The air in the van had grown more pungent as the day drug on, foul enough to cause even the strongest stomach to wretch. Natalie had found it difficult to breathe the odiferous cocktail. Tony had chained smoked cheap cigarettes—the only thing keeping him awake—so the air was filled with a heavy tobacco scent. Hank’s breath carried with it the stench of decay as the blood in his lungs congealed and the injured tissues began to rot. To add to the foulness, he had lost bladder control and urinated on himself several times throughout the day.
Now, the intensity of the sun’s stream though the windows warmed the fetid air, and turned it into a noxious anesthetic. She could feel the repetitious drift of the van and the chatter of the tires as they bumped against the turtle-like rumble strips that divided the highway lanes. Rudy, who had tried every few hours since sunrise to get Tony to let him to drive, sat where he had been since they stole the van last night, in the passenger seat. From where Natalie sat, she saw his head leaned against the window, asleep. She, too, fought drowsiness and her eyes fell closed again.
The sound of an eighteen-wheeler’s air horn woke everybody except Hank. The van suddenly pitched to the right. Natalie heard the truck rumble by and the horn faded into the distance behind them.
Rudy shouted, “You’re going to get us all killed! You need some rest. Let me drive.”
Natalie felt her spirit lift as she watched Rudy from her position behind the driver’s seat. She caught his glance, he masked his thoughts but she teased herself that if Tony went to sleep, she could work on Rudy to either set her free or turn himself in to the police. A fool’s hope.
“Damn you and the whore,” Tony retorted. “If I go to sleep, I’ll wake up in jail or dead. We need gas anyway, let’s find some coffee.”
As they made their southern approach to Lincoln City, Tony veered off the highway and pulled into the gravel driveway up to a gas station pump. He opened the driver’s door.
“I’m going inside,” he said to Rudy. “Get some gas.”
“Please let me stretch my legs,” Natalie pleaded. “I won’t try anything.”
Without an answer, Tony stepped out of the van and slammed the door.
Natalie’s peek-a-boo view of the windshield offered just enough to see that Tony passed by on the way to the store. Her eyes fell easily on Rudy. As he unbuckled his seatbelt, a knock came from the window where he had been resting his head.
“Fuel?” the station attendant asked.
“Uh … unleaded,” Rudy said, and then rolled the window back up. He turned back to Natalie. “Go ahead and stand up, but I can’t let you out of the van.”
She recognized his deep apologetic tone. “Thank you, Rudy,” she said as she shifted Hank’s head off her lap. “I think my whole body’s asleep, would you untie my feet?”
Rudy hesitated a moment and then passed between the two front seats. He reached to the ties on her ankles and undid the tight knots.
“Thank you,” she said and held her wrists out for the same favor.
“Can’t,” he said and slipped back into his seat with a worried look. “Tony won’t be happy I untied your feet as it is.”
“He doesn’t have to know,” she said, as she stood for the first time all day. The three inch heals on her black leather boots forced her to bend at the waist so she wouldn’t hit the roof of the van with her head. “Before he comes back, you wrap my ankles and wrists again, just don’t tie them so tight. After it gets dark, I can release myself and he’ll never figure it out.”
She held her hands out to him again.
“Okay,” he conceded, “but if I get caught it could ruin my plan.”
With her wrists untied, she massaged them and her ankles vigorously to motivate the blood to circulate again.
“Rudy, I know you didn’t mean for all this to happen,” she said as she attempted to stretch every muscle in her body. “You saw an opportunity to have sex with me, you took it and I was willing for my own reasons.”
“Look, Nat, I’m sorry I got you into this.”
She remembered back in the motel room she told him he could call her Nat. The lifeline implied he was her friend and pulled him closer to where she hoped to drive a wedge between him and Tony. She had no thought of letting him slide for his part in this nightmare. He may be simple minded and innocent in his own way, but because of him she was here. First opportunity she had to turn Tony and Rudy against each other, she would take it.
“You know I’m counting on you,” she said, “and I’m glad you have a plan.”
“You must hate me,” Rudy confessed and faced toward the windshield.
Natalie, surprised by the sudden turn in Rudy demeanor, said, “Look, I have every reason to hate you. You got me into this and look at what happened? I’ve put a bullet in one of your friends and Tony won’t stop terrorizing us. I’m so frightened we won’t survive this. But I know this whole thing, in your mind, was to bring us together. It’s because you love me, isn’t it?”
“I do love you. You’re so beautiful,” he confessed and drew his eyes toward the debris at his feet.
“Am I the first girl you’ve loved?”
“Except for my mother.”
“Then, let me love you back, Rudy,” she said. “Do you remember when you asked me out before?”
“Sure, how could I ever forget?” he asked and turned his eyes back to Natalie’s.
_____
©
Jearl Rugh 2012
All
Rights Reserved
No comments:
Post a Comment