Karen Blaine lay on the bare cot and plotted her escape. They picked the wrong girl when they kidnapped her. Karen wasn’t some helpless pushover, too frightened to be any problem. A straight-A student with an analytical mind, Karen was used to figuring things out. Her situation was just another problem to be solved.
She was in a small room with no windows and a wooden door. It was an old door, really old, the kind that locked with a skeleton key.
The room was unfurnished except for the cot. There was a metal sink deep enough to fill a mop bucket on one wall, and a toilet in what at first glance appeared to be a closet. At one time this had been a workroom. Now it was a jail.
Her captors were the odd couple. There was the Arab, the smarmy, well-dressed Middle Eastern man who’d kidnapped her from campus. He probably wasn’t an Arab, but she dubbed him that, a useful shorthand. He spoke good English, with just a trace of an accent.
The big man was another story, a run-of-the-mill American goon, dressed like a slob in a tattered T-shirt so worn she couldn’t make out the rock group depicted on the front. The big man was dumb as a board, not that he ever talked to her, besides grunting out commands. She’d given up trying to talk to him. He just ignored her, or at most muttered for her to shut up. It was clear he wasn’t the brains of the operation, just the muscle.
Karen had no idea why she was here. She assumed it had something to do with her father. That was the danger of being the daughter of a prominent, powerful man. Her father had always warned her to be on her guard, but she’d never taken him seriously.
Clearly she’d been wrong, and now she was paying the price. She never should have gotten into the man’s SUV, but he had CIA credentials. He’d looked like a CIA agent, and acted like one, too, with his suave, efficient manner, and he had such a plausible story: he’d been sent by her father, it was an emergency, and she had to come at once. Her heart was pounding when she climbed into the front seat of the SUV. He’d leaned over to buckle her seat belt, and the next thing she knew she woke up here.
Wherever here was. It could have been right near campus or it could have been a million miles away. There was no way to tell with no window and not even the smallest crack to peek through. Karen never even knew if it was day or night, let alone what time it was. She measured out her days in sandwiches. She’d been here for eight or nine sandwiches; she wasn’t sure when she’d started keeping track.
The big man was the one who brought the sandwiches and took away the empty plates. He never brought her anything useful, like a fork she could bend the tines of to make a key. The meals were sandwiches, for the most part processed cheese with mayonnaise on white bread. Nonetheless, every time she heard the key in the lock Karen glanced up expectantly, hoping this time he would bring her something she could use. But he never did.
What she needed, of course, was something to pick the lock. She had a simple coiled bedspring she’d found hanging from the frame of the cot, and she’d spent a lot of time trying to twist it into a key, but no matter what shape she bent it into the round wire wasn’t substantial enough to move the tumblers. And there wasn’t anything else in the room that might work.
There came the familiar sound of the key in the lock. The big man stuck his head in the door. He did that now and then, just to reassure himself she was there. He never came any closer. It was as if he didn’t trust himself with her. Or as if he didn’t trust her with him.
That didn’t stop Karen from trying.
“It’s you. Thank goodness. I need my purse. I know you have it. You took it from me. There’s a book in it. I’m going nuts. I need to read. Please bring me my purse.”
The big man gave no sign he even heard her. He just turned around and left.
Karen wasn’t crushed. It had been a long shot, first that they even had the purse, second that they’d let her have it. There was nothing in it that she could use for a weapon except pencils and pens, and they’d be sure to take those. Still, they wouldn’t let her have it.
There came the sound of the key in the lock. Karen’s heart leaped. Was it possible?
The big man came in and her hopes were dashed. He had the paperback thriller she’d been reading.
He brought the fucking book!
“Oh, thank you, thank you,” Karen said. “But I can’t read it. I need my glasses. They’re in my purse. Can you get me my purse, please?”
Without a word he set the book on the floor, went out, and slammed the door. Again she heard the key in the lock.
What were the odds this time? The ice had been broken. He’d given her one thing, he could give her another. Conversely, he’d made a goodwill gesture and she’d slapped him down, complained about it, said it wasn’t good enough. He’d never do it again.
There came the sound of the key in the lock and the big man was back. He didn’t have her purse. He had her glasses. He set them on the floor and went out.
Karen snatched them up.
The glasses were broken. The screw had come loose, and one of the plastic temples had fallen off. She never found the tiny screw. It probably would have been stripped anyway. But she’d managed to repair the glasses.
The temple was held on by a safety pin.