I sat a moment, then let the tape drop to the ground. It was tempting to ball it up and hurl it hard as I could, but I was too tired.
Tired, but not dead.
Which was good, but now what? As far as I knew, my cell phone was still in my backpack, far out of reach. If my bad guy had been smart, he’d have smashed it to bits, on the off chance I’d get out of my prison cell. Speaking of which . . .
I put my hands on the floor and pushed my awkward self to my feet. Time to explore.
It didn’t take long. After I’d felt my way around the room once, I went toe to heel with my feet, rounding up since my shoes were maybe ten inches long. My prison was rectangular, eight feet wide on the short side, ten feet deep. The door was solid and its hinges were on the other side. I’d felt a window frame on the wall opposite the door, but it was boarded up.
There were no other openings. There was nothing in the room. I felt every inch of the walls up as high as I could reach and down all the way to the wooden floor. No hooks, no nails, no nothing.
I jumped, reaching high with my tied hands, trying to touch the ceiling, trying to find chain, a rope, anything.
Instead, I grasped a lot of empty air.
I stood in the middle of the room, gasping for breath, trying not to think too much about reality, because it wasn’t that great. In spite of partially freeing myself, I was still locked in an empty windowless room with no tools and no weapons. If the guy came back, there was little I could do to stop him doing whatever he wanted to do to me.
The guy. I stood straight and stared into the dark at the door. For a while I kicked at it and when I stopped from fear of breaking bones in my feet, it was just as solid as when I’d started my assault.
Then for a while I banged on the boards covering up the empty window frame. They were attached from the outside, so maybe I could knock one loose. The boards were wide and I was small and desperate—if I could make a gap, surely I could squiggle through.
But the boards must have been screwed in, not nailed. All my thumping and banging didn’t do a thing. Not one single thing.
Finally exhaustion took over, yelling at me that it was time to quit, that I should wait until morning, wait until it got light.
I sat next to the door, positioning myself for a quick jump up and a fast run should it happen to open.
I laid my arms on my knees, put my head on my arms, and slept.
• • •
My dreams were filled with the growls of animals in the dark and threats that I couldn’t quite hear. At some point, I twitched awake into the barn’s dim light. I’d heard something. . . .
The whooshing of bird wings flew past. “Caw caw!”
Blue jay? Crow? Maybe a robin? Bird identification was another skill I should work on.
I rubbed my face, felt the sticky leftover from the tape, felt the yuck on my unbrushed teeth, felt the dirt and sweat and general ick all over my body and in my hair. When I got out of here, a hot shower was the first order of business.
When I got out?
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.