Blue had finally gotten control of her emotions. It had taken a while. With her hands too far away to dry them, her tears had woven their way down across the contours of her cheeks, dripping onto her shirt, leaving cool tracks crisscrossing her skin. They were drying now. The feeling of dried tears on her cheeks was an almost forgotten sensation.
She was angry with herself because she had let Bronco get to her. She wasn’t going to let him do that again. His threat was not empty; he was clearly a dangerous man. She would do as he said to protect her family and friends, but she would not let him break her. The anger made her feel better, and with that, and the quiet of the house, the immediacy of her predicament faded a little, and she could relax somewhat. Her head felt better, too. The Tylenol must have worked. For the first time, she felt like she was more herself. Until that moment, she hadn’t even had a chance to look around carefully at her prison. She started to slowly scan the room, taking note of all the detail.
There was one window, which had a roller shade pulled all the way down. In spite of the surveillance camera, she tried hopping her chair over to it, but there was no way she could get enough body movement to hop the chair. It was heavy and she was expertly bound. She looked at her feet bindings—several wraps of duct tape around the legs of the chair. She would’ve slumped in defeat, but the bindings kept her too upright for that. She could move her hands and wrists, and that was somewhat of a comfort. Bronco was right, about all she could do was scratch her navel.
She continued her scan of the room. There was the little closet bathroom. There was a chair with a side table and lamp on it, and a chest of drawers with a mirror on the top, and a ceiling fan with a light. Both lights were off. The only light in the room was coming from the translucent roller shade. It cast a yellowish pale light. And there was the bed she had been tied to. That was it. That was her world right now.
She suddenly wondered what time it was. She had no idea how long she had been there. She had been so distracted by the pain and fear and disorientation that she had lost track of time. It could be early morning. It could be noon. It may not even have been the same day. Maybe she’d been out more than 24 hours.
Either way, she must have been missed by now. She had a sick feeling when she realized that even if she had been missed, they didn’t even know where to look for her. She didn’t even know where she was. She could be anywhere, though her first guess was that she was in Bronco’s apartment. Or was she? He was smart. Maybe he didn’t take her to his place.
Will knew, or probably guessed, that she went to the park to follow through with her plan. He would tell them, thank God, about her plan because he was too straight an arrow to not confess. That would cause problems for her down the road, but she realized that that was not important right now. She just wanted to survive so she could have any road to go down at all.
If Will told people about their plan, then they would eventually get around to checking out Bronco. The problem was they didn’t know who Bronco really was. Jack might know, so they would probably question him first. But how long would that take? Then they would have to find Bronco. By the time the police figured out who he was and where he lived, hours could have passed. Even then, they would have to find evidence or get a warrant to search . . . search what? His apartment? Maybe that’s where Bronco went, back to his apartment to come up ‘clean.’ Maybe make an alibi. If that was the case, then where was she? She had been too fuzzy-headed while in the back of the car to notice how long they had been driving, or where. She couldn’t see anything because she was covered up, but the few times she was semi-conscious, she could tell they were passing street lights and making turns.
No, she was pretty sure they were somewhere in town, or very near town. She had not traveled much in the town and she didn’t know a lot of details about where things were or which streets led where. And why did it seem so important to figure out where she was? What good would it do? There was no way for her to tell anyone or signal them anyway.
She stared at the window for a minute. Actually, there was a way to signal. Bronco had said that no one could hear her, so that meant she was a ways away from any nearby house and probably back from any road. The thing about vox is that you can hear it from a long distance. She knew from her childhood games and their experiments with the night vision camera that her eyes made a faint beam of light that could be directed to things. All she had to do was shine her eyes on the shade. If she voxed while she was looking at the shade, Will or someone else in his family could probably hear it even if they were not close. The shade was translucent which meant that it would pass the light from her eyes and show on the outside, just the reverse of the moonlight on the shade last night. It would even spread it out like a light on a movie screen.
That was her only chance. If all four of Will’s family were to walk around town, and she was in town, they just might walk by this place.
A little well of hope rose up and she suddenly found herself voxing at full tilt at the window, “Help, help, help! Please help!” She paused to listen for a response. She waited, and waited. Nothing. She tried again. Still nothing. And then again. Nothing. Each time the sense of futility grew and grew inside her to the point where a worm of fear and panic started crawling inside her. She felt hot tears surging into her eyes again, and she fought hard against it. She could not let it get a hold of her again. She had to maintain control this time. She panted and suppressed the hard sobs that were struggling to get out until she started to calm down.
As she calmed down, her mind got going again and she decided she should keep trying. She would just pace herself. She would concentrate on voxing hard at regular intervals to maximize the chance that she could catch someone in that brief moment that they might be looking her way. She wasn’t sure how long she could keep it up, but it was the only thing she could think of to do right now.