Merrill pushed again, and again the driver fell back on him hard. If there was any life left in him, it wasn’t going to last for long. Merrill knew he was as responsible for this as he would have been if the man had been under his command. He had allowed the two of them to go too far. He had put the man at unnecessary risk. And he was still at risk himself, with Amy no closer to safety. He pushed at the taxi driver a third time, and now the door fell open, and Merrill tumbled out onto the pavement. The jet was rolling away, picking up speed. Merrill ran toward the plane before pulling himself up short. The DH-125 taxied across one runway, then turned and lurched as the pilot jammed the throttles open wide.

“Hey, Merrill!”

Merrill turned and looked around, but couldn’t see who had called him. He turned again to watch the DH-125 rotate upward and catapult into the air, gaining speed and altitude with every second. The plane was headed south.

“Merrill! What do I have to do to get your attention, you dumb bastard? Over here!”

Two

TWO

Amy huddled, shivering, on the floor of the jet under the oversized beach towel one of her kidnappers had thrown over her head on the way out of the hotel. She was still trying to make sense of what happened, keep herself from going into shock. She had seen Sam only that one time, on the balcony, after the other man had fallen, and one of these had fired the shot up at the window.

The only clue Amy had at all that Sam was alive was the craziness in the limo. They had pushed her to the floor for her own safety, one had said in accented English, but she understood they really had not wanted her to see what they were doing. All she knew now was that the plane was climbing at a terrific rate of speed. Did they know anything about her? They weren’t interested in her except as the wife of the all-American boy, wherever he was.

He had thrown a man out of a window? Her Sam?

Now she felt a draft. Someone was raising a corner of the towel with the toe of his shoe. Someone wanted a peek at her goodies? She resisted the urge to pull the towel back down again. When they had wrestled her out of the pool, one of her breasts had been exposed, and almost at once she had realized that if she let them think she was some kind of Miss Priss, they would have her completely cowed. Out of defiance, she pulled the towel down over her anyway.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” one of the men said, in that thick, unidentifiable accent. She froze –-yes, they had her cowed.

“Only a little fun.”