I wanted to fight, to cry, to scream. But there was nothing I could do. I could barely move, much less try to escape from a speeding car while surrounded by hit men.
I was going to die.
I didn't have any questions. The stranger had already told me everything I needed to know. My death was ordered by DiSalvo. He had been a father figure for a time, when he needed me. Now I was a liability, expendable, as good as dead.
I should have guessed from his phone call that he had something planned for me, that he was just testing to see what my plan was, what I thought I could accomplish without incriminating him. It was foolish, but I believed, right up until the moment the stranger with the mustache and the gun said different, that DiSalvo actually cared for me, not much, but as much as a man like that was capable of. And maybe he did, in his own sick way, by ordering the hit men to off me quickly.
I continued to stare around for help that would never come. The whir of the tires on the bridge turned into the steady hum of a long smooth roadway. The slick hiss of the rain lapping at the wheels was like a needle in my ear.
The car was silent for a while, only the sound of the stranger inhaling and exhaling as he chain-smoked breaking through.
My mind raced. I thought of how Vinnie would react when I never showed up in the morning. Would he try to defend the case with Wash? Without me? Jena would be relieved I hadn't shown up to bitch at her for whatever she'd done wrong. And who else would miss me? No one. There was nobody. No family. Not even a dog, cat, or so much as a fucking parakeet. My apartment would sit quiet and untouched. No one would even know I was gone until I'd been dead for days.
Even when an alarm finally went out, they'd never find my body. I'd be stuffed, in pieces in a fifty-gallon drum at the bottom of some muddy inlet on Long Island. I could see it in my mind. I looked down at my hands, imagining them drained of blood, stiff and broken, shoved down on top of other disjointed parts of my body.
It was over, all of it. Silent tears slipped down my cheeks. As despair pooled in my chest, I closed my eyes. I saw a flash of Lincoln's dark hair play across my eyelids. I hadn't allowed myself to think of him, the real him, for weeks. I'd created a fiction for him, Prosecutor X, a nondescript adversary. I let that fall away as I focused on him, thinking of how we had started something that was real. I would never know if it could have been more. I'd never been in love. I didn't think I was capable of it. And now the one chance I had was gone. I'd killed that chance as surely as these men were going to kill me.
Lincoln had seen through to the heart of me, and I would never know if he was the one. He would never know what happened to me, if he even cared. No one would know. And no one would really care. Sure, Vin would mourn me. But he'd move on. He had a family, a child on the way. I had nothing, no one. My own actions had made sure of it.
I choked back a sob. None of the men acknowledged my existence, much less my distress. How many times had they done this? How many hapless victims had taken this same ride?
"Here?" the driver asked as the car came up on an exit.
"Yeah, let's do it at Gilgo," the passenger said on a smoky exhale.
"Is the tide coming in now?"
"I don't know"-taking a big drag-"it doesn't matter anyway"-smoky exhale-"I never had a problem with anything being found yet. Remember that guy we tried the acid on?"
The driver laughed, a deeply unsettling sound. "Yeah, that was funny."
"Ruining a seven-hundred-dollar pair of shoes wasn't funny. The smell wasn't funny." The passenger's voice rose.
"Oh, but seeing the way he turned into goo was. Looked like bubble gum. Pink bubble gum."
The passenger nodded, his memory no doubt matching the macabre picture the driver had painted.
The car slowed and turned off the highway. We were in a more suburban area now, houses and small businesses flowing by on either side of the car. The images blurred as my tears kept coming.
The passenger turned his head again to look at me through the swirling cigarette smoke. He put his gun in his lap and pulled out a handkerchief.
"Frankie, wipe the pretty lady's tears."
The man to my left reached out a meaty hand and grabbed the fabric from the stranger. He went to wipe my face, but I took the linen square from him before he could touch me. I used it, intentionally smearing my mascara into the fibers. A petty act of defiance. I would still be killed. My mascara on his handkerchief would wash away, disappear, just like I was about to do.
The car kept going, oblivious to my tears and my fate. The area had just as quickly turned rural, trees bordering the road on each side, hiding whatever lay beyond. Twilight had passed, the shadows deepening into night.