Lending a Paw(98)

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.