Page 337 of A Matter of Time

“Shit.”

There was a silence before Caleb gasped.

“What’s wrong?”

“Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?” I was instantly terrified.

“Jory, there’s somebody in here,” Caleb whimpered.

“What?” I almost cried out, and then the back of my head exploded and I didn’t hear anything.

The sharp bump woke me, because my head hurt and it rapped me against the floor really hard. I realized the bouncing was from movement, and from the tiny light I figured out I was in the trunk of a car. I was no longer tied, not my arms or legs, which was weird. I didn’t linger on that though, instead focused on the taillight, like they tell you to do in every book on self-defense ever written. Get the light out and wave to people on the highway. If there were small things to drop out of the hole, you were supposed to do that too. I worked as fast as I could. There was the copper smell of blood, and I hoped it wasn’t Caleb’s or mine. Not that Caleb was with me, which was scary since I had no idea where he was. But I pushed that out of my head and concentrated on getting the taillight shoved out. It was an old car, and everything was rusted, so it was harder than it would have normally been. When we stopped suddenly, I had just enough time to put my hands up so my forehead hit them instead of the trunk. The ride changed then, from bouncing and quiet to smooth with a hum. We were off a dirt road or something to an actual paved road.

I tried really hard to get the taillight out, but it was no use. By the time I got myself rolled over and turned around to try the other one, we had stopped. I heard voices, and there was a sudden knock above me.

“Make a sound and Caleb Reid is dead.”

I froze. He had to be in the back seat or somewhere close.

“Did you hear me?”

“Yes,” I rasped, whispering before clearing my throat to speak louder. “Yes.”

“Good.”

I lay there, listening for anything, trying to feel if the car was moving at all, wanting to call out to Caleb but afraid of being heard at the same time. The mixture of tension, adrenaline, and fear made me have to pee. It was painful, and I rolled over on my back and was faced with the rusted metal trunk.

I heard the laughter before the car started, the motor was gunned, and I was bounced hard before I got my hands up to shield my face. I was thrown from side to side, and there was yelling and blaring music. I rolled into a ball and tried to protect as much of my body as I could.

The ride went on for so long, evening out, and the steady hum of the tires with only an occasional bump, that I fell asleep. I tried really hard not to, but I kept jerking hard only to realize I had been drooling. When the car came to a sudden stop, the brakes squealed, and I was hurled up against the back so hard that I was winded. Trunk thrown open, I blinked at the light and the bewildered faces looking down at me. They stared, and I stared back. I absorbed their faces.

“Oh shit,” one of the guys said. “That fucking guy was a goddamn kidnapper!”

“Shit!” another yelled, and I heard their feet pounding the pavement as they ran away.

I wasn’t sure what to do. After several minutes of looking up at the slowly lightening sky, I sat up and looked around. Wherever I was seemed completely deserted at this time of the night, or early morning, which made sense. The thieves would have driven somewhere without anyone around to see them while they went through the car they’d stolen. The only reason they hadn’t stuck to the plan was that they’d found me in the trunk.

Since I needed to know where I was, I took a short walk to get my bearings, and a block down there was a closed liquor store. Clearly, I was somewhere downtown, and because my surroundings weren’t completely alien, I started to calm down. I finally found a street sign and realized I was on the 400 block of South Clark Street. As I returned to the car, I tried to figure out what my best course of action was.

I had no cell phone, no wallet, no money, the nearest hospital was God knows where from me, and finding a police officer in a deserted part of downtown first thing in the morning would be a miracle.

When I walked back and noticed the keys dangling from the ignition, I started laughing. It was just absurd. Between the kidnappers and the carjackers, it was a toss-up over who were the bigger morons. I was hopeful that, because Caleb was a smart guy, he too had been able to escape. I got in, closed the door, and decided to drive to Sam at work. Even if he wasn’t there, someone else who could help would be.

It worked out great since, driving the kidnapper’s car, I could take all the evidence with me. I drove to the First District, where Sam worked, down on South State Street, and parked in front of the police station. It was a noisy, crowded zoo, but I stood in line and waited my turn. When I finally made it to the desk sergeant, I asked him to call Detective Sam Kage for me as I had just escaped my kidnappers.

“Are you Jory Harcourt?” he asked me.

I nodded and smiled at him, realizing right then that I was a bit out of it.

“Come over here, kid,” he directed me, coming around the desk, buzzing me in and walking me into the bullpen. He sat me down in a chair, told me not to move, and that Sam was out, but his partner, Detective Stazzi, would be right down.

I was surprised when Chloe showed up minutes later. Normally “right down” was never that fast. But the elevator door opened and she came flying across the room to me. She was yelling at people to get out of her way, and the two men beside her—big guys, big like Sam—parted the crowd for her. When she knelt in front of me, hands on my face, I smiled at her.

“Hi.”

“Jesus Christ, Jory,” she breathed, her eyes all over me. “Where did you come from?”