My wrists were both zip tied to a radiator pipe that was warm to the touch and I put my cheek against it, letting it warm my chilled skin and wake me up more as I stared up at the singular naked lightbulb that looked about two seconds away from going out.
Surroundings, check.
Two, Lennon, my father said as he held up two fingers, my mother chuckling from her place on the couch next to him as hereached back to tickle her sock-covered foot.Try to understand who took you.
Kidwell, obviously. But she was just being paid. She had said I would meet her benefactors, and while I definitely didn’twantto meet them, I would need to in order to negotiate with them.
I filed number two away for later.
Number three, and this is important. You have to learn how to free yourself from all restraints, my father had told me and what had followed was a long afternoon of learning how to slip out of handcuffs, zip ties, and all forms of rope restraints. Something I had hoped I would never have to use, and yet here I was.
The first thing I would have to do was get this pipe off of the wall.
Thanking my lucky stars that these kidnappers had picked such a piece of shit house for their base of operations, I planted both feet on the wall and began to push, gritting my teeth as I felt the pipe begin to move.
Feet moved in the house above me and I froze, waiting until they stopped before I continued with my task.
Then, without realizing it, the pipe popped free of the wall, sending me careening back into the floor with a loudbang!
The footsteps overhead started up again and moved in the direction of the basement stairs.
“Shit, shit, shit,” I muttered, thinking about my options.
I didn’t want them to see that I’d managed to get free. That would just make them restrain me even tighter or do something even worse to me.
Glancing down at the pipe, I realized that it had come off at the joints and an idea came to mind.
Popping the joints back on enough that they looked connected but not enough toactuallyconnect them, I slumped against the wall and pretended to be asleep again.
“I swear I heard something man,” someone said as several sets of feet tramped down the steps.
“Nah, that agent lady said whatever she gave her would keep her asleep until after the president dropped out of the race. There’s no way she’d wake up that fast.”
“Besides,” another voice said. “That furnace over there knocks all the time, it’s an old house.”
“You sure she’s not awake?” someone nudged me with their boot hard and it took everything in me not to flinch.
“Nah she’s basically a ragdoll, see?” A fist gripped my hair by the root and lifted my head up painfully and I forced myself to remain limp despite the stinging pain in my scalp. “Dead asleep.”
Thankfully they dropped me after that and I slumped against the wall again.
“Let’s go back up, football’s on and I don’t want to miss the kickoff.”
“Why, so the Cowboys can lose another game?”
“Don’t jinx them like that, man!”
“Pfft, they jinx themselves just by stepping onto that field!”
“Asshole!”
As soon as the door slammed shut I let out a shuddering gasp and pulled the pipe from the wall, holding my still zip-tied hands to my screaming scalp.
Once the pain finally faded into a dull ache, I slipped the pipe out of the third zip tie and focused on breaking the ones that were holding my wrists together.
In the hours that they had been around my wrists they had rubbed the skin painfully raw and I hissed as I manipulated my hands to see if I could slip out of them.
Nope too tight.
