Kidnap My Heart
Chapter Four: Emma
We were about fifteen minutes away from our destination when my bladder decided it couldn’t wait any longer and needed relief. I hadn’t even drank a lot of water that day, but the thought of waiting another fifteen minutes was horrifying. When I saw a rest stop exit, I recklessly turned and pulled in, making Taylor scream and hold onto the passenger seat in fear. “Emma, what the hell?” she screeched as we jolted to a stop.
“What?” I asked.
“What are you doing?”
“I have to use the restroom.”
“You couldn’t wait until we reached the concert hall?” she asked incredulously.
“Do you think I’d be using a public restroom if I could wait?” I wrinkled my nose at the thought of all the germs I would find there. Gross.
“Blech! You can go. I’ll stay here.”
“I’ll be back in a second,” I said as I exited my car and walked towards the entrance. Jack left his own car and followed me, inciting a bit of annoyance in me, but it wasn’t like I could stop him. He wasn’t doing any harm.
As I was walking inside, I noticed something was off about Jack. He was walking awkwardly, like he had crabs in his pants. I stopped walking to stare at him. He began to fidget, and it didn’t take me long to realize I wasn’t the only one who needed to use the restroom. “Go to the restroom, Jack.”
“I can’t,” he said. “I’ll just go later.”
“Jack.” I gave him a reprimanding look. “Nothing is going to happen in the minute it takes you to use the restroom.”
There was an awkward pause. “It might take me a little longer than a minute.”
I made a face at the implication behind his words and nodded, raising a hand to stop him from elaborating. “I understand. Just go.” Shaking my head, I added, “I told you that burrito you had would come back and haunt you later on.”
He nodded uncomfortably, making a sad attempt to subtly cross his legs. “I know. Would you do me a favor?”
“It depends…” I trailed off, immediately thinking the worst.
“Could you buy me a pack of Cheez-Its? After you go to the bathroom yourself, of course.”
I rolled my eyes. Seriously, was there a moment in life when he wasn’t thinking of food? Dear God. “Fine,” I said. “Just go.”
He nodded and literally waddled over to the men’s restroom.
Sometimes I really wondered if Jack had been dropped on his head as a baby. There was something wrong with him.
As I looked around the rest stop, I noticed an eerie silence. There was a couple walking towards the bathrooms, but that was it. I couldn’t even see any workers or anything, but I didn’t pay too much notice to this. Taylor was right; I was too paranoid. Ignoring the omens I thought I was imposing on myself, I went to the bathroom, careful not to touch anything because as I said before, these places were disgusting.
After I finished, I went over to the vending machines to buy Jack’s Cheez-Its. Everything I saw in those machines looked downright inedible. Processed junk was my least favorite thing in the world and the calories. Oh, my God, the calories. “I can’t believe Jack ingests this,” I muttered to myself.
I was just about to put a dollar into the machine when a hand holding a red handkerchief cover the lower half of my face. One whiff of the pungent odor, and I knew exactly what it was. It was chloroform. This wasn’t the first time someone had attempted to knock me out with the chemical, and I wasn’t about to let it happen again. I struggled against the person holding me and tried not to breathe, but it was too late. Within seconds of inhalation, I felt my arms and legs begin to go numb, and my knees buckled underneath me. I felt strong arms catch me as soon as I began to slip away. My vision went blurry, the vending machine now just a multitude of rays and lines, and I gave up trying to resist. Seconds later, I saw nothing and felt nothing.
I woke up dazed and confused in an unfamiliar place, my vision still blurry. I tried to sit up and vaguely heard a door slamming shut, but my body wouldn’t respond to any of my commands so I stopped trying to sit up, letting time drag by. It felt like hours, but in reality, it was probably closer to minutes. When I finally came to, I pushed myself up and looked around. I was in an unfamiliar car, but the rest of my surroundings were familiar. I was still at the rest stop; I still had a chance.
I scooted over to the window, rubbing a sore spot on my leg. That was going to bruise later; whoever had grabbed me hadn’t been too gentle. Looking out the window, I saw two figures dressed head-to-toe in black. They were standing by my side of the car and looked like they were arguing, probably about some issue they were having with this kidnapping attempt of theirs. Maybe Jack had done something; I didn’t know. Either way, this seemed like an amateur job to me. At least they’d had the sense to cover their faces with masks.
I tried opening the door, but it was locked, of course. I tried every door, but they were all locked from the outside—child proofed, I was guessing. I didn’t know why I’d expected anything different. Only an absolute idiot would leave a door unlocked.
I was distracted from my failed escape plan when I heard yelling. My head whipped over to the source of the sound, and my eyes widened when I realized what was going on. Taylor had seen everything and was panicking, but so was I. She was going to get herself in major trouble if she didn’t stop yelling. I could fend for myself, but Taylor wasn’t as hard-shelled as I was.
Taylor continued yelling at them in a pathetic attempt to get them to stop, her voice ringing through her window and mine. She was that loud. “Let go of her! Let go of my best friend, you pigs! Let her go!”
I sighed in relief when I realized Taylor was in the safety of my car. My reactions were still a bit slow, and my thought processing wasn’t as immediate as it usually was. I’d been panicking over nothing, and I had bigger things to worry about.
“Hey!” she screamed. “Let go of Emma! Leave her alone! What did she ever do to you?”
“Thank God she’s in my car,” I muttered, although you wouldn’t have been able to tell what I was saying if you tried. They’d duct-taped my mouth—another little detail I’d just noticed. I hated chloroform. I felt weak and helpless, and where the hell was Jack?
I spoke too soon. Taylor decided it would be a good idea to leave the safety of my car and try to make them let me go. What did she think she was going to be able to do? She should have called Jack. She shouldn’t have done that. It was so unlike her, too; it was the kind of stupid, reckless thing I would do, not Taylor.
I tried to get her to be quiet, knowing what would happen if she didn’t run back inside the car immediately, but the duct tape on my mouth was a bit restricting. Pounding on the window didn’t work because I was too weak to put much energy into it. There wasn’t much I could do besides bang my head against the glass window, but all that did was give me a headache.
A couple who was exiting the rest stop—the same couple I’d seen when I first walked in—looked over at our corner in alarm, and the woman pawed at the man’s arm, her mouth moving frantically. I couldn’t hear a single word she was saying, but I hoped she was planning on doing something to help.
The two kidnappers, seeing that they had to act fast, moved over to Taylor and grabbed her. The shorter of the two—not by much, actually, although I had a feeling my depth and height perception were still a little compromised—was the one who actually grabbed her and shoved her into the car with me. She screamed and kicked in protest, but it was no use. She’d written the end to this chapter of hers the moment she left that car.
When I saw Jack run out of the rest stop, my heart swelled in anticipation. The couple must have alerted him, or maybe Taylor had sent him a message, after all. He sprinted towards the car Taylor and I had been shoved in, but he was too late. The two guys jumped in and drove away just as Jack reached us, and his last attempt to save us was futile. “Jack!” I screamed, but the sound sounded foreign even to my ears.
“Handcuffs,” the one in the driver’s seat said. “Now.”
The one in the passenger seat grabbed me by the hands and whipped me around, smoothly cuffing me just as I managed to kick backwards and hit him in the face in protest. “Hey, not the face!”
He grabbed Taylor and did the same to her after throwing me back on the seat, but Taylor didn’t even try to kick him in the face—unfortunately. I needed to teach her how to get some hits in whenever you could.
I shuffled backwards, forcing myself into an upright position, sighing in frustration as well as I could considering I had duct tape over my mouth. What had taken Jack so long? Why hadn’t he helped me earlier? The chloroform’s effects had started to go away the second that handkerchief left my mouth, although I was too dazed to realize it at the moment. What had he been doing in the time that followed? Goddamnit. It must have been that damn burrito he’d had for lunch. I told him it would come back to haunt him; I just hadn’t known it would haunt the both of us in such a horrible manner.
The rest stop was just a tiny speck in the distance by the time I looked back. I turned back around, glaring at the back of their heads. I wasn’t sure who I was really mad at all of a sudden. It could have been me for not finding a way to save Taylor from this. It could have been Taylor for being an idiot and basically getting herself kidnapped. It could have been Jack for leaving when I actually needed him. Or it could have been the kidnappers themselves, for obvious reasons.
After a bit of reflection, I decided I was madder at myself than anyone else. This wasn’t the first time someone had made an attempt to grab me. I should’ve had a better handle of the situation, but instead, I’d assumed Jack would come to the rescue like he always did. Anytime I was in trouble, Jack came to my rescue—I hadn’t considered the possibility of him not getting there in time.
But this wasn’t just about me. Not anymore. Taylor was with me, and she’d never experienced anything like this. Her parents had money, sure, but they didn’t have the power or enemies my dad had. She was freaking out, and although the duct tape on her mouth muffled her frantic protests, it didn’t hide the fact that she wasn’t prepared for this. Of course, I wasn’t either, but at least I was handling it a little better.
I couldn’t let this happen to us. Something needed to be done and fast.
The bobby pins… I had a million of those little things in my hair. If I could just get one out, I could free myself from these damn handcuffs. Then we might have a small chance of escaping.
I soon found that getting bobby pins out of your hair to free your hands wasn’t the easiest task in the world. I kind of needed my hands to reach. My only other idea was to bang my head against the backseat repeatedly until a bobby pin fell out. My hair was in an up-do, and with so many pins holding it up, I figured one of them had to fall out eventually.
“What are you doing?” one of the two guys asked, turning around. He was the one in the passenger seat. That was the only way I could distinguish him from the other guy since neither of them had taken off their masks yet.
I shot him a look, hoping my eyes convened the message I was trying to send. Did I honestly look like I was in any position to answer? Idiot. He seemed to realize this a few seconds later because he turned back around abruptly. I rolled my eyes and resumed with my task of banging my head against the backseat. After what felt like minutes of this, I sank down in my seat and searched for a bobby pin. Luck was finally on my side because I actually found one. My horribly thought out plan had somehow worked!
I straightened the bobby pin out with the tips of my fingers, waiting until it was long enough to work with before I attempted to stuff it anywhere. I fiddled with the lock, twisting and turning awkwardly as I tried to unlock the handcuffs with nothing more than a bobby pin. Our kidnappers kept looking back at me, probably trying to figure out what was wrong with me, but I guess they didn’t consider the possibility that I was forming an escape plan since they didn’t do anything to stop my fidgeting.
Eventually, my efforts paid off, and I managed to get the handcuffs off of me. I didn’t waste any time, acting quickly and completely on impulse. Impulse was the only thing that was going to get me out of this alive. Whipping the duct-tape off of my mouth, I lunged for the steering wheel. The guy who was driving the car panicked and screamed like a little girl.
“You disgusting coward, coming at me with chloroform,” I snapped, desperately pulling at the wheel. “Didn’t think you could handle me without knocking me out? Huh? Huh?”
“Eric, grab her!” the guy screamed. “Holy fu—”
The other guy, Eric, apparently, reached over and tried to grab me, but there was no way he was stopping me that easily. I was in self-defense mode, and there was no stopping me once you got me going down that road. That’s probably why my first instinct was to draw my arm back and punch the guy in the face as hard as I possibly could, knocking him out cold. My hand felt like Satan himself had touched it afterwards, but I thought it was worth it. He wouldn’t be a problem for a while.
The guy who was driving the car obviously thought I was absolutely insane by this point, something he readily voiced. “You’re crazy! Absolutely fucking crazy! Stop it, you crazy bitch!”
I just grumbled a reply, never stopping my quest for the steering wheel. How he managed to keep us on the road was beyond me.
“Are you crazy?” he shrieked, trying to push me away while simultaneously attempting to safely maneuver the car. I would’ve asked him how that was going for him, but I was otherwise preoccupied.
“Yeah, I am!” I shrieked back, wondering why he’d bothered asking. He’d already established that himself. I was, in fact, insane, but it was my insanity and recklessness that was now going to get me out of this mess. “You don’t really want to be stuck with this, do you?”
This was when he finally realized it was best to pull over before I killed us all, just as I’d assumed he’d do. I just figured he’d do it a little sooner, but all was well. Taylor and I were still intact, and that was all that mattered. He managed to pry my arms away and roughly exited the car.
I immediately lunged for the door, but they were all still locked. Damn it. As I was searching my brain for another idea, my door opened, and I was dragged out of the car. I tried to find something to hold onto, but the only thing within reach were my handcuffs, and what good would those be?
I protested angrily, kicking and screaming. This was my chance to get free, but this guy was strong. Freeing myself wouldn’t be so easy. “Let go of me! Get your grubby hands off of me,” I yelled, swinging my legs up and down. At some point, I’d lost my jacket—don’t ask me where or when, because I had no idea—and I felt overexposed. My poor dress was a goner. “You’re going to ruin this dress! This is a Dolce and Gabbana dress!”
“Aw, poor little rich girl is scared I’ll ruin her dress?” the guy taunted. The fact that I still couldn’t even see his face just made his taunt more offensive.
“You ruin my dress, I ruin your face,” I threatened.
“Oh, I’m so scared.” He smirked at me and reached over, purposely ripping the sleeve off of my dress.
The ease with which he ripped it did shock me, admittedly, but I couldn’t let fear stop me from escaping, and I was actually more furious than I was scared. How dare he? My mouth dropped open at the nerve of this guy, and I instinctively swung at his face with the handcuffs I still had in my hand. I hit him on the side of the face, a hit greater than any right hook I could’ve tried on him, and he was out cold immediately. Wow. And here I’d thought these handcuffs were useless.
I watched his body crumple to the ground, and I didn’t even think to check if he was okay or any of that nonsense. I just whirled around and stuck my head inside the car, telling a wide-eyed Taylor, “We’re getting out of here!”