Part 2 (1/2)
If only her sudden success hadn't given her such power, and if he wasn't so dependent on it.
Or if she didn't exist at all. If something happened to her, clearing the way for him to start over without her weight on him, crippling him like the satchel's strap.
His name wasn't Chip or, worse, Chipper. It was Charles, but she'd found out somehow what his nickname had been as a kid back in Manhattan, and ever since, she'd used it all the time.
No matter how many times he asked her not to, it was Chip, do this. Chipper, do that. He'd have thought she did it to annoy him, but he knew better. She'd simply forgotten what he'd said.
But what if he could change things? What if in one decisive stroke he could end Carolyn's petty tyranny and his own habit of being a victim forever?
Siobhan Walters would almost certainly want him to write the current book if Carolyn couldn't, and that might open a door for his novel, too. So he'd have work, money, and freedom.
A dust devil whirled down the otherwise empty street and collapsed as, stepping between two old buildings to escape the frigid wind, he felt his hands flex with unaccustomed urgency.
The bar's door opened and closed, and her boot heels clicked confidently if a bit unsteadily toward him. Only hers ...
For a moment he thought he heard something else, quick and stealthy, like a foot being dragged hastily on concrete. But no ...
He listened again. She was alone. Alone on a dark street, a little tipsy, late at night in a strange town ...
Anything could happen. And she'd come here to meet someone, hadn't she? Mr. Mystery, their anonymous correspondent.
Chip even had the e-mails to prove it.
But in the next instant he realized how ridiculous he was being; self-dramatizing, as the Old b.a.s.t.a.r.d would've called it. Feeling foolish, Chip realized all at once that at least in this case, the accusation was true.
All he had, after all, was Carolyn's word about the novel. For all he knew, Siobhan Walters thought Carolyn was only blowing smoke about writing one. Maybe Siobhan had just been humoring her star author about it, keeping Carolyn happy.
In any case, no contracts had been signed for any such project; if they had, Chip would've seen them. Contracts, like taxes and receipts for expenses, were the kind of boring, routine thing Carolyn always let him handle.
By tomorrow she might even have changed her mind about giving up true-crime writing, especially if things started going well here in Eastport. She'd talked about quitting before several times, and always for the same reason, but had never done it.
So things might not be as bad as he thought, he reminded himself sensibly. And anyway he'd feel better, he knew, when he got back to the city, to his own apartment with his own books, his own papers and music and his own computer.
His own bed. Thinking this, he stepped out of the shadows to look up and down the dark, quiet street for Carolyn. Probably by now she'd be wondering where he had gotten to.
But she wasn't there.
CAROLYN RATHBONE HADN'T REACHED THE TOP OF THE NEW York Times nonfiction bestseller list by being a pushover. But as she stepped out of the bar and looked around for Chip, who was nowhere to be seen, the man got the jump on her, clamping a hand over her mouth and yanking her back cruelly.
She thrust her head back hard, hoping to hit his nose with it. She tried to kick the heel of her boot backward at him, but he dragged her so fast that it was all she could do to stay on her feet.
He hauled her around a corner. No one else was in sight. He took his hand off her face. She sucked in a breath to scream out Chip's name.
But before she could, the man slapped tape over her mouth. Suddenly she was fighting to breathe.
A car stood with its trunk open. No. No, I'm not getting in there. ... She resisted as best she could, but he lifted her easily, shoved her in, and slammed the lid.
It had taken less than a minute. Pitch dark, smothering, and stinking in the car trunk ... sheer panic boiled her thoughts down to a single phrase: No, please G.o.d no, oh please ...
Something was in here with her, thick blankets or something, trapping her. She couldn't move, and she couldn't ...
Breathe. Fear seized her as she battled to get air into her lungs. The drinks she'd had earlier rose like fire into the back of her throat. Desperately she forced them down, forced herself to pull twin threads of precious air in through her nostrils.
The reek in the trunk was of gasoline and stale sweat. Her own tears clogged her throat. She swallowed the salty taste and struggled not to sob.
Why? Her mind shrieked the question as the car started up, lurched backward, and swung around, then headed uphill, rolling her violently onto her side. Her cheek hit the trunk latch with a pain so explosive she saw stars, and the thick, heavy blankets or whatever they were rolled on top of her.
The trunk latch ... hope pierced her. But when she tried to reach out for it, she found that he'd wrapped something around her arms, too, binding them to her body. The car accelerated, forcing her even tighter into the s.p.a.ce between the trunk lid's edge and the weight of whatever it was, smothering her.
Tiny, shuddering trickles of air ... with terrible effort, she made herself concentrate only on them. On each small, lovely sip of oxygen ...
But even as she seized this bare triumph, her heart thudded madly, her mind filling with awful questions she already knew she didn't want to know the answers to.
Where is he taking me? And what will he do then? Whoever he was, he might let her out of the trunk when they got where he was going, but what might happen after that was too bad to think of.
Yet she couldn't help it. Even as she fought for breath, a slide show of crime-scene photographs flew past her mind's eye: Girls tied in handcuffs, in blindfolds, in chains. Girls in rooms, alive but hidden from everyone, sometimes for years.
Girls in graves. It was the crime writer's dark burden, this knowl edge-real, factual knowledge-of the terrible things people could do to one another. It was why she'd tried getting out from under it, by borrowing-all right, stealing-an idea from Chip.
At first she'd been proud of remaining unhaunted by victims of even the most depraved crimes. But by the time she and Chip finished the first book, they'd crept in, infesting her dreams.
And they haunted her now, the girls with their bruised eyes and limply curled fingers, their hair clotted with earth. Because as she lay there trying not to smother to death, she knew without any doubt that however much she begged, bargained, or pleaded, she was about to become one of them.
Because they'd tried all that, too, those girls. That and more, in the vain hope of escape. And yet there they all were in the crime-scene photographs Carolyn had pored over. And this right here, what was happening to her right this minute- This was how they'd gotten into those graves.
The car drove on, rumbling along under her. This wasn't a nightmare. It was real. She couldn't believe it, but blood from her wounded cheek leaked down under her nose and she could smell it, like the taste of a copper penny.
Gradually, though, her breathing settled and her heartbeat slowed. Think. A man was taking her somewhere for a reason she did not dare imagine. If she did, she might just die of fear. But he was not doing anything to her now, was he?
Not right now, not yet. That meant she still had a chance to ...
She tried moving her feet. They were weighed down by the heavy blankets, but they weren't bound. Which meant that if she got the chance, she could run.
She tried rolling partway onto her back and was able to. But as she did, something behind her s.h.i.+fted and fell with a metallic clunk.
Carolyn froze. A tire iron, maybe, striking the metal rim of the spare. Had he heard it? She held her breath, but the car didn't slow. She felt it turn again, realized it had done so several times.
It felt as if he was driving around in a circle, or maybe around the block. As if he was waiting for something-for the coast to be clear, maybe? Only ... clear for what?
But from this thought her mind reeled back in terror. Her gorge rose chokingly, her eyes streamed tears, and a scream tore at her throat until she thought it would burst. Until ...
No, she told herself with a terrible effort. Stop. Breathe. Think.
Probably those other girls had tried to command themselves, too. Tried, knowing they were facing death, to get a handle on their terror, at least enough so that they could function. And it had always failed.
But Carolyn had always felt herself to be an exception, the one who de spite (or even possibly because of) a solid mountain of disadvantages-a mental picture of her childhood home, a two-room trailer hunkered at the edge of a one-horse town in the middle of rural Kansas, flashed into her mind-would succeed better than anyone else could.