Lending a Paw(99)

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.

The ripping sound of the tape unfurling was the sweetest sound I’d ever heard.

I kept rolling the unstuck tape into a larger and larger sticky ball, kept using the leverage of my leg to pull off more tape, rolling, pulling, rolling, pulling. . . . Free!

Of their own volition, my hands moved apart as far as they could go, as if they wanted nothing to do with each other. A hiccuping sob bubbled up out of me. Silly old hands. You’d have thought they’d have gotten used to each other, tied together like that for so long.

How long, in fact, had it been? I had no idea.

The urgency came back with a vengeance. I untied the one end of the shoelace and relaced it through the shoe. I yanked at the big ball of tape, but couldn’t get the other end free of the sticky mess. Cursing, I was forced to leave the tape attached to the lace, and tied a bad and very lumpy knot.

I scrambled to my feet and ran across the small room. Hand there, foot there, and I was balancing on the bottom of the window frame. Hand up, foot up, hand up higher into a cobwebby darkness, foot up on the window frame’s top, other foot beside it.

Gingerly, I stood up straight, doing my best not to look down. I didn’t think I was afraid of heights, but I’d never been standing on a board not even an inch wide with my head at least ten feet off the ground before, either.

I poked my head over the top of the wall. Please, let there be a way out. Please . . .

The darkness on the other side was deep. But that didn’t mean there wasn’t an unlocked door through which I could escape. All I had to do was figure out a way to get over the wall and drop down on the other side without getting stuck in the ceiling or breaking a leg on the way down.

I stood there, my legs starting to quiver, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the dark. Was that a shelf down there? Maybe it would hold me. Maybe . . .

The sound of gravel crunching changed everything.

Without thought, I jumped high and shoved myself into the small space at the top of the wall. I didn’t fit, didn’t fit, had to fit, had to get through and out and away before he got here, had to go out, and then my head and shoulders were through and—

Voices. Footsteps. Car doors opening and closing.

I grabbed the top of the wall, pulled, couldn’t get my big fat butt through the gap, wiggled, squirmed, pulled the rest of me over to the other side, slithered down the wall, hung on as my feet scrabbled for the shelf.

Where was it? I had to find it couldn’t risk landing on it had to run had to get away had to—

A hand clamped around my ankle.

“NO!” I yelled, screamed, shrieked. I kicked, I kicked again, I was not going without a fight, he’d have to kill me in order to kill me he’d have to—

“Ms. Hamilton,” said a male voice, “this is Detective Inwood. You can come down. Don’t worry. You’re safe now. It’s okay.”

But I was frozen in place. I couldn’t move, couldn’t make a sound, couldn’t even nod my head. Strong hands encircled me, helped me down, away out of that barn, and into the sunlight of early evening.

Evening. I’d been in that barn a full day.

“You’re shivering,” Detective Devereaux said. “Let me get you a blanket.” Two police cars were in the driveway, one unmarked vehicle and one patrol car with someone, I couldn’t make out who, sitting in the backseat. Devereaux sat me in the unmarked and brought me a fuzzy blanket. I saw real concern in his eyes.