“What is it?” she asked.
“Locking hinge pins.”
“Never heard of them. But I don’t like how that sounds.”
He tossed the wood and rod on the floor and wiped his hands on his dress pants. “I thought our captor made a mistake with the hinges on the inside. But he didn’t. There’s an extra screw that prevents the pin from being backed out. We’d need an Allen wrench and a screwdriver to get it out. No homemade tools are going to back out that screw. It’s drilled into the wrought-iron frame.”
Her shoulders slumped. “That’s why he didn’t try to drug us, or tie us up. He knew there was no way to escape.”
“Don’t give up on me now. I haven’t thrown in the towel just yet.”
She nodded. But he could tell she was rapidly losing hope.
“Talk to me,” he said. “Tell me how you escaped the last time while I see what else is in here.”
“There’s nothing. Just the couch and a few aluminum pots and pans. The utensils in the drawer are plastic or rubber. There’s nothing we could use to stab or hit him.”
“He’s got a gun. Nothing much trumps that. We need to get out before he returns. We have to think outside the box.” He limped past the front door and the stove, then yanked open one of the cabinet drawers in the kitchenette. “Tell me about the shack, and how you got out.”
“It’s basically the same. Well, the bars are new. And the iron front door. There isn’t a back door. He tied me up when he left, with cloth. He didn’t use handcuffs. Mostly he used drugs to keep me docile. He’d knock me out for hours, and I wouldn’t wake up until he was back. I was in detox for weeks after I got away.”
He pulled the hardware, tested the corners of the drawer boxes. “Go on. What else.”
She sighed heavily. “I was blindfolded whenever it was light outside. And he wore a hooded mask most of the time. That always gave me hope, thinking he’d eventually let me go because he was keeping his identity secret. But I don’t know that he ever would have. He was just extra cautious, in case something happened and I got away. He’s not worried about us identifying him. He’s going to kill us.”
He’d just started into the bathroom but turned around when she said that. “Not if I kill him first. Donotgive up on me.”
Her eyes widened, but he didn’t stand around talking. The sense of time passing was making him feel edgy and nervous. He couldn’t imagine that whatever their captor was doing would keep him gone much longer.
The bathroom was a total bust. It was pitch dark, for one thing, but tiny without even a cabinet under the sink to hide anything. No bleach or cleaners that he could toss in the gunman’s face. He didn’t know how Teagan had managed tothink about the toilet rod or even how she’d gotten it out of the back of the tank in the darkness. He had to give her a lot of credit for ingenuity.
The bedroom was much the same as the rest. Bars on the lone small window. An empty closet. No bed, just a mattress lying on the floor. It looked new, thankfully. Not the one that had been here two years ago.
He paused in the tiny hallway outside the bedroom. As run-down as the place was, maybe they could push through a wall like Teagan had teased about earlier. He doubted it, but he sent her off to look for weaknesses in the walls while he returned to the kitchen corner of the main room. With her distracted, he leaned down to study the two-burner gas stove.
It had caught his attention earlier as he’d considered what he could do given the lit pilot light and the fact that the gas line ran through the wall to a propane tank on the outside. Filling the cabin with gas and causing an explosion would likely burn the dry-rotted cabin like kindling. And the fire could be seen for miles around. It would get first responders out here for sure. But being blown apart in the explosion or burning alive were both wholly unappealing.
“What are you looking at?” she asked.
“Nothing helpful. I’m going to check the bedroom again. Did you find any weaknesses in the walls?”
She followed him as he limped into the bedroom.
“No. But I’m no expert at building construction. And it’s still so dark in here that I might have missed something. Unless you want more baseboards.”
He straightened from his study of the wood beneath the window where he’d been hoping moisture might have rotted out the frame. “Baseboards. That’s what you handed me to use as a hammer. Where did you find it?”
She pointed toward the closet. “In there. The board was broken already so I was able to kick out that piece I gave you.” She rubbed her hands up and down her arms. “He’ll be back soon, won’t he?”
The wobble in her voice had him longing to hold her, to try to comfort her. Instead, he dropped to his knees to study the baseboards, grimacing at the jolt of pain that sizzled through his hip.
“You didn’t finish telling me how you got away.” He felt along the bottom of the closet as she talked behind him, telling him how her captor had missed the vein the last time when he’d tried to drug her.
“He was going on one of his supply trips,” she said. “The injection made me groggy but didn’t knock me out like usual. I pretended to be unconscious. After he left I shoved the blindfold up and used my teeth to loosen my bindings and got myself untied. The old front door was mostly rotten so I kicked it until it split away from the frame. Then I took off. Nothing amazing. I just ran until I couldn’t. Then I walked. Then I crawled. A hiker found me several days later. Not that any of that matters. Our situation is different. We’re good and stuck here.”
He tugged on the board he’d been testing, pulling as hard as he could. It broke in half with a loud crack.
She jumped beside him. “What was that?”
