Willing Hostage Read online

  She’d stay around Oak Creek for four hours instead of eight because she was only half as dumb as Welker thought her. She’d make no attempt to look for the brutal Glade, who had miles of other places to hide anyway. After four hours she’d have earned the money and the car and use them to head for healthier climes.

  Feeling better for having made a decision, Leah traveled the green valley, wondering about the man’s odd name. Glade evoked either a spray can or a peaceful clearing in a forest. But there was no peace in the misnamed man with shadows for eyes and a gun in his hand.

  Leah was not eager to carry out her instructions. The Vega made no attempt to reach the speed limit and two vehicles came up behind her and passed. The first was an empty dump truck with coal dust flying from its bed. The second was a yellow Volkswagen with a blonde at the wheel and a giant Siamese cat blinking back at Leah from the rear window.

  Chapter Ten

  Leah chased the yellow Volks all the way to Oak Creek but lost it after it passed the dump truck.

  She drove around the town, which was even smaller than Walden and placed half in a narrow valley and half up the side of a mountain. She didn’t see her car. But she did see a small airplane fly up the valley along the road and circle Oak Creek.

  Not knowing if it was the same aircraft she’d met the day before or not, she felt sickly in the midst of things again. She parked the Vega on a side street and left it.

  Tightening the scarf around her head, she headed for main street to mingle with other unknowns. Like Walden and unlike New York or Chicago, there was no one to mingle with. She felt exposed to all eyes in the sky.

  Leah spent the afternoon entering, leaving, and reentering the few shops—her plans in disorder. The plane left, and just as she was calming down, it returned.

  Oak Creek contained curious inhabitants. She couldn’t have met more than thirty in three hours, but half wore cowboy boots and Stetsons, and the other half, sandals and long hair. They seemed to blend amicably. The straights and the long hairs divided the businesses—one shop offering hardware and the one next to it crafts in wood and pottery. Both shops sported identical signs in their windows offering a fifteen-hundred-dollar reward from the Cattlemen’s Association for information leading to the arrest and conviction of cattle rustlers.

  In another, she met a Siamese cat presiding over a display counter of Indian jewelry and obviously the prized possession of the girl in the granny dress who ran the place. But this cat was a true Siamese with the slender head and sleek body. Goodyear would make two of him; still there was the same rich cocoa-brown face, paws, and tail, the same fawn-colored body between.

  Leah left the shop with tears in her eyes and wondered what this strange country was doing to her. “This is just not the United States of America, that’s all.”

  Finally, Leah realized she hadn’t heard or seen the plane for some while and literally fell into a restaurant she had passed six times. The smell of sauerkraut hit her in the face like a fist. She would have reeled out into the street again, but a spurt of customers propelled her inside.

  Leah found herself in a minute cafeteria. The room was large enough but the short counter offered a selection of exactly two dinners, sauerkraut and Polish sausage or barbecued ribs—the vegetables and other side dishes didn’t care which. She grabbed a tray and a hot plate, filled it with ribs and extras, and staggered to a table.

  “Coffee, milk, or Dr. Pepper?” asked a boy in a dress next to her elbow.

  “Milk.”

  The milk and the bill arrived immediately with a flounce and gorgeous smile. Was it a boy? Leah concentrated on her dinner and decided she was too spaced out to know the difference. It was probably a girl, but if it was, she needed a shave.

  Leah was halfway through the ribs when she felt eyes staring at her.

  At the next table four men in leather shorts with embroidered suspenders and knee socks stole glances at her, but they were not exactly staring. Bright-colored backpacks leaned against the table legs. The men looked like young replicas of the little old Swiss Colony Winemaker.

  Beyond them two cowboy types with shaggy crew cuts were looking, too. Why should everyone notice her? She had to be the only normal person in the room.

  Her search stopped at the next table. It had a lone occupant whose eyes were shadowed. But she knew they stared at her over grim lips and cleft chin. Leah looked away, signaled the boy in the dress for another glass of milk, and kept her eyes on her plate.

  When she gathered enough nerve to look up, his table was empty.

  Leah found the rest room. There was only one. It sat next to the pinball machine and was labeled “Their’s.” She threw up the ribs and extras.

  When she sat again at her table she ordered ice cream and it melted to pudding. She drank a slow cup of tea. Then a glass of milk. She didn’t want to go back onto the street. She drawdled over a piece of pie. Eventually the place closed up around her.

  Leah was on the street. It was dark and cold. Not daring to peek into any of the recessed doorways, she raced for the Vega, fumbling at the door handle in panic. When it opened, the light in the roof came on and she made a quick check of the floor in the back. He was too big to hide there anyway.

  It seemed to take forever to find the keys in her purse, put the key in the ignition with a hand that shook. The sound of her rapid breathing filled the car before the engine drowned it out. Just as Leah leaned across to lock the door on the other side, it opened.…

  Chapter Eleven

  He crawled in beside her, closed the door so that the light went out, grabbed her wrist as she moved to press the horn, turned off the engine, and took hold of her other wrist. It all happened too fast for Leah to think.

  They sat in the dark, in silence. She couldn’t even see him.

  “I’m supposed to give you a message,” Leah managed finally. She pressed her knees together to stop their shaking. But it made the shaking worse.

  He tightened his grip until she cried out.

  “Welker … I’m not Sheila, honest … but he took my car and my cat and gave me money.”

  “Who?”

  “Welker. He said he was from the FBI and wanted me to come here to give you a message.”

  “Looked like you were trying to run away.”

  “I panicked. I didn’t expect to see you in a restaurant … in the open like that.”

  “I was hungry. What’s the message?”

  “You’re hurting me. I can’t remember.”

  The hold on her wrists didn’t loosen. “The message.”

  “There’s someone after you.”

  He laughed. The laugh held no mirth.

  “Company people … goons? And he will meet your terms for the property.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Neither do I. That’s all he told me.”

  “How did you know to come here?”

  “He said you might come to Oak Creek. He didn’t say why. He said I was to give you the message, that you would know what it meant, and then I could leave.”

  Glade took both her wrists in one hand and passed cold metal across her fingers, then let go. “Drive.” The cold metal poked at her neck.

  “You can have all the money. You can have the car. Take them and let me go. I’m not in this. I’m being used—”

  “Drive to the corner and turn left. Now.”

  No denying the steel at her throat or the steel in his voice. Leah started the engine, turned on the headlights, released the emergency brake in an automatic dream—and wondered at the incredible stupidity of honest people.

  The Vega left Oak Creek on the road by which she had come and he soon ordered her off onto a path by the river. A pile of wooden debris showed white in the headlights and he made her drive through a hole. She found herself in a tumble-down building with a dirt floor.

  Leah shivered as they left the car. The river roared back from its bed through the slits in the building. Every oth
er board in the walls and ceiling was missing.

  “Are you going to kill me?”

  “I’m considering it.” He smelled unwashed. He threw her coat around her shoulders and forced her to sit on the cold dirt. “You’re not Sheila?”

  “No.”

  “How am I supposed to contact Welker?” He stood behind her.

  “He didn’t say. I supposed you’d know.”

  “Then there must be somebody else coming. You were the bait.”

  She remembered seeing the blonde in her yellow Volks on the way to Oak Creek. “Maybe—” Leah closed her mouth.

  “Maybe what?”

  “Nothing.” Helping him would not be helping herself.

  He yanked off the scarf and grabbed the bun on the back of her head. Bobby pins flew, one of them slid down the skin under her dress. The cracking sound in her neck mingled with the sound of hair pulling out at the roots.

  Leah told him about the blonde in her Volkswagen.

  When he let go, she almost fell over backward. She huddled into her coat, her hair falling about her face and shoulders, and hated him.

  “Probably the real Sheila, if you’re not.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Where are your jeans?” He was at the car, pulling the keys from the ignition, opening the trunk, dragging out her suitcases.

  Leah stared at the stars through the open slats in the roof. The brute had a penchant for blue jeans.

  Glade rummaged through a bundle of something in the corner and came back with a flashlight to attack her luggage again. Muttering low, he dumped her hair dryer and rollers from the duffel bag and replaced them with clothing.

  Bars of light and dark crossed his face and body as night light filtered through slats.

  “Get into these.” He dumped a pile of clothes in her lap.

  Ice in the air fingered her body as she slipped out of her dress and into jeans, blouse, wool sweater, and an oversized sweat shirt.

  He’d lost all interest in her “great” body and was pawing through her purse. “You’re a hell of a lot richer than the last time we met.” He held up the wad of bills, then slid them into her wallet. Adding her wallet and the Maalox to the contents of the duffel, he threw her luggage, coat, and purse into the trunk with the clothes she’d removed and locked it.

  When she’d tied her tennis shoes, he pushed the duffel at her and gathered his bundle from the corner. They left the shedlike building to hurry between shadows to the river.

  “I can’t swim,” she lied. Maybe he intended to drown her. Maybe she could swim away if he thought she was helpless in water. Maybe.…

  He grunted in answer and pushed her along the bank until they came to a log over splashing water. His grip kept her balanced as she crossed it. They stood on a tiny island, the river—really just a stream that sounded like a river as it crashed over rocks—surrounded them with sound and a moonlight shimmer of spray. There was a smell of coal dust in the air.

  Glade looked up and down the bank, as if trying to find a crossing. The frogs resumed their debate in baritone burps. Her alleged assailant turned, stooped, and put his shoulder in the pit of her stomach. “Hold onto your bag,” he said and stood to wade across the stream with Leah flopping breathlessly across his shoulder. He put her down on the other side and they headed toward a dark mountain. Glade started straight up the side of it.

  Leah was already winded by the pace he set. “I can’t—”

  “You will.”

  And on they climbed until her legs screamed with aching. It seemed forever before he stopped to let her rest.

  “Why … why don’t you just … kill me down here? I can’t—”

  “I haven’t decided what to do with you.” Again the viselike grip on her sore arm as he dragged her to her feet. “But don’t tempt me.” And they set off.

  Leah’s heart was pounding and her throat stung from gasping when he stopped on top of the ridge. He surveyed the countryside while she sprawled at his feet.

  Crickets sang. Wind whirred in the trees below, moved closer until it ruffled their hair and whirred past. Leah shivered and sat up, holding her head in her hands.

  Glade offered her a drink from a cloth-covered canteen. “It’s just water,” he said when she hesitated.

  The water tasted of metal.

  He stood towering over her, big and hostile like the country around them. “Let’s go.”

  They started downhill, Leah stumbling and slipping each time the grade steepened, her duffel bag dragging on the ground behind her, but always the cruel hand to steady her and force her onward. The night was bright with moon and stars and he didn’t use the flashlight.

  Finally, he stopped and drew her back against him. A darkened building loomed ahead in a small clearing, its roof sloped steeply on both sides like a capital A. His bundle hit the ground with a soft thump and his other hand covered her mouth. They stood in this fashion, listening to each other breathe and to little rustlings in the trees.

  He picked up the bundle and they moved slowly toward the clearing, stopping again at its edge. Glade pulled her toward the building, unlocked the door with a key from his pocket, and ordered her inside.

  Leah faced a wall of window in the same A-shape as the roof. The moon flooded a room that was a combination bedroom, living room, kitchenette, and bar. Her tired tennis shoes sank into thick-piled carpeting.

  He turned on a dim light in a cubbyhole bathroom, told her he’d give her three minutes, pushed her in, and closed the door.

  When she opened it, he was mixing himself a drink using only the moon for light. She went to her duffel for a gulp of Maalox.

  Glade ordered her to take off her sweater, sweat shirt, and shoes and to lie on the bed. Pulling a rope from his bundle, he tied her wrists and ankles leaving a foot-long connection of rope between. He pulled the covers to her chin.

  She watched, hating him, as he stood at the window and finished his drink, took something white from his bundle, and disappeared into the bathroom. She heard the shower running, the thumping of his elbows against the shower stall. Leah worked frantically at her bonds.

  But she was still tied when he stepped out of the bathroom, looking darker in white T-shirt and jockey shorts, rubbing his hair down with a white towel.

  Glade pulled back the covers and crawled into bed beside her.

  Chapter Twelve

  Leah felt along the rope that bound her ankles. Where was the knot?

  The man had sprawled on his stomach and fallen asleep the minute he’d hit the pillow. He’d turned the back of his damp head to her and now he smelled like a wet dog. Leah was still trying to locate the knot and making grandiose plans for escape when she too fell asleep.

  She awoke to daylight, sounds of small animals skittering on the roof, and to find herself snuggled up to Glade’s warmth.

  Easing away to the cold part of the bed, she hoped the hungry rumble in her middle wouldn’t awaken him. The knot must be around her wrists somewhere … and then in disbelief, Leah realized that during her quiet struggle one ankle had come free. The rope was under her heel. This careful man had slipped up and that renewed her confidence.

  She slid the foot out and then the other ankle from the loosened loop. Elated, she crept from beneath the covers and edged over the bottom of the bed to the floor, her wrists still tied.

  It was a small but elegant bachelor’s pad, complete with stereo and moss-rock fireplace and even.…

  Leah stood shivering and incredulous … a telephone sat atop one of the boxed stereo speakers.

  Glade still had not moved. For someone on the run, he slept like the dead. Leah stepped carefully toward the telephone, the rope dangling from her wrists. She picked up the receiver … and heard a dial tone. Her luck was finally changing.

  She glanced over her shoulder and froze with her finger in the O on the dial.

  Leah hadn’t been able to describe the color of Glade’s eyes to the young patrolman or the sheriff’s deputy at
Walden. But she could have now. Because they were open. And directed at her.

  They were as dark and deadly as the rest of him.

  He sat up, blinking away sleep. “Do you know?” he said with a yawn. “You are a real honest-to-God, first-class pain in the ass.” It was the longest sentence she’d ever heard him speak.

  For his size, he moved with incredible speed to cross the room and cradle the telephone receiver.

  They studied each other silently, Leah forcing her eyes to meet his. There was passion there, after all, but now it was busy with other things behind the dark stare. She had the feeling that her fate was being decided at that precise moment.

  The phone rang.

  Leah jumped and dropped her eyes, losing the staring contest. Glade seized the rope between her wrists and twisted it. Leah slammed to her knees in front of him.

  “Make one sound and I’ll twist both arms off. Understand?”

  She nodded, staring now at the black hair on his legs, and heard the ringing stop as he picked up the phone.

  “Yes?”

  The voice on the other end of the line came through like static but she couldn’t make out the words.

  “He didn’t show. But someone else did.… No.… I’ll need another pack, bag, kit, and parka—medium and dark green. Can you do it?… And rations.… I don’t know but I’m taking her with me.… Yes, her.… Thanks for everything.… No. Just stay out of this, it’s getting deadly.… Say you don’t know me and stick to it … I’ll try to make another contact.… Right. I’ll leave the key. Good-bye and thanks.” He hung up and then said to the phone, “I probably won’t live to repay you.”

  Glade pulled her to her feet and untied her. “Your toothbrush and comb are in here.” He shoved the duffel at her. “And wash out that cut on your wrist.”