Swimsuit - James Patterson [2]
Another thump jolted her, and Kim yelled this time, “Hey!”
Her shout went nowhere, muffled by the confined space, the vibration of an engine. She realized she was inside the trunk of a car. But that made no freaking sense! She told herself to wake up!
But she was awake, feeling the bumps for real, and so she fought, twisting her wrists against a knotted nylon rope that didn’t give. She rolled onto her back, tucking her knees to her chest, then bam! She kicked up at the lid of the trunk, not budging it a fraction of an inch.
She did it again, again, again, and now pain was shooting from her soles to her hips, but she was still locked up, and now she was hurting. Panic seized her and shook her hard.
She was caught. She was trapped. She didn’t know how this had happened or why, but she wasn’t dead and she wasn’t injured. She would get away.
Using her bound hands as a claw, Kim felt around for a toolbox, a jack or a crowbar, but she found nothing, and the air was getting thin and foul as she panted alone in the dark.
Why was she here?
Kim searched for her last memory, but her mind was sluggish, as if a blanket had been thrown over her brain, too. She could only guess that she’d been drugged. Someone had slipped her a roofie, but who? When?
“Helllllllpppp! Let me out!” she yelled, kicking out at the trunk lid, banging her head against a hard metal ridge. Her eyes were filling with tears and she was getting mad now on top of being scared out of her mind.
Through her tears, Kim felt a five-inch-long bar just above her. It had to be the interior trunk release lever, and she whispered, “Thank you, God.”
Chapter 2
KIM’S CLAW-HANDS TREMBLED as she reached up, hooked her fingertips over the lever, and pulled down. The bar moved — too easily — and it didn’t pop the lid.
She tried again, pulling repeatedly, frantically working against her certain knowledge that the release bar had been disabled, that the cable had been cut — when Kim felt the car wheels leave the asphalt. The ride smoothed out, and that made her think the car might be rolling over sand.
Was it going into the ocean?
Was she going to drown in this trunk?
She screamed again, a loud, wordless shriek of terror that turned into a gibbering prayer, Dear God, let me out of this alive, and I promise you — and when her scream ran out, she heard music coming from behind her head. It was a female vocalist, something bluesy, a song she didn’t know.
Who was driving the car? Who had done this to her? For what possible reason?
And now her mind was clearing, running back, flipping through the images of the past hours. She started to remember. She’d been up at three. Makeup at four. On the beach at five. She and Julia and Darla and Monique and that other gorgeous but weird girl, Ayla. Gils, the photographer, had been drinking coffee with the crew, and men had been hanging around the edges, towel boys and early morning joggers agog at the girls in their little bikinis, at the wonder of stumbling onto a Sporting Life swimsuit shoot right there.
Kim pictured the moments, posing with Julia, Gils saying, “Less smile, Julia. That’s great. Beautiful, Kim, beautiful, that’s the girl. Eyes to me. That’s perfect.”
She remembered that the phone calls had come after that, during breakfast and throughout the whole day.
Ten freaking calls until she turned off her phone.
Douglas had been calling her, paging her, stalking her, driving her crazy. It was Doug!
And she thought about earlier that night, after dinner, how she’d been in the hotel bar with the art director, Del Swann. It was his job to oversee the shoot and be her chaperone afterward. But Del had gone to the men’s room, and somehow he and Gils, both of them as gay as birds, disappeared.
And she remembered that Julia was talking with a guy at the bar, and she’d tried to get Julia’s attention but Julia wouldn’t make eye contact… so Kim had gone for a walk on the beach.… And that was all she remembered.
Her cell phone had been clipped to her belt but switched