She made a sound of protest, then walked in back of Jake who slung his hands behind him.
Kneeling, she grabbed his wrist. For a moment nothing happened, and she was afraid she was too frightened to activate the link between them.
Then she heard his voice in her head.
Rachel!
Thank God. What are we going to do?
Work together.
“Don’t just kneel there. Tie him up,” the guy ordered in a grating voice.
She wound some of the rope around Jake’s right wrist, striving to keep the connection with him when her heart was pounding so hard that she could barely think.
She caught a mental picture that she knew wasn’t her own thought. A picture of the man rushing across the room and smashing his head into the window. It was so vivid, that she glanced up to make sure the guy was still holding the gun on them.
Help me.
I don’t know how.
Neither do I, but we have to get that pictureinto his mind. Unless you’ve got a betteridea.
She didn’t.
Bending her head so her face didn’t show, she pretended to work on tying Jake.
Help me send him the picture.
How?
I don’t know!
She caught the frustration in Jake’s inner voice.
Just see it the way I’m seeing it and blast it toward him. Like you were throwing a baseball.
Was there a hope in heaven of that working? It had to! Because once they were restrained, the man with the gun could do whatever he wanted to them.
She had never tried to do anything like what Jake was asking. Not in her life. But she did her best to follow his lead. It was like feeling around in the dark looking for a needle she’d dropped on the floor, and she had no idea where it was.
When she made a frustrated sound, he answered,It’s our only chance.
The mental warning galvanized her. They had to get away from this guy, or he was going to do something horrible–to both of them. Like he’d done to Evelyn.
She thrust that terrible thought from her mind. All that mattered was getting away, and Jake had given them a way to do it, if they could pull it off.
With every shred of will she possessed, she focused on the picture Jake had given her–of the man rushing across the room and slamming his head into the window. At the same time as she drilled the picture into her brain cells, she tried to aim it toward their captor.
When she dared to glance up, she saw that his face had turned pale. At least he must be getting the image. But was he going to act on it?
Everything you’ve got, Jake whispered in her mind, and she felt the resolve pouring out of him. She could see dropsof moisture on the back of his neck as he strained to do the impossible.
No, not impossible, because they were doing it.
“Quit stalling,” the guy said, but his voice had taken on a strangled quality.
Because she knew he couldn’t see what she was doing, she stopped working with the rope so that her total attention was on the mental mission.
