Chapter 26

Braxton Hicks! Braxton Hicks! Oh God, please. Not real contractions. Braxton Hicks! I am not going into labor in the trunk of a damn car!

They were still driving, moving fast, but on a flat, straight trajectory that she figured had to be the interstate. But which one? I-95 north or south, or I-75 west?

And then came the contractions. No, no, no, she felt the squeeze in her uterus, muscles cinching up. She let go a gasp that only she could hear. She gritted her teeth as the pain increased and tried not to cry. A minute felt like ten; and then the muscles let go.

Diane tried to control her breathing, deep, regular breath, through the mouth, in and out, in and out. The air was terrible. The hood had been over her head for how long now? The smell of her own bad breath, the stink of moisture on the cloth pressed to her face. And she was in a damn trunk!

Breathe, Diane, in and out.

In her head, she tried to replay a scene from the childbirth classes she and Billy had taken at Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies: Billy sitting so uncharacteristically on the floor of the classroom with her, still dressed in his Brioni suit, but sitting there nonetheless, encouraging the rhythmic breathing, reading the second-hand sweep of his watch with her, timing her. He was supposed to be counting out loud to her now. She was supposed to relax in between contractions. He was supposed to be holding her hand, letting her know she was not in this alone, that they were a couple, that this was miracle made for two.

Damn it, Billy, where are you now? Why hadn’t someone come to rescue her? Why was she going through this by herself?

Diane knew her anger was misplaced, but there it was. Why her? What had she done to deserve this? And what if something happens to this baby? The marriage, the pregnancy, and the child she’d almost given up thinking she’d ever have before she met Billy?

Damn! There it came again, the squeeze starting at the top of her uterus and spreading down. She started breathing faster, faster, too fast.

Calm yourself, girl. Come on. Thirty seconds. Damn. Maybe a full minute—then the muscles relaxed.

Not drinking enough water can cause Braxton Hicks contractions; that’s what the doctor had said. She reached again for the water bottle and drank. When she rolled herself as best she could to change position, Diane felt the fetus inside slide with her.

She was momentarily comfortable, or as comfortable as a pregnant woman could be in the trunk of a car, when she felt and heard the slowing, the deceleration, and finally the stop. They made a turn and then sped up again, but not as fast. A while longer and then another turn, and another, this time onto a rougher surface. They jounced along on a road that somehow felt soft, yet each lurch caused her body to move and push into the close space. When they finally came to a full stop, Diane heard the doors, four of them, open and close. Again, there were no voices. Not a word.

She sensed a change in the light despite her veiled eyes, and then the creak of metal hinges. A change in the air meant they’d opened the trunk. She felt coolness on her legs and arms. Someone reached in and scooped her up in his arms as if she were a child, and helped her, really helped her, get up and out, in distinct contrast to the way she’d been tossed in. She felt her bare feet touch something moist and stringy, which she recognized as some kind of grass. Two people again guided her with hands under her armpits, her belly hanging, unguarded.

She could feel a breeze and, despite the hood, she could smell something musty, like soil or plants. After several steps, she heard the slosh of water and then stepped into something wet. She recoiled at the feeling at first, but was prodded by her captors, who splashed their way forward. The ocean? No, there was no salt in the air. A lake?

She was calf-deep now, with soft muck between her toes. A hand grabbed her behind one knee and lifted her leg and planted her right foot onto something solid. She was urged to step up. When she put her weight on the object she could feel the stair or platform give a few inches—something unstable, something floating. With some uncomfortable pushing and twisting she felt herself finally placed into a hard seat.

When she leaned back carefully, she found herself in some kind of chair, and the hands holding her let go. There was clomping and bumping and again the feeling of instability as weight shifted, and whatever she was on rose and fell. All the sensations were causing her head to spin.

Then all of a sudden, she heard the grinding sound of a motor starting. When it finally caught, her ears were assaulted by perhaps the loudest eruption of noise she’d ever heard. In a panic, she reached up with her bound hands and began wrenching the hood from her head, but was immediately stopped by one of her guards, who grabbed her by the wrists and yanked her hands back down into her lap.

The noise continued to grow, burring with a physical force against her eardrums and vibrating through her body until she felt a rolling, wobbling movement. The engine noise increased and the movement continued forward. She could feel the wind increase with the sensation of speed; gathering her wits, she realized she was on an airboat. They were in the Everglades, she thought. Part of her deflated. She’d actually prosecuted two homicide cases in which bodies were dumped in the Everglades, one in which human remains had been found partially digested in the stomach of an alligator. Florida was full of conjecture that dozens of bodies of missing persons had been dumped in the Glades, where the chances of discovery were next to nil.

But as the boat increased its speed and the wind pressed the hood against her face and forced her to dip her chin so she could breathe, she had another thought: that her captors had made a big mistake coming to the Everglades, a place Max Freeman knew better than any investigator she’d ever been associated with.

She hadn’t thought of Max during this entire ordeal. Billy would have called him, brought him on board immediately. Max was his man in the most dangerous cases Billy had gotten involved with, and Max was absolutely relentless when Billy put him onto something. She knew that Max had killed a man who was kidnapping children from the west Broward suburbs and letting them die in the Glades. She knew he’d worked a case for Billy that involved a serial killer in Fort Lauderdale that came to an end with the shooting of that man. She knew that he’d saved his girlfriend, Sherry, by taking on a gang of Glades fish camp looters and an oil company henchman.

You’ve screwed up, she thought of her captors, stepping into Max Freeman’s world. He will track you and find you and if history repeats itself, he will hurt you.