Triple Trouble: A Cassidy Callahan Novel. Kelly Rysten

stifle my free spirit and I wasn’t going to hold him down. We had reached a silent and contented agreement when out of the blue my worst nightmare occurred and I found myself a widow at twenty-four. As a test pilot, Jack’s life was cut short. Trouble fell from the sky and shook my world. It nearly knocked me flat but I was gaining it back a little each day.

      Then one day I was running errands and had to stop by the grocery store. How in the world can someone get into trouble going grocery shopping? I patiently went up and down all the aisles finding the things I needed and went back through all the aisles for the things the first trip reminded me about. I’d smiled when I checked out and hit all the buttons right on the debit machine. I’d packed up my Jeep Wrangler with a few days’ worth of groceries, hopped in, headed for home and gotten carjacked! Leave it to me to be the only one at the grocery store to get carjacked.

      “I said drive, bitch! Hit the gas!” the man yelled and stomped down on my foot. My Jeep shot across two lanes of traffic, barely missing being broadsided by a white step van and a Brady Bunch station wagon. Tires screeched and the step van rocked and weaved as the two drivers slammed on their brakes. I frantically turned the wheel to avoid the median and that put me going west on Main. I felt his foot come off mine, but I kept the pedal down as much as I could. This guy was obviously in a hurry. I took a deep breath. My mental faculties were catching up with the situation. I had a desperate man in my car. He wanted to go somewhere fast. That left a lot of likely possibilities. I didn’t like the sound of most of them. This obviously wasn’t a joy ride and he wasn’t going to be the perfect date. Nope, this guy meant business.

      The speed limits are fast in my city but we exceeded every one of them. I prayed for a cop to catch me.

      “Where are we going?” I croaked.

      “Just keep driving,” he barked back, “I need to figure this out.”

      “Okay,” I said. “I could use some thinking time too.”

      “Don’t you think, just drive. Get me far away from here.”

      Thinking and driving go hand in hand for me so I just kept on driving straight as fast as I could. I ran red lights when I could and stopped when I couldn’t but the gun was always there menacing, pushing me to do stupid things. My first inclination was to drive to the sheriff’s station but that was almost directly behind me. I kept it as an option but I couldn’t count on it.

      Joshua Hills is not a large city, but neither is it a small burg. It’s 150,000 plus population was sending tendrils of housing tracts out across the desert floor. It didn’t take long for me to hit the outskirts of town. Old houses gave way to new houses and new houses would soon give way to houses under construction.

      I didn’t want to continue in this direction. I could see the agricultural belt on the west side of town and beyond that was foothills and desert. I was nervous about getting off in the boondocks with this guy. I didn’t know what he intended to do but I might need people handy. I steeled a glance. The gun was still there.

      “You married?” he intruded on my thoughts.

      “N-n-no,” I replied, “widowed.”

      “You’re kind of young to be widowed.”

      “Not if my husband was a test pilot.”

      “Got kids?”

      “Not the maternal type.” And there wasn’t time, I thought.

      “Where d’ you live?”

      “Directly behind us. Past where we came from,” I said. And past the sheriff’s station too.

      “I need a hideout for a few days so you’re gonna have company. You try anything and you’ll be sorry. You cooperate and it’ll buy you time.”

      “You want to go to m-my house?”

      “That’s what I said.”

      Traffic was thinning and we had reached the construction that marks the city’s slow, outward expansion. I hung a U-turn and headed back the way we came, thinking ahead, analyzing the route for possible ways to escape. As we neared the middle of town he became antsy again, not wanting to get too close to something. He fidgeted and looked around nervously. The barrel of the gun swung towards my face but he was just motioning with his hand. “Turn off this street and go down to the next light,” he said, real antsy, real paranoid.

      I turned left at the next light, took Hampton down to Thompson and turned right. I was disappointed because that took us off the route to the sheriff’s station. I tried turning right on Division to approach the station from behind, but I got a whack on the side of my head with the butt of his gun. “Keep going straight and don’t try anything,” he growled. I wondered if he knew the city, knew what I’d tried to do. I had to assume he did. I continued down Thompson nervously.

      “How are we supposed to get to my house if you won’t let me drive?”

      “You just keep driving. I’ll let you know when to do what.”

      As we neared the street where he’d earlier jumped into my Jeep, the carjacker took a long look up the street. Red and blue lights flashed at the corner of Santiago and Main.

      “Fuck and damn!” he said, “Keep going.”

      My brain was working overtime trying to come up with some way to get out of this before we reached my house. The next traffic signal was red and there were very few cars around. My training told me a moving target is always harder to hit than a still one. I was thinking of making a run for it. I reached for the door handle, yanked it hard and was halfway out of the Jeep when the butt of the gun came crashing down on my head. Pain exploded behind my right temple and I felt myself being hauled back into the Jeep. The carjacker slid over to the driver’s seat and took off with a squeal of tires. Two more blows from the gun butt followed, presumably to teach me a lesson. I felt the Jeep bump along erratically. Sharp turns, quick bursts of gas, jerky shifting. It had been a while since he’d driven a standard.

      After my failed escape, I found myself on the floorboards of the Jeep with my head against the passenger seat. Aside from the bruise on my head, I felt I was in a much better position now that I didn’t have to drive and plan at the same time.

      “Where the hell is your place?” he demanded, “I gotta get you tied up so’s you can’t try anything else.”

      I peeked over the edge of the window.

      “Stay on Thompson till you get to Desert. Turn left. It’s a bunch of cul de sacs. I’m on the third one.”

      I righted myself in the passenger seat and studied the neighborhood as we drove in. It was midday. Quiet. I lived in a small house in a well-kept older neighborhood. One window faced the street.

      I pointed at my small desert sand stucco house with blue trim and he pulled into the driveway signaling that I should open the garage. I pushed the button and the door went up to reveal a wall of boxes. Somehow we had moved in and were comfortably settled with only half our possessions unpacked. I’ve heard this isn’t unusual. Mr. Carjacker wasn’t happy about the garage situation. He closed the garage, then backed the Jeep so it was visible from the living room window.

      “Now, I want you to go in the house, nice and easy. I don’t want to have to shoot you in the yard. That would cause a scene and I need things to stay nice and quiet.”

      “No,” I said, “I am not letting you in that house.”

      A grim expression crossed his face. His eyes narrowed. “Okay, well, then I guess I’ll have to choose another house. How about that house on the end?

      Looks like there’s more hostages down there. ‘Course, I only need one. And I’d have to take you with me. Can’t leave you alone to go calling the cops.”

      I looked down the street. Mrs. Gonzales was outside with two of her kids cleaning up the yard. I’d let him kill me before I’d sick him on another person. Okay, so I’d go in the house. I could hear barking coming from the living room.