Lending a Paw(95)

Should I?

Could I?

The needle of my moral compass bounced between GO AHEAD and GO HOME, spent a lot of time on GO HOME, then swung firmly to GO AHEAD.

I edged close to the house and peeked in through a kitchen window. No one was in sight. Excellent. I tiptoed to the barn, one eye on the house, one eye on the steep and rocky driveway. The light breeze I’d felt up on the ridge’s top was nonexistent down here and my forehead beaded with rain and humid summer sweat. I got the sudden urge to use the bathroom.

No noise, no lights, no nothing. I made it to the barn undetected by anyone save a grasshopper or two, grasped the door handle, and pulled.

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.