“Lovely bunch, they are.”
“I’m sorry about them,” I said. “But I’m not like them. I’m going to let you go.”
He looked up, unseeing but disbelieving. He let a moment pass, maybe wondering if I was going to end that sentence with a “Just kidding!” But I wasn’t. Without the rest of the girls and their majority rule, I realized I could finally set him free. And I had to do it before I lost my courage. But I had to think of how. There were a few things that could happen after I untied him. At best he’d punch me in the face and leave me unconscious on the floor; at worst he’d set me on fire like he’d promised before. Plus, there was the blindfold to worry about. I wondered if we could work something out, where I promised to let him go only under the condition that he walk out with his blindfold on. And there was the issue of warning my friends to get out of the penthouse before Rupert P. found them.
“What are you waiting for, then?” Rupert P. shouted, suddenly animated, bouncing in the chair and trying in vain to move it. “Let me go!”
His voice knocked me into action, and I instantly forgot about all the possible consequences of setting him free. I had a new fire in me, a determination to do some good. “Yes! Okay!” I crouched down before him and started working on the knot around his right ankle. It was a double knot and extremely tight, made tighter because Rupert P. had struggled against it.
“What’s your name?” Rupert P. said as I worked.
“My name?” He wanted to know my name. “It’s Baby.”
“Baby? What kind of name is that?”
“Well, actually it’s Frances. But everyone just calls me Baby. I was named after the first woman in the c—”
“I didn’t ask for your bloody history. Your friend …”
“Which one?”
“The bitch.” Erin.
“There’s a reason she didn’t want to let me go, isn’t there? She’s planning something.”
I let go of the knot. “What do you mean?”
“Have you asked yourself why she still wants to keep me?”
“She wants to get concert tickets.”
“Does that make any sense to you? I give you concert tickets and then neglect to inform the police of your seat numbers. Brilliant.”
I had to admit it did sound kind of ridiculous. But maybe there was more to Erin’s plan than that. Maybe there was something else she wanted that she’d forgotten to tell me about. Maybe there was a reason she was acting totally OOC, making me forget that she was a good person once—scaring me.
“She’s lying to you,” Rupert P. said, piercing my thoughts. “She’s got something up her sleeve. I know it. You know it. You’re just turning a blind eye to it.”
“Erin is my best friend. I trust her.”
“She doesn’t trust you if she won’t tell you what’s going on.”
He didn’t know what he was talking about. He didn’t know anything about me and Erin and our friendship. So why was what he was saying cutting into me?
“What’s taking so long?” Rupert P. said. “Isn’t there a knife around here you can use?”
Right. A knife. The faster I got him out of here, the faster I didn’t have to dwell on all the things he’d just said. I stood up straight and looked around.
“You know what?” Rupert P. said. “Forget I said that. Last thing I need’s a demented fan wielding a knife. Demented fan. Apologies for being redundant.”
I searched the desk, every drawer, looking for something sharp, but there wasn’t so much as a letter opener to be found. I went to the bedroom and made a beeline for Isabel’s bag. If anyone was likely to pack a knife in her luggage it was Isabel, but all I found were dark-colored clothes, her laptop, and a framed pic of a shirtless Rupert L. I spied polka-dot fabric, and even though I had to move on I was too shocked to find polka-dot anything in Isabel’s things to do so. I pinched the fabric carefully and then held it up by both ends. It was underwear. Isabel wore polka-dot underwear. I dropped them immediately.