Under Suspicion

She would add a stick of butter. Or a heap of pork fat. Or something slippery and slimy and ... I looked at the small barred window on the back wall.

Then I looked at the plastic bottle filled with bubblegum pink hand soap bolted above the sink.

That’s what Paula Deen would do.

I squirmed out of my sweatshirt and yanked my yoga pants over my sneakers—there was no way I was letting my skin touch public bathroom floor. I glanced up at the window again. I sighed, then slipped my T-shirt over my head, too, and stood in the glaring light of that stupid naked lightbulb, mostly naked.

I gently tugged on the ancient faucet and a meager trickle of water began to fill the chipped basin. I loaded my dampened palm with soap, and began sudsing myself up. I chanced a glance at myself in the wobbly mirror— white soap foaming up around my neck, my arms glistening with water and tiny bubbles.

If this doesn’t work, I thought, then I hope I die.

Once my body and underclothes were sufficiently sudsed—or greased, in Paula speak—I stood up on the toilet seat and angled an arm toward the window, giving the ancient jam a shove. To my immense relief, it opened easily and the air felt good as it washed over my damp skin.

“Here goes nothing,” I said to the paper towels.

Chapter Twenty-Six

I clamped a hand around each of the bars and hauled myself up to the window a la Mary Lou Retton. Okay, Mary Lou after a few too many donuts and a couple of extra years. I stuck my head out the window first and wriggled, legs kicking, sneakers thunking against the bathroom wall, and my shoulders slipped out easily. I was out, up to my hips, when one of the bars firmly stopped my plumpish rump. The cold metal bore down hard on my lower back. I couldn’t risk the leeway I’d already made by going back in for more soap, so I used the pads of my fingers to dig into the crumbling stucco outside. When I looked down, I realized that my little cell must have been nearly underground. A cement parking lot was only about a foot below me, and the realization sent a hopeful thrill through me. I gave myself a mighty wriggle and moved about a quarter inch forward, successfully scraping my chin on the wall, pushing my half-soaped panties halfway down my butt, and eking the breath out of my lungs. I rested my forehead against the concrete in an effort to regroup and cry miserably, when I was met with a pair of slowly walking, sneakered feet. They came to a rest a half inch from my nose.

“God, I love this country!”

I worked to turn my pancaked self over and stared up at Will. His face was upside down, but his delighted smile unmistakable.

“What are you doing back here? Weren’t you ever going to come find me?” I managed to shout in breathy gasps.

“I did find you. Here. What are you doing here?” Will asked without breaking his stupid grin.

“Help me!” I howled. “Get me out of here!”

Will crouched down and hugged me to him; then gave my body a quick succession of gentle tugs and wriggles until I felt my butt make it under the bar. Then I felt my legs slide free.

“Oh, oh, thank God!” I said, running around the parking lot, loving the fresh air, feeling the length of my arms and legs. “It was getting so claustrophobic in there!”

“Is that why you decided to take off your clothes?”

I suddenly realized that I was running around a public parking lot that was half bathed in yellow streetlight in my underclothes.

My sudsy, wet underclothes.

I doubled over; my arms clamped in front of my boobs. “Don’t look!”

“I just saved your life.”

“That doesn’t give you the right to see me naked.”

Will’s grin was sly. “Again?”

I punched Will, hard, in the shoulder. “Where the hell were you? I was being kidnapped! I was going to be singed by the sun and killed!”

Will reached out for me and I dodged him. “I’m sorry, love. I was right behind you, but the door was bloody locked. I had to find a way in.”

My teeth started to chatter, the rattle going through my skull. My fingertips started to blue as an inch of breeze covered my body in gooseflesh. Will began to shrug out of his coat and I took a step toward him, shivering, my soapy arms outstretched. Will surprised me and came at me like a linebacker—deadweight that clotheslined me. We both went down hard—me on my back, the melon-like thud of my skull on the concrete as tiny pebbles needled through the bare skin on my shoulder blades. I tried to cry out, but my breath was gone. The pain behind my eyes went from a dull black to a brilliantly bright starburst.

My heart thundered against Will’s forehead and I was finally able to gasp, to suck in, hungrily, huge lungfuls of the icy-cold air as he slid off me. I struggled to sit up and gaped as Will’s head flopped, thumping listlessly on the ground.

Roland was hunched over, his ham-hock hands gripping Will’s red-and-yellow Arsenal socks. A bubble of blood oozed from Will’s hairline, leaving a two-inch-thick red smear from my collarbone to hip as Roland dragged Will’s limp body down my stiffened one.

“What did you do to him?”

Roland eyed me, his lips turned up into a gruesome snarl reminiscent of a smile. He straightened, brushing his palms on his ugly dress pants and kicked at a tire iron that clanged on the ground next to Will’s temple. Ice water sped through my veins and promptly froze solid when I caught sight of the smear of blood on the edge of the iron—Will’s blood.

I tried desperately to moisten my lips. “What ... Is he ...” I couldn’t form the word—wouldn’t form the word.

“Dead?” Roland spat it out with a kind of horrendous glee. “No.” He dropped Will’s ankles and I kicked away, my damp sneakers losing traction in the parking lot.

“Don’t worry about him,” Roland said, giving Will’s slack body a swift kick. “He went down hard, but it’s really not as bad as it looks.” He looked wistfully at Will’s still back. “Probably. Now come on, dear.” Roland crouched down, offering me a pale hand and an even paler smile.

I pitched back, staring horrified at him. “Get away from me.”

Roland cocked his head in a way that was likely meant to be comforting but chilled me—damp underwear not withstanding—to the soles of my feet. “You know you can’t be here, Sophie.”

“Shut up.” I tried to keep my voice steady as my eyes darted from left to right, taking in the empty parking lot, weighing my chances of escape.

“No,” Roland said, his eyes suddenly slate gray and sharp as naked swords, “no.” He straightened, holding a single pointed finger a half inch from my nose before he dove for me, his stubby fingertips digging into the flesh at the back of my arm. For a squat fire hydrant of a man, he was surprisingly strong and lithe. He had me up on my feet; my sneakers folding over each other as he dragged me toward the lone car in the parking lot.

Words—excuses, explanations, scenarios—rushed through my head as I tried to come up with some way to stall, to keep Roland from getting me into his car. I had watched enough 48 Hours to know that once I was in his car, I was a dead woman.

“We can’t just leave Will there,” I said finally, working to keep the hysteria out of my voice. “Look.” I jerked my head and felt my pulse start to throb when I could see Will’s shallow breath making his chest rise.

Oh, thank God.

Roland’s gaze followed mine, and he must have been as stunned to see Will’s body swell with breath as I was, because his fingers loosened their grip for a split second. I took off at a dead sprint; my lungs swelling with the scorching fire of desperation and fear. The streets were bare and empty; I dove toward Roland’s car and yanked open the driver’s-side door, pitching myself into the front seat. My feet slammed hard against the gas and the brake, my wet hands yanking on the clutch, the parking brake, anything that would make the damn thing go.