Лори Касс: Lending А Paw

Smiling, I mentally patted myself on the back for having such a cheery thought first thing after sleeping in the locked-up corner of a barn with my wrists tied together. Good for me. My self-esteem, which should have been at rock bottom, was, due to some miracle, doing okay. Now for the rest of me.

I pushed myself to my feet and looked at my surroundings. The morning sun didn’t exactly flood the place, but enough light was filtering in through gaps in the wood that I could see well enough. The door was indeed solid, the boards over the window were indeed stuck on tight, and the ceiling was indubitably out of reach. The only opening I could see anywhere was a gap between the ceiling and the top of the inside wall.

Hmm.

If I could get up there, I might be able to wriggle through, but since there was no way I could scale a ten-foot-high smooth wall, there wasn’t much point in . . . wait a minute.

The window. It was close to that inside wall.

If I could get my hands free, I could use the thin boards that framed the window as a sort of ladder. I could climb to the top of the window, lever myself up and out over the wall. An average-sized man would never be able to do that—the half-inch wood around the window would surely collapse under his weight—but this compact woman could.

The first part of the plan, however, might be the hardest of all.

I looked at my bound wrists. Thick black tape encircled each one, then wrapped around them both. Twice. It was thicker than normal duct tape, and it felt stickier. Duct tape on steroids, Rafe had called it. It’ll stick to brick, stone, stucco, or plaster, he’d said, and it was doing a fantastic job of holding my wrists together.

The result of last night’s inspection-by-feel of the walls matched what I saw now. No nails hanging anywhere to help me out, no screws, no hooks, no nothing. I couldn’t even find a good sharp splinter to help me puncture the tape. My bad luck I got imprisoned in a barn built to last.

I sat down and studied the stupid tape. It was just tape, after all. There had to be two ends, and one of them had to be on the outside. All I had to do was find the end, peel up one corner, and unwrap the whole thing. Easy.

Unfortunately, the outside end was on the far side of my wrists, making it the worst location possible for unwrapping. I could hardly see it, could barely even feel it.

I picked at the unmoving end and got nowhere.

A tool. My kingdom for a tool. My grandfather had always carried a penknife. My dad carried a money clip that had a bottle opener. All I had was me and the clothes I wore; shorts, T-shirt, underwear, socks, and shoes.

I smiled a wide, happy smile. Shoes. I was wearing shoes. With laces.

Bending forward, I untied my left shoe and pulled the lace through the eyelets. I grabbed the aglet at one end of the lace and pushed it up against the end of the tape.

Nothing.

Push. Push again. Push again.

Nothing.

Despair leaked into my formerly almost-perky attitude. The perkiness must have come from the unrealistic expectation that formulating a plan was as good as having it come to fruition. Sometimes I hated real life.

Push. Push-at-this-freaking-strong-tape! Move!

Nothing.

I took a deep breath, trying to stop the tears, trying to keep on trying to get free. It wasn’t easy. I couldn’t think of any other way to get loose, so I had to go on trying. Because the only other choice was to sit in the corner and wait to die. And that wasn’t a true choice, not really.

Push. Push. Push.

Time passed.

Slowly.

The room heated up. Yesterday’s humidity lingered on. The sunlight shifted around, slanting now from the left instead of the right. There wasn’t a breath of air. Sweat stuck to my fingers, rolled down my face, pooled in places I didn’t want to think about. At least my status of dehydration meant I didn’t have any full-bladder issues.

Push. Push. Push.

I rested. Maybe slept a little.

Push. Push . . .

And then the tape moved. Just a teensy bit, but it moved.

I sucked in a breath. Maybe I’d imagined it. Maybe I was hallucinating. Maybe . . .

Holding that breath, I lifted my wrists to see. I hadn’t imagined it. I’d actually, finally, made the end of this insanely strong tape move a little.

I would have cheered, but a sudden urgency overcame me. The guy could be coming back even now. Just because he’d been gone a long time didn’t mean he wouldn’t come back. If he came back now, right before I escaped . . . if he found me . . .

No. That wouldn’t happen. I wouldn’t let it happen.

Fighting panic, I jabbed at the end of the tape.

Just a little more, a little more, there !

I’d pulled off an inch of tape. Hallelujah! I rolled the shoelace aglet up inside the sticky stuff, used my hot, swollen fingers to tie the other end of lace through an eyelet of the shoe, stretched my leg out, and pulled.

The ripping sound of the tape unfurling was the sweetest sound I’d ever heard.

I kept rolling the unstuck tape into a larger and larger sticky ball, kept using the leverage of my leg to pull off more tape, rolling, pulling, rolling, pulling. . . . Free!

Of their own volition, my hands moved apart as far as they could go, as if they wanted nothing to do with each other. A hiccuping sob bubbled up out of me. Silly old hands. You’d have thought they’d have gotten used to each other, tied together like that for so long.

How long, in fact, had it been? I had no idea.

The urgency came back with a vengeance. I untied the one end of the shoelace and relaced it through the shoe. I yanked at the big ball of tape, but couldn’t get the other end free of the sticky mess. Cursing, I was forced to leave the tape attached to the lace, and tied a bad and very lumpy knot.

I scrambled to my feet and ran across the small room. Hand there, foot there, and I was balancing on the bottom of the window frame. Hand up, foot up, hand up higher into a cobwebby darkness, foot up on the window frame’s top, other foot beside it.

Gingerly, I stood up straight, doing my best not to look down. I didn’t think I was afraid of heights, but I’d never been standing on a board not even an inch wide with my head at least ten feet off the ground before, either.

I poked my head over the top of the wall. Please, let there be a way out. Please . . .

The darkness on the other side was deep. But that didn’t mean there wasn’t an unlocked door through which I could escape. All I had to do was figure out a way to get over the wall and drop down on the other side without getting stuck in the ceiling or breaking a leg on the way down.

I stood there, my legs starting to quiver, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the dark. Was that a shelf down there? Maybe it would hold me. Maybe . . .

The sound of gravel crunching changed everything.

Without thought, I jumped high and shoved myself into the small space at the top of the wall. I didn’t fit, didn’t fit, had to fit, had to get through and out and away before he got here, had to go out, and then my head and shoulders were through and—

Voices. Footsteps. Car doors opening and closing.

I grabbed the top of the wall, pulled, couldn’t get my big fat butt through the gap, wiggled, squirmed, pulled the rest of me over to the other side, slithered down the wall, hung on as my feet scrabbled for the shelf.

Where was it? I had to find it couldn’t risk landing on it had to run had to get away had to—

A hand clamped around my ankle.

“NO!” I yelled, screamed, shrieked. I kicked, I kicked again, I was not going without a fight, he’d have to kill me in order to kill me he’d have to—

“Ms. Hamilton,” said a male voice, “this is Detective Inwood. You can come down. Don’t worry. You’re safe now. It’s okay.”