TAKEN

It was a few minutes past midnight.

Jack Harden had a long drive ahead of him. The unending procession of sentinel pines and transplanted date palms which lined Interstate 10 on its long straight course through the Florida panhandle blurred by in his periphery.

This was the last stretch of highway on a nearly eighteen-hour drive, what truckers referred to as a “turn and burn.”

Affixed to the dashboard, the GPS streamed a miniature 3D version of the actual view through the windscreen. Nice device, but in his humble opinion, overkill, and a big waste of money.

Jack had driven well beyond the legal limit of hours, but that was really the least of his concerns. He was breaking the law in the process, something he was normally loathe to do, but justified this lapse in character as merely a miniscule filament in the intricate web he was spinning tonight.

The sound of the highway rolling under the seventy-seven inch wheels of the cherry red tractor was soothing, almost too soothing. Jack decided that a dose of loud rock music was becoming necessary to help him stay awake.

His fingers skittered over the compact discs splayed willy-nilly on the passenger seat, and finally settled on one. He quickly slipped it into the CD player, eyes never leaving the highway ahead, a consummate professional. Music began to bray from the truck’s speaker system, a welcome distraction from the eerie silence of the cab.

The first track was one of his favorites. It was a song that reminded Jack of high school football games—the smell of popcorn and hot dogs, people of all ages decked out in team colors, some of them laughing, lots of them cursing, and more than a few crying, not to mention the shit that went on under the bleachers filled with unsuspecting fans.

More than anything, the song reminded him of Dianne.

Dianne, Dianne. Oh sweet Goddamn Dianne.

Even though she was responsible for his current situation, Dianne was the love of his life, the sun in his sky and all that other bullshit. He knew she rabidly awaited his return. He had to resist his sudden impulse to slow down, lollygag a little, make her sweat it a while longer.

This was a pivotal time in their relationship. The whole future hinged on how he handled it, and this was not the time for games.

Jack really didn’t want to think about Dianne right now, but still, this whole situation was her fault. She had lit the fire under the pot in which he was now boiling. Fortunately, his mission had been successful. He was on the home stretch.

He cranked down the driver’s side window and was greeted by a blast of frigid November wind. It was just what he needed, invigorating him.

The miles rolled past, and Jack rolled with them.

Although he was forty-five, he still felt like a young man with plenty of years of driving these lonesome highways still ahead. He’d been a truck driver for more than half his time on Earth, with an impressive skill set and work ethic. The guys he encountered frequently on his routes respected him. He remembered money had been plentiful, and grimaced at the thought of how he was barely scraping by now. Like countless others, he had fallen victim to the country’s economic tailspin.

His current haul was an easy paycheck for an easy job: a simple drop and pick that had taken him to Slidell, a small town outside of New Orleans on the scenic shore of Lake Pontchartrain, a nine hour drive each way. A quick switch of loads, point it in the other direction and haul ass home, a walk in the early morning sunshine for Jack. He never slept well, so the long hours suited him.

He saw a weigh station ahead, and knew he would have to pull over and properly secure his precious cargo. If a DOT inspector or Statey happened to get a little too nosey and decided to inspect his sleeper, his goose was marinated, grilled and served with a pineapple syrup sauce with a freshly steamed vegetable medley and garlic toast. This drive home felt more problematic than Chinese math to Jack, but come hell or high water, he would make it home to his Goddess.

Jack glanced in the rearview mirror at the waitress he had duct-taped and tied down on his bunk in the sleeper. She stared back at him, eyes glaring.

They had not exchanged words in forever, and she had not stopped staring at him like that since she had awoken. She possessed an air of earthy defiance. He had abducted her, yet she projected so much confidence, he almost felt as though she had the upper hand.

He had expected her to be frightened and had been prepared for panic and screaming, but she had defied his expectations. She behaved as if being drugged, tied up and stuffed into a stranger’s sleeper cab was as commonplace an occurrence as getting up and dressed in the morning.

A FEW HOURS earlier, at a greasy spoon just outside Slidell, Jack gnawed at a barely recognizable hunk of charcoal pretending to be a rib eye steak. It had the misnomer “The Bloody Outlaw” on the menu. His order had been medium rare, but the steak was so hard, he could have murdered the “chef” with it.

He was choking down a mouthful of the charred meat when he first spotted the waitress. She was blonde, with a similar height and build to Dianne, and he guessed she was about twenty-five.

Her black skirt was tantalizingly short, and she sported several exotic tattoos on her achingly well-toned limbs. A colorful Koi fish on her inner left thigh swam up that curvy leg in search of Zen further north. A vicious looking dragon slithered along her other thigh, evidently racing the fish to paradise.

She was tanned and beautiful: deep brown, almond shaped eyes, perfect teeth, no wrinkles, at least none that he could see.

He was enchanted.

She noticed him staring as she hustled from table to table, stuffing tips into her fanny pack. She stiffened instinctively and Jack looked away, embarrassed. He had been enjoying the guilty pleasure of watching her lithely bend over the edges of the tables. Even seeing her perform the menial task of re-stuffing the napkin holders brought lurid thoughts, as if she were discreetly performing for him.

In spite of his shame at being caught leering, he glanced again in her direction. To his delight, a smile brightened her eyes. She actually winked at him.

Godammit, Dianne! I got you one, he thought, and his pulse quickened at the prospect of this being his moment. It was time for him to make his move. He wasn’t certain, but Jack was pretty sure the girl was flirting with him. If only he could lure this hottie outside with him, his plan could be put into action.

But it wasn’t his plan at all. It was Dianne’s plan.

He wondered if he really had the courage to kidnap this girl and bring her back to the Goddess. The thought that he might actually pull this off gave Jack a jolt of adrenaline. His heart beat so intensely, he felt it might rupture.

He picked the gristle out of his teeth as he waited anxiously for the cashier to come out of the back to ring up his check. He was surprised when the cute waitress he’d been watching strode right up to him, boldly. She was a full foot shorter than him and a natural beauty, like Dianne. She wore no makeup he noticed, didn’t need any. Jack pictured her in a tennis skirt, and had to physically suppress the urge to snort like a wild boar.

The girl held a cigarette in the notch between the first and middle finger of her right hand. Though she attempted to appear nonchalant, he could tell she was a little timid. It was easy to see she was not a lot lizard, not some floozy looking to fuck for a buck. In fact, she appeared completely normal, quite out of place among the ragtag group of overnighters sullenly downing caffeine and cholesterol in this hellhole.

Even though she looked worn out from her long shift hustling tips from dirty truckers, she still walked with confidence, seemingly unaware of how she rolled her hips as she approached him. This girl was playing it cool, calm and collected, but it was easy to see a cigarette craving was on her like swine flu.

She waved her hand in front of his eyes, alerting him to the embarrassing fact that, once again, he was ogling her.

“Got a light, mister?” she asked. Her name was printed on a name tag buttoned to her shirt: Rayne.

“You got a spare smoke, Rayne?” he replied.

Her eyes widened as he said her name, but then she touched her name tag and smiled.

“They’re menthol . . . ” she shifted on her feet, her eyes darting left first, and then right. He wondered if she sensed something not quite right about him.

“A smoke’s a smoke in my book, so you got yourself a deal Miss Rayne. I’ve got a mighty fine lighter in my rig out back. I might just let you keep it,” he said as he turned and handed the cashier a twenty and casually declined the change.

“Let’s go,” the waitress urged, eager for her smoke break. She pushed open the diner’s door with her curvaceous hip and strode purposefully into the chilly evening.

They walked side by side through the crisp night air toward the rear parking lot where Jack’s cherry red Freightliner waited. Jack shivered as he glanced furtively at his surroundings. The parking lot was all but deserted.

He couldn’t remember a time in his life when he had ever been so nervous.

To break the tension, he joked with the waitress as they walked to his truck.

“You sure you should be out here with me?” he smirked as they walked through the dimly lit lot. “It’s awfully dark and I am a perfect stranger, you know.” He smiled mischievously at her and stuffed his hands into his jacket pockets.

She shrugged and swiped her bangs from her eyes, revealing a tattooed ring of black stars circling her delicate wrist.

She eyed him coldly for a moment.

Jack tensed.

Instead of fleeing, she laughed. “Well, everybody keeps telling me cigarettes are going to kill me.”

His pounding heart began to ease back into its normal rhythm, and a confused look crossed his face for a moment.

Rayne punched him playfully in the bicep.

“Upset that I’m not scared of you? I’ve known plenty of psychos in my day, and I can tell you’re just a big old teddy bear. Hey, is this your truck?”

Jack nodded proudly.

She looked impressed with his rig, but held the cigarette between her lips impatiently. She needed that cancerous tube of tobacco so badly that Jack found it humorous.

Jack hefted himself up onto the chrome step and yanked open the driver’s side door. He grabbed his trusty Zippo lighter from the side console and tossed it down to her. She traded him a cigarette for it, lit her own, and absently deposited Jack’s lighter into her own pocket. Jack tucked his menthol cigarette behind his ear. He hadn’t smoked in five years.

Rayne puffed greedily on the cigarette, completely unaware of how the act sullied her angelic image. He followed behind her as she did a walk-around inspection of his Freightliner. She remarked on the handsome shade of the red paint, how it reflected the parking lot’s arc sodium lights, the luminescence adding its luster. She loved how shiny the chrome was.

Jack knew his window of opportunity was a narrow one. His patience was wearing thin, allowing doubts to nag. Maybe this whole thing was a bad idea? Perhaps Dianne was right, maybe he was a big old coward? Why should he have to prove his undying loyalty like this? If Dianne truly loved him, why was she forcing him to do this?

Despite his misgivings, he knew he’d have to do it regardless. Dianne would never accept anything less, and he couldn’t bear the thought of life without her in it.

Jack saw the perfect opportunity present itself as the waitress walked around the side of his truck that faced away from the restaurant. If he did it there, only trees and weeds would bear witness to his crime.

Jack walked around the truck to find her sucking her cigarette like a baby with a pacifier, admiring herself in the polished chrome as she polluted her young lungs, oblivious of his encroachment. Jack’s heart began to knock against his breastbone again.

He approached Rayne from behind. She was relaxed and her guard was down. Sensing his presence, she turned to face him, a kind yet increasingly dismissive look crossing her features.

“Well, thanks for the . . . ” she started to say, but Jack eased a syringe from his jacket pocket and closed the distance between them before she could finish her sentence. With the swiftness of a cheetah upon a wounded antelope he smoothly inserted the business end of the syringe into her soft neck, taking care not to hit her jugular.

She grabbed at her neck as he spun her around, pulling her tightly against him, hoping any passersby would mistake this desperate dance they observed for nothing more than love birds engaged in a drunken embrace.

Jack’s strength easily outmatched Rayne’s.

He felt immensely powerful as her feeble attempts to yank away from him subsided. She might as well have been trying to swim in quicksand.

She wasn’t wearing a bra, and her breasts felt firm and fertile smashed against him. He began to harden, and his grip on her loosened. She twisted around and feebly beat at him with her fists, managing to knock the spent syringe out of Jack’s hand. It bounced on the asphalt, rolling underneath the truck and out of sight.

As the dope hit her hard and fast, the waitress’s resistance flagged as her blows became like a declawed kitten pawing him. Rayne sagged, dropping her cigarette to the blacktop where it lay smoldering and forgotten.

Jack let her petite body sag against him as he released her from his bear hug, then gently lay her down on the ground. He glanced around the parking lot praying to any god that would listen that there had been no witnesses.

Wasting no time, he quickly hoisted the waitress’s drugged body through the driver’s side door of his rig. Jack hopped up into the cab and pushed her into the sleeper compartment. It required little effort as he guessed she didn’t weigh more than a hundred and five pounds soaking wet.

The sleeper was spacious allowing ample room for him to rapidly secure the girl, duct taping her wrists and ankles. Despite her diminutive size, Jack still worked up a sweat laboring over his captive. He had never done anything like this before, but he felt like he was doing well for a rookie.

The waitress was dressed in a pink t-shirt imprinted with the diner’s logo, a short black skirt and tennis shoes sans socks. Dianne would undoubtedly chastise the girl her for her lack of fashion sense. Jack, however, was pleased to find that her choice of clothing worked to his advantage as he taped her ankles together.

Jack patted down the fanny pack that was tied around her slender waist, making sure she wasn’t carrying any weapons. He felt a wad of cash, soft and harmless, a tube of lipstick, and a key ring with a few keys on it. He fished the keys out and popped them into his glove box along with the duct tape.

Satisfied with his work and dripping with sweat from exertion and adrenaline, Jack laid the girl on her back and stuffed a pillow under her head.

He scrutinized the girl one final time. Her arms and legs had been rendered useless and she was snoozing heavily. Her innate beauty still shone through, despite her compromised position. He knew the time would come when he would need to conceal her more thoroughly, but he was desperate to make tracks, and she certainly wasn’t going anywhere.

Jack knew it wouldn’t be long before someone on the Long Haul Diner’s staff started wondering where their coworker had gone. People in the diner had seen him talking to her, and they might even identify him as the last person Rayne was seen with. He wanted to make sure he was at least halfway home by then.

He clambered back into the cab, leaving the waitress to her drugged slumber as he cranked up the Freightliner, accelerated out of the parking lot and sped into the night without looking back.

I’m coming home, baby.

Jack was still unclear as to why Dianne had insisted he steal away an innocent girl. Was she insane? It wasn’t the first time the thought had crossed his mind. Should he even want to be with her at all?

She had told him this would be a test of his mettle, which had nothing to do with the girl, ultimately. She promised the girl would be fine. It was all very reassuring in theory. As he committed the act, though, theory jumped right out the window.

The waitress began to come around when they were close to the Louisiana border. According to Jack’s research into the effects of the sedative he had injected, he had expected it to wear off around that time. He was glad to hear her begin to stir, happy that he had avoided killing her with an overdose.

She yawned quietly and tried to stretch, clearly unaware of where she was or what had happened to her. But when she realized she was bound, she pushed herself into a seated position in the corner of the sleeper, an icy glaze filling her eyes.

“Well, you warned me, didn’t you, motherfucker?”

The unexpected sound of the young waitress’s voice startled Jack. He realized that in his haste to put Louisiana behind him, he had forgotten to tape her mouth shut.

Jack looked over his shoulder and smiled his most winning smile. “Good morning, Rayne,” he said, hoping to sound amiable, but his voice was shaky.

“Don’t say my name ever again, asshole,” she said. “Where are you taking me?”

He didn’t answer, and instead attempted to break the ice.

“My name’s Jack.”

She looked around the dim cabin interior as her eyes adjusted to the light, taking stock of her situation.

“Holy shit,” she muttered, “you really are sick, aren’t you?”

“I feel fine, actually,” Jack replied and turned up the volume on the stereo.

“Where the hell are you taking me?” the girl demanded again, her voice betraying no fear at all.

“I am taking you to the Goddess. Don’t worry. You’re going to be fine.” He attempted to sound as though he was in control, but his voice still wavered slightly. He didn’t feel like talking.

The girl was flummoxed, and shook her head slowly from side to side. “Goddess? What the hell is that supposed to mean? And I’m not fine. You hurt me.”

“I did not hurt you. I’ve been very gentle.”

“You kidnapped me! You drugged me!” she shrieked. “People will be looking for me. I was in the middle of a shift, you idiot.”

Jack glanced at her in the rearview mirror and smirked.

“Nice try, but your shift was over—and you came on to me at the diner. I don’t think anyone’s going to be looking for you at all,” he grinned.

“You’re new at this sort of thing, aren’t you?” she asked. Her eyes were fixed and cold. “I’m not just some stupid slut you can tape up and carry away, you know.”

Jack decided that was the last straw. He had had enough of her mouth.

“Listen close, little lady. I’ll pull over right now and tape your mouth shut if you keep cracking wise. I did you the courtesy of leaving your flap-trap open, but if you don’t shut up right now then you’ll leave me no option.”

He glared at her in the mirror hoping to drive his point home.

“What’ll it be, missy?”

She quit talking and eyed him coolly, an almost blasé expression on her face.

“We have a long ride ahead of us, and I intend for it to be a peaceful one, so do like my sweet Dianne says, ‘don’t open your mouth unless you plan to do something useful with it.’”

He glanced at her again and saw her weighing his words. She was surprisingly calm. She was all steely resolution and “fuck you” attitude.

She remained quiet for a long stretch of miles. Perhaps the futility of her arguments was sinking in or she was considering the sincerity of his promise not to hurt her, wondering how psychotic he really was. She was most likely remembering all the news stories she had heard about young women being abducted and hacked into pieces, or found strangled and raped in fields in the middle of nowhere.

Jack realized that he might have captured himself a real live firecracker, and decided not to light any more matches in her vicinity. He left her to her thoughts as he concentrated on the highway.

She was silent for so long that he thought she had fallen back to sleep, but that turned out to have been wishful thinking.

“So . . . ” she said. She let the word stretch out about four times longer than it normally should. “Who is this ‘Dianne’ you mentioned?”

“Dianne is my Goddess.”

“And you’re taking me to her . . . why?”

As the waitress waited for his response, Jack looked back at her and felt a pang of compassion.

He cleared his throat loudly before he spoke.

“She thinks I did her wrong, thinks I tried to get laid by a hooker in a truck stop, but I didn’t. I told her the truth, that I got robbed, but she didn’t believe me. Now this is a test of my loyalty to her, that’s what she says. She wanted to see if I had the guts to snatch a beautiful girl for her, to prove that I do love her. She made it clear that no one would get hurt, so you don’t have to worry.”

The waitress fell silent again. Several minutes went by as they both sat in contemplative silence.

“It’s funny, but you look a lot like her,” he said eventually.

“You’re a sicko,” she spat.

Now, the weigh station loomed ahead, glowing yellow in the darkness of the interstate. Jack tapped the brakes gently and veered ever so slightly to the right, maneuvering the rig carefully onto the bumpy shoulder where it came to a jerky stop.

“What are you doing?” the girl asked, the first tinge of unease creeping into her voice. Her eyes darted furtively around her temporary prison cell.

Jack put his index finger to his lips. “It’s okay. I have to hide you. There’s a weigh station ahead.”

He attempted to be both comforting and menacing at the same time, and failed miserably on both counts.

“You try to get anyone’s attention, and I’ll kill you.” He unlatched the glove box and pulled out the duct tape. “Then I’ll have to kill anyone else around, too—and every drop of blood spilled will be on your hands, too. Got me?” he said as he climbed into the sleeper with her.

He didn’t wait for her response. Instead, he yanked a four-inch strip of duct tape from the roll and used it to make sure her mouth was no longer an issue. Her eyes bulged in terror, but she didn’t struggle as he muted her.

Jack inspected her wrists and ankles, to make sure she had not started to wriggle herself free, and then pulled a neatly folded tarp out from under his bunk.

He then rolled her up like a burrito, leaving an opening big enough to allow air to enter. The last thing he needed was to accidentally suffocate the girl before he got her home to Dianne. The waitress shot a homicidal look at Jack as her face disappeared beneath the tarp, a look that frightened him at a base level. He’d never found himself the target of murderous intent before.

She probably wants to kill me, but it won’t happen.

I am in control.

Feeling reassured and content, he felt calm enough to move along and face the weigh station.

There were no other drivers waiting in line. Jack maintained a calm demeanor as he exchanged pleasantries with the inspectors as they hastily checked his truck. They waved him through quickly, and he let out a huge sigh of relief as the officers bid him a good night and safe trip.

Jack hated that more than anything. He hated people telling him to have a “safe trip,” as if he controlled fate. Sure, he could be as cautious as a city transit van carrying senior citizens to hip replacement surgery follow-up appointments, and that would guarantee he was being safe. But any drunk or sleepy driver could wipe out his hopes and dreams as easily as the tarp-wrapped girl could surely erase any evidence of a table full of truckers who had devoured a sloppy breakfast of pancakes, hash browns and gravy biscuits.

Have a safe trip, my ass.

He rolled out in a hurry, hitting the highway like a bat out of hell.

He had to pass through two more weigh stations along the way, and both times he feared his heart might burst with fear of being discovered. Each time an inspector approached he slid his hand beneath his denim jacket and touched the handle of the hunting knife he kept in a makeshift shoulder holster. The ivory handle felt warm, comforting, a promise of the eight inches of steel on the other end.

Fortunately, no one showed an iota of interest in Jack, they just ushered him onto the scales, and happy with the results, checked his stickers and sent him on his way. To them, he was just another long haul trucker trying to get back home. Some of the newer weigh stations had drive-through scales, and he was pissed none of them on this stretch of I-10 had been upgraded.

After a millennium of driving, he was almost home, less than half an hour separated him from his dear Dianne. His stomach churned in anticipation of holding her close again. He was ready to get all this behind him, get his passing grade, and return the waitress back to her life unharmed.

Jack glanced down at the gauges. A profound sinking feeling struck him when he saw the truck was nearly out of gas. He wouldn’t make it back to Jacksonville without a refuel.

Jack pulled into a truck stop at the next exit, and opted for the most desolate pump island, which still was not nearly as secluded as he would have liked.

Anxiety snaked through his guts.

Good fortune, by nature, was fleeting, and, even though he was close to the end of his long drive, he knew it would only take one slip to bring about his undoing. His father used to say that discretion was the better part of valor.

Jack wondered if that statement applied to this situation.

Probably not, he decided. But it was something similar.

Prior to his current haul, the worst crimes Jack had ever committed had been little more than petty misdemeanors: the occasional consumption of amphetamines to help him stay awake during a long night of lonely driving, a shoplifting incident back in junior high school, and that was about it.

Now he was a felon, a kidnapper. He had gone straight over the waterfall at the end of the world. After tonight, he knew he would be looking back over his shoulder for the rest of his life.

But the Goddess had insisted, and Jack had obeyed. Had there been an alternative? If she would have instructed him to embark on a killing spree to earn her affections, he had no doubt he would have gleefully opened a thousand throats to appease her demands.

After he finished pumping gas, Jack strolled over to the convenience store where he found an antiquated pay phone screwed haphazardly into the wall. He picked up the receiver and hastily punched in numbers from the back of his prepaid phone card to call home.

The mouthpiece looked as if someone had wiped their shitty ass on it. He almost gagged.

No answer.

He started to call again, but changed his mind and set the handset back in its cradle, disappointed.

As he stuffed his hands in his pockets to warm them against the frosty night, he felt something crumpled in the left front pocket. He knew he needed to haul ass, but it was a five-dollar bill. He could win a million more for Dianne. Against his better judgment he turned and walked inside the store to try his luck on a scratch off ticket.

He scratched the ticket and was astounded to find that he had won twenty-five dollars. This random luck was a pleasant surprise and he felt triumphant as he proudly lay the winning ticket down for the cashier to pay out his loot.

The young man behind the counter was extraordinarily fidgety and nervous. Jack became suspicious of him right away. He suddenly realized that the lighting in the store was too bright, the headache inducing fluorescents causing him to squint uncomfortably.

“What’s the matter?” John asked the kid at the counter. His voice sounded too loud in his own ears, like firecrackers in a cave.

The jittery young man cut his eyes to the right and shook his head a few times quickly. “N-Nothing, sir,” he stammered. His long brown hair swung back and forth in front of his greasy face like a pendulum as his head moved.

The kid pushed five wrinkled and greasy five-dollar notes across the Plexiglas counter in Jack’s general direction, motioning with a shaky hand for him to pick them up. The kid was purposefully avoiding making even incidental eye contact with Jack.

Jack stepped back a few feet so he could fully assess the guy’s body language.

Something was wrong.

Jack looked behind the counter to see if there was a television set, but he didn’t even see a radio. Still, anyone with a cell phone knew everything these days. If anyone had seen him with the waitress in Slidell, if someone had seen what happened in the parking lot, it might be nationally broadcast news by now.

He wondered if the police had issued a “be on the lookout” broadcast for a red Freightliner with a driver matching his description. If they had, he doubted the search would have expanded beyond Louisiana state lines at this point. But he couldn’t be so sure.

He was being paranoid. She had to be missing for twenty-four hours before law enforcement would consider her missing. He guessed the waitress’s coworkers assumed she had hitched a ride home with a good looking trucker, and was maybe riding him like a cowgirl in a sleazy hotel room even now.

But what if someone had seen him stick a needle in her neck and called the cops right away?

The nervous kid developed a voice and broke Jack’s reverie.

“Don’t you want your money, man?” he said, shuffling back and forth frantically. Jack eyed him warily.

“You gotta piss, or what, kid?”

“Yes, sir,” the teen laughed uncomfortably. “Back teeth are floatin’,” he added with a nervous guffaw, undulating in his unceasing potty dance.

Jack shook his head and chuckled.

“Have a good night,” he advised the vibrating counter jockey. Twenty dollars richer, Jack’s confidence was growing again. But as he strolled past the surveillance cameras in the brightly lit parking lot, he still could not shake the feeling that the kid behind the counter knew.

Jack rode the razor’s edge the rest of the way home. His fear was at full tilt, and threatening to undo him. Danger seemed to be around every curve. Every Sheriff’s Deputy or Statey he passed watched him intently as he drove by. He felt the heat of their gazes penetrating right through his façade to the dirty truth.

Jack was slick with sweat and in desperate need of a bathroom by the time he made it into his neighborhood, navigating with extreme caution. He drove a slow five miles an hour down the narrow dirt road that took him home.

His driveway was at the end of the street, a mile and a half beyond the point where civilization ended. It looped around a copse of water oaks and back out onto itself.

His house was a modest prefab with a dainty looking flower garden in the front that feral cats had taken to using as their litter box. Dark woods surrounded the house on three sides.

Jack eased the tractor to a whining stop by the front door. He had driven twelve hundred miles over the last two days, about eighteen hours straight, and it was a miracle that he had not had to go off his route at all. Lady Luck had smiled on him so far, but now he was almost completely exhausted.

Floodlights lit up around his property, activated by motion sensors. They bathed the front yard with a stage-like glow.

He looked in the rearview mirror and didn’t like the hollow-eyed, haggard reflection staring back at him.

Lord, please let all of this be worth it.

He knew his prayers were probably useless. Why would God grant a kidnapper’s requests?

Jack unrolled the waitress burrito wedged in the back of the cab. The burrito’s filling was now wide awake: darting, panicked eyes one second, steely eyes fixed with a vengeful resolve the next. She tried to resist him at first, but once she realized he going to drag her from the truck one way or the other, she lay limp and allowed him to heave her bodily over his shoulder.

“Don’t try anything stupid, lady. This will all work out fine, you’ll see. Dianne will take care of everything,” he said in a voice that was reassuring but firm.

The waitress stiffly nodded her head in agreement.

He opened the door to his humble abode, and stepped inside. He stood in the doorway with the girl slung over his shoulder, eagerly awaiting Dianne’s adulation.

As he stood in the doorway awaiting the appearance of his beloved Goddess, a song by John Cougar Melloncamp floated in from the other room. It was “Jack and Dianne,” how appropriate. Jack knew that Dianne must have waited for this precise moment to play her favorite song. She was so good at things like that.

The front entrance opened into a small foyer. On the left was the living room, sparsely furnished with a threadbare beige sofa. A dusty lamp cast a dim pall on its cushions, and a coffee-stained end table next to it was adorned with a stack of ancient TV Guides. Jack carried Rayne into the dining room.

Dianne was waiting for him there, adorned in shadows, sitting in a wobbly wooden chair facing toward the front door. Even in the near darkness, she shone with a radiance that filled the room.

He was surprised to find her sitting in the exact same position she had been in when he last saw her two days ago. Her hair was perfectly coiffed, and even though her expression was blank, she was still as attractive as when they had first started dating so many years ago. She had done her makeup just right, and she was wearing the pink dress he had bought for her on one of their anniversaries, fifth maybe.

She was beautiful.

Jack smiled broadly as he stood triumphant with Dianne’s trophy. He eased the waitress down into a chair facing his beloved, and said, “Dianne, I’d like to introduce you to Rayne.”

He waited for any sign of her approval. She didn’t acknowledge him. What was this now? She just sat there.

Was she playing a practical joke on him? If so, it was such a rare occurrence, he could not tell.

“I have got to pee,” he said, looking for any reason to excuse himself from the awkward silence. “You girls get to know each other for a minute. I’ll be right back.”

Jack strode briskly back into the family room, leaving the quivering young waitress and his surprisingly subdued wife to get acquainted. He stepped into the bathroom to relieve himself, splashing cold water onto his flushed face to hide the massive perspiration that was developing on his brow. After he felt that he had sufficiently regained his composure, he walked back to the dining room, where Dianne looked as though she was ready to talk.

“So, how do you like her?” he asked Dianne sweetly.

Her voice finally comforted his ears. “So, this is my prize, is it?”

“Indeed, my dear. I told you I could do it,” he said, looking desperately for any sign of approval.

“Take all that tape off of her and hold her down on the table for me, lover.” Dianne cooed.

Jack was taken aback by this. There had not been any discussion about doing anything like this, but he had to go along with it. What was the old saying? In for a penny, in for a pound? He thought he understood what that meant now.

“You won’t try to get away, will you, little lady?” Dianne whispered slowly to the girl as Jack lifted her from the chair, and gently laid her down on the table. “If you think you can get away, think again. Jack is strong, he won’t let go. Right lover boy?”

The girl tried to wriggle free from where she lay on the table, but the duct tape didn’t yield. When Jack approached her with his knife drawn, she stopped moving, but her eyes betrayed her terror.

He began to cut her free of the tape. He tried to be careful, but his hands shook so badly that the knife slipped and sliced into Rayne’s thigh not once, but two different times.

She bucked from the pain of being cut, but Jack held her down tightly as he continued to saw his way through the tape, fresh blood glistening on the blade. The waitress was bleeding from both of her calves and her left arm by the time he moved on to her mouth.

Jack tore the tape from her lips with one sudden yank. She let out a loud scream, and rolled over onto her stomach on the dining table, to find her face only inches from Dianne’s breasts.

Next, Jack sliced through the tape binding her throbbing wrists, freeing her hands. Unbound, she arched back and tried to buck away from Dianne, wincing as she touched wounds Jack had carelessly inflicted with his knife.

“Take off those rags she’s got on, Jack. I want to see what we’ve got to work with here.”

Jack began awkwardly tugging her shirt up and over her head. The waitress sat up straight, holding up one arm in a gesture Jack assumed was intended to make his job easier. But then her other hand shot into her fanny pack and came out with her tube of lipstick. For a gleefully oblivious moment, Jack was happy to see her getting into the spirit of things.

Rayne flicked a little clip on the tube, and a hole opened in the top. Before he fully understood what was happening, Jack had a face full of pepper spray. He cried out in agony as she blasted him in his eyes. Jack tripped over a chair and fell onto the floor, where his skull thudded loudly against the linoleum.

He was blind, and the pain was worse than anything he ever imagined.

The waitress was on him so fast he never had a fighting chance. He heard a scraping, like alligator teeth grinding together, and then came the real pain.

A second blow to his head was accompanied by the brittle crack of splintering wood, then another. A tsunami of anguish cascaded over him, leaving mass destruction in its wake.

Then nothingness, as Jack collapsed in a heap on the floor.

When he regained consciousness, panic and pain were having an orgy inside his skull. His pulse quickened as he heard the brash bang of the screen door slamming shut somewhere behind him.

He was still blind from the pepper spray, his eyes felt like fried eggs stomped into shag carpeting by a grizzly bear with shit on its paws. He tried to blink the chemicals out of his eyes, but it was no use.

Jack could hear fervent activity going on in the room around him, but was too blind to see what was happening. He licked his lips, and gagged in revulsion as his gums and tongue and lips began burning in earnest.

As he attempted to wipe his eyes with his sleeve, he realized the gravity of his situation. He was bound tightly to a chair. How the hell had this happened?

How had he lost control so utterly and completely?

How had this little waif managed to turn the tables on him?

Blindness was utterly terrifying, but the sounds of movement erupting here and there around him made his stomach squelch, and nausea washed over him. He struggled to free himself, but he couldn’t budge an inch. The waitress seemed to be a natural at this sort of thing.

“Dianne,” he croaked. He began to cough convulsively, his throat on fire.

Dianne did not reply, but he knew she was in the room with him. He caught a whiff of her perfume, and realized she had to be within feet of him.

“Dianne?”

Strong gasoline vapors assaulted his nostrils.

“Rayne,” he coughed. “What are you doing?”

“Don’t you ever say my name again.”

Jack understood all too well that the waitress held the reins now, and she was driving this horse straight into a ravine.

After a few minutes, she began furiously scrubbing his face with a handful of scratchy paper towels. His eyes were still watery and sensitive, but finally he saw blurry images and shadows through the veil of pain.

The waitress stood before him wild-eyed and disheveled. She reminded Jack of Sissy Spacek in the movie Carrie after the scene where she is drenched with buckets of blood. Fresh blood was smeared across her face and was leaking out of the wounds on her legs.

She was holding his five-gallon gas drum, the one he kept in the shed. The one he always kept full.

He knew he was in deep shit, but Jack was more worried about Dianne. He glanced around the room and saw her still sitting calmly in her chair, a ghostly shadow sitting directly across from him.

He was about to whisper to Dianne that everything would be fine, but then the waitress walked over to Dianne and doused her with gasoline, emptying half the drum on his Goddess.

Jack called her name over and over in a high-pitched voice, like a helpless pig squealing in a cage. Rayne told him to shut the fuck up.

“You know what Jack?” she asked, in a tone more incredulous than afraid, “I guess I should have known, since you’re obviously a dummy, that your wife would turn out to be a dummy, too.”

“Leave her alone you bitch!” he wailed. “Leave her alone! Don’t you dare hurt my Dianne!”

The waitress swung the gas can with all her might, connecting with the side of his head with a loud clang. He heard and felt the impact at the same time, the pain was surreal.

“Watch this, Jack,” she said, and walked into the living room. His vision was still blurry, but she was carrying something. She had his hatchet. She hefted it and swung it a couple times, laughing maniacally.

Jack’s heart thumped and kicked with fear at the sight of the razor-sharp blade.

“Stop,” he cried. “You can go. Just leave, please leave us alone. I’m sorry.”

He writhed and wriggled. The waitress, sensing his distress, turned and walked to his Goddess’s side, gently stroking her hair.

Dianne just stared ahead.

“Take off those rags she’s got on, Jack. I want to see what we’ve got to work with here,” the waitress sneered sarcastically, mocking him. She took one of Dianne’s hands and laid her arm palm-down on the table.

Without hesitation, she raised the hatchet and brought it down in a tight arc, severing Dianne’s arm cleanly at the elbow with a single savage stroke.

Jack cringed in horror, waiting for Dianne’s scream and a gush of blood from her newly dismembered arm, but neither came.

It was all too much. He thought he might pass out as the hatchet blade came crashing down into Dianne’s shoulder with a cold flash.

Again, Dianne sat stoic and silent.

Jack screamed enough for both of them.

The waitress dropped the hatchet to the floor, and began to dig around in her pocket. When the waitress pulled her hand back out of her pocket, Jack saw that she held something shiny in her fist. His heart sank.

It was his Zippo lighter.

The waitress flipped it open, striking it alight in one fluid motion. For a moment she held the flame close to her chest, as she canted her head upwards toward the ceiling. She appeared to be praying.

Then she searched Jack’s gaze, studying his eyes. Once it was clear that she had found what she was looking for in them, she held the tip of the guttering flame against Dianne’s hair.

An immense whooshing sound filled the dining room, accompanied by the heat and intense light of an instantaneous blaze. Dianne was wholly devoured by flames. She fiercely burned.

The waitress walked away from the burning pyre and stood before Jack.

“How could you love that thing, you idiot?”

Jack watched with growing confusion as Dianne’s body melted in front of him, black smoke spiraling upward toward the ceiling. She never moved once, never even seemed to notice she was on fire as she sat burning.

Jack’s vision was now almost back to normal. He was helpless to do anything but sit and watch his beloved burn. What he saw was more than enough to make him wish he was still blind. She, who had been so beautiful, was now nothing more than a melting charred blob.

What was happening? It was impossible, his Goddess dying, liquefying in front of his eyes.

What kind of cruel trick is this? That isn’t Dianne, it can’t be.

The waitress tapped him on the shoulder. As he turned, she doused him with the remaining gasoline. Fuel sluiced down his body. He watched as she poured a swath along the floor all the way to the front door.

She was going to light it like a fuse, he realized. The pepper spray had burned his eyes, but he knew nothing could ever prepare him for the pure agony to come.

“I need help, Rayne,” he said. “You know I do. I’m not right, and I need help. You can’t burn me up like this. You can’t just kill me.”

She stared at him, clearly unmoved by his plea for mercy.

“Didn’t I tell you to never say my name again, freak?”

Across from Jack, the remnants of the department store mannequin still bubbled, bits of melted plastic dropping to the dining room floor with sickening splats as the flames weakened.

Then, his Goddess toppled.

“There was something I wanted to tell you last night, after you gave me this,” she said, holding the Zippo lighter out in front of her. “But you never gave me a chance, did you, Jack? You think I’m just some piece of trash no one would ever miss—a random victim, right, Jack? You dope me, tie me up and bring me here to do . . . well, who the hell knows what the fuck you were planning to do . . . and you thought that would be that? You fucked with the wrong bitch.” The waitress shook, voice crackling with rage.

It was at that moment Jack realized he was going to die. He never anticipated this ending to his story. All he’d wanted was to make things right with Dianne. Now she was gone, horribly murdered and mutilated in front of him, and this bitch was going to do him next.

“Anyway, Jack,” she spat at him, “I have my chance to say now what I wanted to say then: Thanks for the light, motherfucker.”

Rayne thumbed the Zippo’s wheel.

The flint sparked and a blue-tipped flame appeared.

Releasing a sigh filled with both finality and triumph, she dropped the lighter into the puddle of gasoline beside the empty can. An eruption of flame lit the night, as a surging inferno raced through the front door along the trail she’d left, to find the man inside.

The waitress turned and walked away into the cool night, Jack’s dying screams trembling in her wake.