Lending a Paw(96)

Shove. Stumble. Shove. Stumble. Then a very, very hard shove.

I ran forward one, two, three steps, almost falling, sinking low to avoid falling because there’s not much worse than falling with your hands tied behind your back. Then, breathing hard, I stood straight, anticipating his next shove.

It never came.

Instead, a door banged shut and a bolt slammed home. The door rattled a few times and I heard a grunt. Heavy footsteps crossed the barn. Another door slammed shut. Then nothing.

He was leaving.

I was alone. And not dead.

Two big pluses. Two extremely big pluses. And if I wanted to add more items to the positive side of the column, I wasn’t in a pit, buried alive, or even injured if you didn’t count the bruises I was sure were forming on my back.

So . . . now what?

Much depended on what he was going to do. If he was headed for the house to find his killing weapon of choice, I was pretty much out of luck. Maybe I’d be able to work my way out of my bonds, get out of whatever room I was in, and run for help, but each of those things could take hours and he might be back in minutes. If that was his plan, the best I could do was to . . . to what? Make my death as hard for him as possible? Wouldn’t that mean I’d be inflicting even more pain on myself, with the same eventual result?

I debated the point with myself, then decided that since the thought of giving in was making me angry all over again, one issue was resolved.

Of course, I still had no idea who this guy was. I knew it was a guy, because when he’d been pushing me around, I’d felt arms too hairy to belong to a female. So Caroline Grice was out, unless she’d hired her gardener to follow me. Was it Gunnar? Was it Larry, aka Kyle? Was it another of the Larabee relatives? I still didn’t know.

The rumble of a engine starting made me blink. I hadn’t seen a vehicle; it must have been parked on the other side of the barn. One point off Minnie’s score for a poor job of reconnoitering.

I tilted my head, listening, trying to ignore the fear that was growing and spreading fast.

The car made its way down the gravel drive and onto the narrow gravel road I’d seen coming down the hill. It didn’t take long for the noise of the car to fade away completely.

It took a lot longer for my sobs to stop.





Chapter 19


When I ran out of tears, I started thinking. That didn’t work very well at first, because I kept thinking that the most likely possibility for my future was one of two options. Either the bad guy would come back and finish me off, or I’d die from dehydration and starvation. Years from now, someone would come across my desiccated body. Dental records would eventually reveal my identity, my parents would get a chance to say good-bye, Tucker might see my name in the paper and spare a thought for a woman he barely remembered, and the mystery of how I’d come to die in a barn would go forever unsolved.

Unsolved? The thought brought me to some semblance of sense. The mystery of my death wouldn’t go unsolved, not if I could help it. I had too much to do before I could even consider dying. I wanted to see the house of Green Gables, to track down the equivalent of St. Mary Mead, to find out if there really was a Zebra Drive in Botswana. Besides, if I died now, I’d never find out how the tangled love lines in the boardinghouse got untangled.

Time to stop thinking and start doing.

I shuffled over to a wall and put my back up against it, then slid down its rough surface until I hit the floor. Relax, I told myself. The only way you’re going to get out of this is to stay calm and loosen those muscles. Breathe deep. Center yourself.

My wish to relax was complicated by the fact that I could die soon, but I did my best to forget that singular item.

I rolled onto my side, my arms behind my back, arms that desperately wanted to be in front of me.

Loosen. Relax. Lengthen.

Don’t think about the odds of getting free, don’t think that he might come back any second, don’t think about the strong, sticky tape around your wrists, don’t think about the bag over your head—which smells as if it has been sitting on the floor of a barn for fifty years—and don’t think about how thirsty you are. Definitely don’t think about that.

Relax. Loosen. Lengthen.

The words of that long-ago ballet teacher came back to me. Long line, Minnie. Make yourself into a long line. Don’t you see?

Finally, I did.

I let my arms lengthen into a line of the longest kind. Let my spine grow long. Made it into an arch. And, just like that, the twin changes in my body let my wrists slip around my hind end and up under my knees.

Gasping, sobbing a little again, I rolled to the floor. Managed to pull one leg through, then the other.

I tucked my hands under my chin and held them there, relief singing in my ears. My hands weren’t behind my back anymore! I’d won! A battle, not the war, but the small victory thrilled me more than all my Christmas and birthday presents put together.