“No problem,” Annie says as she presses end on her phone. She notes that her battery was getting low so she plugged it into the car charger.
Annie’s cell phone tracking app shows Dom is a few miles northeast of her position. She motors on. She enters Lawtey’s city limits and slows. Half way through town she spots a dark blue, Ford SUV refueling. She pulls her Miata alongside a row of gas pumps on the opposite side of the SUV. She scans her credit card in the pump’s reader and starts to gas up.
She's eyeballing a muscular man pumping gas when she faintly hears crying. Her heart starts pumping faster. She's about to go between the gas pumps and investigate when the Ford’s side door opens.
Annie recognizes Dom but not the stocky woman holding her arm. Then she sees Dom's hands duct taped while partially covered by a windbreaker with a St. Simon’s Island hotel logo. Instantly her family’s worst fear became reality. Dom was being kidnapped.
She questions whether she should confront the kidnappers or what? She decides to follow the couple to see where they're going. She realized the couple was walking to the stations outside bathroom access. She waits a few yards from the door Dom and the woman entered.
The woman's bathroom door opens. Annie and Dom's eyes lock. Dom quickly signals 'no but help' with slight side to side head movements. Annie frowns. "You have problem," the stocky woman asks Annie as she feels Dom's hesitation.
Annie forces a response, "No problem. Is that bathroom clean?” She wanted to get the woman into a conversation about dirty gas station bathrooms. The woman shakes her head and speaks in some foreign language. Annie continues into the bathroom.
She takes a quick pee giving the Ford time to depart. When she comes out, she watches the SUV turn north.
Gassed up and ready for the chase, Annie pulled out onto U.S highway 301. In the SUV Dom felt somewhat relieved. Another person knows exactly where she is and what’s happening to her. Annie will call Juan and maybe her father, too. Dom settled into the ride planning how to help any rescue attempt.
Annie mulls over one bothersome dilemma. If she tells Juan about Dom's tracking device, she'll break her BFFs promise. If she doesn't tell Juan, Dom may not be around to appreciate her keeping the promise. She needed an aspirin. The worrying gave her a headache.
She decides to call her father, Frankie “Hands” Bianca. She pressed speed dial number one. Frankie, a burly man with curly black hair in his early 60s, sees Annie on his caller ID. In a rough, deep voice demands, “How’s my beautiful daughter?” Before she answers, he asked, “Has Dominica changed her mind about marrying that non-Italian boy?” Her father and his brother Nickolas Bianca referred to Juan as that ‘non-Italian boy’.
“Yea,” she says defiantly. “But we have a problem. I think Dominica is riding in a SUV against her will.”
Frankie switches his dislike from Juan to a SUV carrying his niece. “What SUV and who’s driving it?” he demands. Annie knew she just pulled her father’s emotional hair trigger. She prepared for the integration.
After several minutes of intense drilling, Annie finished relaying the morning’s events. Frankie wanted more. “Are you sure you don’t remember anything else?”
Annie thought back to Dom getting out of the van. She wore a windbreaker. She recalled a logo. Frank half-yelled, “Annie!” Annie spat out, “Dom was wearing a windbreaker over her shoulders with her hands taped in front. I think the logo advertised a hotel on St. Simon Island. I think it’s called The Sea Golf Lodge. That’s in Georgia.”
Her father orders Annie like she was part of his crew. “Follow that van at a safe distance. Don’t let them spot you.” While they were talking, Frankie activated his cell phone’s tracking app. He sees Annie’s and Dominica’s dot near Lawtey, Florida. “Are you near Lawtey?”
Annie thinks, ‘Unbelievable, her uncle Nick’s tracking implant idea was working’. “Yes,” she answers and continues driving north.
Chapter 13
Annie started driving northward above the speed limit. She hoped to have reassured Juan and her father that the situation was under control. She spots the dark SUV in the distance. It’s pulled alongside the road.
This lonely part of the highway gave her pause. With nothing but swamps on both sides of the road, she debated stopping. She puts her cell phone on the passenger's seat and slows down. Questions raced in her head of Dom’s safety. What if Dom’s hurt and they’re going to throw her into the swamp? Did something happen to the driver? Is the SUV in trouble?
She decides to play Good Samaritan and pulls over a short distance in front of the Ford. She takes her phone off the car’s charger and strides towards the van holding the cell phone over her head. "Do you guys need any help? I have a phone!"
The skinny man rolls down the driver's window. He greets Annie with a gun in her face. Little did she know the gun was Russia’s legendary, military Makarov pistol. She was up against former military, KGB operatives. Within an instant, Annie froze. The side back door opened. As the tall, muscular man from the gas station pops out, the skinny man commands Annie from the SUV’s window, "Get in!"
Annie's protest move, trying to turn and run to her car failed. She felt a thump on her head. She instantly dropped her phone while her consciousness whirled into a spotty-black tailspin.
The SUV’s road vibrations woke her. The first thing Annie sees is Dom across from her in the rear seat. The stocky woman sat between them.
The friends had their mouths duct-taped. Dom gives her an unbelieving look – like how could you get caught? She glanced at the inside of Annie’s right thigh. Annie signaled ‘yes’ with two blinks.
They had devised a signaling system while dating in college. One blink meant ‘no’ and two blinks meant ‘yes’. They used it mostly in their bar hopping days. They would indicate a wordless yes or no about the men hustling them. They tried communicating with their eyes only to have the stocky woman threaten to put black bags over their heads.
The skinny man didn’t anticipate this complication. “Who are you?” he screamed from the driver’s seat. The stocky woman ripped the duck tape from Annie’s mouth. Annie faked crying, and then said, “I thought you were in trouble. I was just trying to be a Good Samaritan.”
“What is this Good Samaritan?” Stocky asked.
Dominica hummed mmnnn-mmmnnn from behind her taped mouth. The stocky woman ripped it from her face. Dom asked, “What do you want from us? Why is this girl here?”
Dom pretended not to know Annie. The skinny man said, “You we want. The nosey girl we don’t need.” He told the woman to tape their mouths and put the black bags over their heads.
Dom and Annie surrendered to their uncompromising positions and swayed along with the rhythms of the road. They both hoped their trackers were still functioning.
They heard the skinny man talking on the phone. He called Tariel (Hoza) Mogilevich in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. Hoza, their boss for this job, had instructed them to call in every hour. Hoza asked why they haven’t made contact for almost two hours.
The skinny man explained the interruption in the ride north. Now they had two women captives. Hoza instructed them to find out her name and anything else before they killed her. The skinny man said “da” or ok in Russian. Hoza Mogilevich wanted to make sure all was progressing as planned before calling Dominica’s father.
As they crossed the Florida-Georgia border, the stocky woman began questioning Annie. Eventually, Annie and Dominica confessed that they were cousins. Annie proclaimed, “You guys are in for a world of hurt. Our fathers know