John Sandford - Field of Prey

She was naturally a bit claustrophobic, and being bound, gagged, and blinded triggered all the phobia she had. She began to struggle against the tape, and then, because she could bend her legs, to mindlessly kick the panels on the inside of the truck.

The killer shouted something at her. She didn’t know what he said, but it stopped her kicking, because it interrupted the panic that had gripped her. When she’d controlled her breathing, she systematically tested the bonds on her legs, hands, and arms; and finding a cut in the carpeting of the truck she was in, she tried to scrape the tape off her eyes. If she could only see, she might make some progress. So she scraped, and turned, and scraped, and ripped up her forehead and both of her ears, and got nowhere.

She could get some leverage on the tape around her ankles, and tried to kick off her boots, but failed. Her arms were taped close to her body, and her hands were bound so tightly that she couldn’t feel her fingers.

The truck rolled on for a long time. Occasionally, she heard another car pass, but even that ended. The driver turned onto a gravel road, and that continued for several minutes, and then they were back on blacktop. He was picking his way across the countryside.

A new tactic: she straightened out the best she could, then rolled back and forth across the inside of the truck, trying to find something-anything-in the truck that she could use somehow.

She found nothing, and she began to panic again.

This could be it , she thought. She wouldn’t give up, but if he simply decided to strangle her, she was done. He was a madman, so she doubted that there would be any way to placate him. She had to work him, somehow. If she got the tape off her eyes, if she got it off her mouth, she had to talk to him, work him. She had quick hands, if she could get her hands free and get close enough to him, if she could blind him, scratch his eyes. .

The ride seemed to go on forever.

Then it ended.

R-A used the remote to open the garage door, drove in, killed the engine, closed the garage door, and as it was rolling down, turned and called, “Honey, we’re home.”

Mattsson did nothing; no more kicking.

R-A said, “Okay, be that way.” He climbed out of the truck, went around to the back, opened the cargo doors, grabbed the tape between her ankles, dragged her halfway out of the truck, then tossed her up on his shoulder again. She struggled against him, but she was so bound up that it was hopeless, and so she stopped.

R-A carried her through the door into the house, where Horn waited in his wheelchair. “You got her.”

“Yes, I did,” R-A said. “Slick as a whistle.”

“Taking her straight down the basement?”

“Yup.”

Mattsson heard it all, but didn’t understand-it was the killer’s voice on both sides of the conversation.

R-A walked through the house to the basement door, with Mattsson still over his shoulder, dropped down the steps, banging her feet against the wall a couple of times, then around the corner and into the bomb shelter. He put her down on the concrete floor and said, “Don’t go anywhere, I’ll be right back.”

He was back in a minute, with another roll of tape and a box cutter with a razor blade. He said, “If you fight me, you’re gonna wind up getting cut, and it won’t do you no good. I’m working with a razor here.”

Sitting on her legs, to pin them, he taped her legs around her calves, then cut the tape off her ankles, peeled it away, then cut the laces on her boots and pulled them off with her socks. Then he re-taped her ankles with several wraps of tape.

Her arms were pinned by more wraps, and he left them, but peeled the tape off her wrists, then re-taped them, behind her back. Then he cut the tape that wrapped her eyes, and she looked up at him for the first time; her eyes as hard as marbles, and angry.

“Mmm, you are upset,” R-A said to her, in a teasing tone. “I’m going to leave that tape on your mouth, ’cause I don’t want to hear you pissing and moaning.”

She made some noises, but they were unintelligible, and he ignored them. He rolled her onto her stomach, sat on her back, straddling her, and began to cut her clothes away. That freed her arms, but as soon as her clothing was gone, he got the tape out again and, lifting her by her throat, again bound her arms to her sides. She began to flop around, so he waited until she was on her back, said, “Them’s some nice titties,” and backhanded her face, hard, and she stopped fighting.

He rolled her back over and cut her pants and underpants off. That done, he dragged her to a corner of the room and propped her up, and stepped away, and began taking his own clothing off.

He had to take off his boots to take off his jeans, but then he put the boots back on. When he was naked, R-A didn’t look like much: a wrinkled forty-something alcoholic with way too much wobbly fat around his waist, dead-fish pale below the neck and above the elbows, red nose. He had heavily muscled arms, and hard shoulders. He said, “I guess you know what’s coming next. I’m gonna fuck you.”

He dragged her to the weight bench, bent her over it, facedown, sat on her back, and took a half dozen wraps of tape around her neck and the bench. Then he cut her legs free and wedged himself between them.

And raped her.

After a while, he raped her a second time.

After another long time, he cut her neck free and said, “Okay, Cat, here comes your big chance. Here it comes, and you better grab it, because if you don’t, it’s gonna be nothing but fuckin’ you, until it’s time to get the rope.”

Mattsson had no idea what he was talking about. The rape, bad as it was, didn’t affect her much: it hurt, but she knew she could get over it. She did everything she could to avoid giving him any pleasure at all: she simply took it, without any reaction. Maybe later she’d need a shrink, maybe she’d need medical care: but that was later. What she needed now was to get loose.

Of course, if she did get loose, she’d kill him.

And he said to her, “Here comes your big chance. .” and cut her neck free.

She turned her head: What could that mean?

R-A rolled her off the bench, leaving her legs free. He dragged the bench out of the room, came back, picked up the box cutter and the tape, which he’d left against a wall, and tossed them out through the door, toward the bench. He picked up his clothes, and the scraps of Mattsson’s clothes, and tossed them out on the bench. And finally, he held up a key and said, “This is what you’re fighting for.”

Mattsson was still lying on the floor, watched as he went to the door, pulled it closed, stuck the key in the lock, and turned it. They were locked in.

The room was probably fifteen feet long, and eight feet wide, nothing but gray-painted concrete block, some bare-bulb lights set in ceramic fixtures between the two-by-eight joists, and the door.

R-A came back to her, grabbed her ankles: she tried to kick him, and then tried to kick his hands off her, but he had a grip like iron, and twisted her ankles, rolling her over on her stomach again. He sat on her legs and said, “Hold still, there. I’m taking the tape off your wrists.”

She stopped fighting, and he peeled the tape away, then jumped back, away from her. She lay still for a moment, then glanced back at him, calculating the distance, and suddenly lurched away from him, to her feet, and turned to face him.

They were both naked in the cold room. Mattsson was on the balls of her feet, rubbing her hands, trying to get feeling back into her fingers, while R-A leaned against the far wall, waiting.

When her hands were coming back, she pulled the tape off her mouth and croaked, “Why?”