Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Pyro didn’t know how long Bowie had slept against him.
Hours and hours, and he still hated to wake her.
But he’d watched and waited as late afternoon turned to dusk, then to night, and he continued to wait.
It was pitch black beyond the basement windows now…
and it was time. Time to see about getting the fuck out of here before someone came to take them away.
“Bowie-Bear,” he said softly.
She grunted but didn’t wake.
Pyro found himself smiling, amazed at how hard this little girl could sleep.
“Bowie,” he said a little louder, shrugging his shoulder just a little to jostle her.
That worked. She stirred, and he could tell the moment she remembered where she was and what happened.
“I thought it was a dream.”
“Unfortunately, it’s not. And I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to go home.”
“I want Mommy.”
“I know, sweetheart. I do too. Can you climb off my lap? I need your help.” Pyro had to go easy.
Bowie was a little girl. A scared one at that.
But he needed her to be brave. Braver than she’d ever been in her life.
He loathed himself for what he was going to ask of her, but there was no other way.
He’d been sitting in this chair with his hands cuffed behind him, his leg throbbing, racking his brain for some other way to get out of there. And he’d come up blank.
His plan was to get Bowie the hell away from this place, at the very least. If he ended up being sold off, so be it…as long as Bowie was safe and reunited with Penny.
He still wasn’t able to think about the woman he loved more than life itself for more than minutes at a time. It hurt too much. She’d be so scared right now, worrying about him and Bowie. If he did nothing else, he’d get her daughter back to her, one way or another.
Bowie awkwardly climbed off his lap and sniffed. “I need to pee,” she whispered, sounding embarrassed.
“Okay, Bowie-Bear.” Thank God for an almost full moon giving him just enough light through the small basement windows to check out their immediate surroundings. He’d mentally mapped out everything in the space while Bowie slept.
“Turn around so your back is to me. Good, just like that. Now, take one step to your right. Now, about ten steps straight ahead of you is a bucket on the floor. There’s an old woodstove behind it, so I think it’s used to put ashes from the stove into it. You can use that to go to the bathroom.”
Bowie wrinkled her nose but nodded. “Okay.”
He watched as she made her way toward the bucket he’d noticed earlier.
The danger he felt in the air was making him antsy.
At any moment, the men could return and take Bowie away from him.
He might be able to take out one or two, even with his broken leg, but any more than that and he’d be in trouble.
Not to mention if they had a gun, they could easily shoot him in the other leg, rendering him completely immobile.
When Bowie had pulled her pants back up, he said, “Good girl. Now, ten steps back to my side.”
Her strides were a little more confident as she made her way back.
Pride filled him. Bowie had more courage in her little finger than many soldiers he’d met in his career.
When her little hands gripped his arm, he took a breath.
It was now or never. He had no idea what time it was, and he needed her as far as from this house as he could get her.
“Can you untie the laces on my boots, Bowie-Bear? The jerks who took us didn’t bother to search me before they tied me up. I’ve got a key to the handcuffs in my boot.”
Without a word, Bowie knelt at his feet and began to tug on the laces of his boot. Pyro hissed when she tugged hard on one of the laces on his bad leg.
“Sorry, Kylo-Pyro. Is your leg where they hit you feeling better?”
He was glad for her lack of sight right then. He didn’t want her to see the way his brow was furrowed or how badly he was sweating with the effort to hold back his groans of pain. He lied through his teeth as he said, “Yeah, baby. It’s feeling better. How’s it going down there?”
It took several minutes, but she managed to get his laces undone.
“Good girl. Now take off my boot… No! Not that one!”
His voice was too loud, too adamant. He saw Bowie flinch and hated himself for scaring her.
But she’d been about to pull on his broken leg, and there would’ve been no way he could hold back the scream of pain the movement would’ve caused.
“Sorry, Bowie-Bear. I didn’t mean to scare you.
Not that boot. The other one. Good, yes, that one. ”
It took her a moment of struggle to get the boot off his foot.
“Woo-wee, stinky feet!” he joked, once the boot was off.
The fact that the little girl could giggle was both comforting and sad at the same time. Pyro made a mental vow to do everything in his power, if he made it out of this, to make her laugh every day of her life.
“Now, I know my boot is probably sweaty, and I’m sorry, but I need you to reach in and pull up the insole—the padded thing on the bottom?
Good, yes, that.” He watched as Bowie pulled out the insole he didn’t need for support, but instead to hide the thin handcuff key he and all his fellow Night Stalkers kept on their person, just in case.
Thankfully, he had high arches and didn’t feel the small piece of metal in his boot when he was walking around.
Now the hard part.
“You did it!” he exclaimed, putting as much praise as he could muster into his tone. “Now, go behind me and feel the handcuffs for a tiny little hole. That’s where the key goes. Stick it in and turn it just a little. You should hear a click, and the cuffs will open.”
Bowie was frowning in concentration as she disappeared behind him.
Pyro couldn’t see what she was doing, but he felt her fingers moving all around the metal cuffs on his wrists, feeling every inch.
It took quite a while, and she grunted in frustration several times as she struggled first to get the key into the hole, then to make it turn.
Every minute that went by was as frustrating for Pyro as it was for Bowie. He kept up a steady stream of praise, telling her what a brave girl she was. Smart. How much he loved her. Anything to keep her from giving up.
When the telltale snick of the cuffs loosening on one wrist sounded, Pyro felt like the proudest dad that ever walked the planet.
He lowered his hands, ignoring the pins and needles that shot through his arms at the movement, and took hold of Bowie’s arm, tugging her around the chair and pulling her into his embrace.
Being able to wrap his arms around her was a huge relief.
She buried her nose into his chest as she clung to him.
As much as he wanted to sit there and hold her, the giant clock in his head was steadily racing forward. She needed to go. He needed to tell her the rest of his plan—but not before he gave her all the information he could remember about the house where they were holed up.
He pulled back and held Bowie’s shoulders as he spoke to her, ignoring the cuff still hanging off one of his wrists. He’d deal with it when Bowie was gone.
“There’s no door in this basement, and we can’t go up the elevator.
We also can’t wait for your mom and Casper and all the others to find us.
We have to help ourselves get out of here.
But the thing is…I’m hurt, Bowie-Bear. Too much to walk.
And I can’t fit through the tiny windows in this basement—but you can. ”
Her lower lip trembled but she didn’t protest. Didn’t shake her head in denial.
“I need you to go find help. Tell somewhere where I am. Where your mom is. You know your address, right? And your mom’s phone number?”
Bowie nodded. “She made me memorize it when we moved in with Miss Zita.”
“Good. Tell me.”
The little girl recited both her address, her mom’s full name, and her phone number.
“You’re so smart,” Pyro praised, feeling sick inside. He didn’t want to do this. Didn’t want her to do this, but he needed her away from here. It wasn’t likely she’d be able to get help for him, but that was okay. As long as she was safe.
Of course, sending a blind six-year-old out into an unfamiliar environment wasn’t safe.
Wasn’t remotely close to safe, but Pyro had to believe she’d come across someone, anyone, who would help her.
The odds of her crossing paths with a psychopath or a child molester were way lower than finding a decent human being who would take one look at the lost and scared little girl wandering around in the dark and bend over backward to help her in any way possible.
“The house we’re in, it’s big. Two stories. It’s yellow with white porches on both the first and second floors. The roof is brown. I don’t have an address and I don’t know where exactly we are, but it’s by the ocean. Did you smell it when we got out of the car?”
Bowie nodded.
“Of course you did. Because your senses are way better than mine. When you find someone, you give them your mom’s info. Tell her about the house. How there’s an elevator and we were in the basement. She’ll send help. You’re going to be okay. I just know it.”
He didn’t say that he’d be all right because the truth was, Pyro figured the second their captors realized Bowie had escaped, he’d be a goner. They’d be pissed off and would probably kill him on the spot out of spite. But to get Bowie out of here, he’d gladly take that bullet.
“Kylo-Pyro…I can’t see,” she whimpered. “I don’t know how many steps it is or where to go.”
“This is scary, Bowie. I know it. I’m asking you to do something impossibly hard. But you can do it. You know how I know that?”
She sniffed and shook her head.
“Because the moment I saw you walking toward me on that roof in Gabon, I thought to myself, ‘This girl is special.’ And you are. So special. You’re the most specialist girl I’ve ever met in the world. And I love you.”
“I love you too, Kylo-Pyro.”