The Desert Standoff

away from there so that nobody could ever touch her again. Certainly never without her permission. Natalie doesn’t want to process what he’s saying. She doesn’t want to be good or bad. She doesn’t want to live in a world that doesn’t have Suzi in it.
“Please…” Natalie hears herself begging. No doubt something he has heard before. “Please, she needs a doctor... Please …I’ll do anything you say.”
Dapper Man’s hazel eyes stare at Natalie through the rearview mirror with curiosity. “Interesting—for her and not yourself?”
“No. Please. Please, she needs a doctor ... she needs medical help. Please. I won’t fight you. Please just get her help ... please.” Natalie’s sobs are broken up with tears. She wants to sound more convincing, but her desperation is evident. The car rolls to a slow stop and Dapper Man puts the vehicle into park in the dead center of the road. He twists in his seat and makes a face at the liquid vomit still sloshing around the floorboards. He reaches his hand back and pushes Suzi’s pretty hair away from her face and Natalie recoils from the mottled bruising that spiderwebs over the side of her friend’s face and the way that her crystal-blue eyes are open and staring straight ahead—her features in her face frozen into an expression of terror. Her final moments are forever preserved on her face and Natalie can’t breathe.
Dapper Man smiles and nods. “Sure thing, she’s definitely still breathing,” he says as he pulls his hand away from the spot on her throat where he pretended to check for her pulse. He chuckles and places his hands back on the steering wheel and starts to drive away.
Something inside of Natalie fractures. She cannot be here, with Suzi looking like that. Her body scrambles in an effort to get as far away from her as possible, she feels like she’s tainting her body just by touching it in the way that she is. Natalie screams ... and screams and then she screams some more as her body dissolves into a state of shock.
Dapper Man’s features turn from passive bemusement at the situation to outright fury. Her shock needs to be quiet or he simply cannot tolerate it. He whips around to hit her, the intention being to render her unconscious again, but something changes. They drive over something that makes the car rattle in a strange way and Dapper Man swears loudly. Natalie is thrashing and attempting to get her hands on the handle of the door, fully intent on throwing herself from the still moving vehicle that she simply cannot be in for another second. Dapper Man is losing control of the car and it is evident that whatever they have driven over has punctured one or more of the tires. The vehicle is screaming as Dapper Man attempts to keep the wheel straight and come to a proper stop. Natalie has never heard anything like it. She’s never been more terrified in her life. The car jerks out of Dapper Man’s control because he can no longer control the vehicle at the speed that they are moving at. The hunk of metal goes careening into a guard rail and the front end of the car crumples and the airbags deploy.
Natalie’s bound hands finally find purchase on the metal of the door handle and she yanks. Her body falls halfway out of the car sideways and she lands heavily on her shoulder. In the dim lighting of this highway there doesn’t seem to be another hint of a headlight in any direction for as far as she can see. She is alone out here. She might as well just lie down and die ... but the dapper man isn’t out of the car just yet. His head no doubt hit the steering wheel pretty hard when they hit whatever it was. Natalie’s attention turns to the road where something metal glints—a long, spiked strip, lying across the entirety of both sides of the road. A man dressed entirely in black is standing on the far side of the road, pulling off the metal strip. She doesn't know who this man is, but he clearly isn’t working with the dapper man. She doesn’t want to trust him, but what other choice does she have? At least it’s obvious that she is being held inside of this car against her will by the way that she is bound.
Natalie pushes herself as far out of the car as she possibly can get and is struggling to find a way to get her feet up underneath her when the man in black finishes winding up that spike strip and pulls a gun from the bag that he dumped the spike strip into. He moves slowly as if he doesn’t have anywhere else to be in the world. Natalie watches with terror in her heart as he screws on a metal silencer to the end of his gun. Is it possible that she escaped one would-be murderer just to fall into the hands of another? How can that even possibly happen? The man in black moves closer to her and grabs her by the shoulder, hauling her up to her feet, and she is too scared to move. He pulls out a large knife from his pocket and bends in order to cut the bonds on her feet and then on her hands. He looks at her dead in her face.
“Run.”
Natalie doesn’t wait to question him. She doesn’t want to know what is going to happen or why she is chosen to be lucky. Grief nearly cripples her as she runs, not even feeling worthy of keeping her life in the first place. Adrenaline keeps her moving, keeps her legs pumping underneath her as she tears down the road, not aware that her feet are in high heels or that her dress is torn in a strange way. She cannot stop. She