Mercy (Atlee Pine #4)(75)

CHAPTER





51


PINE LISTENED AS ADDITIONAL SETS of footsteps followed those of the two people who had already left. Then another one after that. The light was turned off, driving her even deeper into darkness. The door was closed and locked. And then a few seconds later all became quiet as the sound of the footfalls vanished.

She waited a bit longer and then leaned so far forward in the chair that the back legs came off the floor. Her knees edged down to touch the concrete, so there was barely any noise. They had tied her ankles individually to the chair legs, but had not run the rope through the crossbeam. That was a big mistake. She slowly turned to the side and simply straightened her own legs to free them. Then she was able to stand with the chair still attached to her.

The blindfold had slipped enough with her maneuvers that part of it was close to her mouth. She bit down on the fabric and jerked her head to the left and right. The cloth slipped enough to where she could see. She looked at the wall, turned, and backed toward it until the chair bumped into it.

She bent forward so the lower half of the chair and the back legs were right against the wall. Then she slowly applied weight and thus pressure until she could feel the wood begin to give. She kept going, slowly. The last thing she needed was some explosion of sound to bring her captors running.

The left leg separated first and then the right. Then the bottom half of the chair came apart from the top. The next minute the whole thing was splitting apart at various spots. She got her hands free of the restraints and quietly pulled the chair off her. She ripped away the blindfold and looked around at the darkened space. No windows. Solid walls. One door in and out. Slab floor. She slipped over to the door, and put her ear against it. She could hear nothing. If someone had been on the other side, they would have already come bursting in here. She tried the door, but it was locked. She had no phone, no lockpick kit, no guns.

She was alone with no way to get help.

Instead of feeling hopeless, she saw it as a challenge, an obstacle to be overcome. And it wasn’t like she had anything else to do while they were waiting to kill her.

Pine looked around the space and saw some boxes stacked by the wall. In one was an emergency radio with a built-in light and other features. She popped the battery compartment and snagged the old batteries in there; some had their ends ruptured where the chemicals had seeped through. She laid out the batteries on their sides in front of the door, pocketed one of them, and then stood on the chair Buckley had used and unscrewed the light bulb. Then she climbed down and went to stand by the door.

Pine stood there for more than an hour until she heard footsteps—fortunately, only one set.

She moved back against the wall.

The door was unlocked and then it opened. She saw in the darkness a hand move to the light switch as the person entered the room. No light came on, obviously. Then the feet reached the batteries underfoot, and the person fell heavily.

That was the only opportunity Pine needed. She could see his outline on the floor from the scant illumination coming from the next room. She smashed her foot right into his diaphragm to keep him from crying out. Her next shot was an elbow strike to the head, which bounced his cranium off the concrete with the same level of whiplash a rear-end car accident might inflict. The impact knocked him cold.

She searched him and pulled out his pistol. Fortunately, in his other pocket was her shield. She used the rope from the chair to secure his hands and feet, and then she slid him over to a corner of the room.

Pine looked closely at his face. This was one of the men who had kidnapped her from the hotel. She doubted this was the guy who had been talking to her. That man was clearly the boss, and head honchos seldom did the dirty work. She clocked him one more time in the face just for the hell of it.

She moved out into the next room after shutting the door behind her and locking it. Then she quietly made her way across the room and up the stairs, and reached the top landing. The door was partially open. She did a turkey peek that revealed nothing. She did a second look and saw a man sitting at a table looking at his phone with his earbuds in. He was the other guy who had snatched her. She stuck her head out and surveyed the rest of the room.

Empty. But that was not good enough. There was no room for error here; she only had one shot to do this right.

She took out the battery with her left hand and hurled it at the window behind the guy. As soon as it struck the glass, the man jumped up from the table, dropping his phone on the floor, and cried out, “What the hell!”

Pine waited three seconds to see if the tossed battery drew anyone else out into the open. When it was clear the man was alone, she stepped through the doorway and pointed the gun at him.

“On your knees, hands behind your head, then lie down face-first, legs spread. Do it now or I will shoot you.”

The man saw the gun, fell to the floor, and put his hands behind his head.

Pine quickly moved forward and used the butt of the gun to inflict two hard taps on his skull, knocking him out. He got the same trussed-up treatment as his partner downstairs, with a cord of thick twine she found in a cabinet.

She snagged his phone and called 911, told the dispatcher who she was and what had happened, and asked her to notify Tate Callum of her circumstances.

“Do you know where you are?” the dispatcher asked.

“Give me a sec.”

She ran outside and looked around at the thick woods surrounding the house in which she’d been held captive. “In the middle of nowhere. Seems to be a lot of that around here.”