Thorn by Fred Saberhagen (books to read romance .txt) 📗

      Mary had turned her head slightly again. Ellison Seabright understood, all right. All too well, as Mary saw. Oh, Ellison’s face was controlled, but Ellison’s face knew. He was frightened, perhaps, but neither surprised nor terrorized. When one of the masked gunmen looked at him, he nodded, twice, and that was the only objective sign of his complicity in the plot that Mary had been able to name to the police later. Other people probably nodded, too. But as she watched him there grew in Mary the incommunicable certainty of his guilt. He had known all along that his brother was going to be kidnapped tonight, and Ellison was very glad beneath his fright.

      Mary and Delaunay went helplessly the rest of the way down the stairs, passing among the motionless, helpless servants to the great front door. Now in an alcove at the far side of the great hall one man of the household staff was observed in the act of trying to pick up a phone.

      “Put it down, you, put it down! Or we kill her right here, and take one of you in her place.”

      The butler put it down.

      Then Mary, Delaunay, and the two kidnappers had passed through the front door and were outside. The great dogs were still savaging the air with their noise, fenced away (by sheer accident, it was later testified) where they could not get at the marauders. The night was a warm one for so early in the spring. On the gravel drive there waited in darkness a late model pickup truck with an elongated cab containing a rear seat. The vehicle was tall as a Blazer, with high road clearance, standing on grotesquely rugged all-terrain tires. Mary was prodded up into the back seat, then pushed down into a crouching position on the floor between the front seat and the back. Her whole body was forced into the narrow space where people riding in the rear seat would ordinarily have some trouble fitting in their legs and feet. The cab was broad, the front seat evidently had plenty of room for three, big Del included. A burlap cloth, under the circumstances an effective blind, was thrown over Mary. Doors slammed. Then one of the abductors, leaning back from the front seat in what must have been a strained position, dug a gunbarrel joylessly into her elevated rump.

      “No jokes, Seabright. You understand that? I’ll blow her ass right off.”

      “I understand.”

      The truck’s engine roared. Gravel flew up from the drive to bang the fenders. In moments they were on paved road, having passed through a front gate that was obviously being held open somehow. Almost from the very start of the ride, Mary lost track of where they were. Different types of pavement roared under the rough, speeding tires, but she could not think coherently to tell what the changes signified. Now they must be on some main highway, for speed was constant. The heavy-duty shock absorbers in this off-road vehicle made even the highway ride a relatively rough one, kept death’s obscene metal organ jiggling against her body. From time to time there was a little talk of some kind among the three men; Mary could hear murmuring but in the roar of rough tires and racing engine she could not understand a word.

      With heartfelt fervor she recited prayers, and fragments of prayers, that yesterday she would not have been able to remember. The ride remained continuously fast; there was little traffic to contend with in these lost hours of the morning, and as far as Mary could tell there were no pursuers either.

      In Mary’s original experience the ride had been mercilessly long, containing lifetimes of terror. But duration in this reliving was somehow modified, her time in the back seat cut short. Moving cautiously in her cramped, aching position, she registered the fact that at some recent time the gunbarrel had been removed from her flank. She tilted her head under the burlap, enough to see that dawn had begun to filter into the cab. By now the truck had slowed somewhat from its headlong highway rush. It seemed to be jouncing at thirty miles an hour or so over an unpaved road.

      The vehicle, without slowing, turned rather sharply. It slowed down, then, and turned again, with a shifting of gears. The men in front had been silent now for a long time. Now Mary felt a perceptible tilting. The road must be climbing rather steeply. Turning, climbing, shifting, went on for another immeasurable time. Mary was taken completely by surprise when brakes brought the vehicle to a halt and the engine was turned off.

      She didn’t try to move immediately; she wasn’t sure she would be able. The door behind her opened, and cold air rushed into the cab along with the new day’s light. Now her burlap cover was pulled off. Groaning, she tried to rise on her numbed arms and legs.

      She was alone in the truck. The men had got out already and were standing together just outside. Del’s head was bowed, his gray hair disheveled. The vehicle had been parked on a steep slope, so it looked almost in danger of tipping sideways. It stood on a segment of primitive road, whose ruts were cut so deeply as to be impassable to an ordinary car. On all sides grew tall trees, the vague shade of their needled branches dimming the predawn whiteness of the sky. One of the masked men, standing just outside the downhill door, reached to take Mary by the arm as soon as she had risen halfway on her deadened limbs. He half-helped, half-pulled her out.

      The other gunman stood patiently pointing his long-barreled weapon right at the midsection of Delaunay Seabright, whose hands, Mary now saw, had been bound behind him. Del had raised his head and was looking at Mary. Across some tremendous gulf, as it seemed to her. The man who held her arm dragged her away from the truck. Her legs were barely