"I'll call the car," Nathaniel said, already pulling out his phone. "Ten minutes."
"Go inside," she told him. "I'll wait."
"You're sure?"
"I'm sure. Go."
He went. Nathaniel always trusted her word. He disappeared back through the restaurant doors, and Sophia stood alone under the canopy with the rain drumming the awning above her.
A white BMW pulled up to the curb.
She squinted through the rain. Right make, right color, appeared at exactly the moment she'd expected Nathaniel's car. She pulled her coat tight, ducked her head, and ran for it.
She yanked the passenger door open and threw herself inside, shaking water off her sleeves, reaching back to pull the door shut.
"Thank God, it is absolutely pouring-"
She looked up.
The man behind the wheel was not Nathaniel's driver.
He was the man from the restaurant. The one who'd gotten water thrown at him. Up close, without the frosted glass between them, she got the full picture: dark hair, sharp jaw, an easy posture in the driver's seat that somehow suggested he'd been expecting her. He was looking at her with the same expression he'd worn while wiping his face - that slow, deeply entertained smile.
"Wrong car," he said.
Her hand flew to the door handle. "I'm so sorry-"
She pulled. Nothing. Pulled again. "The handle-"
"Child lock," he said pleasantly. "Front passenger. You have to pull up and then out at the same time."
"I'll do it myself." She tried the motion he'd described. The door didn't move. She tried again.
"Or," he said, "you could sit down."
"I don't want to sit down, I want to get out of your car-"
"You got in."
"By accident."
"I didn't say on purpose." He reached past her to turn down the stereo. She yanked back against the seat to avoid his arm, but he was only adjusting the volume. "Where were you headed?"
"That's none of your business."
"You're in my car in a downpour," he said. "It's a little bit my business."
She looked through the windshield. She could see the restaurant canopy, but not Nathaniel - he was inside, waiting for the car, blissfully unaware. She needed to get out and walk back. She tried the handle a third time.
He put the car in drive.
"What are you doing-"
"Going to the highway." He checked the mirror. Calm. Unhurried. "You can get out when we get there, or you can come along."
"Stop the car." Her voice went sharp. "Right now."
"No good place to stop on this block."
"I don't care about a good-"
He accelerated.
The BMW slid into traffic with the ease of a car built to make its driver feel the world was designed for him. City lights blurred past - wet storefronts, pedestrians with umbrellas, the orange smear of a traffic light - and Sophia sat rigid in the passenger seat with her hands in her lap and her pulse in her throat, cataloging her options.
"You're insane," she said.
"Probably." He merged left. "How do you feel about the highway?"
"I feel like you should stop this car."
He didn't stop it. He didn't slow down. The city peeled away and the highway opened up ahead of them and the rain came harder here without buildings to break it, and the speedometer climbed.
And kept climbing.
"Please slow down," she said.
Something in her voice changed. He heard it. He glanced at her once.
Then he braked.
Not gradually. Hard. The car lurched, the seatbelt grabbed, and Sophia's hands shot out and hit the dashboard as she pitched forward, and then everything stopped.
She sat there for a second, breathing.
"You idiot." Her voice shook. "You absolute idiot, what is wrong with you-"
"You said slow down."
"I said-" She pressed her palms flat on her thighs. She was furious. Genuinely, thoroughly furious, and her hands were trembling, and she needed to get out of this car. "Let me out."
"We're on the highway."
"I don't care."
"Four miles to the nearest exit. No cabs out here." He looked out at the dark, rain-swept highway. "No Ubers either."
"Then I'll walk four miles."
"In those heels." It wasn't mocking. He said it almost gently. "In this."
She looked at the door. Rain, wind, darkness, asphalt. She thought about it very seriously for approximately four seconds.
Then she pulled the door shut.
The silence in the car felt different now - smaller and closer. She hated him. She hated him with a satisfying completeness that had nowhere to go.
She pulled out her phone.
[Hey - ran into an old friend outside, she's just in town for tonight. Going to catch up. Don't wait up!]
She sent it. Stared at it. Felt the quiet, familiar sting of lying to someone who had never once lied to her.
His reply came back in two seconds. A single heart emoji. No questions.
She turned her phone face-down in her lap.
"Happy?" she said.
"Getting there," said the man who had kidnapped her, and put the car back in drive.
Twenty minutes later they were parked at a rest stop off the highway, engine idling, rain still going. He'd gone inside at some point and come back with two coffees, and there was one in the cupholder next to her.
She didn't touch it for a while. Then she did.
"The proposal," he said.
"How much did you hear?" she asked.
"Enough." He glanced at her. "Did you say yes?"
"No." She wrapped both hands around the cup. "I said I needed time."
He was quiet for a moment. The space between them felt oddly comfortable - she didn't want it to feel comfortable, she wanted to stay angry, but the warmth of the coffee and the sound of rain on the roof made it difficult to sustain full outrage. He was watching the rain, not her, and she found herself looking at the side of his face without meaning to.