Cooked Goose

particle of courage and experience she had gathered in her brief life, Margie shifted into “cop’s daughter” mode. Her dad hadn’t really talked to her that much about crime, or the potential of being victimized, but she had absorbed some secondhand knowledge by watching and listening when her father thought she was tuning out.
    She studied her kidnapper in her peripheral vision, trying to gather all the information she could in spite of his disguise.
    He sat several inches higher than her in the seat, and when they had been standing face-to-face in the garage, she had come up to about chin level on him. Under his bulky black sweatshirt, he looked to be in good shape, neither fat nor skinny, just medium.
    His hands were large. So was the knife he was holding. It looked like something you would take hunting, if you were expecting to do hand-to-hand combat with a grizzly bear.
    As they passed beneath a streetlamp, she caught the glint of a ring on his finger. It was big, like some sort of class ring, and had a gold star in the middle of the setting.
    That rang a bell, somewhere in her distant memory. She had seen a ring like that before, but she couldn’t recall where or when. And there wasn’t time to think about it now, because they were getting farther and farther out of town... closer to the place he had chosen.
    Very soon her nightmare was going to get much worse.
    “Turn left up there,” he told her, pointing to a dark road that veered off the main one about a quarter of a mile ahead.
    There were no other cars in sight. Any dim hope she had been entertaining that they might cross paths with a cruising police unit evaporated.
    Margie realized that no one was going to help her get out of this one. If she was going to live, or die horribly, it was all up to her and this maniac sitting next to her.
    And she wasn’t about to leave her life in his hands if she could possibly avoid it.
    “Tell me something, kid,” he said, again, using that mocking tone that she hated. “Are you a virgin, or are you an experienced woman?”
    For half a second, her memory returned to the backseat of Tommy Morrison’s classic Mustang... and to Jerry Whitley’s basement family room the night of her sixteenth-birthday party. Then she shoved any honest answers to the question aside and tried to figure out what he wanted to hear.
    Any guy who didn’t approve of women saying “fuck” probably wouldn’t approve of them doing it, either.
    “Well?” he said, poking her on the upper arm with the point of his knife blade.
    She felt it nick her skin and a small warm, liquid trickle flow down the back of her arm. He had cut her. And he had done it so casually, as though it were nothing at all to him. Her shaking got worse.
    “Yes,” she told him. “I’m a virgin.”
    He laughed. “Yeah, sure. And I’m Santa Claus.”
    The road they were on became more and more narrow. On either side was nothing but orange trees. Row after row, leaves and round fruit, shining silver in the moonlight.
    “All right,” he said. “See that driveway up there, on the other side of that big water tank? I want you to pull the car into the drive. Nice and slow.”
    Margie’s heart had been pounding before, but now it felt like it was about to jump out through her throat. She could hardly hear what he was saying for the pulse throbbing in her ears.
    Time slowed to a surreal crawl as a hundred thoughts streaked through her brain. But the thought that stuck was something Savannah had said in their defense class: “Even if you take all these precautions,” she had told them, “you may still find yourself in a potentially life-threatening situation. And you may have to do something bold, something dangerous and extraordinary to get out. You may have to risk your life to save it. Only you will be able to make that decision. Go with your instincts.”
    And Margie’s instincts told her that if she and this guy got out of the car together and walked into that orange grove, she would never walk out again.
    For half a second, she thought of her pretty new car and how careful she had been not to even get a scratch on it. Then she thought, To hell with that! This asshole’s not going to rape and murder this punk kid if I can keep him from it!
    Margie rammed the gas pedal to the floor and steered straight for the water tank.

    * * *

    7:50 P.M.

    No sooner had Savannah settled her weary body into the Victorian, clawfoot tub full of fragrant bubbles, than