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because they had guns.”
    “Okay.” Wanting not to break the spell. “You asked them no questions?”
    She shook her head.
    “And they never addressed you?”
    “No.”
    “Nothing was said. Basically they left you alone in the backseat.”
    “The middle seat.”
    “Right.”
    “Yes. Except…”
    “Go ahead.”
    She was far away again. “The one who was sitting next to me. Not
next
to me… but in the same seat, the same bench, the two of us. The one who blindfolded me. I could tell somehow… he was looking at me.”
    “Looking at you.”
    “Not like that. I mean… I don’t know. Maybe it was just a feeling.”
    “Not like what?”
    “Not like, you know,
looking.
Just, I don’t know. Just
there.
”
    “You had his full attention. And then what?”
    Her eyes swelled in the recalling. “They just drove and drove. Seemed like hours. I guess I have a sort of… it seemed like it went on forever, but now it’s like there were whole blocks of time… I’m just blank. I know that at some point I realized we were off the highway, making lots of turns. I was praying they would stop, praying it would be over—and then all of a sudden they did stop, and all I wanted to do was keep on driving. The engine was still running but I could tell the ride was over. That’s when they shook my Coach bag.” She found Frawley’s face. “My credit cards, my car keys… ?”
    “If they turn up, you’ll get them back. The one in the seat next to you, he made the threat?”
    “No. No, the voice came from in front of me, the angry one. The one who took me to the vault.” She pulled at her stained fingers. “I had trouble with the combination.”
    “Was he the driver?”
    “I don’t… no, I don’t think he was. He wasn’t—because I was on the left, and his voice came from the right front.”
    “Would you say he was in charge?”
    “I don’t know. I know he did the talking then.”
    “What about the one next to you?”
    She lifted the lap of her skirt to cross her legs, and Frawley noticed that her shoes were gone, just dirty stockinged feet. “I think there might have been tension.”
    “Between them? How so?”
    “The angry one, he was the one who wanted to take me.”
    “From the bank. And the others?”
    “One of them questioned him—I’m not sure, it happened so fast. I think it was the one who sat next to me.”
    “So the angry one, as you call him, he takes your license.”
    “And then the side door opened. The one next to me helped me out.”
    “Door slid open or opened out?”
    “I… I don’t remember.”
    “And the one next to you—you say he ‘helped you out’?”
    “Just that—I was afraid of falling. I was afraid of
everything
. But he didn’t let me fall.”
    “So he didn’t pull you from the van?”
    “No. He grabbed my arm and I went. It didn’t feel like I had a choice.”
    “Did he lift you down, walk you down?”
    “I wasn’t—I mean, of
course
I was scared, I was very scared,
terrified
.” She uncrossed her legs, sitting still. “But it wasn’t, like… I didn’t think he was… maybe I was naive. If it was the angry one taking me, I would never have left the van on my own. I wouldn’t have been able to
walk
.”
    “Okay, slow down. Did you get a sense of his size?”
    “Yes. He was big.”
    “Big as in strong?”
    “As in strong, tall.”
    “Would you say he was friendly?”
    She picked up on Frawley’s implication. “No. Impersonal. Just, not angry.”
    “Okay. So you’re out of the van.”
    “I’m out of the van, and we’re walking fast. He’s got me by the arm. The ocean stunk, really foul, and the wind was hard. I thought I was at the airport—I heard planes—but it wasn’t a runway because the ground was sand around my feet. It was a beach. And basically he told me to walk to the water until I felt it on my toes, and not to take off the blindfold until then. It was so windy, and the sand was blowing up, airplanes screaming overhead—I