Elsie struggled to wake up, but consciousness remained just out of reach. Her head was swimming toward awareness but remained in a riptide of darkness.
Something was wrong. She knew it on a basic level. Everything was out of whack. The scent in her nostrils was unfamiliar. The sheet that covered her felt slick rather than smooth. Even the quiet held whispers of darkness, sounds of breathing and stealthy movement.
She opened one eye. Dim light filtered under a crooked curtain hanging over a window; but it wasn’t daylight. The light flashed on and off, from a neon sign nearby. A motel sign.
She was in bed, at the EconoMo.
And she wasn’t alone.
Elsie had a roommate. She rolled her head to the side to scope it out. Though her vision blurred, she could make out a girl in the next bed, with a mop of frizzy ringlets and a strip of silver duct tape over her mouth.
Elsie ran her dry tongue over her lips, registering with belated surprise that her own mouth was not similarly covered. With a herculean effort, she slid to escape the bed, intending to remove the tape from the girl’s mouth.
But she couldn’t get either of her feet onto the floor. Her right arm would not cooperate. Elsie turned her head to determine the problem. What she saw sent dread washing over her in a wave. She was handcuffed to the bed.
The sight helped to clear her foggy head. She rolled onto her side and inspected the cuff. It looked like the real thing; like the handcuffs that officers carried on their belts at the Barton Police Department. She tugged at it, a reflex reaction; but it remained secure.
Her head fell back onto the mattress. With her eyes focused on the ceiling, she thought, What have I gotten myself into?
Her head clouded again, and her body ached to return to sleep. But the shifting noises on the next bed roused her.
Groaning, Elsie rolled onto her side; she stretched across the bed as far as the restraint would permit and spoke to her companion.
“Are you Desiree? The girl from Barton, Taylor’s friend?”
The eyes widened under the mass of hair, and the girl nodded emphatically.
Elsie’s heart was pounding, her mouth as dry as burnt toast. She spoke in a ragged whisper.
“They’re looking for you, honey. I’m Elsie, I work at the courthouse in Barton.”
Desiree’s eyes were wild. She tried to speak, but the duct tape garbled the words.
Elsie said, “My mom is your English teacher. Mrs. Arnold.”
Clearly, the revelation soothed the girl. Elsie saw the tension in her shoulders relax; and she bowed her head, breathing deeply.
The girl’s slow breathing caused Elsie to follow suit, and the oxygen helped keep the fog in her head at bay. Elsie scoured the room in the flashing light, taking in the few fixtures of the hotel room, and noting the door in the wall that connected them with the adjoining room.
She whispered, her voice ragged. “Are they next door? Tony and the woman?”
Desiree looked up, nodding again. Elsie saw that Desiree was wearing a lace push-up bra on her girlish chest; but she couldn’t tell whether she wore other clothing, because her lower body was covered by the bedsheet. Her arms were behind her, and she resumed the shifting movements.
Elsie tugged at her handcuffed wrist. “Are you cuffed, too?”
Desiree shook her head. Shooting a frightened glance at the door to Tony’s room, she scooted sideways on the bed, revealing her restraints.
Her hands were bound with yellow nylon rope; her wrists raw and bloody. But the rope had loosened. One of the knots was undone. As Elsie watched with wonder, Desiree’s bloody fingertips plucked at the rope, moving relentlessly over the hairy nylon. Elsie thought, that’s got to hurt like hell.
She watched the girl’s bloody hands move; her wrists were slick with gore that had stained the bedsheets as well as the rope. With a muffled howl, the girl’s arm muscles tensed, and she tried to pull her hand free.
The rope gave, but not enough to slip her hand through. Elsie saw the girl’s head bow; Desiree breathed deeply for ten counts or more. Then her arms tensed again; she growled behind the tape; and pulled.
This time, the wet hand slipped through the rope. Desiree collapsed on the bed, her chest rising and falling as she breathed through her nose.
When she lifted her head, Elsie said, “The tape.” And Desiree ripped it from her mouth, leaving a bloody streak across her cheek.
The girl groaned, and Elsie extended a hand in comfort, but she couldn’t reach. So, she said, with awe, “You did it. How’d you do that?”
Desiree’s voice was so low that Elsie barely caught the answer. “Mom taught me how. The Houdini Act.” She shook the nylon rope that still hung off her left wrist. “But that was a lot harder than the pageant.”
She glanced over at Elsie’s bed, where her arm was attached to the bed frame by the metal cuff. “They kept me in handcuffs till you came along. I can do handcuffs. But I gotta have my pin. I don’t have one. We used to hide it in my costume.”
Elsie had no clue what Desiree referred to; but it didn’t matter. “Can you get your feet free?”
Desiree kicked the sheet off; her ankles were bound together with the yellow rope as well. Elsie watched, holding her breath, as Desiree tried to pick at the knot with her raw fingers. The girl paused, clenching her fists together with a moan. “My hands hurt too bad.”
Elsie swiveled her head to survey the room. “Does he keep a knife? He has to have something he used to cut the rope and tape.”
Desiree shook her head. “It’s not in here. He keeps it on his belt, in a holder thing.”
She wriggled off the bed and hopped to the desk. The landline phone was missing, its space deserted; but on the dusty surface of the desk, a small pad of paper sat beside an ink pen. Desiree picked up the pen, then crouched on the floor, and thrust it into the yellow knot at her ankles. The blood on her hands made the tool slippery, but Elsie watched the girl work patiently at the bindings, stopping to wrap the bedsheet around her hand to quell the bleeding.
Elsie’s fists clenched and unclenched in sympathy. Desiree studied the tool, and proceeded to pick at the knot with the pointed end. Just as the tip of the pen wormed inside the rope and looked like it would pull the biggest knot free, the plastic case shattered, and scuttled across the floor.
“Shit,” Elsie hissed, trying in vain to reach it with her foot. “Desiree. I think it rolled under my bed.”
But Desiree wasn’t listening. Her bloody hand groped the desktop and picked up another item that lay on its surface: a pink plastic headband covered in sparkly hearts.
“Desiree,” Elsie whispered, but the girl ignored her. She took the headband in both hands and broke it in two.
Elsie watched, her unease growing; it looked like the girls’ eyes shone with unshed tears. But she wiped them away with the back of her raw wrist and poised one of the pink plastic shards over the knots. It had a pointed edge. After long minutes of effort, the pink spear loosened the knot sufficiently for Desiree to pull the ropes loose.
She shed the yellow rope, kicking it away from her ankles. With a woebegone face, she set the pink plastic on the desktop and looked up at Elsie.
“I always thought it was lucky. The headband.”
“It is. Lucky you had the sense to use it like that.” Elsie held her breath, straining to hear whether any sound came from the next room. “Sounds quiet next door,” she whispered.
Desiree crawled to the adjoining door and pressed her ear against it. “I can’t hear anything.”
Elsie pulled to a sitting position against the backboard, her heart beating with urgency. “You’ve got to get out of here.”
Desiree’s face twisted with panic. “I don’t have my clothes.”
Elsie’s eyes darted away from the girl, who was dressed in scanty underwear. “It doesn’t matter. We’re on the second floor; make a run for the stairway. This motel is on the highway. There’s a gas station right by us, and a fast food place. Taco Bell. I think.”
Desiree hesitated, her face a mask of distress. “I’m almost naked.”
“Take the sheet. Or get a towel.”
Elsie watched her pull the flat sheet from the bed and drape it over her shoulders. “Isn’t it stealing?” Desiree asked.
Elsie waved off the question with her free hand.
“The defense of necessity,” she said. To Desiree’s confused face, she added, “I’m a lawyer.”
Desiree tiptoed to the window and peeked through the curtain. “I don’t see anyone,” she said.
“Good. Run for it. There’s an Amber Alert out for you, Desiree. When you get inside—the gas station, or a restaurant, yell. Say ‘I’m Desiree Wickham from Barton, Missouri. There’s an Amber Alert for me.’”
Desiree nodded, clutching the sheet to her with her bloody hands. The yellow rope still dangled from one wrist. “And I won’t be in trouble?”
“God, no.”
Desiree put a hand on the doorknob and flipped the dead bolt. At the metal click, Elsie winced, as if the sound could be heard for miles.
As she pulled the chain lock free, the girl paused. “Tony is going to make you do things with some guys from the casino. I heard him say so, when you were too out of it to understand. He told them to come back here after last call, whatever that is.”
Last call: Elsie knew what it was. The alcohol supply was cut off at 1:30 a.m. She gave a frantic glance around the room to check the time; but the numbers on the clock were black. She lifted her chin and spoke in a confident whisper. “The cavalry’s coming,” Elsie said, hoping it was true.
Desiree darted over to the desk and picked up the broken pieces of the pink headband. Before she left, she dropped them onto the sheet, near Elsie’s left hand. “It’s lucky.”
“Go,” Elsie urged.
Desiree pulled the door open and slipped outside. The door closed with a thunk, leaving Elsie alone.