A local woman missing- Mary Kubica

Desperate, I smack my hands against the window to try and draw
attention to us, to myself, trapped here in the back seat of my own
car.
Bea snaps, “Stop it, Meredith. What the fuck do you think you’re
doing?”
“Let me out of here,” I say, feeling like a caged animal. “You can’t
do this, Bea. You can’t do this to me.”
The only thing I can think to do is lunge into the front seat of the
car. To forcibly gain control of it. A rush of adrenaline counters the
pain in my body and head as I, impetuously, press myself into the
narrow space between the two front seats and start to go.
But then I see it, sitting there on the passenger’s seat: a knife.
Bea grabs for it at the same time as me. She gets there first. I go
rigid.
“What are you doing with that?” I ask, terrified that she already
used the knife to do something to Delilah.
“Just do what I say and no one gets hurt.” Her voice is controlled.
I sit back in my seat. I have no other choice. My mind is in flux,
trying to figure out how to get out of this. I come up empty,
despairing because of it. What is Bea planning to do to me? What
has she done to Delilah?
Bea drives through town. We turn right, then left, then right again.
It isn’t aimless; she’s hatched a plan. We leave our town and enter
another, and then another, where it’s less populated, more industrial
than residential.
“Take me home,” I beg as she drives. “Please just take me home.
We can forget this ever happened. I promise you, Bea, I won’t go to
the police. What happened to Shelby stays between you and me.”
She ignores me at first. But I keep pressing until she snaps. “Shut
up, Meredith. Please just shut the fuck up.” Her tone is cold, direct.
She pulls into the parking lot of a run-down motel just off the
highway. The building is ochre in color. It’s single story. There is a
Dumpster in the parking lot, picnic tables, a vending machine. She
parks my car in the nearly empty lot.
Bea grabs my purse from the floor of the car. She tells me what’s
going to happen. “You’re going to go in there and get a room. For a
month. Pay cash,” she says. She goes through my wallet and then