Chapter 39

As Natalie began to awake, the sound of a muted crack from the fire thundered like fireworks in her ears. Her reflexes jerked her body in a convulsive twitch and forced her to consciousness. A wary dread drove into her sleep-fogged mind. Confused by her surroundings, she lay still and centered her thoughts.

She stared into the dark empty space beyond the campfire. It only took her a moment to recall her plight. On the other side of the coral, the firelight danced with playful shadows across Rudy’s chest and face. He leaned against a post on a small pile of hay with his sweatshirt zipped and the hood pulled over his head. She noticed the smeared residue of a bloodstain, my blood, left from cleaning her clotted nose.

From the advanced gloom of the barn, she judged she had slept for several hours. The last thing she remembered she ate every bit of the meat from a package of salami and washed the welcomed briny taste out of her mouth with a bottle of water. While she had eaten, she recalled the wind waged a fierce battle against the walls of the barn. They shrieked and shuddered as if they fought in mortal combat to prolong the barn’s inevitable demise. Despite her fear she’d be buried alive and, with Tony off to find a rat to nap with, she had found a spot near the fire to plan another escape attempt. With her stomach filled and her thirst quenched for the first time since the motel two days ago, in the warmth where she hoped to gain strength, she had succumbed to a deep, dreamless sleep.

Now awake, she realized her stomach had settled and the strength she needed for the coming fray had begun to creep back into her limbs. The fire popped again. This time it didn’t startle her and she watched orange sparks drift upwards, riding the thermals, and then burn out a few feet above the flames. She tracked the smoke as the languid gray billows folded and rolled upward to the rafters and found an exit from the barn through gaps in the roof. By the fading light offered through those same fissures, she knew nightfall was looming and Tony, if he modeled the same frantic behavior he had shown over the last three days, this barn would be in their rearview.

Her mind drew back to her dad’s farm. She remembered more than once he built a fire behind the barn to burn debris. She and her sister, Cindy, always helped keep it stoked and stirred. At the end of those tranquil days, they roasted marshmallows over the fading embers.

She’d have lingered in nostalgia but, with the patter of the rain on the roof of this barn, and Tony’s terror always a hot-breath away, she knew today wouldn’t end the same.

Awake, every torturous thing done to her in the last three days came to mind—raped, pistol-whipped, tied and gagged, starved, punched in the face, kicked, devalued—and she renewed her vow to get out of this alive. She glanced toward Rudy, cleared her throat just loud enough to get his attention but not with enough volume to disturb the monster she knew lurked somewhere in the shadows.

“Where is he?” she whispered.

“Don’t know, don’t care,” Rudy said and turned his head up from a bag of potato chips.

Between them, the low fire burned and from what she could see, Rudy had busied himself while she slept building a supply of combustible material. The barn floor next to him was stacked with scrapes of wood and fence planks he had broken into right-sized pieces. With a couple of empty beer cans at his side, she wondered if he had tried over the last few hours to dull the sense of doom he must have felt. She had tried to tell him Tony couldn’t let him live to be a witness but, Rudy had explained, if they got to his uncle’s hunting cabin, he knew he could hide both of them in the woods. She couldn’t see that happening but, as she had realized last night, this was Rudy’s pattern. Don’t fight, run.

She sat up and looked around the barn. In the dull light, it was hard to make out distinct shapes but the reflection of the fire caught something chrome on the front of the car.

“If he’s still asleep, we might be able to get away,” she said and began to get to her feet.

The white nylon rope had been removed from her hands and feet, but she had no memory of it happening. As she stood, she realized her atrophied body might take her will captive if she had to run. Since she had spent most of the last three days either entombed in a trunk or tied hand and foot, the muscles in the legs were unwilling to extend. She reached to her thighs and tried to massage them back to life. That not working, she stood first on one foot and then the other flexing and stretching her legs until enough strength emerged they might support her in a crisis.

“You think we should try? He’ll hear us.”

“He might, but we can’t just sit around and wait for him to kill us.”

“But how? We can’t get out of here.”

Disappointed in his ability to think past his next breath, she didn’t mask her disgust. “The car! You hotwire the car and we can get out of here.”

Rudy twisted to glance over his left shoulder toward the Subaru and then stood.

“Oh . . . yeah, maybe I could. I just wish I knew where he was.”

Encouraged that he seemed to be reasoning out the probability of success, she said, “We’ve got to take the chance, what’s the worst that can happen? He plans to kill us both anyway.”

*

As Rudy started toward the car, he pointed the flashlight toward areas of the barn cloaked in shadow. He hoped to reveal Tony’s roost with the penetrating beam but, wherever he hid, Rudy didn’t spot him. Being careful not to scuff his feet on the ground for fear of stirring Tony, he allowed his mind to consider that this effort might open the door to the realization of his ultimate hope. He remembered what Natalie had said yesterday before Hank’s death, “Get me away from Tony and Hank and I’m yours.” His heart rate began to accelerate as the adrenaline of anticipation surged through his veins. Maybe there was still a chance his will hadn’t been scuttled by the demonic spirit of that psychopath.

When he reached the driver’s door, he tugged on the handle. The door opened.

*

Natalie reached the passenger side of the car a moment later and noticed both the front and rear doors were ajar. She remembered, when Tony stole the car, Rudy had placed her on the backseat next to an infant seat. Now, it had been tossed out onto the barn’s dirt floor. She presumed Rudy must have moved it out of the way when he moved her to the coral. She slipped into the front passenger seat and looked toward Rudy.

He laid face up under the dashboard and, aided by the flashlight, looked underneath. In his left hand a maze of small, blue, yellow, red, black, white, and green copper-filled tubes, any two of which could have been the right ones, painted a puzzled look on his face.

“Hurry,” she whispered.

“Don’t know which are the right wires.”

“Can I help?”

“Uh, yeah, line your finger up under the dash right below where the key goes.”

Natalie found the ignition and slipped the forefinger of her left hand below it.

“How’s that?” she asked.

“Perfect.”

Natalie’s eyes were on Rudy’s face. His lips hadn’t moved. He turned his eyes to hers and she saw the baffled look had transformed into stark terror. She knew if she could see her reflection, her face mirrored his. That familiar voice with its Jersey accent screeched like a subway’s steel wheels against the tracks. When it rumbled from the backseat and with just one word—“perfect”—a repressive weight of despair fell over her.

“Well, ain’t this cozy?” Tony continued. He sat up and peered over the back of the front seat. “Takin’ your whore for a ride lover boy?”

Rudy remained silent. The flashlight slipped out of his hands and he laid his head on the floor of the driver’s compartment.

Natalie realized Tony must have camped out in the car for insurance. He could have gone anywhere in the barn to stretch out and sleep but he chose the one place where he could protect his interests. He intuited their first thought would be to take the car, so any escape attempt included him in the backseat.

She knew she should refrain from engagement but, just like the emotional fights she got into with her mother, the rage she had amassed in reserve thwarted any apprehension that might have suggested caution.

“Why do you insist on calling me a ‘whore?’” she shouted. Her throat horse, she forced herself to articulate every syllable so her message was clear. With the rest over the last few hours, her mind had sharpened. She was ready for battle. To further intimidate, she stepped out of the car, turned toward the back door, and slammed it shut with her foot.

“’Cause, that’s what you are,” Tony said. “Like a damn umpire, I call ’em as I see ‘em.

Tony slid across the seat to the passenger side door and tried the handle but the child lock had been secured and the door wouldn’t open.

“Damn it,” he yelled. He leaned over the seat, pointed the Python at Rudy, and glared out the window at Natalie. “Open the damn door or I’ll blow him to hell right now.”

Two against one were better odds than her alone and, she wanted no more bloodshed, so she stepped to the door, opened it, and then stood back as Tony got out.

“I suppose you’d know all about whores,” she continued and scowled through the gloom at the swollen bloodshot eyes in Tony’s head. “That the only way you get laid?”

“You’d be surprised what gets me off, bitch.” He turned toward Rudy, who still laid as if he had melted into the floor mat, and continued, “Out of the damn car.”

Natalie felt the barrel of the Colt jamb into her ribs and he nudged her toward the coral. “’Bitch’ is no more complimentary than ‘whore,’” she said. Her side, bruised from when he kicked her in the motel parking lot, ached but, without a flinch, she began to walk as directed. “How’d you like it if I called you bastard?”

“You have called me ‘bastard’ and I am one in the truest sense. My mother got knocked up by some guy who didn’t know her name, some guy who didn’t hang around, some guy who paid her for the trick, and the next thing you know, drum roll please, it’s me. So yeah, I’m a goddamn bastard. At least I know what I am but you have this delusion about who you are.”

Natalie continued to walk toward the fire. She saw out of the corner of her eye that Rudy had left the sedan behind and now moved like a lamb to slaughter a few steps away on her left side. Behind her, Tony scuffed his foot against the loose dirt of the floor.

Natalie said, “Is that so? Who do I think I am?”

“Oh, you’re Ms. Hollywood. Ms. walk-down-the-boulevard swinging your ass so men’ll notice. Ms. take-off-your-clothes-for-the-camera just to get a part. If that’s not a whore ... ? You’re no better than my ma, spreading her legs for profit.”

Natalie didn’t want that to be true. Her memory flashed back and brought full exposer to Amy’s first sexual experience with the boy in the barn—the one who took her cherry. She went down with him in the hay not because she liked him, or even because she was that curious about sex. She had been brainwashed by her parents and her church, that sex outside of marriage was a sin. However, not being accepted at school by those popular cheerleaders seemed a worse hell than eternal damnation. After months of scorn, during her sophomore year, the Queen pulled her aside one morning after geometry class.

*

“See that boy?” she asked with her finger raised toward a boy a year older than her pulling his books out of a locker. “He’s a friend of mine. He told me he wants to meet you but he’s too shy to ask. He’ll be eating his lunch alone today in the quad. Go talk to him and be his friend. If you’ll do that, I’ll consider it a great favor. And if you go all the way with him, there’s an opening in the cheerleading squad—“

“You want me to sleep with him?” Amy asked. Her mouth fell wide open.

“I’ll need a trophy” The Queen ignored Amy’s question with a wink.

“A trophy?”

“Yeah, proof that you did it . . . with him.” She nodded toward the boy.

“Like what?” Amy shot a quick glance toward him. She couldn’t believe she even entertained the suggestion. He was one of the more popular boys around school and cute in a boyish way. He looked back at her and smiled a sheepish grin.

“His underwear . . . no, his signed underwear. Bring me his tighty-whiteys with his signature and you’re in the squad.”

Amy didn’t believe in miracles but after her rejection a few months earlier from the cheerleading team, she knew it’d take a miracle to pull her out of the rural-farm ghetto class. Now she was being offered a gift, a way to rise out of the slums. It’d cost her virginity but the price paled when she considered the reward. In league with the popular girls promised the respect she craved.

“I’ll do it,” Amy agreed although her stomach churned with nervous hesitation.

The friendship didn’t come and another girl advanced to the squad. How could Amy know she was being played? She was always so trusting and gullible. As it turned out, one of the cheerleader minions was on the outs with the Queen and the boy in the hay was her boyfriend. It came out when his briefs went up the flagpole. Rather than be embraced with her newfound social status, Amy was exposed in front of the whole school as a self-confessed slut.

*

With this vivid memory seared into her mind, she couldn’t escape the knowledge that, even then, she had used sex as a tool for gain. If that wasn’t a hooker . . . it was no different than any starlet on the director’s couch. Natalie had even teased herself with the thought that a one-time hookup with her agent might be worth it but she couldn’t give Tony the satisfaction of admitting he was right.

“I guess I have a narrower view of a prostitute,” she said. “I think of a hooker like you’ve described your mother, getting paid for sex.”

“You leave my ma out of this,” he said, as they reached the coral.

“I didn’t bring her up, you threw her out there,” Natalie continued and stepped close to the fire. Its hot breath warmed her black leather boots. She kept her back toward Tony and Rudy, and stared into the orange glow at her feet for strength.

They stopped behind her

“Sit down,” Tony shouted and, by the scrape of feet in the dirt, she sensed Tony had pushed Rudy. “Well now that she’s the main subject, Ma does make a fine comparison.”

She kept her eyes on the fire and stepped around behind it to place a subtle barrier between them.

“Why’s that?” Natalie said and the sarcasm spirited across the distance between her and Tony like a heat-seeking missile.

“Hell, by Ma’s standards, you are a whore.”

“How do you figure?” Natalie’s eyes drifted to Tony’s hand. He slipped the gun under his waistband, pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, and lifted a smoke to his lips.

“Well, what’s your definition of a whore?”

“Like I said someone who gets paid for sex.”

“Damn, this may be a first. I agree.”

“But I’ve never had sex for money.”

“Of course you have,” he shouted, “and I have the video to prove it.”

“Do you mean sex with Rudy? Not only was that under false pretenses but, as I recall, I never got paid for it, unless the payment was your abuse.”

*

Tony glared at her. In just a few steps he could have grabbed her, thrown her frail ass into the fire, and held her there with one foot while she burned to death—but not now. Fate’s grim will determined who took the next last breath.

He stepped toward her. She held her ground. At the fire, he bent at the knees and took hold of the unlit end of a burning stick. He raised it to light the cigarette and drew a long deep breath. In a sudden convulsive fit, he coughed rattling, raspy phlegm from his lungs and then spit it into the fire. The sputum hissed in protest like an angry viper as it shriveled in the blaze. He stood and cleared his throat. Their glares were eighteen inches apart. With the flaming stick held between their faces, he could see the fire dance in the gold flecks in her smokey hate-filled eyes. He took the cigarette from his lips and forced a stream of smoke out of his lungs toward her face.

“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “Why did you spread your legs for Rudy? Why did you allow yourself to become his fantasy?”

*

The light of the fire revealed the evil in his eyes. She shrugged off the quake of fear that threatened to roll up her back and converted it to her storehouse of rage.

“I had no idea I was his fantasy. I thought I was doing a screen test.”

“That’s right,” he said, “a screen test for who?”

“For Ansell Parker. But you made that up. Ansell doesn’t have anything to do with this.”

He dropped the burning stick into the fire, put the cigarette back into his mouth, and reached across the flames. He grabbed the lapels of her jacket and pulled her torso slowly over the center of the fire pit. “You didn’t know that when you consented to have sex with him.”

She stared into the face of her oppressor. His evil eyes flickered with more than the light of the flames. Out of his dark sockets, the fires of Hell emanated as if they were contained in his soul. His lips were only inches from hers and his scorching spittle spattered against her bruised cheeks as his accusation spewed into her face.

“Take your hands off me,” she demanded and her voice, not obstructed by fear, reflected the fury in her chest.

“So, let’s see what we’ve learned,” he continued and pulled her closer in defiance. Holding her there for a few silent seconds, with a sudden shove, he pushed her backward.

She had to take a step back to catch her balance but, without hesitation, she moved again to the edge of the fire and didn’t give him any ground.

“You thought you were going to have sex with an actor so you could look good for Ansell. Your plan was to ultimately get paid for fucking Rudy by getting hired in a leading role on an upcoming movie. Getting paid for sex,” he paused like a lawyer who just caught the witness in a lie. “Isn’t that what you said?”

“You’ve twisted this all around.” Her own words, the ones she had come to dread, echoed in her memory once again and the image from the loathsome glare of the farm girl reflected in the mirror in her apartment fell across her eyes as if Amy stood in the midst of the fire—Whatever it damn well takes. Now, she was being forced by this con man, this murderer, this psychopath to realize somehow he was right. He got her to prostitute herself.

Tony took a long last drag from the cigarette and dropped the stub into the fire.

“Is that so? By your own definition, you are a whore. So own the title. It’s an honorable profession, you’ve earned it.”

Tony’s eyes smoldered as he continued to glare at her across the fire. A sinister smirk she recognized spread over his acne-scarred face and he began to force a wicked guttural laugh out of his mouth. She could see he knew he had won the debate. Although she’d never admit it to him, she recognized it too. He was right, she had done it all to self-promote, to compromise her body to get ahead. She wondered if her move to LA had really been to pursue her passion for acting or just to assuage a driving need to overcome insecurities she knew chased her through life—an obsession for recognition.

*

Tony’s exhilaration was complete. He read the naked truth revealed on her face. She’s no better than Ma. It was more satisfying than any sexual climax he had ever experienced. She had been willing and now she had become Ma. She had passed the test.

“What’s the matter,” he chided, “cat got your tongue?”

*

Over the last three days, Tony’s gun had been the phallic symbol of power. Tony had used it in the warehouse to elicit her submission to assault and threatened her into compliance with it again and again. Natalie had seized the authority for a moment and used it to subdue Hank, but Tony didn’t need it now. His words were enough.

She shifted her eyes and realized the tide could change again in the next moment. The brown composite pistol butt lay exposed and unchallenged just above his belt. She grabbed for it.