car with the first aid kit and a bundle of clothes. She recognized one of her nighties, a pink, oversized t-shirt sporting a fat white cat wearing a glittery cap and glasses. Beneath it the caption: I’m purrfect. She flinched as he reached for her.

  “You need to put this on, cover your torn dress and all the scratches and bruises.”

  Blood rushed to her fingers as her wrists were freed. He stood blocking the door. There was no way to escape. Resigned, she snatched the tee from his hands and pulled it over her head.

  As soon as it was settled around her, he shook the scarf he’d used and said, “hands behind your back.”

  It was one thing to be tied up but when your very own clothes were used to do so it took the audacity to a whole other level.

  “Do we really have to do that? You’ve tied my ankles. I can’t run anywhere.”

  “But you can try and punch me again. Hold them out front.” Kennedy hesitated. Jack, just about out of patience, put a hand to her throat. “You’re about to piss me off. Don’t let that happen.”

  Kennedy was helpless to pry his fingers away from her throat and took a huge gulp of air when he released her. She held out her hands. He made an intricate loop secured with a Boy Scout style knot. She was bound, but her hands were in front of her and blood flowed to her fingers. It was way worse just a minute ago. Using another item of clothing, Jack reached for her foot.

  “There’s water in the back,” Kennedy said. “A couple of bottles in the thermo pack.”

  He looked from her to the back seat, opened the back door and grabbed both bottles out of the pouch. He handed one to her, opened the other and poured a generous amount over her feet. She winced from the initial contact, but the water was soothing to her raw, split skin. He dabbed the area and then opened the small bottle of hydrogen peroxide from the kit and poured it over her feet as he’d done the water.

  “Aw!”

  “It’ll sting but trust me, that’s less painful than dabbing them. They’ll feel better once they’re wrapped up.”

  That said, he ripped apart one of her favorite dresses and formed two long pieces of fabric. He methodically and efficiently wrapped her feet and tied off the cloth. Kennedy wondered about the man who called himself Jack Sutton. Everything about him screamed military. That hadn’t been evident in the Bahamas, but every action she’d seen since had been precise and calculated. Obviously, he had covert skills. And how had he been able to make her pass out with a press of his thumb to her wrist?

  He returned to the car, paused for a moment before turning the key. He started to say something, stopped, then quickly started the engine, put the car in gear and eased on to the highway. Kennedy looked at the dash and noted the time. It was just after eight a.m. Was it really only three hours ago that she placed her luggage in the car, nervous but also excited about seeing Tamara for the first time in more than five years? It felt as though an entire lifetime had passed, all the moments since spent struggling to simply stay alive. For the first time since waking up bound and blindfolded in her own car’s backseat, she thought about others. Tamara, Dodie, Gwen, her mom. They’d probably all placed repeated phone calls and were probably worried sick, especially her mom. Even without the whole story, she was still bewildered by all that had happened. Kennedy had promised she’d call before leaving the states which was scheduled to be less than ninety minutes from now.

  “Where’s my purse, my phone?” Kennedy asked.

  “The trunk.”

  “I need my phone. There are people who were expecting to hear from me hours ago.”

  “They’ll have to wait a couple hours longer, until you’re back in Chicago.”

  Kennedy fell back against the seat and looked out the window. They passed a sign that let her know Chicago was sixty-two miles away. The life she knew was much further away from her. She wondered if she’d ever arrive back there again. Cars passed by. Anyone seeing them probably saw normal. A guy with a baseball cap behind the wheel. His friend/wife/girlfriend /captive on the passenger side. The pink tee covered her ripped dress and body bruises. Her hands told a different story. Scabs had begun to form on her palms where the shards of glass cut her. Scratches covered her outer hand and fingers. The manicure she’d gotten just yesterday was totally trashed. She still had a hard time believing that this was her life, the one that happened while she’d been busy making totally different plans.

  Jack had slowed down and was driving the speed limit. Kennedy had always liked road trips. Were she not with her captor, she would have been able to appreciate the beautiful summer morning on this Labor Day weekend. At the moment, her gratitude was simply for being alive. She took a deep breath, tried to focus on that. Beside her it seemed that Jack had calmed down, too. The tension had dissipated. Somewhere between her feet being bandaged and these past few miles, the two must have reached an unspoken truce. The relative peace caused a shift in Kennedy’s thinking. Until now all she’d thought about was getting away from Jack Sutton. She still couldn’t wait to put a fair amount of distance between them. Until then though she needed something from him, answers to questions that only he could give.

  “You’re Jack Sutton.”

  He remained silent for so long Kennedy doubted he’d answer. Finally, he did. “That name works as good as any.”

  “But it’s obviously not your real name.”

  He looked over with the lopsided smile that had won her over in the restaurant. That she was ever attracted to a man who could do all he’d done to her made her want to throw up.

  “Obviously.”

  “Since you won’t share something so basic as your name, you probably won’t answer my other questions either. Like who hired you to kill me.” He didn’t answer. “If I had only one guess I’d go with the obvious, and say it was one of the people exposed, pun intended, in that picture today.”

  “Anybody can see that picture has been doctored.”

  Kennedy surprised herself by laughing, something that for the past few months had happened all too rarely.

  “Have you seen the pictures? I can guarantee you Van Dijk has. That’s probably who you work for and who ordered you to kill me. That they’re real is why you were sent down to the Bahamas, why you drugged and assaulted me and stole all my stuff.”

  “I never touched you.”

  “No? I went out clothed and woke u
p naked. You had to have touched me, and had you been able to feel an ounce of the shame I did the next morning? You’d call it an assault, too.”

  “I’m sorry about that.”

  Kennedy’s head whipped around. Amazing that he’d actually apologized and, even more crazy, she believed him. This situation just got weirder and weirder.

  “Funny thing is, I didn’t even know what I had. You can’t see the men with the naked eye, even blown up on a computer screen. The average viewer’s eyes are naturally drawn to the focal points of my design—the rainbow, the water, the gorgeous green foliage. Even when you followed me to Chicago and burglarized my place there, my friends and I chalked it up to bad luck. It wasn’t until Logan was burglarized and his flash drive was taken that I became determined to find out what I was missing in those pictures. That’s when I sent them to a friend because quite frankly, I was tired of looking at them, tired of them running and ruling my life. When I got back his enlarged pictures focusing on two guys having sex, I couldn’t have been more shocked.

  “I take it you’re a fan of TBC?”

  “I watch it from time to time.”

  “I didn’t doctor those pictures, Jack. I’m not homophobic, either. Becker and Van Dijk can meet and fuck until the cows come home. But I believe America has the right to know.”

  Jack was quiet a moment. “So . . . you sold the pictures?”

  It was Kennedy’s turn to hesitate. “For my protection, copies of those pictures were sent to at least half a dozen people. The leak could have come from anywhere.”

  “I asked if you sold them.”

  “And I gave you an answer.” Kennedy shrugged, and looked out the window. “It was as good an answer as any.”

  For the next thirty miles they were silent. Then Kennedy felt Jack glancing over at her, several times.

  “How did you get out of the house?”

  “Through the ceiling, and then through the window in the attic.”

  “I saw that window but didn’t think . . .”

  “I didn’t either. I just reacted. Staring death in the face makes you very resourceful.”

  “I came back to get you.”

  “Tsk.”

  “My . . . the information I’d been given was that you had captured information that was a threat to our national security. As a military man, I’ve sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution, an oath that doesn’t end now that I’m working a civilian post. Anyone threatening that democracy is treated like an enemy combatant, up to and including elimination.

  “I left you to die, had created a timed gas explosion to make sure that happened.”

  The admission seemed to fill the car’s interior. For a few seconds, Jack said nothing. Kennedy was unable to get her lips to move. She remained quiet as well.

  “Down the road a ways from the house I stopped at a bar. The bartender was watching TV. Breaking news came on. It was the pictures you took. That’s when I saw what I was helping to keep hidden and came back to get you out of the house.”

  “What if you hadn’t made it, or I hadn’t escaped?”

  “Then you would have been collateral damage, a casualty of war.”

  Not much was said after that. Kennedy thought of everything and nothing at all. She was numb with shock, exhaustion and disbelief. Just outside of the city limits, Jack took an exit near a busy strip mall. He parked in an isolated area, then Kennedy watched Jack methodically and efficiently wipe down every area of the car’s interior. He wiped the car handles. She heard him lift the trunk and close it. He wiped down the back seat. Then he returned to the front seat, started the car and drove off.

  “Where are we going?”

  “I’m going to park not far from your house, set up another explosive device.”

  He looked over to gauge her reaction. Even though she felt she could pee on herself, Kennedy kept her face a mask of stone.

  “It will be on the door, set on a timer, controlled on my phone. Once I get out, you’ll have to wait thirty minutes before you open anything—a window, door, trunk, anything. If you open it before the time is up, the car will blow up.”

  She didn’t respond, but if thirty minutes was the price for her freedom, he could have that lead time. Kennedy intended to go after Jack, or whatever his name was, for what he did to her. But that wasn’t the top priority on her list. For too many weeks the pictures she’d taken and at least one of the subjects in it had basically taken her life. It was time to get it back.

  30

  Kennedy waited thirty-five minutes after she’d watched him attach something to the driver’s side door, adjust his ball cap and walk casually but quickly down a street leading into one of the busiest tourist areas in the city. He’d parked far enough away so that any potential bomb blast wouldn’t kill too many people, but where within minutes he’d be absorbed into the crowd. She’d watched him until she couldn’t see him anymore, remembered everything she could about him and filed it away with all the details she’d remembered on the drive back to Chicago. She waited, periodically checking the clock on the dash, trying to put herself back into her body after having an experience that only happened in movies. It wasn’t easy. Her mind teetered on the brink of insanity, pushed by spending hours as the captive of her weeks-long hunter and the aftershock of knowing that earlier today she almost died. When she placed her hand on the door handle, a wave of panic overwhelmed her. She pushed through it, squeezed her eyes shut and opened the door. The only sound she heard was a crazy lady screaming. It took a few seconds to realize the noise was coming from her. Once she did, she chuckled. The chuckle became a laugh that grew into an all-out guffaw. She fell back into the car, laughing until it turned into a coughing fit, until tears filled her eyes. Then the pendulum swung to the other side of her emotions as she broke down and cried.

  She didn’t know how long she laid there, but Kennedy felt better when she sat up. She wiped her eyes, blew her nose and pushed the trunk button. Strange looks from the few who passed her reminded her of her dress rag-clad feet and her purrfect tee. She probably looked a hot mess and didn’t give a damn. Have them get abducted, almost blown up, escape from a locked home and then get recaptured, and see how good they’d look. After retrieving her purse from the trunk, she hobbled on to the other side of the car and got in.

  Being reconnected with her cellphone was an emotional experience. Tangible proof that she was no longer alone, she held it against her chest for a second before turning it on. Once it fired up indicators pinged like a song. It sounded as though the whole world had called her. She took a deep breath and instinctively placed the first call. There were others more important and whom she’d known longer but this first call had to be to someone she wasn’t trying to protect. Less than an hour away from the trauma of her life, she didn’t have the energy. The simple act almost brought on another crying spell. Once again, she was in the driver’s seat of her life. It wasn’t until she’d started the car, merged into traffic and driven away from the congested area that she finally engaged her Bluetooth.

  Tamara answered, quietly frantic. “Kennedy! Oh my God. I’ve been calling you for hours.”

  Ironically, her friend’s agitation calmed Kennedy’s nerves. Good thing, because she could barely answer one question before Tamara fired off another one. “My phone was off.”

  “So you are in New York?”

  “No, I’m still in Chicago.”

  “Why haven’t you called Dodie?”

  “I was . . . tied up.” Again, maniacal laughter bubbled up from her stomach to her throat and pushed against her teeth. She swallowed it and began to understand what crazy felt like.

  “She’s been calling you, too. We’ve both been so worried. What is going on?”

  Tamara finally took a breath, allowing the first moment of silence since her number was dialed.

  “I’m alright now so please don’t trip out when I tell you what happened. This morning, as I got in my car on the way to the airport, I was abducted
.”

  “What?” Tamara’s voice climbed at least two octaves to hit the note that word delivered.

  Kennedy navigated the busy Saturday morning streets of Chicago with no destination, telling Tamara how her last few hours had been spent. When she reached a quiet, residential area with lots of street parking she pulled over and finished the tale.

  “He put an explosive device on my car, walked down the block, and disappeared. I did what he told me, waited until the timer deactivated, then opened the door, got my phone, turned it on and called you.”

  Several seconds passed with no response. “Hello? Tamara?”

  There was a slight sniffle on the other end. “Kennedy, I’m so sorry. You’ve been to hell and back this morning and here I was going off on you and putting you through it again.”

  “It’s okay, Tamara. Were the tables turned I’d probably react the same way.”

  “Kennedy, how are you. Where are you?”

  “Right now, I’m parked on a beautiful street with big houses, nice lawns and tall, old trees. It feels safe here.”

  “Kennedy, honey, you shouldn’t be alone. You’re obviously traumatized and probably still in shock. It sounds like you need medical attention. Obviously, you need to go to the police. But not by yourself. Is there someone you can call to come be with you while I arrange for you to get on the next flight here from Chicago? Don’t worry about Dodie. I won’t share what happened, but I’ll let her know you’re alright and that you’ll call her soon. Okay?”

  “Thanks, but she’s my next call and yes, there’s someone to help me.”

  “I can’t believe the story you just told me.”

  “Yeah, well, it happened to me and I can’t believe it, either.”

  “Thank God you’re alive.”