While I normally put in a lot of internal links to previous, related posts here, I won’t be doing that for what I hope will be thirty NaNoWriMo posts. If you have jumped into or stumbled onto this story in mid-adventure, there are plenty of other ways to navigate around the site to find previous installments. Actually doing so is left as an exercise to the student.
The “finish line” is in sight, at least the one that says to “win” NaNoWriMo you need 50,000+ words. Even if I don’t get a full chapter and 3,000 words in tonight (and I won’t, I’m falling asleep with my eyes open already), I’ll probably pass that line either tomorrow or Sunday.
But that’s not the end of the writing at all. My original goal was to get the whole “zeroth draft” of the novel done in November, and that will probably mean something more like 80,000 to 90,000 words. From there I’ll let it sit for a couple of months and work on other stuff, then come back to it and start some serious cleanup and rewrite work. Even though I’ve never written a full novel before, I’ve written plenty of papers for school programs, written a fanzine for years, and written documents such as user’s manuals for work. I may be doing it “wrong”, but it’ll do until I get told otherwise.
With that first (artificial) “finish line” in sight and plenty of time to go in the month, it’s so, so tempting to slack off. Especially when I’m pretty worn down from the last two weeks. But do you remember near the end of “Star Wars” when the little X-fighters are attacking the Death Star and one of the attacking groups before Luke’s is getting close and the group leader keeps saying, “Stay on target. Stay on target! STAY ON TARGET!”
Yeah, him. If I take a day off now, this close to that milestone or finish line, I’ll be hearing that voice all night long. Sometimes I think I have a rotten brain. Sometimes I’m not best friends with my rotten brain.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
”What a coincidence running into you here, Tom,” Ellen said. “If I were a less trusting person I might think that you were following me.”
“I can see how it might look like that,” Tom replied. “If I were a more trusting person I might have showed up on time to meet you at your store four days ago. Oh, wait, I did, didn’t I?”
“That was unavoidable, but I’m sorry that you couldn’t take a hint. But you are tenacious. I should have expected that. Dahlia said that you would be.”
That got Tom’s full attention. “So, she is around here someplace. Given the way you’ve acted and your current choice of companions here, would it be too much to ask that I could just talk to her for a couple hours?”
“Why, Tom, that’s why we’re here. We’ve been looking for you all morning so that we can take you to her.”
“Right.” Tom weighed his options, which seemed limited. “Is this an official kidnapping or are we using a different euphemism for it these days?”
“It’s not a kidnapping at all, Tom. You’ve misjudged us, and I can see why you might not trust me. But I assure you, you don’t have to come with us. You can stay here, or leave town, or do whatever you want.”
“So even with the dramatic entrance, the blacked out SUV straight from the State Department collection, and the two incredibly large and threatening dudes, you want me to believe that I can just say ‘Thanks, but no thanks,’ and we’ll just part friends?”
“That’s exactly what will happen if you want, Tom.” She jerked her head toward the SUV and the two bodyguards turned and got back inside. “Of course, you won’t get to talk to your aunt. I thought that was important to you, but maybe I was wrong. Plus, you never can tell if there might be some legal issues you’ll have to deal with, maybe something with certain electronic equipment that you appear to have misplaced. Who knows? Then, once the police start looking at that, there might be all kinds of things that they could find you connected to. They might get Homeland Security involved. They’re always fun to deal with. Oh, and it really would not be a good idea for you to do any further spying or trespassing out in the desert. It’s dangerous out there, you could get hurt. But it’s your choice. We wouldn’t dream of forcing you to go anywhere you didn’t want to go.”
“I see,” said Tom. He saw only too clearly what was going on. “When we’re done, you’ll just bring me back to town here?”
“When you’re done, sure, we’ll bring you back right here if that’s what you want,” Ellen said. Tom didn’t trust her for a second.
“Should I go up and get some clothes or is this going to be a day trip?”
“You don’t need to bring anything, we’ll take care of anything you need. We’ve wasted enough time, we should go now.”
“Okay, then, let’s go.” He let go of his backpack, which was still sitting on Margaret’s passenger seat, closed the jeep door, and walked toward Ellen.
Ellen held out her hand, palm up. “I believe you have a toy that we would prefer you not bring along?”
Tom realized that denying it would be pointless, so he fished out his keys and pulled the tracking device off of the ring. Ellen took it, dropped it to the pavement, and crushed it under her boot heel.
“Now go get your camera. There really is no need to leave it for this nice lady and get her involved in our discussion for no good reason, correct? Especially since we’re being so nice to you. The least you can do is to share your pictures with us.”
Tom narrowed his eyes, but turned back, opened the car door, and unzipped the backpack. He called out to Ellen, “Do you want the whole backpack with the binoculars and water and snacks and gloves and all of the other gear, or just the camera?”
“Just bring the camera and any memory cards. I simply would like to look at your pictures, if you please.” It sounded like Ellen was getting impatient at last.
Tom dug the camera out from underneath the binoculars and other gear, pausing a half second to slip one of the remaining tracking devices up his sleeve and praying that it wouldn’t fall out. As he stood bent over the backpack and digging through the gear, he talked quietly and quickly to Margaret without ever looking up at her.
“Thanks for the help, I really appreciate it. Tell Jason that things have changed and I won’t need that motorcycle after all, but if he hasn’t sold it in a few days he can call me back, okay?” Without waiting for an answer, he grabbed the camera, closed the door again, and walked away with Ellen. They both got in and the SUV took off onto the highway.
Margaret had no idea what had just happened, but she knew that it wasn’t good. Had Tom really just been forced to go with those people? He had called that woman “Ellen”. Wasn’t that the name of the lady from Colorado he had mentioned? Who was “Jason” and what was the deal with a motorcycle? And was any of this her problem at all?
None of the people in the car had been in the group which had shown up at her office this morning with their threats. By the same token, the people who had taken Tom hadn’t seemed to recognize her at all. For a second she had a brief hope that she had the option of just walking away from this mess.
That hope didn’t last long. She didn’t know which possibility was worse, that the guys threatening her were with the guys who kidnapped Tom, or that they were a different group. If they were part of the same group, sooner or later they would put together the pieces. When that happened, she would not be safe at all, and Neil would probably be in danger also.
If they were a different group, then she still had to deal with someone trying to put her out of business but now she would do it without her star witness. If anything happened to Tom, she would be a key witness to his kidnapping and she would be in danger then as well.
Beyond all of that, she simply wasn’t the sort of person who could watch someone get abducted right in front of her and do nothing about it. All of the choices in front of her seemed to be bad, worse than bad, and a lot worse than bad, but she knew what the correct choice was, even if it might be the hardest. She was going to have to find a way to help Tom.
(At 22:53, Chapter Fifteen to be continued…)
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 