I felt for my cell phone and wallet, but they were both gone. I slid down to the doors, but there were no inside handles. I tried to look out the windows, but I couldn’t see anything. I was incredibly thirsty and it seemed like odd luck that there were cases of water. I pulled a bottle out of one of the boxes and I took a sip but I could barely swallow.

We were driving somewhere very bumpy and I spilled most of the water on myself, but what little I was able to get down tasted good. I looked again at my watch. I couldn’t believe how long I had been out. I figured they had waited until it was dark so that they would have the cover of night for killing us and getting rid of our bodies.

They must have followed up, after all, on what I told them about Vincent, and without him the girl was just a liability, no longer a bargaining chip, just somebody they had kidnapped, so better to get rid of her; and me, well, I was a fool that they had absolutely no use for and if I was dead, then I couldn’t make trouble for them. They had a good setup: they distributed beverages and heroin, and that’s probably how they met Vincent. The beverages got them in the door at bars and then they hooked up bartenders to deal for them. They dealt in two substances that people needed, and the liquids probably cleaned the cash from the drugs.

I looked around me. I didn’t want to die. I had to do something to help me and this girl. In the murky shadows I made out a spare tire attached to the wall of the van. I thought maybe I could use the tire to bang open the door. It was a futile thought, but I tried to take the tire off the wall and I saw that inside it was a jack and a tire iron. I yanked out the iron. One end was shaped like an egg holder for unscrewing lug nuts, and the other end was a sharpish wedge for prying off hubcaps. The van came to a stop. I got to my feet. I could just about stand near the two doors, bending over a little. My head was pounding. I held the tire iron like a club, the lug nut end in my fist.

The doors opened up and it was the fat boy and I came down on his face with the tire iron as hard as I could and the thing went right through his nose and deep into his face and got stuck there. I fell forward and he fell back onto the ground and I landed on top of him and it was a freakish thing but that tire iron, with my weight behind it, pierced deeper into his flesh and must have gone right into his brain.