Swimsuit - James Patterson [4]
The voice was mellow and calm when he spoke again.
“Sorry to be so rude, Kim. I’ll introduce myself in a minute or two. It won’t be very long now. And don’t worry. Everything’s going to be fine.”
The line went dead.
Kim blanked when the phone call cut off. It was as if her mind had been disconnected, too. Then the thoughts tumbled in. She found hope in the stranger’s reassurance. So she clung to it. He was acting… nice. He’d said, “Everything’s going to be fine.”
The car took a hard left, and Kim rolled against the side of the trunk, braced her feet against the wall of the compartment. And she realized that she was still gripping the phone!
She held the keypad close to her face. She could barely read the numbers by the pale light of the faceplate, but she still managed to punch in 911.
She listened to the three rings, then four, and then the operator’s voice. “ Nine-one-one. What’s your emergency?”
“My name is Kim McDaniels. I’ve been —”
“I didn’t get that. Please spell your name.”
Kim rolled forward as the car come to a stop. Then the driver’s side door slammed — and she heard the key turning in the trunk lock.
Kim gripped the phone tighter, scared that the operator’s voice would be loud enough to give her away, but more scared that if she hung up she’d lose the GPS connection between herself and the police, her best hope of rescue.
The phone call could be traced. That was correct, wasn’t it?
“I’ve been kidnapped,” she spat.
The key was turned, left and right, the lock not quite unlatching, and in that fraction of a minute Kim desperately revisited her plan. It was still good. Say her kidnapper wanted to have sex with her. She could survive that, obviously, but she had to be smart, make him her friend, remember everything so she could tell the police.
The trunk lid lifted, and moonlight spilled over her feet.
And Kim’s plan to seduce her abductor flew out of her mind. She hauled back her knees and kicked hard at the man’s thighs. He jumped back, avoiding her feet, and before she could see his face, the blanket was thrown over hers, the cell phone ripped from her hands.
Then — there was the prick of a needle in her thigh.
Kim heard his voice as her head rolled back and the light faded.
“Fighting me is pointless, Kim. This isn’t about you and me. It’s a whole lot bigger than that, trust me. But, then, why should you trust me?”
Chapter 5
KIM CAME to consciousness.
She was lying faceup on a bed inside a glowing, yellow-painted room. Her arms were tied and anchored behind her head. Her legs, a long way away, were roped to the metal frame of a bed. A white satin sheet was tucked under her chin, draped between her legs. She couldn’t be a hundred percent sure, but she thought she was naked under the sheet.
She pulled at the rope holding her arms behind her, and she got terrifying glimmers of what might happen to her next, nothing that matched the man’s promise that “everything’s going to be fine.” Then she heard grunts and squeals coming from her throat, sounds she’d never made before.
She got nowhere with the ropes, so she lifted her head and as best she could, looked around the room. It seemed unreal, like a stage set.
To the right side of the bed were two closed windows, hung with gauzy curtains. There was a table beneath the windows loaded with lit candles of all heights and colors, and there were tropical flowers.
Birds of paradise and ginger — very masculine to her eyes, sexual really — stood erect in a vase beside the bed.
Another look around, and she took in cameras, two of them. Professional grade, mounted on tripods on either side of her.
She saw lights on stands and a sound boom she hadn’t noticed at first, positioned above her head.
She became aware of the roar of surf, loud, as if the waves were crashing against the walls. And there she was, pinned like a butterfly at the center of it all.
Kim took in a deep breath, and screamed, “HELP MEEEEEE.”
When her scream faded, a man’s voice came from behind her head. “Hey, hey. Kim. No one can hear