He simply laughed.
“Or the bathroom? Don’t any of you need one?”
“We’re like camels. You’d better be, too. No, we’re not stopping. Sorry, but you’ll have to think of some other way to escape.”
She tried. Oh, Lord, she tried. But, imprisoned in the car between two dark-suited sides of beef, she was hamstrung. There was no hope for escape unless they stopped, and it terrified her to think of where that would be and what they had planned for her then.
Just as she was beginning to bemoan the darkness, she noticed that the car was heading back toward the city. Of course. It made sense. Psychological torture. The purpose of the long ride had been to set her further on edge.
“Look, you’ve accomplished what you’ve wanted,” she confessed without pride. “I’m thoroughly frightened. You can drop me off anywhere. I’ll even take my chances and thumb a ride home.”
“Is that what you thought, that we’d just let you go? Susan, Susan, how naive you are.”
“What are you planning?”
The man on her left made a ceremony of debating whether or not to tell her. He moistened his lips, scratched the back of his head, then shrugged. “I guess it’s time you knew. We’re gonna do what we thought had been done months ago.”
Lauren’s heart was slamming against her breast. “What was that?”
“Your car plunged off the road and burst into flames. There was nothing left but ashes. The ashes were supposed to be you, so the boss gave you a fine burial.” He sighed. “In this case, the burial came before the death, so we’re kinda doing things ass-backward. But you will burn, Susan. Take that as a promise. You will burn.”
Where Lauren got the breath to speak was a mystery. Perhaps the source was her desperation. “It’s a threat, and you won’t get away with it.”
“Oh, we’ll get away with it, all right. We’re not novices at this type of thing.”
“You’re killers, then. Hit men. Is your boss connected with the mob? Well, let me tell you, if the mob kills its own, that’s one thing. But I’ve got nothing to do with the mob or your boss or Susan Miles or you, and that makes me an innocent victim. I swear, you won’t get away with it!”
The man on her left laughed. “Ah, pretty lady, that’s priceless. Tell me, what do you intend to do once you’re dead? Haunt us?” He laughed again.
Lauren gritted her teeth, no mean feat since they were chattering. “You’ll get yours. So help me, you’ll get yours.”
When his laugh only came louder, she lapsed into silence. She’d save her strength, she decided. At some place, at some time, she’d glimpse a chance to escape. She’d need every resource she had when that time came.
Unfortunately, she couldn’t seem to glimpse that chance to escape. After they had arrived back in Boston, the car drove down Atlantic Avenue, parallel to the harbor. It turned into a darkened path, continued to the end and stopped.
“Let’s go,” the man on her left said.
Before he’d even left the car, the man on her right had seized her. His arms were like cords of steel around her legs and shoulders. She was literally crunched into a ball with her face smothered against his chest. As she was carried from the car, she called on those resources she’d saved to try to free herself, but her bonds only tightened. Her scream was a pathetic sound muffled against the man’s shirt, and she grew dizzy from the lack of air.
Terror was a driving force, though. Frantically she fought against the arms that held her. Futilely she tried to turn her head and gasp for air. While the doomed battle waged, she was carted up a flight of stairs, then another and another. Her captors’ footsteps hammered against the wood planks, each forceful beat driving another nail into her coffin.
Then she was released, dumped unceremoniously onto the floor of a cavernous room. Gasping and trembling, she pushed herself up and looked around. It was dark, but she knew she was in a warehouse—rank and decaying, abandoned warehouse.
The two men loomed over her. Their bodies were straight, their legs planted firmly apart. Their stance was aggressive, but it couldn’t have intimidated her any more than she already was.
The man who’d been on her left abruptly hunkered down. She inched back on the floor, but she couldn’t escape his hand when he took a strand of her hair between his fingers. He spoke with lethal quiet. “Your final resting place, pretty lady. Take a look around. Try to find a way out. It’ll keep your mind busy.”
“Where are you going?” she whispered.
“I’ve got a call to make.”
“To whom?”
He let the strand of hair sift through his fingers. “Who do you think?”
“Your boss?” A sudden flare of fury gave her voice greater force. “You tell him for me that he’s an idiot! You tell him that he’s murdering the wrong woman and that he’ll pay—”
When the man raised his hand, palm up, she ducked her head and shrank back. But he didn’t hit her. Instead, he slowly lowered his hand until it gently brushed her cheek. “Such a pretty face,” he murmured. “Such a shame—”
