Finally he stood and terror bloomed in Carli’s chest. “One piece?” he said, shaking his head. “You should eat more than that, my angel. You’re going to need energy for your training!” His smile was ghastly. “I’ll leave another piece for you to work on.” He lifted a slice of limp pizza from the box and plopped it down on her plate. Carli tried not to puke. Then, he picked up the box. “I’ll be back in a little while,” he said, “and we can begin getting to know each other better.”
He climbed the stairs and left her alone again. Where her kidnapper was right now and what he might be doing she had no idea and no real desire to find out. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be good for her. She wondered how long her body could continue dealing with the sky-high stress level she felt before it finally crashed. Adrenaline coursed through her, not that it was doing any good.
As soon as her captor retreated up the basement stairs, Carli had set to work, twisting and turning the handcuffs, probing for a weak spot, searching for a way out. One side of the bracelets was fitted snugly around her slim wrist, and the other was attached firmly to the headboard of the bed frame, which was stark and depressing but made of iron and, as far as Carli could tell, very solid.
A short length of metal chain connected the two bracelets. The links were thick and solid, way too strong for her to break. She knew because she tried, yanking her hand insistently, succeeding only in tearing her skin and raising a painful bruise on her wrist.
She bent to examine the cuffs more closely, squinting, concentrating on those three metal links, certain that, if there was any weakness at all, it would be here. But there was nothing. The steel was shiny and strong, with no rusting metal or gaps that could be pried open.
Her cuffed hand, sweaty and throbbing from trying to snap the links, slipped suddenly off the iron post of the headboard and fell behind the bed. Ow! Her knuckles scraped the cement blocks of the wall and bruised her wrist even more as the cuffs snapped her hand back at the end of the chain.
Tears filled Carli’s eyes, and she pulled her hand reflexively, covering the scrape with her free hand. Blood stained her palm when she stopped. She would have to be more careful because the same thing would happen if her hand slipped off the heavy iron post again, that was how close the headboard was placed to the stupid cement wall. The scrape burned, and her skin stood no chance against that rough surface.
Then a thought occurred to Carli, and with it was the barest glimmer of hope: If the rough concrete surface could damage her skin so easily, why couldn’t it have the same effect on the shiny silver steel of the handcuffs? There was very little play in the bracelets, just a couple of inches, but she had already proven—painfully—that she could reach the wall. Now, all she needed to do to test her theory was to twist her arm so that her wrist faced the wall, then rub it back and forth, scraping the small round circle of steel against the cement blocks.
It was extremely uncomfortable, with Carli’s wrist bent at an unnatural angle, but she smiled as she felt the cuff’s metal ring come in contact with the wall. She eased her arm downward and felt friction, heard a tiny whispered scraping sound. In less than a second, the chain had been pulled taut, sending a pulse of pain radiating outward from her already injured wrist.
She hissed involuntarily between her clenched teeth and pulled her arm back through the bars of the headboard, looking down and studying the metal of the handcuff. Still strong, still shiny. But—there! A little scratch, almost invisible but definitely there, on the steel ring where Carli had run it along the cement. It was tiny—nowhere near enough to allow Carli to snap the cuffs apart.
But it was a start.
Carli took a deep breath and tried again, then examined her right wrist, the one trapped inside the handcuff. It throbbed in time with her heartbeat and already had begun turning the greenish-purple color of the sky just before a thunderstorm. The wrist looked sore because it was, but that pain was nothing compared to what she knew she could expect from the twisted lover-boy upstairs. She eased her right hand back through the space between the iron bars and continued scraping the inside of the handcuff up and down against the cement. Scree…scree…scree. The noise was minimal, so she knew there was no possible way the crazy man could hear it unless he was standing right next to her, but the thought of him catching her was terrifying.
Carli had no idea how he might react if he found her attempting to escape, but she knew it wouldn’t be pleasant. All the more reason why she had to try. Scree…scree…scree, rubbing the cuffs against the wall, wincing in pain after every stroke, as the couple of inches of play in the cuffs was used up and the bracelet pulled tightly against the worsening bone bruise.
Across the basement, the sunlight fighting its way through the dirty glass of a single casement window began to dim. It would be night soon. It was late May, only a month away from the longest day of the year, and Carli figured the time must be a little after eight thirty if darkness was approaching. Martin had left the lights off when he went upstairs and now it was getting dark outside and in.
What would happen when the sun went down? The basement was dank and creepy, undoubtedly filled with spiders and who knew what other insects. The prospect of lying here, chained to this disgusting bed in the pitch-dark basement of this lunatic’s house in the middle of the night frightened Carli almost as much as the idea of being a victim of the I-90 Killer.
Scree…scree…scree.
She pulled her hand through the bars to give her aching wrist a break, and she examined the handcuff closely. Right there! Was that a little more damage to the steel bracelet, or was it just her imagination?
She leaned back against the iron headboard on the thin pillow the man had provided and closed her eyes, willing herself to listen and concentrate. The house was old and the floorboards creaked, and for a long time after they ate, she had heard him walking around on the first floor. It sounded like maybe he had been pacing.