“Same if you said that wasn’t you I bumped into.” I clear my throat again. Most of the pain is gone, but the lingering ache is making my voice sound raspy and strained. “I’m going to have to get a bit personal with you,” I warn. “If you feel hands, that’s me.”
“Pretty sure we’ve already gotten personal together.”
I laugh. Thank fuck he can joke about what happened and things aren’t going to be weird while we’re stuck here together. “True.”
Being careful not to move too fast so I don’t spook him, I feel around until my hand hits his leg. Once I know where he is, I run my palm over his knee, then up the side of his thigh and over his hip until my fingers bump into a smooth wall.
“Why would someone target you?” he asks as I feel around on the wall to make sure the space is clear.
“Same as you,” I say as I finally settle next to him.
Our legs brush gently, and the little bit of contact makes the dark feel a little less oppressive.
“Money?”
“Yup. My family has a lot of it. If they know who I really am, then they’re probably after a ransom.” I try to cover up my laugh, and it comes out as a snort.
“What was that for?”
“If that’s what happened, then these fuckers have no idea what hell they’ve just unleashed.”
“What do you mean?”
“My family doesn’t take insults lightly, and abducting me is a pretty epic insult. These assholes just signed their death warrants.”
We fall silent, but the warmth of his leg against mine is calming as I lean back against the wall.
My head is mostly clear now, and my body finally feels normal, but my memories are still a jumbled mess. I have no idea what they drugged us with, but memory loss seems to be the worst of the side effects.
“Do you think they’re going to kill us?” he asks softly.
“I doubt it. They had lots of chances while we were knocked out and helpless. They wouldn’t have bothered to take us to a second location alive if the plan was to kill us.”
“Yeah, that makes sense.” He shifts beside me, and the brush of his body against mine is strangely soothing.
“Are you hurt?” I ask belatedly.
“No, just stiff and sore. But the zip tie is really tight.”
“I know a way to get out of them.”
“You do?” he asks hopefully.
“Yeah. The only problem is what’ll happen to us if they come in here and find out we got them off.”
“They can’t get ransom for a dead body,” he says, and the hint of snark in his tone is a welcome change from the small, scaredvoice from before. “How do we get them off? I saw something online about using shoelaces, but my boots have zippers and buckles on them. Is that how we get free?”
“You can use laces, but my shoes don’t have any either. And there’s another way that’s even easier,” I tell him. “It’s kind of hard to explain, but what you want to do is bring your arms up above your head, make fists with your hands as best you can, and face your fists together with your elbows out. Then bring your arms down hard and fast in front of you and pull them apart as hard as you can when you reach the bottom of the arc and your elbows meet your hips.”
“I…can’t picture that,” he says ruefully. “Like what you said makes sense, but at the same time, it makes no sense.”
“Yeah, it’s hard to explain,” I repeat. “I’ll get out of mine, then we’ll get you out of yours. Okay?”
“Okay.”
I scoot forward a few feet, then move a little bit away from him so I don’t risk hitting him when I get free. Using my teeth, I bite down on the end of the tie and pull it as hard as I can to make the tie as tight as possible. Then, doing exactly what I told him, I lift my arms up, get my hands into position, then bring them down and wrench them apart.
The snapping of the zip tie coming off is loud and satisfying, and I’m grinning like a dumbass as I rub my wrists a few times to get the blood flowing into my hands again.
