Saving Mr. Bell

Chapter Three

Rudolf

What the hell was going on? Since when did documentary makers, successful ones at that, kidnap people? Because hell, yes, I recognized him. The man who’d driven me away from the club was Arlo Thomas, the same man who I’d spent time with a few weeks shy of my eighteenth birthday, my father’s idea to feature me in a documentary to elevate my public profile ending as suddenly as it had begun.

Arlo and the film crew were there one day and gone the next, without even having had the courtesy to say goodbye. I hadn’t seen him since. Until now. I’d seen mention of him in the media, my attention snagged by it being someone I’d once known, but our paths had never crossed. If this was some new-fangled way of getting an exclusive interview, I wanted no part of it.

“Rudolf?”

Right. I hadn’t answered his question. “Yeah, I recognize you.” He smiled again, all white teeth and disarming friendliness. “How long has it been?” The answer held little interest for me apart from as a means to make conversation. That’s what you did with kidnappers, right? Kept them talking. Made them like you.

“Six years.”

“That long, huh?” Time flew when you were on a never-ending whistlestop tour of the entire globe. His apparent friendliness filled me with hope of resolving this quickly. “Listen, I’m sure we can work something out interview-wise, but this isn’t the way to do it.”

Arlo laughed. He actually laughed. “You think I want an interview?”

“I can’t think why else you’d trap me here and take my phone.” I held my hand out. “Speaking of which, I’ll have it back now.” I wiggled my fingers in the universal sign for waiting and running out of patience.

Arlo turned back to the front and stared out of the windscreen. “I can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because then you’ll call someone.”

“Well, yeah, that’s what phones are for.”

“I didn’t go to all this trouble for you to raise the alarm.”

“All what trouble?”

The pause was long enough to make me think he wouldn’t answer. “Finding out where you were going to be, waiting for you to come out of the club.”

So, this was premeditated. Whatever this was. If he didn’t want an interview, then what the fuck did he want? “You know you sound like a stalker, don’t you?”

His fingers tightened around the steering wheel. He was wearing leather gloves. It made me think of motorbikes. Motorbikes and murderers, but I didn’t dwell for too long on the latter. “Yeah. I’m aware.”

I reached to the side and rattled the door handle, my movements less urgent now the panic had subsided. “Listen… just let me out. No one has to know about this. I’ll tell Jade I went under a bridge and we got cut off, and that I opted for a cab because I didn’t want to wait for the car to come get me. There’s nothing I do that would surprise her.”

Arlo chuckled. “I bet.”

“Nothing that wouldn’t piss her off either,” I added as something of an afterthought.

“Are you sure you want me to let you out?” When I frowned, Arlo jerked his head toward the window. I followed his gaze to what lay outside, all my focus having been on the man behind the driver’s seat. And what lay outside was… nothing. No buildings. No cars. No houses. No streetlights. Nothing but trees as far as I could see. Which wasn’t far when it was pitch-black.

“Because I don’t think you could walk back to Salzburg,” Arlo said conversationally. “Even if you could work out what direction it’s in, it’s at least ten miles. There are probably bears out there, or wolves.”

I swallowed, not liking the sound of tramping through the undergrowth with wild animals on my tail very much at all. “You’re just saying that to scare me.”

Arlo shrugged. “I’m not really up on the flora and fauna of Austria. How about you?”

I wasn’t, but I wasn’t about to admit that. “In that case, you’ll need to turn the car around and take me back.”

There was a moment where I thought Arlo might agree, but then he shook his head. “Not happening. I’ve come too far to quit so soon.”

He reached over to the passenger seat, my mind going into overdrive, time slowing. Was he going for a weapon? A knife? A gun? But when he lifted his hand, there was no flash of cold steel. No yawning barrel of a gun, either. Just a tartan blanket. I swallowed down a bubble of hysterical laughter that wanted out.

Arlo threw it between the seats, and I caught it. Next came a bottle of water. “It’s not drugged,” he said when I eyed it warily.

“Course not,” I retorted. “I never thought it was.”

Arlo’s snort as he started the engine said I wasn’t convincing anyone. I drank half the water in a series of long gulps before tucking the blanket around me. I had it, so why not? There was no point in being cold if I didn’t need to be. “At least tell me where you’re taking me.”

“You’ll see when we get there.”

I didn’t expect to sleep, but there was something about the movement of the car and the warmth of the blanket that made me drowsy. The lateness of the hour and the amount of alcohol I’d imbibed probably had something to do with it as well. Besides, there was nothing else to do. I couldn’t look at my phone because Arlo refused to give it back, and he’d lapsed into silence, the dark, winding road demanding all his concentration.

When I woke, the world had turned white. I jerked upright, wondering if I was dreaming. But no, it really had turned white.

“It’s snowing,” Arlo said, strain present in his voice.

“I can see that. Why?”

“It’s cold enough that the water vapor in the clouds has frozen. Therefore, instead of rain, we get snow. Most people think it’s frozen rain, but it skips that stage altogether and—”

I cut into the science lesson before he could bore me back to sleep. “That’s not what I meant.” I didn’t really know what I’d meant. Only that things were going from bad to worse. I could barely see the road, the flakes large and heavy enough that they obscured what little visibility hadn’t already been stolen by the encroaching darkness. “Should you be driving in this?”

“Probably not,” Arlo said, his cheerfulness at odds with the way he hunched over the steering wheel. “But do you really want to stop here?”

Here, was more trees on either side of the road and nothing else. “I want to be in my luxury hotel suite in Salzburg with central heating and room service. But what I want doesn’t seem to matter to you.”

Arlo didn’t respond. I stayed awake for the rest of the trip, worried that if I dropped off to sleep again, I might miss the part where we skidded off the road and ended up in an icy ravine. The road only got bumpier and the snow heavier until I gripped the seat and wondered if it was too late to find religion and start praying.

“Bad weather wasn’t forecast,” Arlo said out of the blue. “I checked, and it wasn’t supposed to happen for a few more days.”

“We should sue,” I said just as the car hit a pothole and launched me into the air for a few seconds before I crashed back down.

“Yeah,” Arlo agreed.

When the car rolled to a stop ten minutes later, I didn’t know who was more relieved, me, or the man behind the steering wheel taking in air like he’d been holding his breath for the last twenty miles. After what felt like an age, he sat up straighter. “Are you ready to run?”

Once upon a time, I’d watched a horror film about a group of bored businessmen who’d gotten their kicks by luring tourists to a remote location and then hunting them. It’d been an absolute gore fest, the tourists meeting a grizzly end one by one, until only one survived to raise the alarm. Is that what this was? Was Arlo making a documentary on sick fucks who got off on torturing people? Why me? Did someone hate me enough that they’d requested me, like a menu, but for people rather than food? “Will you chase me?” Will somebody else chase me while you film?

Arlo frowned. “What? I just thought you’d want to get inside quickly out of the snow.” He gestured out of the window and I saw what I’d missed while I’d been letting my imagination run away with me, namely an old-fashioned log cabin.

“Tada!” Arlo said. “We got here safe and sound. It took longer than I expected because of the snow, but better late than never.”

“And here is?” Him not bothering to answer didn’t come as a surprise. That seemed to be his modus operandi, to only answer the questions he wanted to.

Arlo unclicked his seatbelt. “It’s either come in, or stay in the car.”

Yeah, I’d already worked that out. I just hadn’t decided which option was preferable. I checked my watch. Four in the morning. Which meant the entire journey had taken less than two hours. It seemed longer. I must have only slept for about an hour. I eyed the log cabin with some trepidation, still not entirely sure it wouldn’t harbor a group of bloodthirsty businessmen who wanted to cut off my fingers and string me up from the ceiling. Perhaps I needed to stop watching horror films.