4

.

IWAITED UNTIL WELL AFTER DARK.

I had showered and shaved, dressed in a black polo shirt and olive-green cargo shorts, my darkest clothes, and followed the directions the Dane had given me.

I didn’t have to go back through the lobby to do that, didn’t have to go past anyone. Just opened my door and walked straight down to the water. From there I was guided by moonlight. There was enough of a reflection to form a path on the water, and the path seemed to follow me as I made my way south to the end of the bay and over a huge rock that usurped the sand for one hundred feet or so and that had to be ascended and descended without help from anything other than the moon.

And then I was on the other side, with no one else around, no other signs of human life, no sound except the water rolling into the shore. I passed one, two, three hulking houses, none of which showed any lights. Then, by moving slowly and peering closely, I found the big table on a little rise just slightly above the sand. It was positioned to provide a view over the water while sheltered by large branches from a Guanacaste tree. I climbed up to the table to look around.

Again, the only sound was the water surging and receding.

The house was at least one hundred and fifty feet away. Up slope. It was a very large house, and it came out toward the water in two wings, with a patio in between. Stairs led from the patio down to a swimming pool that was glowing blue-green from an underwater light. A path meandered from the pool to where I was. Both wings of the house were lit up. The path was not.

I had no real plan. I mostly wanted to see what Jason Stockover looked like. I would see him and then I would find a way to confront him.

I never got the chance.

I had not even made it halfway up the path between the beach and the pool when something struck me across the shoulders so hard it drove me to my knees. Then a foot was delivered into my back, sending me sprawling into the dirt, and a huge body landed on top of me. It was all I could do to get my breath and all I could do to keep my head from being forced into a hood and then my arms were pulled together, something snapped over my wrists, the hood was cinched tight at my neck, and whatever sounds I made were those of a shocked and wounded animal.

I WAS PUSHED and pulled up the path, up a flight of stairs and into the house. I couldn’t see and the best I could do was feel with my feet, try to guess where I was and where they were taking me. With my wrists cuffed behind my back, it was doing me no good to continue to struggle. I did anyhow. I shouted out my name and the fact that I was a district attorney. My captors went right on pushing and pulling.

I tried digging in my heels, but it made no difference. I was shoved across a floor and then down a single step and onto a much rougher flat surface. I was delivered smack into the rear of an open-doored van, and when I ricocheted off the van’s bumper I was slammed in the back again so that my upper body catapulted forward and then someone grabbed both my legs and heaved me into the vehicle headfirst. The door slammed shut while I was still bouncing. I came to rest about the time the engine coughed to life. I started to get to my knees and the van surged forward. And nobody paid the slightest attention to the fact that I was being pitched from one side of the vehicle to the other.

THE VAN TURNED LEFT. It turned right. I would remember this, I told myself. We flew over rough road, potholed road, and I repeatedly went up in the air and crashed down again. The bed of the van was made of thin steel, and it was ribbed, so there was no place to seek any kind of comfort, even in those rare moments when the nonexistent shock absorbers let me lie flat. We turned left.

I told myself we were heading back to town. There should be lights, noise, something to indicate other people were around. As soon as we slowed I would start kicking the rear door. I would kick with both feet and someone would hear; someone would want to know what those sounds were.

The transmission shifted. We picked up speed. I bounced more, flew higher in the air, came down harder. My focus became trying not to move so much. The transmission shifted again. The driver was not doing me any favors.

We kept going. Only once did I get the sensation of light, but that was about twenty minutes into the drive, long after we should have passed through Tamarindo. And it was there for only a second. Something that streaked over my head. A single streetlight, perhaps. With no voices.

We slowed, we downshifted, and then we sped up again. It occurred to me that these men could do anything they wanted with me. Who was to know? The Dane? And when would she know? Tomorrow? The next day? I had taken the room for two days. Would she do nothing until I failed to leave? How long would it take the people at the hotel to search my stuff? To see that I had an airplane ticket to fly to Boston by way of Houston on the day after tomorrow? To realize that I was really and truly missing? And who would realize it? The very woman who had sent me to the spot where I got mugged?

I told myself I had to live in the moment, not think so much about what lay ahead. Bounce, recover, be grateful you’re still okay.

It worked part of the time.

5

.

ANOTHER TWENTY MINUTES PASSED BEFORE WE LURCHED to a halt. I slid forward, banging into the back of the driver’s seat. I was sick from being tossed around. I ached. I tried to lie very still, as though somehow, if I was good, nothing bad would happen.

The engine was shut off. I could hear chirping and peeping noises. Doors opened and closed. Footsteps sounded, one set much heavier than the other. The rear door was unlatched, hands seized one of my ankles and hauled me toward the opening. I tried kicking with the other foot. I hit someone, but it did me no good. I was pulled so hard I dropped at least three feet from the floor of the van to the ground. It was soft ground, but it still hurt when I hit. It still made me groan and stunned me enough that I couldn’t kick again before both my feet were grabbed and I was being pulled over rutted, uneven, rock-strewn dirt, and it was all I could do so my head would not hit all the things that were thumping against my back.

I thought of things to say. I said none of them. What kept going through my mind was the idea that the farther they dragged me the worse it was for me. I could see nothing through the hood and what I could hear was mostly the sounds of my body bumping and scraping. And then my captors began to argue.

The two men were going at it in a language that was not Spanish. One of them wrapped his arm around my chest and hoisted me to his hip as if I were a sack of potatoes. I tried to knee him in the back of his thigh and he rewarded me by flinging me away from him. I had the sensation of flying through the air and was certain I was being tossed off a cliff. The air surged out of my lungs and then almost immediately my shoulder hit something. My shoulder, my hip, my side. I had been thrown inside some sort of structure. I landed on my left side and slid across a wooden floor, but I did not slide too far because the planks of the floor were pitted and worn. Splinters stabbed into my arm and stung my leg. Once again I tried to keep my head up, my face away, and then I stopped moving.