Body Rides Read Online Free Page A

being known throughout the world as the woman who got abducted and tortured by some sadistic maniac. That I was found naked and tied to a tree. It won’t just be strangers who find out about it, either. It’ll be everybody who knows me. All my relatives and friends . . .’
    ‘Doesn’t sound very pleasant,’ Neal admitted.
    ‘There’ll be pictures of me everywhere. Guys will probably look at them and have daydreams about stripping me and using pliers and knives.’ She threw the rope down and rubbed her right wrist. ‘I want to keep my life,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to become public property.’
    ‘You talked me into it.’
    ‘You’re with me?’
    ‘Yeah. I don’t want to end up in court or on Hard Copy .’

Three
     
    ‘Are your clothes around here someplace?’ Neal asked.
    Elise, still rubbing her wrist, shook her head.
    ‘Here, you can wear this.’ Neal took off his shirt and gave it to her.
    ‘Thanks.’ She put it on. As she fastened the buttons, she turned away and walked toward the body. The tail of the big, loose shirt draped her buttocks.
    Neal followed her, the pliers in his hand. ‘What’re you going to do?’ he asked.
    ‘Borrow his shoes, for starters.’ Crouching by the body, she started to pull them off. ‘Don’t want to wreck my feet on the way out,’ she said. ‘He carried me over here.’
    He carried her naked?
    ‘I’ll carry you out, if you want,’ Neal offered.
    ‘Thanks, but you don’t have to do that.’
    I wouldn’t mind, he thought.
    She stood up. Balancing on one foot, then the other, she put on the man’s dark sneakers. ‘Disgusting,’ she muttered.
    ‘What?’
    ‘Wearing his shoes. But at least they aren’t gigantic.’ She squatted and tied the laces. Then she duck-walked away from the body and tugged a couple of thick, leafy weeds out of the ground.
    ‘What’re you doing?’ Neal asked.
    ‘I want to hide him.’
    ‘Shouldn’t we just get out of here?’
    She twisted sideways and tossed the weeds at the body. One landed on the chest, the other on the face. ‘If the cops were coming,’ she said, ‘they’d be here by now. Don’t you think so?’
    ‘I don’t know. Depends on how busy they are, I guess.’
    ‘I think they’d show up fast for a report of shots being fired.’
    ‘Probably,’ Neal admitted. He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket. As he wiped the pliers, he said, ‘I’d still like to get out of here.’
    ‘This won’t take long.’ She pulled out more weeds.
    Done wiping the pliers, Neal squatted beside the man. He placed the tool on the ground near the gloved hand.
    ‘The longer he goes without being found,’ Elise said, ‘the better off we’ll be. Don’t you think?’
    ‘Yeah,’ Neal said. ‘Things’ll deteriorate. It won’t be so easy for the cops to pinpoint when he died.’
    ‘And people might forget they saw us,’ Elise added.
    ‘Let’s hope nobody does see us.’
    ‘But if they do, it won’t matter so much if the body doesn’t get found for a while. If nobody knows for sure when anything happened . . .’
    ‘Yeah. You’re right.’
    ‘I wish we had a shovel.’
    ‘That’d be pushing it,’ Neal said. ‘The quicker we get out of here, the better.’
    ‘Maybe so.’
    ‘You go ahead with that,’ he told her. ‘I’ll look for my brass.’
    ‘Your brass?’
    ‘My cartridge casings. I want to find them if I can. We should try not to leave anything behind.’
    On hands and knees, he searched the ground to the right of where he had stood while firing. He quickly found two of the shells. The chances of finding all four were remote, but he figured there was no reason to quit. Not yet. Not while Elise continued to work at concealing the body.
    She hurried about, pulling bunches of weeds and grass, and even uprooting a couple of small bushes.
    Neal found the third casing. It must’ve flown six feet before landing on the ground beside an old beer can.
    ‘That should about do it,’ Elise