Kelly’s head throbbed when she woke. She felt nauseated and confused as she tried to shake the foggy feeling in her head and rid the cotton from her mouth. Panic set in when she realized her hands and feet were bound with thick layers of duct tape and she was in a room she didn’t recognize.
She felt as though a band was tightening around her chest, suffocating her. Waves of panic swept over her and bile burned at the base of her throat.
She was lying on the floor in a typical bedroom, a bit small. It was daylight out. There was a twin-sized bed, and a torn-up upholstered chair in the corner, but that was it. The room was bare, other than those two pieces of furniture.
Kelly fought to pull details from her mind, grasping at threads of memory so thin they seemed to fall from her mind before she could see where they went. She closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths and pictured herself earlier in the day. It would have been noon when she was grabbed. She had left the clinic at noon.
She could remember walking out the back door of the clinic. Denise had asked her to take the trash to the dumpster on her way out, so she left through the back door even though her car was parked out front. Out front—where her security detail would have been.
She struggled to remember, but felt like there were holes in her mind, like her brain wasn’t quite functioning right. She could remember someone coming at her from behind as she walked out into the alley, then a strong, sweet smell filled her nose and overwhelmed her before she blacked out. Nothing about the memory seemed right, like trying to put together pieces of different puzzles.
Tears were flowing freely now. Kelly could picture three men surrounding her, and she remembered seeing a van with two more men before she passed out. The men had worn masks….
Staying calm was no longer an option. Fresh waves of sheer terror bolted through Kelly’s body. She closed her eyes tight and tried desperately to calm herself, but she had never felt a level of dread and utter anguish like this.
Her mind started running through all the ways that this could end, each image sending her into further panic until she felt as if she would choke on the fear. Then one image stopped her catapult into darkness. Jack.
Jack taking her in his arms. Jack holding her, safe again. She didn’t know if Jack’s Aunt Mabry was responsible for this or not, but she knew one thing. He would find her.
Kelly latched onto that image and tried to take deep breaths.
You can do this. You need to stay calm and figure out how to get yourself out of here.
She looked around and assessed the room. There were muffled voices outside the door to the room. It sounded as if all of the men were out there, but she couldn’t hear what they were saying.
She did hear the sound of a television as it played in the next room. Kelly hoped that would mask any sound she made as she tried to move and release her bonds.
She stayed as quiet as she could so they didn’t realize she was awake and studied her surroundings, trying to understand her circumstances. She was sitting on the floor with heavy layers of duct tape around her ankles and wrists. There was tape over her mouth too.
Thankful that they had bound her hands in front of her body instead of behind her back, she found she could use her hands a bit. She reached up with her hands and pressed her lips together to fight the urge to cry out, then pulled the tape from her mouth. She left the flap of it hanging from one corner so that she could put it back if they came in.
Kelly began to take inventory of the room.
Is there anything I can use to get out of here? Look around, Kelly. Focus.
Swallowing another wave of panic, she saw how little furniture there was in the room, how hopeless her situation was. She again forced herself to take deep slow breaths. She needed to look out the window.
Kelly lay down again and began to roll sideways, moving herself slowly and quietly toward the window. She was methodical in her movements to avoid making noise. She rolled up onto her knees, placed her bound hands onto the windowsill and levered herself up to look out the window. It had been nailed shut.
She appeared to be up on the third floor of what looked like a small apartment building. She could tell because there was another, similar building across the street, and she wondered if she could signal anyone over there but didn’t see any movement in the windows.
It was hard to hold herself up at the window with her ankles bound so tightly, but she made a mental note to look out the window again every fifteen minutes to try to get someone’s attention.
Kelly turned and sat on the floor, leaning her back against the wall. There were two other doors in the room in addition to the door leading to the voices. After resting for a few minutes, she rolled over to one of them.
A closet. Empty.
She rolled to the next door and opened it. A bathroom. It was as empty as the rest of the apartment. No shower curtain. No towels or bathmat. Kelly took a deep breath and rolled to her knees, put her hands onto the sink and pulled herself up. She hopped up onto her feet and bumped her lip on the corner of the sink.
She swallowed the urge to yelp at the pain and shoved open the medicine cabinet above the sink. Empty. She reminded herself to be methodical, cautious…to think.
She crouched back down and rested on her heels. Think, Kelly, think. That was her mantra now, to keep her focused and calm.
She looked up at the sink. It could provide a long-shot possibility; there was no other way to get out. Kelly remembered watching a child safety video when she was little. Their parents played it for her and her sister and brothers all the time. It had this cheesy caped safety hero who taught safety for kids. She had a sudden memory of a scene in the movie.
The sink. Turn on the taps and let the water run over to flood the apartment below.
She thought about it for a minute. She would need to turn it on low so the men outside the door wouldn’t hear the water running. And she had to fill the safety drain hole in the basin by the wall. Balled up toilet paper did the trick. She just hoped she had enough time for it to overflow if it poured at such a low rate—and that there was someone below to see it.
She figured she could listen to the kidnappers and come turn the flow up, or try to break a window and call for help if she heard them leave the main area.
That seemed like a long shot though, because there were five of them. It was unlikely they would all leave at once, so Kelly knew her best chance was to focus on silent ways to alert others of her location. The open sink faucet might be her only shot.
Kelly turned the tap on low and plugged the drain, then rolled back into the bedroom and lay down where they had left her. She put the tape back onto her mouth and closed her eyes, and tried to picture Jack. She squeezed her eyes shut as tightly as she could and blocked out the fear by picturing herself safely in Jack’s arms.