“Is he all right?”

“Yes, yes, he is fine. Trust me. All this is absolutely necessary.” He took her chin and turned her head around so she could see his eyes. “Perhaps you’re ready to get out of that bathing suit and robe and put on something more comfortable? I have everything you need, all the brands of make-up, the perfumes. You can make yourself feel as pretty as you are.”

A little more time was right. She was down to minutes now — seconds, if for a moment he thought she was trying to mess with his mind. Some mind. He wanted her to suit up like a sixty-dollar streetwalker. Come one, come all. At least she knew what he wanted. And she’d be dead as soon as he got it. She reached up and pinched his nose. “Whatever turns you on, tough guy.”

The car went downhill and then up, turned one way and another, stopped and then started again. In the darkness Merrill tried to keep track of all the changes in direction, but he had to give it up as hopeless. He felt sick to his stomach, and he was taking deep breaths and holding them to throw it off and recover his strengths. The radio was on again, he could hear the men talking and laughing, and sometimes, when the vehicle slowed or stopped, he could hear sounds from the outside: another car or truck, an especially loud radio, crickets.

Finally the Mercedes wheeled onto a gravel road, proceeded a little distance, just a few yards, and then stopped. The driver killed the engine, which turned off the radio. The two men got out of the car, and one slapped the lid of the trunk and said something in Spanish as he passed. Merrill could hear their footsteps on the gravel as they continued to move away. Where were they going on a gravel road, that they could leave him in the car? He breathed deeply and tried to push up the lid of the trunk. Nothing.

With his ear so close to the metal, he could hear, in the distance, very faintly, another radio. After a moment, a wooden slapping sound, followed by a brief, muted, but familiar, clanging roar. Then the slapping sound again. Merrill knew that sound, too. A screen door.

This was not a road, it was a parking lot.

A restaurant parking lot!