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I dashed for the door, dropping the makeshift bludgeon as I ran. Karim was right behind me. I didn’t even make the door before he grabbed my coat and spun me round. “You’ve left me no choice,” he snarled. Get down on the floor and don’t move.”
His tone chilled me. I didn’t argue. I got down one knee and then the other. “What are you going to do with me,” I cried.
He put his hand up to his forehead and fingered the broken skin. The back of his long brown fingers were lightly furred with dark blood-stained hairs. You know too much. I ought to...”
He broke off and his expression softened, “I’m going to tie you up.”
I stared past him as if he wasn’t there.
He rummaged through his medical bag and took out a bandage and ripped it open.’
“Hold your hands out.”
I wasn’t brave enough to refuse. I sniffed back tears as he tied them together with a crepe bandage. Then he leaned in over me, bound my knees together and then my ankles. Picking me up like a baby, he carried me into the walk-in pantry and deposited me on its tiled floor. He left abruptly but returned in a moment, holding his medical bag in one hand and a hypodermic syringe in the other. “I’m going to put you to sleep for a while,” he said.
I thought despairingly of Annie, counting down the hours to this evening. I’d have no chance of raising the alarm if he drugged me.
“Please don’t,” I begged. “It isn’t necessary. You’ve tied me up, I can’t escape. Even Houdini couldn’t undo these knots.”
“It’s for your own good. After half an hour the pain in your arms, legs and across your shoulders will be unbearable. Better by far to sleep through it. By the time you wake up everything will be over.”
I stared numbly at the back of his head as he rifled through his medical bag. “Would you believe it? I don’t have any Nonbenzodiazepine.” His face was tight and stiff with disbelief. “What a nuisance! I’ll have to get some from the pharmacy.”
I did some belated thinking. “I’ve been scared of needles all my life,” I sobbed. I raised my face piteously as the tears I’d been holding back flowed in rills down my cheeks. “Please don’t,” I begged. My voice cracked as another sob escaped. “I really hate needles.” Even to my ears it seemed a feeble excuse, but then feeble was exactly how I felt.
“Calm down, Beth” he said in a low tone.
“I c- can’t ... if you’re frightened I’ll call for help, gag me.”
Gagging you won’t be necessary,” he said, looking down at me with a hint of compassion. “This complex is brand new and apart from me, it’s untenanted ... the privacy it affords is the reason I moved in.” He gave me a crooked smile. “Okay, you win. But don’t blame me when the pain...” He broke off when the phone rang.
“That was Dr. Randall,” he said a few minutes later. There are some last-minute details he wants to go over with me. I’ll be back in an hour or so with some Nonbenzodiazepine. By then you’ll be begging me for it,” he said, as he flicked off the light.
* * *
So what am I supposed to do now, I thought helplessly. First off calm down, commonsense advised. Hard to do when my sister, royalty, twenty world leaders and an audience of school children were about to be blown to kingdom-come and I, the only one who had a hope in hell of intervening, was tied up in a pantry belonging to the person behind the atrocity.
I sniffed back about a gallon of unshed tears and tried to wipe my eyes on the shoulder of my anorak, but I couldn’t get my face close enough. My only option was to yell. All it needed was for one person to investigate. Karim had boasted that the building was untenanted, but there was a very real chance that a realtor could be showing an apartment to a prospective buyer.
Feeling calmer, I yelled for help at the top of my voice. The volume was on a par with that of a Nordic Valkyrie – she-warriors whose shrieks were known to break glass and shatter eardrums. And I kept it up. I yelled without flagging until my clothes were drenched with sweat, my mouth was dry and my throat felt like it was on fire.
My optimism wasn’t altogether unwarranted. I’d been imprisoned once before; my captor had left me to die in a cave at the back-of-beyond. On that occasion Mo had come to my aid. I heaved a massive sigh. Mo wouldn’t save me this time. He had no idea I was in trouble. No one did.
A terrible thought came into my head. Maybe Karim has no intention of coming back for me. I’d read somewhere that a person can only last a few days without water. A violent spasm shook me. Only once before had I felt as frightened and forlorn. Fear like a dense, deep fog wrapped around me. No one knew I was missing. No one knew where to find me. I was going to die in this tiny room, in the dark ... alone.
Oh God, I whimpered, I’m scared. I don’t want to die. Please let someone find me ... please, please, please ... I’ll never ask for anything, ever again. No one came. I wasn’t surprised. I had a nerve asking for His help. I’d stopped believing when I was about fourteen.
In the end, exhausted, I stopped yelling. I breathed deeply. Sucked in my cheeks. Tried to force my brain to come up with an alternative plan. Giving up was out of the question. If Annie died, my life would shatter into a million pieces. I’d never be able to put it together.
Think, I told myself think ... I can’t give up.
An interminable time passed. My bonds felt tighter. My calves tingled. Once I lost sensation I’d have no chance of freeing myself. I edged my body sideways a fraction. The pantry was about four feet in width, so there was room for movement. With my limbs immobilized my only option was to roll onto my side until I reached the wall. Then using the wall and an elbow as a prop I raised my upper torso and lowered my head, neck and shoulders. Holding the position was agonizing but my face and more importantly my teeth were now in biting range of the knot that bound my hands together. No beaver ever gnawed away at tree trunk as frantically as I gnawed at that knot. My teeth ached, my entire mouth ached; but the knowledge that Annie would die if I couldn’t get this Gordian[25] of a knot undone, kept me at it. Eventually, cramps set in. Karim hadn’t exaggerated. The pain in my shoulders and limbs was unbearable. I rolled onto my other side. Wouldn’t you know it? Compounding the agony, my cell phone was now digging into my hipbone.
I was about to roll back when my brain clicked in. How? I couldn’t guess because my mind was in turmoil and I hadn’t been actively working on a solution to my situation. Stunned, I sat there with my mouth open as excitement fluttered like a butterfly’s wings in my throat. God bless technology. My hands didn’t need to be free in order to make a phone call. My cell’s service was voice activated.
I opened my mouth and gave the instruction. The breathy croak, all I could get out of my sore throat, was too weak to be heard. I’d have to get closer to my cell. It was difficult to conceive how this was to be done but the risk of Karim returning had me contorting my far from flexible body in an insanely extreme yoga position. I rolled onto my back bent my knees, took a breath and drew them up towards my chest while simultaneously raising my shoulders and upper torso. The strain on my back was excruciating, but I’d have borne worse to save Annie. Even so, it took everything I had to hold the position. Only the infusion of hope made it possible for me stand the pain. Laboriously, painfully, I lowered my head as near as I could to the pocket where I kept my cell. A double-jointed circus artiste couldn’t have got closer.
“Hey, Siri,” I croaked, “Call Mo.”
