For Hugh’s part, the shock at recognizing this kidnap victim had momentarily paralyzed his ability to think. The synapses in his brain that connected and registered a semblance of continuity between one event and another simply weren’t firing properly. Because there was no logical continuity. This couldn’t be happening. Impossible.
“Hugh?” Charlie said. “How? What?”
The sound of her voice started some of the synapses firing and connecting again. Hugh said, “Charlie?”
Hugh was still holding Charlie in his arms, and he quickly released her and sat back on his heels. Charlie remained sitting in the dirt.
“Thank you, Hugh, for saving me.”
Hugh had finally found enough composure to ask, “What are you doing here? Here, like this?”
“It’s a long story. But same question.”
“I’m parking for the night. I’ve got a load out of Las Vegas. I’m supposed to be here. But let’s have your story first.”
“Can we get out of this dirt, please?”
Hugh helped Charlie stand up, and untied her hands.
“Let’s go to my truck. I can call the cops for you.”
Hugh saw panic in Charlie’s eyes, and she stiffened at his words.
“No. No. Please don’t. Let me explain first!”
They walked back to the truck. Hugh opened the passenger door for her, and motioned for her to climb in.
When Hugh climbed in on the driver’s side he saw Charlie looking around. He noticed she held her gaze for a moment on the sleeper berth.
“You OK?” Hugh asked.
“Yeah, yeah. I’ve never been inside one of these things,” she replied.
Hugh started the engine. “I’ve got to get off the shoulder. Buckle up, and we’ll go to the truck stop.”
Parked, and signed off for the day, Hugh suggested they go into the travel plaza to use restrooms and clean up. “We’ll talk about this when we get back.”
“OK. But please promise me you won’t call the police.”
“I promise.”
Hugh and Charlie walked over together. After doing his business, Hugh waited for her outside. Massive surges of déjà vu flooded over him. Only, it was in an alternate universe Bizarro World kind of way.
Back at the truck, the first thing Hugh did was save the last thirty minutes of so of the dash cam footage to a folder on the dash cam, with a backup to his cell phone.
“What are you doing that for?” Charlie asked.
“I’ll ask the questions,” Hugh said. “The first one is, where’s your car? How are you going to get back to Boise?”
“That’s the problem,” Charlie explained. “They’ve got my car, and all my stuff. I have nothing. No phone. No nothing. Just a few dollars in my pocket.”
“OK. Let’s start with that. Who are they?”
“Mafia. The mob.”
“Yeah, right.” Hugh didn’t believe her. “Try again.”
Charlie told Hugh she had gone down to Las Vegas to research an investigative story she had been working on for the newspaper. A consortium of Las Vegas casino owners – in other words, the mob – was attempting to make a move into Idaho, specifically Coeur d’Alene.
They had believed the jewel city of Idaho was ripe for a major casino investment, like Las Vegas and Atlantic City had been. Nobody would talk of it openly, but Charlie suspected organized crime ran underneath and throughout the whole process. She believed Idaho politicians were bought off not to acknowledge the underworld connections of those who were proposing the project.
So she had come to Las Vegas to prove the mob connection, and to expose the crooked Idaho politicians.
“That still doesn’t explain how you ended up here,” Hugh said.
“I’m getting to that.”
She told Hugh it hadn’t taken long for mob enforcers to discover what she had been doing in Las Vegas. She had collected damaging information on them she knew they wouldn’t want her to publish. So she had decided to get out of town. She had gotten as far as this truck stop before they had closed in on her, and had forced her to the side of the road.
“I think they are still out there watching me. Watching us in this truck. The minute you let me go, they’ll be on me again.”
“Then why don’t we call the cops?”
“No way. The mob owns the cops here. I’d be a dead person the next minute after they put me into a cruiser.”
Hugh’s survival instinct and natural skepticism told him Charlie was reciting her story from rote memory. Too pat. He’d go along with her story, and let her play it out to see where she planned to go with it.
“All right, so what do you propose we do about you? You’re a danger to me and my truck. Been there. Done that. Don’t want to do it again.”
Charlie told Hugh she though it would be OK for her to stay with him for awhile. Only three of them were trying to kidnap her. One guy took off with her car. He’d probably ditch it somewhere and hook back up with the other guys.
“One of those guys won’t be in any shape to do much of anything,” Hugh said.
“So there will be two of them. Enough to grab me again, but I can see they’d have a hard time getting past you. Besides, they’ve got all my stuff. My notes, my recordings of interviews. I think after a few days of me riding with you if they see I’m not going to the cops they’ll be done with me.”
There it is. All this to get the ride-along announced in her newspaper article. Hugh thought parts of Charlie’s made-up story sounded plausible. He’d give her credit for that. But nothing she said could overcome the sheer impossibility of the coincidence.
Hugh clapped his hands,
