No Regrets

hoped that he didn’t mean that literally.
    But his mother wasn’t home. “We’ll come back after we eat,” Mike said.
    They went a few miles farther and pulled into the Oregon Creek Campground just beyond the Nevada County/Yuba County line. They parked in an almost deserted part of the campground near the Yuba River, and Kari made sandwiches for them.
    She had been with them for almost eight hours on a meandering, aimless journey. Before long it would be 2:00 P.M., and she didn’t think she would be calling to let her husband and her coworkers back in Fairfield know that she was safe at that deadline. She wasn’t safe—not at all.
    The beer was getting to the men, and they could not walk a straight line. John turned to Kari and said, “Walk down the river with me.”
    She had no choice but to obey.
    “Take off your stockings,” he said. “So you can go wading.”
    Kari felt stark terror. She didn’t want to do that, fearing that he was preparing to rape her again. She made excuses and managed to coax him back to where Mike was drinking beer.
    “I kept handing them cans of beer,” she recalls. “Trying to get them drunker.”
    John said he had to go to the bathroom again, and Kari said she wanted to go, too. They had quite a long walk to the rustic restrooms.
    Without being obvious, Kari looked out of the corners of her eyes to see who else might be in the campground.
    This was her last chance. She knew it in her heart.
    •  •  •
    While deputies and CHP officers were stationed outside the Western Union or patrolling the very roads over which they’d traveled, none of them had spotted Kari Lindholm and her captors. They didn’t know that her Ford Granada had been dumped hours ago, or that they should be on the alert for a red and white Thunderbird.
    Now John waited outside the women’s restroom for a while, apparently wondering if he could trust Kari. She watched him through a window inside. She could see that he stumbled as he moved to lean against a wall. Neither of them had had any sleep the night before, but
she
wasn’t drunk, and every synapse of her brain was working well.
    She went over to one of the stalls and slammed the door loudly—but she didn’t go in. When she moved silently back to the window, she saw John entering the men’s side.
    Looking beyond him, Kari saw several men dressed in hunting clothes who were sitting at a picnic table. They had guns beside them. After all the stops they had made where there were only women clerks, finally, there was someone who could protect her. John had a knife—but he didn’t have a gun—and he wasn’t close enough to stab her.
    Kari made up her mind.
    She walked out of the restroom without looking back and headed toward the picnic table where the hunters sat. Her back prickled with fear and she picked up speed, running toward the strangers. John still had the knife, and he was very drunk. Would he be so angry and frustrated that he might throw it at her? Adrenaline coursed through her body. The men who might rescue her seemed a long way away, but they were really quite close.
    “I’ve been kidnapped,” she cried. “Please help me!”
    The startled men stared at her, their mouths dropping open. For a second, Kari wondered if they were going toturn away. She heard John slamming the restroom door, and she whirled. He walked toward them, and she saw that familiar look on his face—the “charmer,” the man who believed he could talk his way out of anything. He must have his knife tucked up his sleeve.
    “That’s one of them,” she said to the men. “Please. Please—I don’t want to go with him.”
    Would they believe her? She knew that often strangers didn’t want to get involved. They might think she was crazy—or that she’d been drinking.
    And then one of the hunters—a middle-aged man— stood up, and he cradled his rifle in his hands, letting John see that he was armed.
    “I don’t believe the lady wants to go with you. I think you’d better leave,” he said, standing between Kari and John.
    John paused for a moment, stared at Kari, and then shook his head. He turned and walked back hurriedly to where Mike waited with the Ford Thunderbird.
    Richard Bessey, his son, John Bessey, eighteen, and Alan Kramar—all from La Mirada—quickly surrounded Kari and led her to their vehicle. They didn’t know the circumstances, but she looked exhausted and as if she was in shock. She wore no shoes, and her clothing was