The moment he cleared the door, she launched herself at his back, leaping onto it piggyback, reaching around his head to dig her fingers into his face.
She got a thrill from hearing his grunt of surprise and pain when one of her fingernails peeled a good two inches of skin off his cheek. But her success was short-lived, lasting all of ten or fifteen seconds.
Then his gloved hands closed around her wrists and forced her hands away from his face. While before, she’d been holding on with fierce determination, she was now fighting just as hard to free her wrists from his iron grip. She kicked against the backs of his legs but that was a waste of valuable energy.
She acknowledged the futility of trying to work herself free at the same time her reservoir of strength ran dry. She sagged against him, draped over his back like the flag of the vanquished.
“You done?” he asked.
“Not by a long shot.”
“I’m going to let you down. No more nonsense, all right?”
“Go to hell.”
“In due time, Doc. It’s a sure thing.”
Stretching his arms behind him over his shoulders, he dangled her until she could touch the floor, then he let go.
She’d planned for this. Before he was fully turned around to face her, she jerked free the butcher knife she’d stuck into one of the wall logs and made a swipe with it across his middle. He bowed his back and sucked in his belly just in time. She missed completely. The second swipe nicked the material of his coat but did negligible damage to the tough fabric.
“Damn you!”
She raised the knife high and arced it downward toward his neck. The tip of the blade caught in the wool of his scarf, but never found flesh before he grabbed her hand and, with humiliating ease, unarmed her. He tossed the knife across the room, where it skidded across the hardwood floor before banging into the baseboard.
“Now are you done?”
She stumbled back against the wall, fearing retribution. He looked huge and indomitable. Blood trickled from the deep scratch on his face. He brushed it with the back of his hand, leaving a red smear on the chamois leather glove.
He looked at the fresh bloodstain, then at her. “I guess you’re feeling better.”
She pulled herself up to her full height and glared at him, despising her own weakness and infuriated by his composure.
“Want to tell me what the hell that was about?” he asked.
He followed the direction of her angry gesture and looked over his shoulder toward the dining table where she’d placed the incriminating laptop and its charger, which she’d found in the locker beneath the bed. “You lied to me.”
“No I didn’t.”
“You said you didn’t have a charger.”
“I said I didn’t have a phone. Which I don’t.”
“Well I found the charger, and it’s been plugged into my cell phone for two hours, and the phone is still dead. What did you do to it?”
“I took the battery out.”
His calm admission rendered her speechless. As she stood there gaping, he clamped the end of his middle finger between his front teeth and used them to pull off his right glove, then began unbuttoning his coat.
“Why?” she wheezed.
“So it couldn’t emit a signal.”
She’d been entertaining a sliver of hope that she’d let her imagination get the best of her, that she’d seen too many TV shows, read too many books, fiction as well as true accounts, about women who were captured, tortured, abused, murdered. She’d held on to the diminishing hope that he wasn’t actually keeping her in this isolated place against her will and with evil intent.
But he’d just dashed that slender hope all to hell. He’d disabled her phone. On purpose. Her location couldn’t be tracked using GPS, which is one of the first things the authorities would try to do when Jeff reported her missing.
“Why did you bring me here?”
“Haven’t we already established that?”
“We haven’t established a damn thing except that you’re a kidnapper and a—” She broke off, not wanting to plant ideas in his head.
He seemed to read her mind, however, because he arched one dark brow inquisitively. “And a what?”
She’d had a slim-to-none chance of incapacitating him, either by gouging his eyes out or plunging the knife into him. Since both attempts had failed, the only weapon left to her was reason.
“Listen, I don’t care what you’ve done in the past. You haven’t hurt me yet. In fact, you’ve been exceptionally kind. Which I appreciate. Things could have gone a lot worse for me if you hadn’t been there to…to find me and bring me here.”
He waited several beats. “But?”
“But I need to leave now and go home. You must let me go.”
He raised his shoulders slightly and motioned toward the door. “It’s unlocked. But I warn you, I don’t believe you’ll get very far. I walked a couple of miles down the road, thinking that the fog might not be so thick at a lower elevation. I never walked out of it.”
“You walked.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you drive?”
“For the same reason I wouldn’t drive you last night. There are dozens of switchbacks. I could miss a curve and go over a three-hundred-foot drop.”
“But you took the keys to your truck.”
“Because I didn’t want you driving it.”
“It occurred to me.”
“I figured. I didn’t want you wrecking it and possibly killing yourself in the process. Which is why I took the keys.”
He stuffed his gloves, bloodstain and all, into the pocket of his coat and hung it on a wall peg. He unwound the scarf from around his neck. Static raised his hair when he pulled off his watch cap. It and the scarf were added to the peg.
He went to the fireplace, hunkered down in front of it, stirred the embers with a poker, and then added several logs. Coming to his feet and dusting his hands on his seat, he asked if she’d eaten anything.
“No.”
He went over to the refrigerator and opened it. She marched up to it and pushed the door shut with enough force to rock the appliance and rattle bottles inside. He turned, looking like he might kill her then and there, but she didn’t let his murderous glower intimidate her.
“My husband will be frantic to know where I am and what’s happened to me. He’ll have the police out searching.”
“Well they won’t find you today. Not the way things are socked in.”
“I can e-mail him. But I need the password for your laptop.”
He glanced at the laptop, then turned back to the fridge, bumped her hip with his to move her out of the way, and reopened the door. “I don’t do e-mail.”
“That’s okay. I can contact him through Facebook. Even if Jeff doesn’t see my post, a friend—”
“Sorry, Doc, no.”
“But—”
“No.”
“I won’t mention you. How could I when I don’t even know your name? I’ll just let Jeff know that I’m okay.”
He shook his head.
“No details, I promise. You can approve the post before I send it.”
“No.”
It was like hitting the dreaded twenty-mile wall of a marathon. One had to press on, power through it, or be defeated. “You’re committing a crime, you know.”
“I haven’t laid a hand on you.”
“But you’re keeping me here against my will.”
“Circumstances are keeping you here.”
“You could change the circumstances if you wanted to.”
“I can’t change the weather.”
“I wasn’t referring to the weather. You’re refusing to let me use your laptop to—”
“The laptop is off-limits.”
“Why?”
“That’s my business.”
“Whatever that is, it can’t be good.”
“I didn’t claim it was good. It’s just the way it is.”
“Tell me why you’re holding me here.”
He advanced on her and bent down to bring his face almost on a level with hers. Speaking in a rasp more sinister than a shout, he said, “I’m not keeping you in, Doc.” He hitched his chin toward the door. “I’m keeping them out.”