"Then what?"

"I planned to hide you. I still plan to hide you. It's not safe for you to be back in the city right now."

"Oh, and I'm supposed to assume that I'll be safe with you?"

"You are safe with me." Max was straining to recover the situation.

"How does that follow?" Ess noticed that she was displaying a little of Manda's gumption. It was quite the adrenaline rush. "How does going from one kidnapper to another mean that I'm safe?"

"I won't hurt you," he was desperate to reassure her, "but Angoli will. I plan to protect you, to repay you for what you did for me. Angoli's purpose for taking you is less noble, I guarantee you."

That crushed Ess's adrenaline fed accusations. She had nothing more to say, and couldn't think of anything she could do to get out of the situation.

They sat in silence for a long time.

About an hour later (a very slow hour) Ess noticed that they were slowing down. She looked up and saw some lights ahead in the distance. Max decelerated the car and turned into a grimy gas station that was attached to an antiquated general store.

He finally broke the silence. "This is the last stop before the wilderness preserve. I'm going to fuel up and get some provisions. If you don't want to get hurt, then stay here."

Ess was indignant in her quiet way. "Is that a warning or a threat?"

Max winced, realizing his words had come out wrong. "It's advice." He shut the car door behind him, and walked towards the dirty old store, concentrating on not looking back to see what she was doing. It wouldn't help his case any if he made her think he didn't trust her.

Ess didn't particularly care to believe him, but then again, her former kidnapper had shot at him as well as her, so it wasn't like he was in cahoots with them. She didn't know what to think. It was difficult for her to make a snap decision when it was truly her life in her hands.

Besides that, nothing but darkness and trees surrounded the gas station; and the only other person present was the storekeeper. She could see through the window, that he was a grubby old man with an unkempt Santa Claus beard and a patch over one of his eyes. He looked like a quintessential pirate. Ess decided she'd rather chance it with Max than with 'Captain Ahab'.

Max made sure that it was a very short time later that they were back on the highway. A few minutes afterwards he turned the car onto a one-lane road, which quickly became a dirt path.

Ess started to panic a little again. Thoughts ran through her head of television news stories in which raped and beaten victims were left for dead in the middle of the wilderness. Perhaps it wasn't the right decision to trust this guy over the filthy pirate storekeeper, after all. She looked at Max as he drove, trying to study him like he had studied her; to see if he was really honest and sincere about what he told her. She wanted it to be true, just to know she was safe.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The bumps and jolts of the small car traveling over rocks and potholes were giving Ess a headache. Nervousness and fright kept her body tense, making every jostle radiate through her rigid frame, and quite possibly giving her whiplash in her neck. The slow progress was made painfully slower by the edgy quiet that fell between her and her current captor. Quite honestly, she felt less afraid of him when he spoke. The problem was, she didn't exactly know how to get him to resume a conversation.

She remembered watching the movie Silence of the Lambs, and tried to recall a specific scene. What was it, again? The one about the psyche of the bad guy not using the victims' names. Instead, he referred to them as objects, or 'its', rather than as people so that he could keep his conscience clean from his criminal acts. Maybe if she started talking about herself, making herself more of a real person to this Max guy - rather than an object of obsession - he would feel less inclined to harm her. It was the only weapon she could think of at the moment.

She cleared her throat and began, "So, a lot has happened to both of us since the last time we met." Wow, that was a lame start, but she was desperate and needed to initiate a 'getting-to know-you' conversation quickly.

Sadly, Max noticed the awkwardness of that statement. He didn't understand where such a comment came from, but he knew she was scared. He realized that she didn't know him, and she still didn't fully understand the extent of the danger she was in. Well, maybe she understood a little, since she was kidnapped and shot at, but she had no reason to believe anything he had told her about what was happening. Perhaps if she got to know him a little better, he could earn her trust. He would do anything to make this situation easier for her.

"Yeah. A lot. For the both of us." Jeez, was that the best he could do? Say something. Initiate an anecdote. Tell a joke. Anything. Why hadn't he been granted the gift of eloquence?

While criticizing himself for yet another of his flaws, Max suddenly realized where he was. It was time for the next leg of their journey.

Suddenly the car stopped. Ess's heart raced. Oh, no. She didn't have a chance to make him see her as a real person. He wasn't going to give her the chance. This was it. They reached their destination, which looked like nowhere in particular, and he was going to strike. Well, she wasn't going to give in so easily. She would fight tooth and nail for her life.

Before Max shifted the car into park, Ess had her seatbelt off and reached for the door latch. Pushing at the door as she pulled the latch, she practically fell out of the seat. She felt the brush of his hand as he tried to grab her arm, but he missed. Ess was now out of the car. She scrambled to regain her footing, and it took her longer than she had time for to re-establish her balance so that she could sprint. At least now she could run with her arms free from bindings.

Max was startled at her action, if not surprised. If she was going to run, he expected that she would have done it back at the gas station, not in the middle of the wilderness. This was not a place to run around in during the middle of the night.

He instinctively grabbed at her, but missed. Her clumsy escape from the car gave him time to get out of the driver side door. By the time he dashed around the front of the car, she had her bearings and was fleeing.

The half moon gave off a bright glow at this time of the night, but the thick canopy of the trees cast many shadows. This made both the escape and the pursuit more difficult. There were boulders and gullies everywhere. Max needed to catch her before Ess did some real injury to herself . . . or before some wild animal caught her.

Ess was more afraid than ever. She loved nature, and had gone camping many times in her youth, but between the darkness and her inappropriate shoes, she was finding it very complicated to maneuver in this topography. She stubbed her toe on a rock and almost flew forward to the rocky ground. Luckily, her other foot stopped her fall, and her balance, though faltering, didn't fail her.

However, she wasn't ready for the low branch that was in her path as she looked to the terrain in front of her. The branch made harsh contact with her cheek and nose, knocking her backwards. Her arms tried to swing behind her to catch her fall, but they weren't in time. She landed on her tailbone, followed by her back. Her head just missed a ragged rock, which smashed into her shoulder instead. Then, she felt a sudden numbness throughout her body.

Max witnessed it all. He heard the thud as Ess hit the branch, and saw her feet swing out from under her. The way she went down, he knew she had landed hard. He was only seconds away from her aid, practically slipping as he came to a halt over her.