Chapter 3 #2
“Yeah. I wasn’t too far from it when I woke up, found it by feeling around.”
Using his voice as a guide, I scoot closer, using my feet to search out any obstacles that might be in my way.
“Do you think anyone else is in here with us?” he asks nervously.
“I don’t know,” I say honestly. “I guess we’ll find out soon enough.”
“Yeah,” he says, sounding as uneasy as I feel about the possibility that we’re not alone in here.
“Can you think of any reason someone would do this to you?” I ask.
“Not unless they want money.”
“Being a DJ pays well?”
He snort-laughs. “You could say that. “
“Like, how much are we talking?” I ask as I scoot across the floor.
“My fee for the rave was just shy of one million.”
“Shit,” I scoot closer. “That answers my next question of why you took the job when it was such a small event.”
“Almost a mil for three hours of work seemed like a good trade-off.” He huffs out a soft laugh. “Guess I should have known it was too good to be true.”
“Is that not your usual rate?”
“Not for an event that size. Those usually only pay half that, sometimes less. Big venues always pay more.”
My foot brushes something. “Is that you?”
“I think so?” A hand closes around the toes of my shoe. “Is that you?”
“Yes.”
He lets go of my shoe. “Thank god, because I was about to piss myself if you said no.”
“Same if you said that wasn’t you I bumped into.” I clear my throat again. Most of the pain is gone, but the lingering ache is making my voice sound raspy and strained. “I’m going to have to get a bit personal with you,” I warn. “If you feel hands, that’s me.”
“Pretty sure we’ve already gotten personal together.”
I laugh. Thank fuck he can joke about what happened and things aren’t going to be weird while we’re stuck here together. “True.”
Being careful not to move too fast so I don’t spook him, I feel around until my hand hits his leg. Once I know where he is, I run my palm over his knee, then up the side of his thigh and over his hip until my fingers bump into a smooth wall.
“Why would someone target you?” he asks as I feel around on the wall to make sure the space is clear.
“Same as you,” I say as I finally settle next to him.
Our legs brush gently, and the little bit of contact makes the dark feel a little less oppressive.
“Money?”
“Yup. My family has a lot of it. If they know who I really am, then they’re probably after a ransom.” I try to cover up my laugh, and it comes out as a snort.
“What was that for?”
“If that’s what happened, then these fuckers have no idea what hell they’ve just unleashed.”
“What do you mean?”
“My family doesn’t take insults lightly, and abducting me is a pretty epic insult. These assholes just signed their death warrants.”
We fall silent, but the warmth of his leg against mine is calming as I lean back against the wall.
My head is mostly clear now, and my body finally feels normal, but my memories are still a jumbled mess. I have no idea what they drugged us with, but memory loss seems to be the worst of the side effects.
“Do you think they’re going to kill us?” he asks softly.
“I doubt it. They had lots of chances while we were knocked out and helpless. They wouldn’t have bothered to take us to a second location alive if the plan was to kill us.”
“Yeah, that makes sense.” He shifts beside me, and the brush of his body against mine is strangely soothing.
“Are you hurt?” I ask belatedly.
“No, just stiff and sore. But the zip tie is really tight.”
“I know a way to get out of them.”
“You do?” he asks hopefully.
“Yeah. The only problem is what’ll happen to us if they come in here and find out we got them off.”
“They can’t get ransom for a dead body,” he says, and the hint of snark in his tone is a welcome change from the small, scared voice from before. “How do we get them off? I saw something online about using shoelaces, but my boots have zippers and buckles on them. Is that how we get free?”
“You can use laces, but my shoes don’t have any either.
And there’s another way that’s even easier,” I tell him.
“It’s kind of hard to explain, but what you want to do is bring your arms up above your head, make fists with your hands as best you can, and face your fists together with your elbows out.
Then bring your arms down hard and fast in front of you and pull them apart as hard as you can when you reach the bottom of the arc and your elbows meet your hips. ”
“I…can’t picture that,” he says ruefully. “Like what you said makes sense, but at the same time, it makes no sense.”
“Yeah, it’s hard to explain,” I repeat. “I’ll get out of mine, then we’ll get you out of yours. Okay?”
“Okay.”
I scoot forward a few feet, then move a little bit away from him so I don’t risk hitting him when I get free.
Using my teeth, I bite down on the end of the tie and pull it as hard as I can to make the tie as tight as possible.
Then, doing exactly what I told him, I lift my arms up, get my hands into position, then bring them down and wrench them apart.
The snapping of the zip tie coming off is loud and satisfying, and I’m grinning like a dumbass as I rub my wrists a few times to get the blood flowing into my hands again.
“Did it work?” he asks hopefully.
“It worked,” I confirm. “Now move away from the wall so you don’t hit it.”
“How far?”
“A few feet should be good.”
There’s the scrape of material against the smooth floor as he scoots forward.
“Now what?” he asks.
“I’m going to get in front of you and show you what to do, so if you feel hands, that’s me.”
“Okay.” He blows out a shaky breath. “I’ve seen way too many horror movies,” he says as I reach out to search for his leg or another part of him so I know where he is.
“I keep imagining all the things that could be hidden in the dark, and I’m half convinced that some creature or demon is going to grab me, even though I know none of that shit is real. ”
My hand bumps against his leg. “That was me,” I tell him. “And I get it.” I use his leg as a guide so I can move in front of him. “I’m not really into horror movies, but my friend keeps convincing me to watch them with him, and being in the dark like this is fucking with my head too.”
“At least you didn’t hyperventilate and almost piss yourself when you woke up,” he says, the self-deprecation in his voice clear. “And you didn’t cry or beg a god you don’t believe in to save you while wishing you’d drop dead so you didn’t have to be here anymore.”
“I also didn’t wake up to silence and think I was alone,” I point out.
I don’t tell him that this isn’t the first time I’ve found myself in a situation like this, and while I’ve never been drugged and abducted and then woken up in a pitch-black room with a stranger, I’ve learned how to deal with this kind of shit.
Carefully, I put both of my hands on his knees, then slide them up until I feel the soft rasp of his sweater sleeves under my palms.
“I’m going to check the tie and see how tight it is,” I tell him as I move my hands down his sleeves. “It’s counterintuitive, but it needs to be as tight as possible for this method to work.”
He stays still while I slip my fingers under the sleeves of his sweater and run them over the tie to make sure it’s tight enough.
“Okay, that seems good. Now bring your arms up over your head. I’m going to keep my hands on you until you’re in the right position, so don’t swing early or you’re going to knock me the fuck out, okay?”
He huffs out a soft laugh. “Okay.”
Keeping a gentle grip on his elbows, I move with him as he lifts his arms over his head.
“Good, now bend your elbows at a ninety-degree angle and keep them as wide as possible.”
He shifts his arms, and I run my hands over his elbows and down to his hands. They’re already in tight fists and facing each other.
“Good, now let me get out of the way. When it’s clear, you’re going to swing your arms down hard and fast, then use that momentum and pull them apart at the bottom of the arc as hard as you can. Make sure it’s a single, smooth motion, and it should work.”
“Why do I have a vision of me punching myself in the dick and not managing to get them off?” he asks wryly.
“I mean, that’s a very real possibility when you’re standing up, but your dick should be safe since you’re sitting.” I move back a few feet. “Ready?
“As I’ll ever be.”
“Do you want a countdown, or are you just going to go?”
“I think I need a countdown.”
“Okay. On three. One, two, three.”
There’s the soft sound of flesh hitting flesh, then the snap of the tie breaking.
“Holy shit,” he exclaims. “That worked.”
“It’s simple but effective.”
“How did you learn that?” he asks.
“My cousins and I played a very realistic version of cops and robbers when we were kids. It was either learn to get free when captured or lose, and none of us like losing.”
“You and your cousins zip-tied each other while you played games?” he asks incredulously.
“Not just zip-tied each other.” I get up and knee-walk back to the wall.
“We also used handcuffs, duct tape, rope, belts, shoelaces, basically whatever we could get our hands on. One time, my cousin braided a bunch of bendy branches from a weeping willow and used that to hogtie his twin brother. And just because he could, he made a crown out of wild daisies and put that on his brother’s head while he was trying to get free. That was an entertaining afternoon.”
“You know none of that is normal, right?”
I huff out a laugh. “I’m well aware, and we’ve never claimed to be normal. How are your hands?” I ask as he settles beside me again. “Do they feel okay now?”
He’s pressed up against me now, and I lean even closer to him, soaking up his body heat and using his solid presence to keep grounded.
I know how to keep my head in emergencies, but not being able to see anything is fucking with me more than I want to admit, and my own imagination is starting to conjure up all sorts of things that could potentially be in here with us.
“They’re okay. Getting the zip tie off hurt more than having it on, but I’ll take not having my hands bound over some extra bruises any day.”
“Yeah, that’s the trade-off with that method. There are easier ways to do it, but they all need some sort of tool to work.”
We fall silent again, and a strange feeling of fatigue falls over me.
I’m not tired, not really, but I feel drained.
Like I’m running on fumes. I don’t know if it’s leftover from whatever I was drugged with, or if it’s just a stress response from the situation, but I can already feel my body shutting down.