Ears ringing, Dez turned her Glock—still in her purse—to point back through the gap between the front seats at the guy behind her.
He’d just begun to lift his gun.
She fired, trying to hit his arm. She thought she missed. She moved her aim to his chest and started to pull the trigger.
Whether he’d been hit or not, he dropped his weapon.
Dez eased off the trigger, twisting around in the seat so she knelt in it, facing the three men in the back, her gun still pointing at them from between the seats.
She swept her eyes over the other two. The guy behind Kaem slumped forward, clutching his broken arm between his chest and thighs. The guy behind her was leaning, wide-eyed back against his door, as if stricken with fear.
Dez spoke to the guy in the middle-back. “You gonna give me any trouble?”
Looking panicked, he shook his head.
She said, “Kaem? You okay?”
There was no response, so she glanced at him.
Her heart stopped. Kaem was slumped, unmoving, against the door.
She pulled her purse off the gun and dug into it with her left hand. Pulling out her phone, she yelled, “Call 911! Now! Emergency!”
Dez told the car to stop, then focused on the guy in the middle-back. She said, “Slowly bend forward and pick up one of their weapons by its barrel.”
Trembling, he did so, holding it out to her.
She set her phone down on the console and took the gun. She reached behind her and dropped it gently into her footwell. “Now the other one.”
She’d just taken the second gun and was turning to put it in her foot well when she realized faint sounds were coming from her phone. Shooting the gun in here has made me a little deaf, she realized.
The phone was saying, “Hello, hello, 911, what’s your emergency?!”
Wondering how long it’d been since they answered, Dez said, “We’ve been kidnapped. I shot…” she glanced at the guy behind her and didn’t see him clutching at a wound, “I shot one of the kidnappers. He needs medical attention as does my… friend. But I don’t know where we are.” She suddenly noticed the car hadn’t slowed.
The guy in the middle-back seat said, “We’re south of town on 64, going east.”
Dez said, “911, did you get that?”
“Did you say you shot some people?!” the woman said, sounding shocked.
“One person. There are two of them. They were beating my friend. Do you know where we are? Are you sending help?”
“Um, just a moment!”
“What the hell?!” Dez shouted. She looked at the guy in the middle-back. “I know you said you aren’t going to give me any trouble. I’m just warning you; if you do, then,” she waggled her gun at him and turned to Kaem. “Kaem!” He still didn’t move. She reached over and felt his head. It was swelling but didn’t feel caved in. “Car!” she barked. “Stop! This is an emergency! People are injured!”
The car kept going.
The guy in the middle-back said, “The car’s been programmed so it only follows Joe’s instructions.”
“Hello?” a man’s voice said from her phone. “This is 911. What’s your emergency?”
“We’ve been kidnapped! We’re trapped in a car on highway 64 south of Charlottesville, going east. The kidnappers were beating my friend and didn’t know I was armed. I shot one of them. Both he and my friend are in need of medical help. Please send ambulances!”
“Our GPS tracker says you’re still moving. Pull off the road.”
“The car’s not following my commands! Wait a minute.” She used her gun to poke the guy clutching his arm and snarled, “Hey, asshole, tell the car to stop, now!”
The guy just moaned and rocked back and forth over his arm.
Dez said, “911, the car’s not responding to my instructions and I can’t get the kidnapper to tell it to stop. Is there any way for you to stop it? Do you have people on the way?”
The 911 operator said, “Where’s it going?”
“I don’t know! The guy told it to go home but I don’t know where home is. Dammit! Are – you – sending – people – to – help – us?!”
“Yeah, we’ve dispatched. But we can’t help you in a moving vehicle.”
“You could put a car in front and one beside us, then slow to a stop.”
“I’m not putting my people at risk, driving up to surround a vehicle with unknown numbers of armed persons inside.”
“I’ve disarmed them. I’m the only one that’s armed anymore.”
“So you say.”
Dez focused on the guy in the middle. “Do you know where we’re going?”
“Not for sure. Probably home base.”
Something about the way he said it gave Dez a chill. “Are there going to be more of his… gang there?”
The guy shrugged, but his eyes said yes.
In an alarmed tone, 911 said, “Are you thinking your captors are a gang or some kind of organized crime?!”
“Yeah,” Dez said. She transferred her gun to her left hand and pointed it at the guy behind her through the gap beneath the headrest of her seat. She reached behind her and found one of their guns in the footwell.
She brought the gun up into her field of view and glanced at it.
911 came back on. “Ma’am, you do not want to arrive at their place. If the vehicle slows at a corner, you may want to bail out your door.”
Dez was thinking, It’s a damned 1911 version 45 caliber! The thumb safety was already off. She swung it around to point it forward. To 911, she said, “What about my friend?”
“Can he jump out with you?”
“No, he’s unconscious. Hold on, I’m gonna try to stop this car.” She started firing into the engine compartment,
