To what purpose, she could only imagine.
Her mind felt impossibly tired. Just from being active. From thinking. From being conscious.
And with that, Jessica faded back into blackness. Back into a sleep that wasn’t restful. A sleep that didn’t restore. A sleep that wasn’t really sleep at all. A sleep punctuated by nightmares of the worst kind.
When she awoke again, she felt a little better. She didn’t know how much time had passed.
It was silent around her. The voices had disappeared.
She was hesitant to open her eyes. She remembered the last time. She remembered how she’d seen nothing but fuzzy shapes and lights.
What if the blow to her head had damaged her vision permanently?
What would she do then?
It wasn’t like there were doctors and surgeons who could potentially fix the issue.
No, she’d be blind for life. Or seriously sight-impaired.
And then what chance would she have?
Well, if she was blind, the sooner she learned the truth, the better chance she’d have.
She’d have to get out of this situation one way or the other, whether she could see or not.
It wasn’t any use sitting around feeling sorry for herself.
She opened her eyes.
Jessica breathed a sigh of relief.
She could see.
Her eyesight was a little blurry still, around the edges of her field of vision. But it wasn’t that bad. And maybe it’d get better.
She was out in the open, underneath the sky. The sky was gray and she couldn’t see the sun.
There were trees all around her.
She was in some sort of small clearing. It might have been a campground. Or something similar.
There were two motorcycles parked not far from her.
The men weren’t in sight.
Good.
It was the perfect opportunity.
All she had to do was get away. She’d be able to hide safely among the trees. She’d be able to rest until she was strong enough to start to find her way back to the lake house.
She reached to her side, expecting to feel the comforting weight of her Glock.
But it was gone.
Of course it was gone.
They’d have to have been idiots to leave her with her weapon.
But then again, they’d left her unsupervised.
Her mind was still foggy, and she suddenly realized that all she’d been doing for minutes now was looking around and planning. She hadn’t moved a muscle, except to reach for her Glock.
She was in a strange position, lying on her side on the ground.
She went to move, trying to uncurl her legs so that she could stand up.
Only to find that they were bound together. Tightly.
She looked down, craning her head down awkwardly.
Her ankles were bound together, as well as her thighs.
It wasn’t rope that bound her. Instead, there were jumper cables.
Great. Just great. They’d be tougher to break. Tougher to saw through.
But her hands were free.
She realized it all of a sudden. After all, she’d reached for her absent Glock just now. Her mind was still a mess of fog, the pieces of reality fitting together strangely, as if everything was desynchronized.
That had been with her right arm.
Her left arm was trapped underneath her body, and she realized that she couldn’t feel it at all.
She tried to keep calm.
Getting worried about her arm would do her no good. It would just make her less effective.
And if there’d ever been a time when she needed to be effective, it was now.
Unfortunately, she couldn’t think clearly.
So she’d have to take things slow. Proceed item by item. Take things one at a time. Calm and measured.
OK. She was doing it.
She needed that arm. She’d get it to work.
She knew the clock was ticking. The motorcycle men might come back at any minute. But she still needed to proceed as calmly as she could.
Her left arm was probably just asleep. It had been stuck underneath her body for who knew how long.
Jessica tried to shift her weight off her arm.
But it was hard to move with her legs bound together.
The best she could do was wriggle her body around until she flopped down on her stomach. Her face pressed uncomfortably into the dirt.
Her left arm hung uselessly there. But at least it was free.
It was only a matter of time now before she started to regain feeling in it.
She knew she’d have to wait. She knew she couldn’t let herself get overcome with anxiety.
A minute passed.
Then another.
It felt like an eternity.
But, sure enough, she started to feel the painfully intense sensation of pins and needles creeping over her left arm.
It wasn’t long after that, that she was able to move it.
Now she had both arms at her disposal.
She pushed herself up off the dirt and got her legs around to her front so that she could reach down to untie the cables.
The motorcycle men had tied tight, complicated knots.
But they were still nothing more than knots.
What had they been thinking?
Had they been planning on her simply not waking up?
Or maybe they hadn’t been expected to be away for so long.
Jessica worked methodically and carefully.
In just another couple of minutes, she had the knots undone.
She stood up shakily, her legs in pain from the tight cords.
It was then that she heard the laughter.
Laughter coming from behind her.
Raucous laughter.
Cruel laughter.
She spun around.
The two motorcycle men were there, emerging from behind the trees where they’d been hiding.
They walked towards her.
One held a gun. Pointed right at her.
There was a vicious smile on his face.
“I told you that’d be hilarious.”
“It was even better than I thought it’d be.”
“Shit, we should do this with everyone we get.”
“The best part is when they think they’ve gotten away.”
“Definitely the best.”
Jessica’s heart was pounding. Her body was telling her to run. She was entering panic again.
But they’d just shoot her.
There was no point in running.
Slowly, she raised her hands into the air. She was frozen in place, her feet firmly planted on the ground.
15
Rob didn’t know where he was going. He didn’t have the slightest idea.
The Subaru engine was whining terribly, the tachometer pushing into the red zone.
He was forgetting to shift. And he knew that wasn’t good. He was wasting gas. Putting unnecessary strain on the small four-cylinder engine.
But his mind was a nexus of panic and focus. All he could think about was getting to Jessica. Rescuing her. Fighting with everything he had.
He was aware that he wasn’t approaching this rationally. He wasn’t acting the way Jim would have acted.
Jim would have taken a mental step back from the situation, evaluated his options, and proceeded calmly and diligently along the best route.
Instead, Rob felt like he was just plowing on full steam ahead without really considering the consequences.
After all, what happened when he ran out of gas?
What happened when he found himself stranded, unsure of how to get back?
What happened if he crashed? After all, he was driving erratically.
He was doing everything wrong. There were a thousand errors he could potentially make. And they were all more likely in his current mental state.
And, still, there was no sign of Jessica.
There was no sign of anyone.
All he knew was that he was heading southwest. Well, he didn’t even know that for sure. It was just his best guess.