“Where are you heading?” the man asked while the woman hoped out of the van and opened the side door. I stepped in and sat down, put my things onto the ground and then buckled my seatbelt. The air conditioning in the van felt heavenly and it made it very hard to even think straight. My body was hot, probably too hot and I felt a huge sense of relief when I felt the cool air rush over my body.
“Ideally I’m going to Chicago, but I’ll go as far as you can take me,” I said. I wasn’t about to turn down a ride at all. If they could only take me to the next town, that would have to do for the night. I could try and call Rebecca and Robert from there, or maybe get access to my bank account so I could get some money for the rest of the trip.
“We are actually heading south of Chicago, we can drop you off. Where at within Chicago?”
I didn’t have an exact location and really didn’t know at all where I needed to be.
“Around Navy Pier would be great,” I said as I tried to sound convincing. Really, I had no clue where to start looking for Chris and his team. I didn’t even know which agency he worked for. The first place that had come into my mind was the rides that I remembered going to at Navy Pier when I was younger. I hoped that I would be able to get where I needed to go from there.
“Alright, sit back and relax, we will get you there,” the woman added. She looked back and smiled at me and I instantly felt at ease.
It was weird to be in a van with people that I didn’t know. I had never hitchhiked before and thought that I would never have done such a thing. But I felt surprisingly comfortable with the pair. They had a baby car-seat in the back and the woman was reading a book in the front seat. I couldn’t see what the title was, but it looked like a romance novel. The man, who was in his mid-thirties, drove and flipped through the radio stations until he found something that he liked. He didn’t seem to care that I was in the van with them and I had to wonder if the pair had ever picked up a hitchhiker before.
My favorite thing about the ride was that they didn’t bombard me with questions. I was exhausted and didn’t have the energy to explain every detail about why I needed to go to Chicago. I probably wouldn’t have explained it to them even if I did have a ton of energy.
Chapter 50
It surprised me that I had fallen asleep in the van with the two strangers. It certainly wasn’t something I had planned. The hot summer heat and the relief of being in air conditioning had been too much for me. But when we went over a bridge on our way into downtown Chicago I was jolted awake.
As I sat up and looked around I couldn’t figure out exactly wher
e we were at. I didn’t know Chicago very well though, so it wasn’t unusual that I had no idea where we were. I just sat back and looked around as we continued through the city streets.
“Do either of you have any water?” I said as the dehydration from my day in the sun seemed to set it. My level of dehydration had probably contributed to the long nap that I had taken on our drive into town also. The woman handed me a bottle of water and I guzzled it down as quickly as possible.
Hopefully, after the pair dropped me off, I would be able to call someone and at least get a hotel booked for the night. I certainly didn’t want to find myself sleeping in a homeless shelter or something like that. I continued to look around and take in all the buildings, but I still couldn’t figure out where we were. It seemed like we were heading more into the shipping district as I saw large docks and container ships all along the side of the road as we continued to drive.
My heart started to beat faster as we turned into the shipping area and I grew more concerned that something was going on. We weren’t anywhere close to Navy Pier and I was pretty sure there was no reason to be turning into an old shipping yard at that hour of the night.
“Where are we?” I asked.
Neither the man driving nor the woman responded to me. Something was definitely going on. They ignored me and drove into the shipping yard. I looked around to see if I would be able to make a run for it. Maybe if he slowed down to make a turn, I could jump out and start running. I looked at the door handle for the sliding back door, but it was gone. The whole door handle had been removed. I couldn’t believe I had not noticed that before!
I looked at the door handle and then at the driver. By that point, he was watching me very closely through the rearview mirror. He knew I had figured out that something was going on. He motioned to the woman sitting next to him and she started to rifle through her bag of things.
“There is nothing to worry about. Someone just needs to speak to you,” the man said as he looked at me in the mirror. I looked at him and then at the female in the passenger seat. They both looked so normal! Then it dawned on me, perhaps Chris had sent these two to come get me. They must have went to the bed and breakfast and then left when they found that no one was there. I tried to run that idea through my head and see if it fit the possibilities of the situation.
I wanted that to be the truth. I genuinely wanted them to be with Chris’ team. Something deep down inside told me that they were not though. There was just something about the way the driver looked at me; I could tell that he did not intend to be helpful to me at all. We pulled into a back alley between two large warehouses. I felt my body start to shake from the adrenaline that rushed through me. I tried to calm myself and took a few deep breaths, as I let the air out and looked around and took note of my surroundings.
The vehicle was all the way at the end of a long parking area that was between the two buildings. I would have to run down that long area before I would be out of view and it was likely that the driver or his passenger had a gun. I didn’t want to get killed, so I waited. I needed just the right opportunity to make my move. Then suddenly and without any warning, the driver reached back and poked me with a needle in the thigh.
“Ouch,” I screamed.
I looked down at the needle and then at the driver. My first thought was that it was some sort of drug like heroin or something. My knowledge of needles and the drugs that could be administers was very small. My body almost instantly felt like I was drunk. My vision got blurry and I felt my face become flushed. I reached toward the needle and pulled it out of my leg. A tiny dot of crimson blood pooled on the spot that held the needle.
The power in my hands quickly dissipated and I couldn’t hold the needle. It fell to the ground and I heard it make a light thud as it hit the carpet of the van. Everything seemed to move in slow motion. My vision got more and more difficult and everything went blurry around me, so much so that I couldn’t even make out the face of the driver. I had to close my eyes. I hated the feeling of being nauseous.
My eyes closed and I was overwhelmed with a desire to lay my head down on the bench seat next to me. I couldn’t hold my body in the upright position for another second. I needed to sleep, if only just for a moment. As I lay there, my eyes were closed and I couldn’t move any part of my body. To the driver and the woman, I clearly looked like I had fallen totally asleep. Although I hadn’t fully become unconscious yet, I could still hear them talking.
“Do you think she will flush out the mole?” the woman said.
“Yeah, whoever he is won’t let her be punished. He’ll expose himself and then Gino will kill him with a bullet to the brain.”
I remember thinking that Chris was in danger and I had to warn him, and that was the last thing I remembered for a long time.
Chapter 51
I felt the rope around my wrists and ankles before I was even able to open my eyes. The tight compression of the string held my limbs up against the cold metal of the chair I was in. My head slumped down and as I started to wake up, I slowly pulled my head up. My eyes were filled with a blurry mess when I tried to look out and see what was in front of me.