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12
Annie
It happened fast. One minute there was one stolen Corvette, two NHP cruisers, four bad cops, and some random traffic, all on the drone cameras I had no doubt.
Next instant there were four new vehicles surrounding us, all of them huge black SUVs that stood taller than the cop cars. Dwarfed the Corvette. They could probably transfer it back to its owner by driving it into one of the cars.
They surrounded the existing tableau and I was sure effectively blocked it out to anyone passing.
Or any eyes in the skies.
Someone put a hand on my head and shoved me into the vehicle. Someone inside the vehicle pulled me across the bench seat in the back and stuck a needle in my neck. I looked at his face – completely unfamiliar, unpleasant, and unkind – and the world turned upside down.
Maybe I should have been Lily, I thought, in the instants before the world went black. Like a baseball player's lucky, never-washed socks, the Lily persona was familiar and comfortable and most important, nothing awful had ever happened to me when I was Lily.
Okay, nothing permanently awful.
The world sailed backwards down a drain and I went with it.
I woke with a pounding headache and the sudden fear that I had been taken by the wrong group. Which was stupid. How many trafficking rings did I think there were? But I wasn't being taken before a Judge, that was obvious, or they would have done the fake arrest and hauled me off to the judicial chambers. Not put me in the back of an unmarked, unofficial SUV and driven me off and injected me with a sedative.
So why the change of MO? Did they have an idea I wasn't who my ID said I was? Or had something slipped? Or did my cavalier behavior warrant something different?
Not much I could do about it. We were still traveling. I was alone in the backseat and other than the headache, I felt okay. The back of the vehicle was cordoned off with a metal mesh. My hands were cuffed in front of me now, probably in case I had an adverse reaction to the drugs. There were bottles of cold water, a plastic tub of crystallized ginger, slices of lemon, and a small bag of potato chips. Somebody didn't want me getting carsick.
How thoughtful.
"Hey!"
The driver already knew I was awake. He'd met my eyes in the rearview. He did it again and his partner turned around and looked through the mesh at me.
"Shut up."
"What's happening? Where are you taking me? Are you police? What happened?"
He kind of rolled his eyes. The gesture was so natural and so absurdly out of place I almost laughed. "You stole a car. You've been arrested. You're on your way to arraignment. There's stuff there if you feel sick. We'd prefer you not throw up in the car."
I stared at him. As if someone could help it if the driver didn't relent and the doors weren't opened.
The driver said, "Shut up, idiot." To me he said, "You feel sick, tell me. I'll stop. You tell me you're sick and you're not, you'll be sorry."
"Okay," I said, and thought, Probably not. Not sorry. I don't think you're allowed to hurt me.
No comfort there. Even if he couldn't hurt me, there were a lot of other people who could.
I had a feeling I was on my way to meet them.
They didn't blindfold me. That was bad. They didn't restrain me other than the cuffs and my hands were in front of me. That was sensible – because that way I could reach the anti-nausea display or drink the water – but bad. They weren't calling anyone to let them know they were coming, so probably all that had been done out in the desert. That wasn't bad. It just was.
I was uncomfortable with the amount of information they were letting me have. I'd been taken to Cole's blindfolded and he was planning to help me.
It was a long drive. We left Vegas behind. We drove out of Nevada. We crossed into Arizona.
The driver and the guy riding shotgun didn't talk. They stared straight ahead. That was creepy. At some point we passed out of Mojave desert and into Sonoran. They looked the same. There were just different markers identifying things.
"Tell 'em we're coming." That was the first thing the driver had said in hours.
Shotgun called someone and had a short conversation that consisted mostly of yes, and estimates of time, and that yes, they had her.
