The Chain(44)

“Toast cut into triangles, Maine butter—from grass-fed cows, of course—Coco Pops, and OJ. That should keep you going for a while.”

He sets the tray down on the ground.

She has deliberately placed Moby-Dick on the floor, opened, facedown, two-fifths from the end. She knows he’ll pick it up, impressed.

“My goodness, you’re doing well with this. You’re over halfway—”

While he is bending over, Kylie clubs him on the head with the wrench. The fact that he’s wearing the ski mask makes it easier to do because she can pretend she’s not hitting a human at all. The man groans and she hits him again.

He falls forward and lands with a sort of pathetic clump on the edge of the mattress.

She has no idea where on the head she’s hit him but it has done the trick, all right. He’s out.

Now she knows she’s in a race against time.

She has to flip him over, get the handcuff key out of his pocket, uncuff herself, and run up the steps.

Out in the yard, there could be a dog or the woman or anything. She’ll have the gun. She’ll have to shoot. If there’s no one there, she’ll have to run straight for the fence as fast as she can. If she’s in the part of New Hampshire she thinks she is, it’ll be marshy and boggy, but if she keeps going east, she’ll hit I-95 or Route 1 or the ocean. She’ll keep going even if they yell at her to stop.

He’s a heavy man but she manages to roll him over onto his back, pushing on his sweaty chest and his armpits that smell like onions.

She takes the gun out of his waistband and searches in all his pockets for the key to the handcuffs.

No wallet, no ID, no nothing, but especially no key.

She searches again just to be sure. He’s wearing old-fashioned brown slacks with deep pockets, but they’re totally empty. There are no rear pockets in the pants, but his shirt has a pocket at the front. It would be the perfect place to hide a handcuff key.

Yes! she thinks, but there’s no key there either. Damn it.

On to plan B. Kylie examines the gun. There are six bullets in the cylinder. OK, she thinks, all he has to do is wake up.

A minute goes by.

Two.

Oh my God, has she killed him? All she did was hit him with a wrench. That didn’t kill people in the movies. She didn’t mean to kill— The man begins to stir.

“Oh, my head,” he says, smiling weakly. “Right in the noggin. You got me good.”

He groans, and after a few seconds he sits up and looks at her. She has the gun in her hand. The loaded gun.

“What did you hit me with?” he asks. He puts his hands under the ski mask and rubs his eyes, moaning.

“I found a wrench on the floor,” Kylie says.

“What wrench?”

Kylie holds up the wrench in her left hand.

“Oh, wow. How did we miss that?”

“It was under the boiler.”

“Impossible! I checked this room.”

“You had to be in a certain spot at a certain time. I remembered what Howard Carter said when he found King Tut’s tomb. You have to be looking, not just seeing.”

The man nods. “I like that. You’re very smart, Kylie. All right, so what is supposed to happen next in your plan?”

“I’ve searched you. You don’t have the key to the handcuffs, but she must. I want you to yell for her and tell her to bring the handcuff key.”

“Or what?”

“Or I’ll shoot you.”

“Do you think you’re capable of doing that?”

“Yes. I think so. My uncle Pete took me target shooting a few times. I know what to do.”

“It’s a different thing, though, isn’t it, shooting a target, a piece of paper, and shooting a person?”

“I’m going to shoot you in the leg first to show you that I’m serious.”

“And then what?”

“She’ll give me the handcuff key and I’ll go.”

“Why would she let you go?”

“Because otherwise I’ll kill you,” Kylie says. “But I know you didn’t mean to do all this and I’ll make you both a promise. After I get out of here, I’ll say to my mom that I can’t remember anything. I’ll wait twenty-four hours until I tell the cops where this place is. That will give you both a day to fly anywhere you want. Anywhere there isn’t a, um, one of those—”

“Extradition treaties?”

“Yeah.”

The man shakes his head sadly. “I’m sorry, Kylie. It was a good effort, but you’ve miscalculated. Heather doesn’t really care about me. She’d let you shoot me. She’d let you plug as many bullets as you’d like into me.”

“Of course she’ll care! Call her. Tell her to bring the key!”

“No.” He sighs. “She hasn’t cared for years, if she ever really did. Jared’s her son from her first marriage. I was kind of a stopgap measure, I guess. A stopgap she got stuck with. I love her but I think the feeling’s never really been mutual.”

Kylie makes a mental note of the two names he let slip in his dazed state, Heather and Jared. That information might be useful later but for now she has to get out.

“I don’t care about any of that stuff, mister. I want to get out of here! I’m not bluffing.”