Worst Case - James Patterson [52]
She had been coming through one of those cavelike construction scaffolding tunnels across the street from the gym when a man standing beside the open door of a van had said, “Mary Beth?”
She remembered a stinging numbness in her chest as she turned toward the voice. Her whole entire body seemed to cramp at once as she fell forward, powerless. A strong, wet, medicinal smell filled her nose and mouth then, and she was out.
She’d woken up in the straitjacket with a massive headache. That had been what? Seven? Maybe eight hours before? Eight hours of blackness and silence. Eight hours of being starving and thirsty and dirty and having to use the bathroom. It was like she was stuck at sea. A sea of darkness where there seemed to be no hope of being rescued.
At first, the sadness had been sharp, but now it was lessening, weakening like a candle dying out. She thought of her friends and teachers. Her mom. I’m sorry, everyone, she thought. Sorry for being so stupid. Sorry for messing up.
She didn’t know how much more time had elapsed when she heard the clacking of a steel shutter rolling up.
Oh, God! Somebody was coming. The man who had taken her.
An unhinging bolt of animal panic gripped her, froze her. He would touch her now, wouldn’t he? That’s what they did, right? Crazy men? Hurt you. Raped you. Killed you. She whimpered. It would be better just to be buried. She didn’t want to be in pain.
That’s when she shook herself out of her pity. She found a hard place inside herself and went there. She would fight for her life. She would bite and scream and kick. She found the thought of it comforting. She wanted to live, but more than that, she wanted to fight. She suddenly knew she could, and that was somehow better.
There was the sound of a car motor approaching. The clackety-clack of a metal gate going back down again. The killing of the engine and the sound of the door opening made her new strength waver for a moment, but then she bit down harder on the gag, and it was back.
I want to live, she thought. Please, God, just allow me the chance to live.
Chapter 59
THE METALLIC SCRAPE of a lock was loud right next to Mary Beth’s ear. The lid of the steel box screeched as it opened.
Even in the poor light, she knew it was him. The suit. The gray hair and the glasses. He looked intelligent, fatherly, like a kindly doctor or a popular professor. How could men be so evil? she thought.
Her arms and especially her hands were strong from volleyball. He’d free her to get at her, wouldn’t he? First chance she got, she’d smash the side of her fist into his glasses, try to ram a shard into his eye as deep as it would go.
He lifted her out by the straps on the back of her jacket. She saw that she’d been held in a large industrial toolbox. They were in an enormous dark warehouse of some kind. Behind the van were girderlike pillars and welding gas tanks. Could she kick one over and start a fire? Best of all was a high window above the steel shutter of the door. The world lay on its other side.
Make it there, she urged herself. For everything that everyone in your life has done for you, make it there.
The man sat her on a bench beside a metal table and sat down on the other side of it.
He took two items out of his jacket pockets and laid them on the tabletop for her to see. She made another whimper at the sight of them.
They were a straight razor and a black pistol.
“I’m going to remove your gag. If you scream, I’m going to have to cut up that flawless face of yours, Mary Beth. Nod if you understand.”
She nodded. He leaned across the table, slid the cold flat of the razor to her cheek, and shredded the gauze. She breathed through her mouth as she worked her sore jaw, wishing her hands were free to scratch her cheeks.
“Hi, Mary Beth,” he said. “Do you know who I am?”
Um, let me guess, she thought. You’re the sick freak who’s going