clutched her arm and tugged her toward the car. 'Now come with me. We're going to get into the back seat of the car. Keep your head down.'
He opened the door and put his hand on her head to keep it from bumping as she slid onto the seat. He moved in after her, and the lock buttons clicked down. The driver put away his gun, put the car into gear, and drove.
The car went up Hill to Temple, turned left away from the court building, past the cathedral and the concert halls, and swung onto the Hollywood Freeway moving north. Obviously, they were taking her, not back to the courthouse, but to their precinct station. She decided to introduce doubt. 'You've got the wrong person,' she said. 'I haven't done anything wrong.'
'I didn't ask you,' said the cop beside her. 'There will be plenty of time to talk later.' He had small, close-set eyes and the sort of thick, dark hair that went down too far on his forehead so it looked like a cap.
'I was just getting on the subway and you came along and arrested me, so you must think I did something.' She had begun the urgent business of keeping them from holding her long enough to connect her with Shelby's escape.
'I didn't say that.'
'But whoever you're looking for is back there somewhere laughing at us. She's getting away.' She didn't have much hope of persuading them it was a case of mistaken identity, but she had to keep probing to see if she could derail the inexorable process of getting her into a jail cell, where she'd be when the escape was discovered.
The cop beside her sighed wearily. 'You had a little scuffle on the courthouse steps, didn't you You hurt some people. Does that ring a bell'
She knew cops lost their sympathy when somebody lied to them, so she'd have to try something that didn't contradict what they'd seen. 'I was in front of the building when these three men rushed out of the building and attacked me. There are at least a hundred witnesses who saw what happened.'
'These men just attacked you for no reason.'
'If they had a reason they didn't tell me what it was.'
The cop shrugged. 'Could it be because you had just helped James Shelby to escape'
'Escape All I was there for was to get excused from jury duty.'
'Consider yourself excused,' the driver said.
'Those three men were trying to hurt me.'
The cop beside her said, 'I'm not arguing with you. I believe that's what happened.'
'So why are you arresting me'
The cop beside her said, 'When you see three men who mean you harm, how do you know that there aren't more'
The driver laughed. 'There could be a couple more waiting in a car nearby.'
Jane turned to face the man on the seat beside her. 'What are you' Her hands were cuffed behind her, but she used them to grasp the door handle.
'We're the guys who caught you pulling a jailbreak.'
She kept her eyes focused on his, but she was watching the speed of the fixed objects passing the window behind him-trees, buildings. The freeway was crowded, but the car was still moving about forty miles an hour. Even if she managed to survive a fall to the pavement at that speed, she would be hit by at least the car behind, and probably the next two after it. She had to wait and hope there was a bottleneck somewhere ahead that would slow the traffic to the stop-and-go crawl that was typical of Los Angeles freeways.
She said, 'Since you're not cops, this is kidnapping, false imprisonment, and about eight other things. If you drop me off at any police station and say you saw me get James Shelby out, they'll arrest me and you'll be heroes.'
'Sorry. We've got orders, and that isn't what they are.'
'Whoever told you this was a good idea isn't doing you any favors. Will he be with you while you're serving a life sentence in a federal prison'
'Nobody's going to prison,' said the driver. 'Just sit back and relax for a little while, and everything will be fine.'
'There's nothing fine about this,' she said.
She watched for her chance impatiently, but the car never slowed below forty. It was still only a few minutes after noon, so the traffic was moving smoothly. She watched for police or highway patrol or sheriff's cars, but the only one she saw was an LAPD car about a quarter mile ahead, taking an exit onto a surface street.
They drove outside the city and into the dry, brown hills to the northwest. Beyond them there were the same rugged gray mountains that loomed like a wall on the east all the way up the coast from the Mexican border to Oregon. The traffic sped up instead of jamming.
Jane waited and watched. If she had suspected that the men weren't police officers, she would have made her stand before she got into the car. The badges, the guns, and the make and model of the car had fooled her. If she hadn't been in the middle of the criminal court complex, expecting the police to be chasing her, the thought of impostors might have entered her mind, but it hadn't. She had allowed herself to be kidnapped in daylight on a city street without ever suspecting it was happening. She kept remembering what the experts said about kidnapping. Never get in the car. Once you're in the car, you're dead. If you're going to fight, you have to do it before then.
The car wasn't going to be stalled in traffic on the freeway, so she began to work out an alternative plan. Sometime they would have to pull off the freeway onto an exit ramp, and an exit ramp usually came to a stop at an intersection. If there was no traffic signal right away, there would be one soon afterward. As soon as the traffic stopped, she would unlatch the door with her handcuffed hands, lean out, and roll when she hit the pavement.
If she was lucky, the two men would panic and drive off. If, instead, the two tried to drag her back into the car, she would kick and scream that she was being abducted. She might be able to delay them long enough to attract help, or at least get someone standing nearby or in a passing car to call the police.
A few minutes later, at five after one, the car began to coast, then moved to the exit lane, and she saw the sign for Route 23 North toward Moorpark. She prepared herself. Their course seemed to be taking them from crowded places to empty ones, so this might be her only chance.
She felt the car losing momentum, heard the tires bump over the crack that separated the freeway from the ramp, felt the brakes slowing the car. As the car rolled to a near-stop, she pushed the door handle down, and the door swung open. As the car started to move forward again, she pushed off with both feet and propelled herself out. She hit the pavement hard, rolled with the momentum, went backward over her shoulder, and landed on her knees at the top of the ramp.
'Help! Help me!' she shouted. 'They're kidnapping me!' A car with a frightened woman at the wheel nearly hit her as the woman swung past. 'Call the police!' Jane yelled at her. 'Help!'
The two men didn't drive on. They both flung open their doors and ran toward her. The man who had handcuffed her took out his gun. As Jane dived toward the bed of ice plants beside the exit ramp she heard the shot and felt the brutal impact of the bullet, and then the explosion of pain.
JANE'S RIGHT LEG FELT AS though it were crushed and on fire, throbbing with each heartbeat. She must have lost consciousness for a moment, because she didn't remember being dragged back into the car. She was strapped tight by the seat belt with her hands still cuffed behind her. The pain was like fire that seemed to grow hotter and hotter. The leg was weak, and if the bumping of the car moved it, the pain shot inward from her thigh to her spine. Jane could manage only shallow, quivery breaths that rasped in and out. She tried to keep the breaths quiet, to hide her weakness from her enemies, but she couldn't control them. She knew she had been shot only a few minutes ago, but she couldn't imagine living much longer with this pain. She fought the impulse to close her eyes again. She had to remain aware of what was around her.
Since she had come to, the man beside her in the back seat had been talking to her in a hiss of hatred, his face close to her right ear. What was he saying 'You bitch. You stupid bitch. You did this to yourself. We would have found out what we wanted and then let you go-dumped you someplace so it would take you time to get to a phone. But you couldn't live with that. Now you're going to be crippled, or lose your leg.'
To give herself strength, Jane gathered her pain and anger, like two hands scraping crumbs together and compressing them. 'I doubt it.'
'Oh You're a doctor, too'
'No, but I can see I'm bleeding out.'
