4. Lilah
4
LILAH
It was loose. I was sure it wasn’t my imagination. The sock was slippery with sweat from my hands — blood too — but the bolt was giving just a little as I tried to turn it.
The sun was sinking in the west, a fiery orb dropping into the sea, as I paused to slow my breathing. I’d stopped checking my pulse. It was too sluggish and I was starting to feel light-headed more quickly after each break.
It only freaked me out to confirm what I already knew: I needed my meds.
Thinking too much about what would happen if I didn’t get them — if I didn’t escape — only caused a spike of anxiety, and that only made things worse. Now I stopped when I started getting short of breath, sat back on the teak floors in my prison room, took a break to use the bathroom, anything to make it easier to pull oxygen into my lungs, keep the blood flowing through my veins.
The setting sun seemed like a portent of doom. It was terrifying to be held prisoner on a boat in the middle of the ocean but the thought of losing what little light I had from the porthole windows, of losing the small orienting view, made me want to scream.
I took a long deep breath. Then another. Took a swig of the water from what was left on my lunch tray.
I would work the bolt loose, free the screw. I wouldn’t be able to use it on both the German woman and the guard, so I would need to get the woman off-balance and use the screw on the guard, who had the gun.
I thought about the training I’d done with Locke. If I could hit the guard’s carotid artery with the screw, he’d bleed out before he could give chase, but the artery would be difficult to hit during a struggle.
The eyes, on the other hand, were always a soft target. A stab in the eye might not kill someone like a hit to an artery would, but an eye would be easier to hit, and it would throw him off-balance enough to let me run.
I cut a glance to my lunch tray: a salad with salmon and thin strips of cucumber and carrots. There was obviously a full kitchen on the boat.
And if there was a full kitchen, there were knives.
The screw wasn’t exactly a deadly weapon, but it might be enough to get me to the kitchen where I could get my hands on a knife or three.
I could almost feel the weight of my lost knife in my hand. I would take the guard’s gun if I could get it, but I was most comfortable with a knife. I just needed enough time to get my hands on one.
I took a deep breath and sat forward on my knees. Then I wrapped the remnant of my sock around my hand again and started twisting, ignoring the stinging in my hand, the warmth of fresh blood on my fingers.