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Besides, that feeling was back. The one that made the small hairs at the back of her neck stand up. Several times she’d stopped, letting the crowds wash around her, and tried to catch a familiar reflection in the shop window. Or at least the same face twice. It never happened. Maybe she was nuts.
She shrugged it off and focused on some serious shopping. Just like last year, it was easier to buy for those people who were on the periphery of her father’s life, like the ambassador from Germany. The closer the circle got, the more personal the gift had to be, which was no piece of cake considering the disparity of the people involved.
She ended up finding her salvation at Hammacher Schlemmer, picking up a dozen tiny CD stereo systems, highly stylized, that could fit on any bookshelf. She also bought several back massagers, three facial saunas, and a couple of radio-controlled cars for her father’s more emotionally stunted friends. The real bonus about the store was that they would deliver the entire purchase to the Senate office, where she could deal with the wrapping, cards and mailing at her leisure.
She had to schlep all the other packages though, and as they piled up, she grew less careful about checking reflections. By the time she got into Saks, she was more concerned with juggling bags and credit cards and not being poked, prodded or stepped on by the other harried shoppers.
As she signed for a jeweled cigar cutter, she glanced at her watch. She’d been in the mall for nearly two hours. Enough. She’d had it for tonight. In fact, she’d had it with malls. She’d do the rest of her shopping online.
There’d been a time when Christmas shopping had been fun, but that was when her mother had come with her. Jade headed toward the mall exit, thinking about that last Christmas—
A thought stopped her so sharply, the man behind her stepped on her heel. She heard his low curse, but she didn’t care. The feeling she’d been having this week. Could it possibly be memories of her mother?
Too pragmatic to believe in ghosts or spirits, Jade did believe that the mind was a powerful, mysterious thing. That the subconscious could play mighty tricks on the conscious. It was all too possible that she missed her mother so much that she’d conjured up the feeling of being watched. Although she’d ascribed fear to the experience, now that she understood it, that could change. She could gain comfort, instead.
She reshuffled the bags in her arms and continued toward the parking lot, wrestling with this new idea. Wondering if she should look up Doctor Frankle. She’d been a good therapist, not too heavy-handed, definitely not Freudian. Jade had seen her for eight months, after a terrible breakup and while deciding about getting her Ph.D. At the end of their time together, Jade had felt better, stronger. It wouldn’t hurt to go for that feeling again.
As she exited the wide glass doors, she noticed two different Santas, complete with bells and donation buckets in front of them. Since she gave at the office and had no desire to disrupt the carefully constructed conglomerate of packages in her arms, she headed up the middle, eyes straight ahead.
She passed the gauntlet unscathed and made it to the massive parking lot without dislodging so much as a ribbon. Unfortunately, she’d parked in what felt like another county, and her right arm was already feeling numb.
The only good thing about parking so far in the hinterlands was the relative quiet. She’d never cared for crowds, and with all that was on her mind, they’d been particularly annoying in the mall. All she had to think about now was negotiating the traffic home. Then it would be a roaring fire, sinfully buttered popcorn and movies, movies, movies.
Too bad her father had that dinner. It would have been nice to have a quiet evening with him, although he never did make it through the movies. He always talked about watching, but nothing held his attention. Not for two hours, that was for sure. Halfway through, he’d make up some excuse, like getting a drink, checking something from the office or even going to the bathroom. He always promised to come right back, but he never did. She’d stopped trying to change his ways.
He’d been like that forever, his fertile mind filled with his duties, his constituents, his campaigns. She couldn’t blame him. He was definitely playing in the big leagues, and she realized it was a lot to ask him to relax, but she couldn’t help her worry.
Ever since her mother died, he’d been running himself ragged. He worked impossible hours and ate horribly. The only reason he wasn’t big as a horse was that he walked every day, mostly on the Hill. But still, his color wasn’t good, and his hair, always his pride and joy, was thinning and dull. She’d begged him to get a full physical, but he kept putting it off.
That’s what he could get her for Christmas. The thought of losing him, too, was entirely too much to bear, and she would manipulate his emotions mercilessly until he gave in.
She saw her car, finally, just a few aisles away. Rounding a pylon, she practically ran into a third Santa Claus. She gasped, almost losing her armload from the surprise. She stepped to her right just as he stepped to his left. Her smile died on her lips, however, when she looked more carefully at his face.
He stared at her with intense, bloodshot eyes, and his expression was anything but jovial. Her heart kicked into double-time as she realized he wasn’t just another store Santa.
“Ms. Parker,” he said.
That did it. How did he know her name? She looked to her right, her left, but there was no one nearby. Someone had to be around, for God’s sake.
“Please, don’t be scared, I just want to talk to you.”
She checked to her left once more, tried to feint to her right. But his hand caught her arm, and his grip held her firm. She opened her mouth to scream, but the move came too late. His hand, thick, clammy, covered her mouth, the hand on her arm pulling her farther into the recesses of the garage.
She struggled against him, but he kept maneuvering her past cars, toward her SUV. God, he knew her car! She hadn’t been crazy, or nostalgic for her mother. This maniac had been following her, stalking her, and now…
She remembered in a vivid flash the most serious admonition given to every woman: don’t let the abductor get you into the car. The chances of surviving were minimal once he got you away from people, from crowds.
She kicked his leg, and his grunt let her know she’d made an impact, but it wasn’t enough. His grip didn’t loosen. In fact, his hand tightened brutally.
They got to the SUV and she heard something behind her, a car door closing. She tried to twist around, but he pushed up against her back, his warm breath and scratchy white beard tickling her neck.
“Don’t make a sound,” he whispered. “I won’t hurt you as long as you stay quiet. I’m going to take my hand away from your mouth. I have a gun, and I have nothing to lose by shooting you.”
A gun. Oh, God. She was going to die. She thought of the mace in her purse, and it might have been on the moon for all the help it did her. She should have just dropped her packages and run at the first hint of trouble, but she’d clung to the stupid gifts as if they mattered.
As promised, his hand moved from her mouth, and just as she was about to scream, regardless of his threat, she felt something hard and round poke into her side. It was a weapon. Nothing else could feel like that. If she screamed, she died. If she held on, there was always a chance she could escape.
“Good girl,” he said, his lips so close to her ear it made her wince. “I’m going to take your purse now. Don’t do anything stupid.”
“Fine. Take it. Take the money. There are credit cards. You can take it all.”
He didn’t respond. Just lifted the purse from her grasp. The gun still poked her side. She couldn’t see what he was doing, but she knew that he wouldn’t have to look hard for her keys. She kept them in the outside pocket so she herself wouldn’t have to dig for them. Stupid. Another bonehead move. She lived in D.C., for God’s sake, one of the most dangerous cities in America, and she walked around like she was invincible. Even after she’d sensed someone was stalking her.
He unlocked the car electronically, then pulled her back so he could open the back door. “Put the packages in the back seat.”
She did as he said.
He opened the front door. “Get in.”
She did, searching frantically for something to use as a weapon.
He’d already figured this part out, because the second she was behind the wheel, he captured her hands, held her wrists with one hand while he tied them together with a thick blue scarf. Then he tied that to the wheel.
A moment later, he ran around the car. She pulled at her restraint, tried to move so that at the very least she could honk the horn, but then he was beside her. Him and the gun.
“I won’t hurt you. Just listen to me. I’m going to untie you. You’re going to drive away from here. Don’t panic, and don’t try anything stupid, and we’ll both get out of this alive.” He stuck her key in the ignition and undid the bindings. “Start it up. Now.”
With trembling fingers, she turned the key. From her peripheral vision, she saw him toss the Santa hat and the ridiculous beard into the back seat. His hair was dark, his skin, pale. She was afraid to look at him directly, afraid that if he realized she could identify him, he’d have no reason to let her go.
“That way,” he said, pointing with his free hand toward the east exit.
She checked her mirror, then, without even thinking about it, she turned his way, and something registered. She’d seen him before. Recently.
“Drive.”
She focused on her speed, direction and the gun he held so steadily he couldn’t possibly miss. But the face haunted her. Where had she— “You’re that reporter. You killed that old man.”
He grunted. “Yeah. I’m that reporter.”
Max Travis. His name made everything else fall into place. All the reports on the news, in the paper. He was a lunatic, and he’d already murdered once. Twice wouldn’t make him blink an eye.
“You can’t get away with this,” she said, hoping her voice sounded a lot stronger than she felt.
“I already have.”
Chapter Two
“Where are we going?” Jade was scared, but kept her fear under control. If she was to escape this ordeal alive, she would have to be ready to flee at the first opportunity.
“Shut up. Turn right here.” The gun in Max’s hand never wavered. Damn that CSI show—she could picture the bullet entering her body, tracing a path to her heart… Her purse lay at his feet, so she couldn’t get to her cell phone or the mace.
“Can’t we talk about this?”
“No. Head for I-95.”
Jade threaded her way through the streets of Arlington for the highway, fully aware that it headed for either Washington or deeper into Virginia. She considered faking a skid on the snow-swept streets, but the gun could go off in a crash.
“Get on here,” Max said, waving the gun toward the southbound on-ramp.
She swung onto the highway, merged with the traffic and accelerated into the blowing snow. She reached to turn the heater up and Max’s nervous twitch reminded her that she was being kidnapped by a cold-blooded killer.
She tried to recall what she’d heard about the man on the news—pitifully little, actually—that might help her reason with him. He was a reporter for the Washington Post. He’d done some big stories, some undercover work. He’d even been up for a Pulitzer. For unknown reasons, he’d brutally murdered an older man, a friend of his father’s and an important man at Geotech, an energy and mining company large enough to change the course of the nation for years. Even the FBI, often loathe to meddle with the D.C. police, was involved in the hunt for this man. His father said the murder was totally uncharacteristic, that Werner Edwards was a family friend. He swore Max would be exonerated.
Oh yeah, she felt much better now. All his neighbors probably thought he was a real nice guy. Never hurt a fly.
“Pull off at the next exit.”
“We’re going to Springfield?”
“Just pull off.”
Jade did as she was told, and Max directed her through turn after turn around the suburban streets.
She watched him as closely as she could as he divided his attention between her and the streets, peering out between the gusts of snow, then back at her. “Stop. Stop here.”
Again, she did as she was told, pulling behind a black SUV on a quiet, windblown street.
“Turn the car off.”
She did, her hand shaking, her heart in her throat. Was this the end? Was he going to kill her here? In the middle of suburbia?
From beside him, on top of the Santa suit, Max withdrew the blue scarf. “Crawl through to the back seat and lay down.”
“No. Please.”
He waved the gun at her, a new sense of urgency and desperation to his moves. She obeyed, the fear making her clumsy. She finally made it to the back seat where he forced her to kneel on the floor. “Put your hands behind your back.”
“Don’t hurt me. My father can help you—”
“Your father’s the reason you’re here.”
“My father? What does he—”
“Put your damn hands behind your back.”
The seats pressed into her stomach as she worked her arms around until her hands were in the small of her back, and Max tied them tightly. “Lay down on the seat.”
“I can’t.”
Max grunted and opened the door. As the cold swept across her bare legs, Jade realized how exposed she was, but he quickly closed it, then opened the rear door. He tossed the presents into the back with his free hand. Once the seat was cleared, he pulled her roughly onto the cushions and pulled off the thick black belt from his Santa suit. He used it to tie her ankles together.
“One more thing,” he said and pulled a neckerchief from his pocket.
“No.”
“I can’t have you scream.” He crawled onto the seat with her. He didn’t hurt her, in fact, he moved carefully, making sure his knee was on the seat and not her body, but the closeness, his proximity, made her flesh crawl and it was all she could do not to pass out.
He forced the cloth between her teeth and tied it behind her head. “I’m going to be out of the car for a few minutes, but I’ll be watching you. Don’t be stupid.” Max waved the gun in front of Jade’s terrified eyes, then slammed the door.
As she lay face down on the back seat, the sound of his footsteps disappeared rapidly in the winter wind. She tested her bonds, but whatever other flaws Max might have, tying knots badly was not among them.
She tried squirming around so she could push herself upright against a door, but the necessary movement caused both her coat and her dress to ride up her thighs, and she felt horribly vulnerable, so she lay quietly and tried to think of a way to escape.
She heard scraping at the back of the car, but couldn’t tell what it was.
The mace and her phone were so close, and yet there was no possibility of getting them. No one knew where she was. The moronic detective had stopped tailing her. Her father wouldn’t even miss her for a few more hours, and then what? They’d look at the mall, but had anyone seen her abduction? The crowds that had been so pressing inside the stores had vanished in the far reaches of the parking garage, so she couldn’t count on any witnesses. Even if they had seen her, she’d been kidnapped by Santa Claus. She doubted they’d even start looking for her car for hours, and with this snow…
Overwhelmed, frightened beyond any kind of reason, she blinked frantically as hot tears blurred her vision. She couldn’t move, she couldn’t speak, God, at least she wanted to see. But the tears wouldn’t stop.
The driver’s door opened with another blast of cold wind and gusting snow. She heard his coat rustle, the SUV tip slightly with his weight. Then his voice. “You okay?”
She tried to tell him she was not okay, that she’d never be okay again, but she couldn’t with the gag in her mouth.
He turned on the interior light and looked over the seats at her.
All she could do was blink, trying to clear her vision.
“Legs cold?” he asked.
That startled her. What the hell did he care if she were cold? She didn’t want to answer, but the fact was, her legs were freezing. She nodded once, then turned her head so she faced the back of the seat.
She heard the rustle of cloth, then her coat slipped down to mid-calf. More rustling, then more of her legs were covered. She twisted around so she could glance down, and saw the red of the Santa suit across her ankles.
He started the car, slowly edged into the street. As he drove, she shifted on the seat until, when she craned her neck, she could just see out the top of the side window. She tried to guess where they were from her limited field of vision but it was useless, and she quit trying. She needed to conserve her energy. He had to stop sometime.
She tried to focus on sounds, anything at all familiar, but the big luxury car had been designed to keep traffic noise out. All she could tell was when they got on the highway again, by the speed of the car and the occasional sound of a truck going by.
Time crawled by as he drove and drove, and every minute seemed to reveal a new ache, a new pain, a new terrifying facet of her situation. Her arms cramped in the unnatural position and no matter how she lifted them, shifted them, the pain just worsened. Even her ankles hurt, as the edge of the thick belt chafed.
Her ribs hurt, her head throbbed, and she’d gotten stuffed up from crying and had to struggle for breath beyond the gag in her mouth.
It felt as if she would surely die from the fear, if nothing else. Image after image of what he could do to her flooded her brain, only to be followed by vivid mental pictures of her father hearing the news that she was dead.
A lurch, and her eyes opened.
God, she’d slept. It seemed impossible. But she had slept, for how long, she had no clue.
She realized that the very absence of noise and motion was what had awakened her. The driver’s side door opened and her kidnapper got out, then the rear door opened and she once again felt cold air on her legs.
