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“My name is not Melisa,” she said, emphasizing each word and leaning forward to try to meet his eyes. “You got the wrong person. You need to pull over. Please.” Where was her phone? Maybe it had enough life for an emergency call. She patted the seat next to her and sought the zipper on her bag.
Gerald’s eyes narrowed in the rearview mirror. “He didn’t say anything about you acting like this.” He sounded annoyed and Melinda’s pulse picked up. “Is that part of the thrill? Do me a favor, save the act for Paul. I have to concentrate on getting us to the mountains.”
The mountains?Melinda’s skin crawled. He’s angry—why are psychopaths always angry? Was he insane and pinning some ex-lover’s betrayal on her? Or was he genuinely mistaken about who she was? And was he saying this Melisa person expected to be kidnapped? Melinda unzipped her bag and dug through dirty clothes. Shouldn’t cell phones come on command by now? Why the hell hadn’t someone invented the Cell Phone Clapper?
She tried to reason with him. “Gerald, I don’t know who Paul is. Please, please could you please stop?” Melinda found her wallet and flipped it open to her license. “Check my ID. My name isn’t Melisa, it’s Melinda. Please, Gerald, please?” He had to be insane. No honest man would keep driving after learning he had the wrong passenger.
Gerald glared at her in the rearview mirror but made no move to take her ID.
“Is this how you get turned on?” he growled. “This is messed up. I’m just trying to do a favor.” He barked out a laugh. “A favor. You guys are sick. I knew this was a mistake. Where’s the favor in kidnapping someone and hauling them to some mountain cabin? Especially with weather coming. I’ll be lucky to make it to my place after I take you to him.”
Kidnapping? Cabin?Melinda’s mind sputtered and spun. “Gerald, please, listen,” she said. “I don’t know any Paul. I don’t know who Melisa is. You picked up the wrong person. Won’t Paul be upset if I show up and he really wants Melisa?”
Finally. She found her phone wedged beneath her bag on the seat. Would the sudden brightness of the screen alert him and make him become violent?
No—because it was well and truly dead.
~
Grant’s stomach churned. Paul hadn’t said anything about Melisa playacting that she was anything but willing. Happy, even. His hands tightened on the wheel and his foot depressed the accelerator. Shouldn’t she be happy right now?
“I didn’t sign up for the drama, lady, and I’d appreciate it if you’d knock it off. Paul gave me your picture. I know it’s you. Quit the role-playing, for all our sakes,” he said. He hit the button to raise the partition between the front and back seats.
“Gerald!” She clawed at the wall he erected.
“Calm down, lady. Give me a break!” Grant’s blood pressure had to be in the four hundreds, if that was even possible.
“Please! Please, I’m not who you think I am!”
Grant’s seat shook as her fists beat the partition and he ground his teeth together. No way was he lowering the partition again. This chick is crazy. Who the hell got turned on by pretending to be held hostage by a stranger?
DiMario had said it would be easy. A bizarre favor, but a favor nonetheless, to pretend to kidnap his girlfriend of three years and whisk her through the foothills to his cabin for who-knows-what. Grant’s lip curled. Apparently something wild, if Melisa’s behavior was any indication.
This night couldn’t be over soon enough.
Paul had loaned Grant his loaded Mercedes for the evening and explained that Melisa would want to call Paul once she realized their annual rendezvous was happening. With a slight cough, Paul had suggested raising the partition in case the phone call got “personal.” The partition, typically for private business meetings when he was being chauffeured, was the perfect solution.
“You’ll be able to hear her if she yells,” Paul had said as he showed Grant the button for the automated barrier. “But not if she speaks at a normal level. So give her a little privacy when she asks for it and expect her to call for you when she’s ready for small talk.”
Nothing awkward about chit-chatting with my buddy’s girlfriend after they have phone sex.But to each their own. Grant somewhat admired Paul and Melisa for keeping their romance alive.
“Won’t she recognize the car?” Grant had asked. “Are you sure you want to trust me with this? It’s worth more than my fleet put together.” As a snowplow driver, Grant was used to the snow, but airport traffic could get cutthroat and he wasn’t responsible for other drivers’ states of inebriation or idiocy.
“She’s never seen it,” Paul said. “I use my Land Cruiser after work so that’s what she knows. She doesn’t care for flash.”
“You have too much money.” Grant laughed.
“Don’t scratch it.” Paul tossed him the keys.
The timing had been perfect, since Grant needed a lift from the airport to his own property, ten miles from Paul’s cabin in Silverthorne. Grant had visited his brother’s family in North Dakota for a week after the birth of his second niece and hadn’t had a spare rig to leave at airport parking during snow season. Paul had snapped his fingers and someone met Grant’s flight that afternoon with the Mercedes. Up until Melisa started the waterworks, it had seemed like an okay plan.
Grant found a classic rock station and twisted the volume to an uncomfortable level to drown out Melisa’s hollering. Surely she’d get bored soon and call Paul. He squirmed in his seat, conscious of growing abdominal pains. What the hell? This isn’t keeping the romance alive, this is giving me an ulcer.
~
Melinda was crying. Again. She’d cried, stopped crying, yelled, kicked the doors, hit the partition, screamed for help. She’d tried and failed to roll down the windows, tried and failed to squeeze into the trunk space and kick out the taillights. She’d beat on the windows and waved frantically. But with the late hour and tinted windows, no one saw inside her luxurious mobile prison.
Now she cried tears of incredulity. This wasn’t what was supposed to happen to her. She deserved better than this B movie terror. She cried tears of remorse that she hadn’t trusted the voice of fear, that her gut sense about Gerald had been wrong—that she had been attracted to him for even a moment. She cried the tears of giving up, of realizing that this was when bad things happened.
