The Sanctuary

Chapter 10

Pain seared through Evelyn’s head with each bump in the road.

The trunk of the car was lined with several folded blankets, but that didn’t help much. Not only was the road surface rough and riddled with potholes that felt like veritable crevasses at times — more of a mountain trail than a paved road, Evelyn imagined in her fleeting moments of lucidity — the journey itself felt like an unending series of tight bends that veered left and right and climbed up and down hills and mountains, tossing her body around without warning like a bottle adrift in a storm, and squashing her against the insides of the trunk with each change of direction.

Her suffering was intensified by the duct tape across her mouth and the cloth sack around her head. The sensorial isolation would have been bad enough without the long and winding road from hell. She could hardly breathe, struggling to suck in faint wisps of the dank, stale air through her nose. She worried about what would happen if she got sick. She could suffocate on her own vomit, and they wouldn’t even hear her. The thought sent a bracing shot of anxiety through her veins. Her bones ached from the constant battering of the ride, and the zip-tie nylon cuffs around her wrists and ankles chafed against her thin, wrinkled skin.

She wished she could find relief by losing consciousness. She could feel herself spiraling into the darkness, but each time, just as she was on the verge of blacking out, another bump would send a jolt of pain quaking through her and jar her awake.

The car hadn’t traveled far from the downtown area when it had pulled into a deserted lot behind a heavily damaged building in the southern outskirts of the city. Evelyn had been dragged out of it, tied, gagged, hooded, and stuffed into the trunk of a waiting car with practiced efficiency. She’d heard her abductors discuss something briefly, their words unclear in her confused and muffled state, then the doors were slammed shut and the car had lurched onto its journey. She couldn’t begin to guess how long she’d been in here, but she knew that hours had already passed.

She had no way of knowing how much longer it would take.

Her mind was besieged by a tangle of blurred images. She saw herself running mindlessly through the downtown arcades, out of breath, her legs burning from exertion. Following Farouk. His terrified face.

Farouk. What happened to him? Did he get away? He wasn’t in the car with her. She thought she remembered seeing him slip away from their kidnappers and run down the alley, past the car. Right after someone had screamed out her name.

Mia. She didn’t dream it, did she? Was her daughter really there? She flashed to the surreal image of Mia, standing there, frozen in shock, yelling out from the far end of the street. She was reasonably sure that had actually happened. But how? What was she doing there? How did she get there so quickly? She remembered having drinks with her. Leaving her at the hotel. Why was she in that alley? And, far more important, was she safe?

A fist of grief punched through her and throttled her heart. There had been deaths. She was sure of it. The gunshots rang in her ears. The soldier, mowed down by the car. The deafening, horrifying thuds, the body slamming against the windshield like a crash-test dummy, shattering it. She tried to concentrate, tried to remember more clearly, but every bump shook her to her roots and sent her thoughts scattering.

She tried to let herself go, to force the blackout, but it wouldn’t come. The discomfort and the pain were unyielding. With a burgeoning horror, she started to focus on the specifics of her journey. Hours. It had taken hours. That didn’t sound good. Not in such a small country. Where were they taking her? She plowed through dissonant memories, back to newspaper reports she remembered from years ago, from the “dark days” of Lebanon. The kidnappings. The journalists, the random hostages who had been plucked off the streets. She remembered how they’d described their journeys — wrapped in duct tape like mummies, stuffed into crates, hidden in trucks. A growing sense of dread gripped her as she visualized their captivity cells. Bare. Cold. Chained to radiators that didn’t work. Surviving on scraps of vile food. And then the scariest thought of all came rocketing blindingly out of the darkness.

None ever knew where they were held.

Years of captivity. The most efficient intelligence services in the world. Not a clue. No informants. No ransoms. No rescue attempts. Nothing. It was as if they’d been wiped off the face of the earth, only to reappear years later — if they were lucky.

The car must have then hit a serious pothole, as her head snapped back and bounced up against the sheet metal of the trunk’s lid. The burst of pain was enough to finally send her over the edge and into the merciful peace of a dreamless sleep.