Just as she felt as though she would begin to understand the circumstances controlling her life, those circumstances were forcibly jumbled by the impact of vehicles against their would-be rescuers. She'd seen it before in movies, but was unprepared for the reality. The action star was always able to keep the vehicle on track, no matter who was trying to run him off the road. He always managed to foil at least two or three of them, sending them careening off into the ditch with impressive explosions and stock screams. But this was no movie, and their driver was not a professional stunt man. Her mind engaged from the first nudge, but she had nothing to use. Her captors were unpredictable, and without her tools she could not hope to be of any help.

The brief struggle for control ended when the van was taken off its wheels. Sam tried to keep her balance, but the interior of the van rotated without warning. She bounced off of the roof and landed hard. She heard sharp cracks and pops, people yelling. For her, the world stopped.

"Head to the thicket." was all she heard before the rush of blood drowned her ears. The sting she'd felt earlier receded as she went into shock. There was a strange wonder in it; how everything else seemed so far away now. Her vision swam as she struggled to maintain balance.

[i]Head hurts,[/i] she mused. [i]Not much time.[/i]

The gunmen would never be able to target them through the cloud of sand, and if Sam had had her wits about her she would have known that. She certainly would have had the presence of mind to retrieve her notebook from between the seat cushions. Instead, she scrambled through the open door and wound her way through to the thicket.

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