Лори Касс: Lending А Paw

Nothing happened. I gaped. Locked? People locked their barn doors? A wave of complete defeat drained all the energy from my body. I’d come so far. . . .

No. There had to be a way in. I took a closer look at the door. No hinges. Duh. I pushed instead of pulled, and it creaked open.

A musty smell rushed out to greet me. I stepped inside quickly and shut the door.

Complete darkness.

I reopened the door a crack and let in enough light that I was able to spot the quad parked in the middle of the large space. Shadows all around suggested smaller rooms and old animal stalls, but I didn’t bother poking around. I wanted to get back over the hill to my car and home.

Dumping my pack on the ground, I unzipped it and hunted around for my cell. I walked fast around the quad, snapping a few flash pictures, zooming in on the Off-Road Vehicle tag slapped on the front fender.

Done. Time to skedaddle. If this wasn’t enough proof for the detectives, I’d have to keep my promise to Holly some other way.

I squatted down to put the cell back into my backpack. Just as the zipper hummed shut, complete darkness descended in front of my eyes.

“What . . . ?” My hands went up. Found cloth. “Hey!”

An unforgiving grip grabbed at my wrists and pulled them back behind me, one, then the other.

“What are you doing? I was hiking up in the hills and got lost. I thought maybe—”

My spur-of-the-moment lie was cut short when I felt my wrists being bound with something strong and sticky. Tape of some kind. Duct tape, or, even worse, the Gorilla Tape that Rafe always went on about. “Strongest tape ever made,” he’d bragged, brandishing a roll. “This stuff won’t ever come off.”

“Listen,” I said, “whatever you’re doing, there’s no harm done at this point, right? Cut me loose and I’ll leave. Maybe spend a night in the woods, which will be unpleasant, but I’ll live, and in the morning I’ll find where I parked my car and no one will have to know anything about this and—”

I felt a small rush of air on my face. He was lifting whatever it was that he’d used to cover my head. “Thanks,” I said gratefully, even though he hadn’t lifted it very far. I still couldn’t see, but it’d be okay in a minute. “It was getting a little stuffy in there.” I gave a weak chuckle. “If you—”

He pushed my jaw shut and slapped tape over my mouth. My yell of protest got as far as my teeth and went no farther. The bag came back over my head and was tied down. I kicked, and hit only air. I tried to pull away, but his grip held me fast. I turned into a kicking, yelling, pulling, shoving, screaming, panicking, sweating mess of a human being. And nothing I did made any difference.

He grabbed my wrists, and pulled them up behind me. Pain shot through my arms, my shoulders, my back. Nothing existed but the agony being inflicted on me; nothing mattered so much as that it end.

Which it did when I started walking. He gave me a shove, I took a stumbling step. Another shove, another step. I couldn’t see anything—for all I knew, he’d dug a hole and was going to push me into it and bury me alive. As the idea occurred to me, I slowed. Immediately, he grabbed my wrists again and yanked them high.

I quick-stepped forward. If he wanted me in a pit, I was going in a pit and there was nothing I could do about it.

Fury sang through my veins. Frustration came next, with a solid determination following close behind. I was going to get out of this. If he shoved me into a pit, I was going to climb out. If he tried to bury me alive, I’d hold my breath until he left and then climb out. He was not going to beat me. He. Was. Not.

My anger sustained me during the interminable walk across the barn. Shove, stumble. Shove, stumble. The barn hadn’t seemed nearly this large when I’d walked into it. I spent half a second wanting this horrendous journey to end, then spent a much longer time not wanting it to end. Whatever was waiting for me couldn’t be better than this. Stumbling around in the dark wasn’t so bad when you considered possible alternatives.

Shove. Stumble. Shove. Stumble. Then a very, very hard shove.

I ran forward one, two, three steps, almost falling, sinking low to avoid falling because there’s not much worse than falling with your hands tied behind your back. Then, breathing hard, I stood straight, anticipating his next shove.

It never came.

Instead, a door banged shut and a bolt slammed home. The door rattled a few times and I heard a grunt. Heavy footsteps crossed the barn. Another door slammed shut. Then nothing.

He was leaving.

I was alone. And not dead.

Two big pluses. Two extremely big pluses. And if I wanted to add more items to the positive side of the column, I wasn’t in a pit, buried alive, or even injured if you didn’t count the bruises I was sure were forming on my back.

So . . . now what?

Much depended on what he was going to do. If he was headed for the house to find his killing weapon of choice, I was pretty much out of luck. Maybe I’d be able to work my way out of my bonds, get out of whatever room I was in, and run for help, but each of those things could take hours and he might be back in minutes. If that was his plan, the best I could do was to . . . to what? Make my death as hard for him as possible? Wouldn’t that mean I’d be inflicting even more pain on myself, with the same eventual result?

I debated the point with myself, then decided that since the thought of giving in was making me angry all over again, one issue was resolved.

Of course, I still had no idea who this guy was. I knew it was a guy, because when he’d been pushing me around, I’d felt arms too hairy to belong to a female. So Caroline Grice was out, unless she’d hired her gardener to follow me. Was it Gunnar? Was it Larry, aka Kyle? Was it another of the Larabee relatives? I still didn’t know.

The rumble of a engine starting made me blink. I hadn’t seen a vehicle; it must have been parked on the other side of the barn. One point off Minnie’s score for a poor job of reconnoitering.

I tilted my head, listening, trying to ignore the fear that was growing and spreading fast.

The car made its way down the gravel drive and onto the narrow gravel road I’d seen coming down the hill. It didn’t take long for the noise of the car to fade away completely.

It took a lot longer for my sobs to stop.

Chapter 19

When I ran out of tears, I started thinking. That didn’t work very well at first, because I kept thinking that the most likely possibility for my future was one of two options. Either the bad guy would come back and finish me off, or I’d die from dehydration and starvation. Years from now, someone would come across my desiccated body. Dental records would eventually reveal my identity, my parents would get a chance to say good-bye, Tucker might see my name in the paper and spare a thought for a woman he barely remembered, and the mystery of how I’d come to die in a barn would go forever unsolved.

Unsolved? The thought brought me to some semblance of sense. The mystery of my death wouldn’t go unsolved, not if I could help it. I had too much to do before I could even consider dying. I wanted to see the house of Green Gables, to track down the equivalent of St. Mary Mead, to find out if there really was a Zebra Drive in Botswana. Besides, if I died now, I’d never find out how the tangled love lines in the boardinghouse got untangled.

Time to stop thinking and start doing.

I shuffled over to a wall and put my back up against it, then slid down its rough surface until I hit the floor. Relax, I told myself. The only way you’re going to get out of this is to stay calm and loosen those muscles. Breathe deep. Center yourself.