The handcuff loosened another click. “It’s the trauma from before. If he’d been anyone else, I imagine that wouldn’t have happened. But your brain shut down the moment you realized who he was. That’s not your fault. It’s not something you could control.”
“Nice of you to say, but I’m not so sure that—”
Click. He pulled the handcuff off her.
She rubbed her wrist and grinned. “I’m free!”
“Not quite. That was step one. Step two is getting out of this shack. Step three is disappearing into the woods long before he gets back.” He slipped her end of the handcuffs over his still-cuffed wrist and clicked them loosely into place.
“What are you doing!” she exclaimed. “Why did you do that?”
“To save time. I can do whatever I need to do with both cuffs on the same wrist. I’ll worry about getting them off later.” He waved toward her shirt, which had fallen to the floor. “I’m having enough trouble focusing with this concussion without your gorgeous breasts distracting me. Mind putting your shirt back on?”
Her smile beamed at him, full wattage. “You think my breasts are gorgeous? What a sweet thing to say.” She winked and grabbed her shirt. “Let’s get out of here, Bryson. I want you to buy me those matching underwear sets so you can take them right back off again.”
He laughed and tried to shove himself to his feet, but his hip gave out and he collapsed against the cushions. His face heated with embarrassment as he cleared his throat. “Looks like I’ll need a little help standing. I should be able to walk but getting up off this couch is beyond my current abilities. I always get stiff after lying down for a while.”
“I sure hope you do.”
He glanced at her in confusion, then realized what she meant when she winked.
He shook his head, grinning. “You’ve got a one-track mind. Help me up.” He held his hand out to stop whatever she was about to say. “Without another sexual innuendo. We’re running out of time.”
Her smile faded and fear took its place. He regretted being so blunt, but even though her natural tendency to block out her fears and worries by flirting and teasing was adorable in most circumstances, they were a liability in this one. Especially since the blow to his head had him thinking far less clearly than usual.
She helped him up, and thankfully he was able to limp unaided to the door.
“What do we do now?” She settled her shirt into place. “Try to pull out the hinge pins?”
He was already sticking the underwire into the door lock when her innocent question had him glancing up in surprise. The hinges were on the inside. Because doors like these were intended to keep people out, not in.
Their abductor might have finally made a mistake.
Chapter Sixteen
“You, Teagan Ray, are brilliant,” Bryson told her. “I’ll try the lock first, but I was worried this metal will be too soft for this. The hinge pins will likely be our ticket out of here. But we have to find something to use to pop them out.” He motioned toward the stove, which was only about three feet from the door, and beyond that to the handful of cabinets that formed the tiny kitchenette. “Look through this kitchen, in the bedroom, under the couch. We’ll need something we can either wedge under the end of the pin to pull it or something to stick in the hinge on the bottom to push it.”
“I’m on it.”
She moved past him and started slamming open cabinets and drawers. He could follow her progress through the tiny shack by the sound of her cursing and the sounds of her either kicking or hitting walls.
He blocked all that out and focused on trying to pick the lock using the underwire.
After half a dozen attempts, he realized it wasn’t going to happen. The metal was just too soft and kept bending. He tossed it aside as she ran to him holding up a long metal rod and a foot-long piece of wood.
“Will this work?” She was breathing heavily from exertion. “I figure you can stick the metal up the bottom of the hinge and use the wood like a hammer to push out the pin.”
“Do I even want to know where you got the steel rod? And why it’s wet?”
“Probably not.”
“Were you in the bathroom?”
“Like I said. You don’t want to know.”
He grimaced. The rod looked like one of those old-fashioned toilet-tank float rods that controlled how the toilet flushed. As to the wood, it was either a piece of baseboard or a piece of the floor itself. Judging by the dilapidated shape of the building, neither would surprise him.
The steel rod was the perfect size and slid in place beneath the middle hinge pin with ease. Hope flared in his chest as he slammed the wood against it. He slammed it over and over and over, but the pin wasn’t moving. He finally stopped and leaned in close, trying to see if there was something keeping it in place. Then he took a closer look at the hinges in the door frame and cursed.
