She lifted the lid. Screwdrivers, wrenches, and a couple of pliers filled the top tray. She lifted the tray out and found her prize—a box cutter. She snatched it up and clutched it to her chest. “Thank you, God.”
She dropped onto her butt and pulled her legs up to her chin. A sting of pain burned her left hip where the tops of her thighs touched her lower belly. She uncurled herself to find a wound. It was a knife cut. Blood still seeped from the incision. As she examined it, she realized it wasn’t a random injury, but a marking. Two letters had been sliced into her—I and V. The son of a bitch had branded her. The thought brought bile to the back of her throat.
She pulled her legs back up to her chin to hide the mutilation, and parted her knees to give herself easier access to her ankles. Her feet tingled from the movement. She extended the box cutter’s blade and worked it across the thick plastic of the cable tie. The blade was dull and the plastic tough. Progress was slow, but steel was gradually winning. Each fast, efficient stroke ate into her restraints.
An intense shriek from Holli jolted Zo?, and the box cutter sliced deep into her anklebone. The pain was sudden and intense. She bit back the flood of agony to keep in a cry.
She ignored the thick bead of crimson trickling down her ankle and kept sawing away. Finally, the cable tie broke. The rapid flood of blood to her feet was both painful and fantastic. She closed her eyes for a moment to take in the exquisite relief.
Her feet might have been free, but she wasn’t halfway home. Trying to cut the other restraint while it was still around her wrists was a much bigger proposition.
She turned the box cutter on herself and tried to work the blade back and forth with her hands. She managed to get a sawing rhythm going, but her movements were so small that she’d be there forever at the rate she was going. She needed something else.
She ransacked the toolbox for anything that might help. She tried the pair of pliers, but her hands were so confined she couldn’t work them.
She spotted a rusted old saw with a wooden handle, hanging on the wall. The serrated blade was at least eighteen inches long. A real carpenter’s tool. And a real escape tool for her. She grabbed it and dropped to the floor with it. She turned the saw blade-side up, braced the handle against her groin, and clamped the other end between her feet.
Instead of working the blade across the cable tie as she had with the one around her feet, this time she worked her bound wrists along the blade. The large, serrated teeth made cutting through the plastic difficult. The cable tie bounced across the wide gap between the teeth, but each tooth snagged and chewed the restraint. After a few minutes of progress, the bond finally snapped.
She grinned as she massaged her wrists. She was free.
Her smile disappeared. No, not free. She had one more thing to do first.
She picked up the box cutter. The tool was now her weapon.
She pushed open the shed’s door and peered out. Another shed was directly across from her, silent and dark, and a weather-beaten workshop sat off to her right. Beyond that, nothing. Desert stretched into the darkness, and mountains turned the horizon into a jagged tear between the ground and sky. There were no streetlights or houselights to be seen. She was in the middle of nowhere. No wonder the bastard didn’t seem worried about the noise.
Escape was a tough proposition. When she ran, where was she going to go? A dirt road running up to the workshop disappeared into the darkness. It had to be the only way in and out of this nightmare.
At least she wouldn’t have to do it on foot. Her VW Beetle sat off to the left. She didn’t see a second car, so he must have brought them here in hers. If she got away in that, he couldn’t chase after her. For the first time, she felt real hope.
But she was getting ahead of herself. Driving away was the final part of the escape. Rescuing Holli was the first part.
Holli. Her heart fluttered at the thought of her friend’s name. It took her a moment to recognize the source of her new and sudden fear. The screams had stopped. She strained to hear even a whimper, but she heard nothing. Not even the sound of his movement.
Please don’t be dead, she thought.
She had to know the truth—know how bad it had gotten.
Light spilled from the workshop’s small-paned, dirt-covered windows. It forced back the night and flickered as someone moved inside.
Holli was in there. So was he. She felt her courage waver.
There was movement but not sound. It had been several minutes since she’d heard Holli scream. Was she dead? There was only one way of knowing.
She slipped outside, with the box cutter in hand. The shed had been a sweatbox. Now, in the dry desert heat, her body dried in an instant, baking the dirt to her skin. If someone caught a glimpse of her now, they’d swear they’d witnessed a creature from the world’s Neolithic past.
Staying low, she darted toward the workshop. A wave of light-headedness overwhelmed her, and she pitched forward onto her knees, dropping her weapon. The drug in her system still had its grip on her.