“Look, I never signed on for anything like this! Spender was one thing, and I never wanted to go along with that, but this is too much!”

Rick said, “I think you should lower your voice, asshole. There’s houses over that ridge people are living in, dickwad, and they might hear you.”

“Maybe I don’t care about that. Maybe it’s too late to care about anything.”

Greenway looked at Rick and nodded. Suddenly, Rick slapped Carpington across the face savagely, sending the councilman sprawling up against the side of his Caddy. Before he even had time to touch his cheek, Rick had him by the shirt and was dragging him across the mud-caked street in the direction of his car. Rick reached into his pocket, pulled out a set of remote keys, and popped the trunk on the sedan, which opened about an inch.

As Rick swung the trunk open a tiny light came on long enough for Carpington to see what was inside. There was barely time for him to scream “No!” before Rick had shoved him inside and slammed the trunk shut.

Chapter 21

21

maybe, if i’d ever served my country in the military or something, I’d be more familiar with the sounds of a man screaming. Once, when called out around midnight to a particularly grisly highway accident as a young newspaper photographer, I listened while a man burned to death in a car, rescue crews unable to get close to him. The driver of a tanker truck had fallen asleep at the wheel and gone through a red light, virtually crushing a Chevette that was crossing its path. It was a wonder the man in the Chevette remained alive long enough for police and fire officials, and me, to arrive and hear him die. His final cries of anguish had stayed with me for a long time. Even now, some twenty years later, I can still hear him calling “Princess!” which I learned later was the nickname of the nine-year-old daughter he’d left behind.

And maybe those cries were worse than what I was hearing now. It’s a tough one to call. But there was something about Carpington’s screams that had nothing to do with pain. They were screams of outright terror and hysteria, and listening to them made my blood run cold. They were the screams—interspersed with cries of “Get me out!” and “Let me out!”—of a man finding himself locked in a trunk with his worst nightmare. The parked car bounced on its springs like it was being driven down a washboard road as Carpington rolled about and kicked and pounded at the trunk lid and walls.