Tuesday, 12:17 p.m. PST

ADOOR OPENED, SLAMMED SHUT. The noise woke her, jerked her out of one dark place and into another. A second creak of metal and the trunk must have been opened, because suddenly, she could feel the rain on her blindfolded face.

Fight, she thought dimly, struggling to regain her earlier clarity. Kick legs, punch hands. She couldn’t pull herself together. The gas fumes had permeated her brain, leaving her in a dense fog where the only thing she wanted to do was throw up.

She lay curled in the car, passive deadweight.

“I’m going to loosen your bindings,” a male voice said calmly. “If you do what I say, everything will be fine. Struggle, and I’ll kill you. Understand?”

Her assent was implied; with the gag in her mouth, they both knew she couldn’t answer.

She felt hands move in front of her. The man’s fingers were rough and not particularly nimble; he struggled with his own knots.

Kick him, she thought again. But still her body wouldn’t respond to her brain.

He slapped her hands. A sharp pain raged up her forearms, blood-starved nerve endings protesting their abrupt return to life. He shook out her fingers and they struggled to obey. He already controlled more of her body than she did.

“This is a pen. Take it.” He folded her right fingers around the cool metal cylinder. “This is a pad of paper. Take it.” He thrust the paper into her left hand and again, her fingers found life in his orders.

“Now write. Exactly what I tell you. Word for word. Obey, and you can have some water. Disobey, and I will kill you. Understand?”

This time, she managed to nod. The motion pleased her somehow; it was the first one she’d managed on her own.

He dictated. She wrote. Not too many words, in the end. The date. The time. Where to go, what instructions to receive.

She was abducted. He wanted ransom. For some reason, that made her giggle, and that made him mad.

“What’s so funny?” he demanded. “What’s wrong with you?” When he got angry, his voice got higher, sounded younger.

“Are you making fun of me?”

And that made her laugh harder. Laugh as tears leaked from her eyes and soaked into the blindfold. Which made her aware of a few more things. Such as it was still raining and that if she strained her ears, she could hear the sound of the ocean, breaking against the shore.

He whipped the pen and paper away from her now. Jerked her wrists together at her waist, wrapped them this time with a zip tie.

“I hold your life in my hands, you stupid bitch. Make fun of me, and I’ll throw you outta the car right now and let your body roll right down the cliff. Now whaddaya think of that?”

She thought it didn’t matter. He’d managed to kidnap the one woman in the world who didn’t care if she lived or died. And now what was he going to do? Ransom her back to the only family she had-a husband who had left her? When the lucky tree had come calling, this man had clearly been out to lunch.

“Poor stupid bastard,” she murmured around the wad of cotton in her mouth.

The man’s demeanor suddenly changed. He leaned down, his face mere inches from hers. She could practically feel his smile by her ear. “Oh, don’t worry about me, Rainie Conner. Think I’m young, think I’m stupid? Think I have no idea who I’m holding in my hands? This is just the beginning of our relationship. You’re going to do every single thing I ask. Or someone quite close to you is dead.”

He shoved her back into the trunk. The metal door clanged down, the scent of gasoline filled her nostrils.

Rainie lay in the dark. She didn’t think of Astoria anymore. She didn’t think of her situation. She didn’t even think of Quincy. She just wished she had a beer.