Everything is will be okay.
What the fuck am I thinking? Of course, it is not going to be okay. I’m in a car with three guys looking for their stolen drugs. I’m in deep shit.
A phone rings, the tune a Beatles song, and everyone in the car looks to me.
“Oh.” It’s mine.
Without thinking, I reach into my back pocket and pull out the cell phone I stashed there when I stepped out of the car at the apartment building.
“Hello, Nate?” I say, not sure it’s him even though his named blinked on the screen.
“Josie, where are you? Is everything okay?” He sounds frantic and rushed. “Winnie is at the apartment with Emma and says your car is there but you aren’t.”
“I’ve been kidnapped!” I yell into the phone as the man to my right tugs it out of my grip. “Nate!”
“Shut up, lady.” The tall guy who tackled me pulls his hand back like he’s ready to slap me again. He takes the phone from his partner. “Is this Nate? The Pelican Bay Security Nate?” He’s smiling and his head bobs back and forth like he’s having fun during the madness happening around us. Obviously he’s a true psycho.
There’s a beat of silence as Nate yells on the other end.
“Is that so? I’d like to see you cut off my dick with finger nail clippers. I bet we could make some money at the side show,” he says and laughs.
There’s more yelling from Nate and the man’s face falls at whatever he hears. “I’d advise you to not follow us. We’re just going to ask your friend some questions, get back our stolen product, and then we’ll return her. Probably safe and sound. It depends how forthcoming she is,” he says leering in my direction and wearing a smile, which freezes my blood.
The power window is lowered and the guy tosses my cell phone out on the road without a second of warning.
“Hey!” I turn, watching the phone bounce once on the asphalt and then fall into the ditch. “I just bought that.”
“If you live through this, I’m sure your boyfriend will buy you a new one,” the guy driving the car says.
I swallow and turn back around to face the front.
The car slows and we turn, pulling into the parking lot of what has to be an abandoned building on the outskirts of Clearwater. The sides are covered in rusting metal and the roof has a hole in the top with so many tiles missing I bet you can see clear through the top.
“Get out of the car,” the one sitting next to me says after he gets out first and leans back in the open doorway.
I stand my ground. Well, sit my ground since I’m in the back of the car. “No thanks. I don’t want to.”
“Get out,” he says more forcefully this time.
“But the car is so nice. Why don’t we stay here?” I pat the seat beside me. In reality it’s horrible. There’s a crack in the fake leather seats and is smells like somebody dropped a bag of Cheetos mixed with nachos sauce and let it marinate in the sun. For a year.
The area surrounding the warehouse is covered in trees and I’ve watched enough monster movies to know I don’t want to go down any dark trails with somebody who has no problems with bumping me off. And even if they don’t take me down out in the woods and finish me old yeller style, the building looks as if it’s about to fall over.
I’ll be rubble fodder if a gust of wind hits it just right.
“Get out of the car before I shoot you,” the driver says, pulling a gun out from underneath the front seat.
19
Iput my hands up, because that’s what you do when someone is pointing a gun at you, and slide my butt off the seat. “Okay, okay.”
“You don’t want to be late for your meeting.”
I shuffle toward the front of the warehouse, grateful they haven’t walked me into the woods. You know your life has gone to shit when you’re grateful to be going into a falling down building and not taking a shot to the back. “Late for my meeting?”
“The boss,” the tallest guy of the three says. “Make sure and be respectful.”
I hold my eye roll. I’m sure the seedy underbelly of Pelican Bay needs respect.
