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Eat shit, you asshole.“Okay, I promise, Uncle Josh.” If I keep saying his name, then maybe sanity will click back on inside his head.
Satisfied, he nods and starts the car.
There’s no siren and his speed is unhurried as he steers out of the parking garage and through the dense maze of downtown Emerald City.
I keep wracking my brain for something to say but I can’t think straight through the hazy buzz of fear.
Up front, my uncle keeps driving, signaling to merge onto the freeway as if he’s just out for a routine drive and doesn’t have his pregnant niece handcuffed in the back of his squad car.
The radio crackles and a woman’s voice blurts out some police jargon but he presses a button and the sound disappears.
He’s given no hint about our destination but I can’t just sit back here and hope for the best. Something has gone very wrong inside my uncle’s head.
Or, more chillingly, something hasalwaysbeen wrong inside his head and I’ve discovered this a little too late.
But when I sift through my memories at lightning speed I can’t think of a single occasion when my uncle treated me with anything other than patience and love. He attended my dance recitals and ferried me to doctor’s appointments when my father didn’t have the time. He brought me bakery treats and sent care packages while I was living in a college dorm.
Of course, all that warm and fuzzy history went out the window the second I saw that photograph. I just can’t make sense of what has happened since then.
We’re picking up speed now, rocketing down the freeway and leaving Em City behind. In a futile move, I try to break free of my handcuffs and only end up bruising my wrists.
If Uncle Josh overhears my struggle he doesn’t say a word. I glare at the stoic back of his head and wish for very bad things to happen to it. If only I hadn’t left my purse in the front seat. Maybe he wouldn’t have noticed if I sneakily used my phone.
Then a revelation hits me.
I would have smacked my forehead if my hands were free.
While I did leave my purse up front,my phone is not with it. Earlier, as I walked into my father’s office, I stuck my phone in the deep front pocket of my sweater. I was so flustered that I forgot.
But it’s still there.
Keeping a wary eye on my uncle, I want to weep with happiness when my fingers dig into my pocket and close around the shape of my phone.
The happiness is short lived when I slowly withdraw the phone, press my thumb to the screen and watch it flicker to life.
Now what?
I can’t call the police. They aren’t going to believe a word I say with their chief sitting right there and he can make up any story he likes.
Worse, my battery is low, barely a sliver. It can’t be at more than one or two percent.
With my wrists still cuffed, I don’t have much range of motion. My efforts are clumsy and I bite back a curse when I accidently click on the last text received. It was from Charlotte. No words, just a picture of Total.
Uncle Josh must have eyes in the back of his head because somehow he knows that I’m up to no good.
“Put it down.” He’s so exasperated you’d think I was a child who got caught with her hand in the cookie jar.
He glances over his shoulder at my frozen face.
“Just toss the phone into the box and don’t touch it again. We’re going to talk, you and me.Nothingis going to get in the way of that. Do as I say, Tess, and do it now.”
What will he do if I disobey?
Crash the car?
Shoot me?
The phone is about to die anyway.
