3 Sin City Hunter (24 page)

There wasn’t time to tell him
all that had happened with
Carl from
Friday night at the craps table to Wednesday night at the racquetball club. He had no idea how deep C
arl’s hatred of me was, and
these men weren’t going to let me go. We needed a miracle.

The
driver’s side door
was jammed, but t
he passenger door was jerked open by a man
who I hadn’t seen before
.
He
had a deep,
scar running diagonally from the corner of his eye, across his nose, and down to his jaw. The man with the tattoos on his arm was, once again, holding the crowbar. They forced us out of the car and onto the side of the road.

Mick spoke first, “
All of the evidence
from the motel room is in the backseat in a garbage bag.
We left the money in the room, and
the k
ey is in the bag. T
ake it, and leave us alone.”

Scarface
said, “That’s n
ot what the boss told us to do, and we follow orders.” He reached into the car, grabbed the car keys
and opened the trunk. He scowled
a
t us and
commanded
, “Get in
.”

Mick balked and made a sudden move toward
scarface
.
The t
attoo
ed
man swung the
crowbar
. Mick didn’t play racquetball, but he did play handball, and he was quick on his feet
as he
lunged to the side. The crowbar didn’t
fully
con
nect
, but it did graze the side of his head. A trick
le of blood appeared
. I let out a cry of alarm.

Scarface stepped up and yelled at the tattooed man, “Stop it! The boss said no more crushed skulls.” He pulled out a gun, aimed it at us, and said again, “Get
in
.”

We had no other choice but to
do as we were told
. It was dark outside, but with a nearly full moon, we had been able to see each other in the moonlight. Now
, in the trunk,
we were in total
darkness
. One of the men started the car, and we were moving. I couldn’t even begin to imagine where we
they were taking us
.

It was incredibly uncomfortable in the trunk. Mick had his back to me, but began shifting little by little until he was facing me. I started crying. Once again, I had not only put myself in danger, but now I had Mick’s life on the line, too. It was unbearable.

“Come here,” he said softly. His hands were around my waist and through to my back as he attempted to pull me close to him. I
kicked
off my shoes and shift
ed my legs so
my feet were behind me. I felt his warm breath on my face, and more tears
came as I smelled the scent which
was specifically Mick. He wore
a cologne
I
loved, and it only smelled like this on him. It had always been a powerful turn on for me, but
now
it was making
me cry harder. I regretted that
his arrival last ni
ght had been so
unpleasant
, and
we had slept together without so much as a goodnight kiss.

He tried to calm me. “I don’t know what’s going to happ
en, Susan, and I won’t say
I’m not scared, but I’ll do everything I can to find a way out of this for us. Th
ey could have shot us
, and they didn’t, so this could work out yet. I love you,
sweetheart. I promised you
I would protect you, and I’ll do my best.”

“I love you, too, Mick,” I told him between sobs. “I’m sorry about last night, about Dell, about Darby, about everything.” Saying the words only made me cry harder.

“Shhh. Shhh.” He
was holding me close and trying to calm me. He kissed my face again. “Susan, your parents and Darby held an intervention for me this morning. They explained everything. Before they were finished, Dell Grady showed up. The hockey team is still in town, and your dad called him to come over to the hotel. By the time they were finished, I had a pretty good picture of the predicaments you had gotten yourself into. I’m still a little unsure as to why Darby was kissing you at the arena, but I’m only jealous of Darby because of the
amount of
time he gets to spend with you. I wish it were me.”

I answered his question by saying, “Darby was kissing me because he spotted these two guys right behind me. He pretended to be my boyfriend, so he kissed me and whisked me away out of reach of them. Believ
e me, I was as surprised by his
kiss as
much as
you were.”

I
heard a
chuckle
in the darkness
. “I’ll have to thank him later for rescuing you,” he said.

The car
came to a halt. We could hear voices, but no one opened the trunk. Mick
tried again to pull
me as close to him as he could
and said, “Susan, you’re
the love of my life. I’ll
try
to get us out of this.”
He kissed me tenderly.

This brought a fresh wave of te
ars from me, but I was
crying quietly now. We
stopped talking and
held each other close. I started to feel calm
er
.
Mick’s sc
ent and his arms around me were
comforting as he occasionally kissed my chee
ks, my eyes, my lips. I felt
safe in his
arms, and I
suddenly
knew
everything
would be a
l
l
right
.

A
ccording to my lighted watch dial
, we
were in the trunk for nearly an hour before
hear
ing
the sound of an approaching vehicle. It stopped, a door slammed, and we heard muffled voices.
The
trunk lid flew open, and
we were blinded by
the
headlights
of
the vehicle which had just arrived
.

“Get them out of there,” a voice barked.

It was Carl!

We were yanked from the car.
Scarface
was holding Mick, and the tattooed man, with the crowbar still in his hands, had wrenched
my arms
behind my back.

Carl was
a lunatic. His eyes
were dark and opened wide
, his breathing was
ragged,
and his anger was visible, yet he was preening like a proud peacock. It was frightening in its lunacy.

“Weren’t
the two of you
so cozy in that trunk,” he said
sarcastically as he
start
ed
to pace back and forth in front of
us
. “The fiance, I presume. The man who will give you NOTHING,” he screamed. “You could have had everything with ME, Susan.”

“Leave him alone, Carl,” I said defi
antly. “I’ll come with you, but
leave him alone. He doesn’t know anything about any of this.” Mick’s protests to leave
me
alone were falling on deaf ears – both mine and Carl’s.

“It doesn’t matter what he knows
,” he sneered
.
“
You humiliated me last night, and no one treats me like that and gets away with it. You want him, don’t you? Well, I wanted YOU, and I can’t have what I want,
so I’m going to make sure
you don’t get what you want.”

I lunged for Carl. Mick wrested free of
s
carface, but before he could get a hand on Carl,
the tattooed man
cracked him on the head with the crowbar. Mick fell to the ground in
a heap
. I screamed
.

Scarface
grabbed
me, slapped
his hand over my mouth, and wrenched my arm
s
behind my back
again
. The tattooed man
quickly put
duct tape over my mouth.
My wrists were tied
behind my back with rope
which
they
also used to
bind
my
ankles
together. I
was
essentially hog-tied. I couldn’t move, but for
the moment, I could still stand
.

I was looking wildly at Carl, and trying to plead with him, but the tape only produced muffled sounds. Carl was laugh
ed
uproariously. He
pointed
at Mick and told the men, “Put him back in the trunk.”

They picked up Mick’s body, and I heard him groan. Thank
fully
,
he was still alive. They tossed him like a ragdoll into the trunk and slammed the lid
. Carl walked to the truck
he had been driving, reached into the back, and pulled out a gas can. He set it down on the ground beside the
rental
car.
With a look of pure evil, he
barked at
the two men
, “The girl gets it first.”
He laughed a manic laugh before opening
the back seat of the
car, grabb
ing
the garbage bag, and return
ing
to the truck. He
swung
in, turned the truck around, and headed back toward the city. I tried to move to get away from the men, but I instantly fell over. I was screaming, but the tape refused to allow the sounds to be heard.

The men dragged me across the desert, one on each side of me
,
with a hand under each arm. My feet hurt. I had kicked my shoes off in the trunk and had no protection for the soft tops of my feet as they dragged along the rough landscape.

I didn’t know where they were taking me or what they were going to
do to me. There was no way
Mick could help me, and if I couldn’t get away from these two guys, I knew what Mick’s fate was going to be.

I thought they would never stop dragging me, and
I was sure the skin was
entirely off of my feet by now
. I looked up to see if I could see anything
ahead of us
, and my heart sank. I started to scream again and began to wriggle and fight. It was useless, and they only jerked me harder. They were dragging me toward the railroad tracks.

I could barely breathe. Crying with my mouth taped had only served to partially stuff up my nose, and I needed to blow it. I felt like I was struggling for air.
The two men
dragged me onto the railroad tracks. I tried to kick with my feet, but they easily overpowered me and used more rope to secure my feet
to one side of
the tracks. My bound hands were secured to the other side by even more rope. They had positio
ned me on a slight angle so
I could see down one end of the tracks as well as from where we had just come. I assumed they wanted me to watch back toward the car
,
and
also
to
be able to
see when the train approached. My head was literally resting on one rail.

Tying me down had only taken a few minutes
, and t
he
two men
were off and running toward the car
which held Mick in the trunk
. Several minutes later, I heard the explosion and saw the fireball go up
into the night sky. I could just
barely see the lights to their car com
e
on and then driv
e
out of my line of sight. I screamed again as loudly as I could. I was crying uncontrollably and kept screaming and screaming until I simply couldn’t scream anymore.

This was the worst thing I had ever gotten myself into. If Mick hadn’t seen that stupid USA Today article, he might not have come out early, and this would have never happened. All of this was my fault. My heart was utterly destroyed as I watched the car burn. The pain turned to numbness, and calmness was coming over me again
. I knew I could
lie there and let the next train take me away from this life.

I was quiet and held my breath for a second. I thought I felt an ever-so-slight vibration on the rail under my head. I looked down the track, and far off in the distance was a speck of light. A train. A train! Survival is a strong d
esire, and although I knew
I deserved to die, the panic came quickly, and I started fighting against the ropes. I was screaming again even though
there was no one to
hear
. The ropes! If I could only get
one hand free, I might be able to get loose. I started twisting my hands back and forth creating painful rope burns. I just needed to get one hand out!