Chapter Ten

Juliette

France

Saturday 2:51 p.m.

J uliette was growing agitated. She was trying to keep herself rational and calm, so she could make the best possible decisions. She tried to listen to her own good counsel from around the tinnitus that obscured her inner dialogue.

She'd have another chance to escape, eventually.

They'd have to slow down again, sooner or later.

If Juliette pulled her eyes to look as far left as they could shift, she could see that blue jeans guy had pushed his gun under his thigh with the muzzle pointing forward toward the driver. Juliette wondered if the car bounced would the trigger rub against the man's leg and shoot the driver? She willed it. She pulled up the thought and tried with the sheer power of wishful thinking for the gun to go off.

When the bang actually sounded, she froze with surprise.

The driver was yelling and pulling at the wheel. Obviously, he wasn't hurt enough by the gun shot to kill him. Her first thought was disappointment. Her second thought was that his cuss words were vile. And how would she, a student in a Lebanese high school, learn the Russian language well enough that she'd know the meaning of such words?

From out of the barrage of cuss words, Juliette picked out the words, "flat tire."

Not even a gun shot.

Her momentary thrill of power was dashed. Had she been in any other circumstance she would have laughed at herself and the absurdity of that moment.

Before she landed too solidly on that thought, she felt the car stopping. The driver had straightened them out and moved them to the side of the road. He jumped out of the car, Juliette assumed to check out the damage. He spoke to blue jeans through the window. It seemed that as they'd passed through the construction site, they'd driven over some debris and had a bolt lodged in the tire.

"Is she still out?" the driver asked.

Blue jeans reached over, pinched up the flesh on her thigh, and twisted it viciously.

Juliette's face scrunched tight in agony, but that pain was hidden by her hair. She was able to keep the rest of her body slack.

"Completely out," blue jeans responded. "Let's get to it."

Both doors popped open. Both doors slammed closed.

Juliette waited for the trunk and voices of the men conferring before she dragged her purse over to her. She fished out her phone, her passport, and her wallet. Nothing else in there was important – a brush, her lip gloss, a plastic container of tissues…

She slid the phone in one back pocket and the wallet and passport in the other as the car was jacked up, tipping her toward the ditch. The land outside of her window dipped down and then rose quickly into a bank. Juliette thought it would be too steep and too obvious for her to try to scramble up that embankment. The car tipped more, and now she thought that if she opened the door to get out as she'd planned, it would stick in the dirt. She'd only have one way to run and that was toward her kidnappers.

"Oh shit, look. Here we have a good Samaritan coming up to give us a hand."

"He's shorter than I am, he won't be able to see in the windows with the car angled up."

But he will be a distraction, Juliette thought. And she was going to go for it as soon as she heard the man's voice.

She waited. Waited.

"Hello there!"

And that was her cue. With hands on either side of the opened window that had tortured her for most of the drive, Juliette pushed her torso out. She got her hips up on the edge then reached her hands toward the ground as if she were diving into a pool of water. There was nothing solid there. Just a ditch piled with leaves. Juliette reached back to the car and pushed to get the weight of her body to take her the rest of the way through the window. There was a whoosh, and she bit her tongue as she landed, but she was out of the car.

She looked around and there was nowhere to go to escape except maybe the good Samaritan's car up ahead. Could she hide inside? That seemed dangerous. A trap that would be hard to escape. She could steal it. She hadn't driven a car in so long. Her license had been taken from her because of the vertigo. That's what her dad told her. The truth was, Juliette didn't remember a time when she'd driven a car. Maybe she knew how. Maybe she didn't. When she'd watched her father drive, it didn't seem complicated. Even if she was able to get into the man's car and drive it away, chances were that she'd crash it just down the street, and the Russians would catch up with her and grab her again.

She wrestled herself deeper in the leaf-filled ditch and started snaking away from the Russian's car.

"We've got this, thanks for your help." One of the Russians was saying in very poor French.

Juliette crawled faster. She needed to get to the other car first.

"You've got a spare tire there, do you?" the good Samaritan asked. "No, look at that. It's dry rotted. Do you have a service who can bring one to you?" The Russians must not have understood him because he simplified. "Look. No good. Danger."

"We're travelling. This is a friend's car. Do you have another? I'd be happy to buy it from you. I can give extra cash for the problems this brings." That was blue jeans voice, and he sounded so polite and friendly.

Juliette stopped crawling when the man said, "Wow, that's an incredibly generous amount. Let me go look at my tire. If it's in good shape, you've got yourself a deal. If it's not, I'll take this money into town and get you a new one."

Now Juliette didn't know what to do. If she stood up and showed herself, the Russians might very well shoot the guy and take his car, and she'd be back under their control.

She decided to lay still. Perfectly still. She wouldn't even breathe. She'd close her eyes and pretend she didn't exist.

After a moment the man called out, "Good luck. This should work."

There was a thunk as he pulled the tire onto the ground and started rolling it toward the men. She waited until the tire stopped moving so the attention would be down on their task, then she crawled again slowly the way she'd seen in the movies with her weight on her elbows. Her knees were in the muck. But she thought that the color of her clothes would help her stay camouflaged as she moved under the leaves.

Once she came to the car, she tried the back door.

Locked.

She decided that she was down to two options. With minimum distance between her and her captors, she wasn't sure which she should take. She could try to climb undetected into the trunk and hope that the man would shut her in – then she'd have to escape from a locked trunk.

How would the Russians react? They'd do a quick search, probably find her tracks and chase down the car even if it got a good start. The man wouldn't know he was being chased, that the men had guns.

That would be bad.

The other choice again was to steal the car.

They'd shoot at her.

But if she drove away fast enough, they might miss.

She was alongside of the car now – the driver had pulled far off on the shoulder of the road. The road curved just up ahead. That was helpful. She lifted up from her squat, her high heels sinking into the moist ground. She could see the keys dangling in the ignition. She could see that the front doors were unlocked.

Without giving it another thought, Juliette's body took over. She pulled the passenger side door open and threw herself in.

She slammed the locks into place, scrambled under the wheel, and started the engine.

That's when the shouting of the three men started up behind her.

The rearview mirror was blocked by the trunk that was still open. But Juliette knew that all three men were dashing toward her.

Jamming the car into drive, her foot pressed heavily on the gas pedal until she was nearly standing on it. Juliette was terrified as the wheels spun in place not moving her even an inch forward. Mud spewed out at the men as she watched them race forward where she could see them now in the side mirror.

She lifted her foot a bit to slow the engine, and the tires gripped. She shot off down the road and around the corner.

No bullets flew in her direction.

The man who owned this car would frantically be calling the police. If they stopped her would that keep her safe or put her in prison?

The road in front of her was swimming in her vision.

Stress always made the vertigo so much worse.

She just needed to get to a town where she could hide. She needed to figure out a plan.

What she needed was a miracle.