Chapter 31
It was pitch dark in the cargo bay of the truck.
There was a straight, smooth road under them and Jane felt the truck moving faster, felt the automatic transmission shift to a higher gear, and finally rose to her knees and moved close to Karen.
She whispered to her, “I’m sorry you got involved in this.
But now we’ve got to find a way out of it. How badly are you injured?”
“They hit me, and she burned me with my curling iron. You saw I could walk and move my arms. What are we even going to do? We’re tied up and we don’t have anything to fight back with.”
“I watched that man wrapping up the two bodies.”
“Yeah. I couldn’t believe what you did to—”
“—I noticed something when he was getting them wrapped. He didn’t go through their pockets or get their wallets or anything, just got them ready to put them in the truck and haul them away.”
“I guess these two got what they came for and wanted to get away as soon as they could.”
“When I came in, the first thing I saw was the man to my left reaching into his pocket for something. They must have flown here, so they couldn’t bring guns with them. To me that means he was going for a knife.”
“Oh my God,” Karen said. “Which one is it?”
“This one. He’s in the flowered bedspread.
You can’t see that, but I made sure I knew where we were putting him.
” Jane moved herself with her feet so that her back was close to the man, and she tried to reach his tape with her hands behind her back.
After a few minutes, she said. “This is not working. I’ve got to try something else first.”
Jane leaned forward, moved her wrists, and strained her legs to slip her backside into the circular space her bound wrists made of her arms. She worked to slide her arms down her thighs, then under her knees.
When her hands got down to her ankles, she said, “This is where it gets really hard.” She bent her legs to bring her knees up to her chin, worked her bound wrists under the heels of her feet, and stopped.
She said, “See if you can pull off my boots.”
Karen slid herself close to Jane so her back was to her, and her fingers felt around until she could feel Jane’s boots. She tugged and then pulled the first one off, then worked on the other and pulled that one off too.
“Thanks,” Jane said. She felt the change. Her heels were much lower than the heels of her boots, and she could point her toes to bring her heels up and slide her wrists under them. “Okay,” she said. “My hands are in front of me.”
“I can’t do that. I’m not limber enough.”
“You won’t need to.” Jane turned to the nearby corpse, and felt with her hands until she could feel the tape around it.
She worked at finding the slightly raised beginning of the strip and then pulling the strip off until she couldn’t go any further, then moved to find the next strip of tape and got that tape about as far, and then moved to find the third, and the fourth.
She rolled the body to reach the next few inches of tape, then the next.
It was a slow, frustrating process, but at last she rolled the body, and the blanket and bedspread stayed flat.
She had removed the tape. She could reach under the covering and feel the man’s clothes.
The body was getting stiff, and the smell of the blood was strong.
She felt the right leg of the trousers and realized she had been right.
She had difficulty reaching into the pocket because her hands were still bound together, but she managed to work the object up out of the pocket.
“It’s a knife,” Jane said. “It’s odd, though.
The blade isn’t exposed. I can’t see anything, and I don’t want to cut myself. ”
Jane found a slot at one end of the handle.
She ran her fingers along each side until she felt a place where it was raised, and pressed it.
There was a click, the handle gave a little jump when the spring was released, and the blade jutted outward.
Jane ran one finger along the blade from the slot in the handle to the tip.
“The blade is about six inches long, shaped like a stiletto, sharpened on both sides, with a blood gutter down the middle.”
“Sounds awful.”
“It’s wonderful,” Jane said. “I’m going to use it to cut your tie now. Make fists with both hands so there are no fingers out, and pull your wrists apart so the tie is tight. Don’t move.” She felt Karen’s wrists, then sawed at the tie, and felt the knife cut through. Karen’s wrists jerked apart.
“It worked,” Karen said. “It feels so good.”
“Now cut mine. Open your hands and feel where mine are. The knife blade is pointed down touching the floor.”
Jane put the handle in her hand and then made fists and pulled her wrists apart so the tie was taut. Karen sawed through the tie and freed her. “It does feel good,” Jane said.
“What’s next?”
“As long as we have the chance, we should find out what else these two have on them.”
They found the man’s wallet, and Jane took the money and cards out of it, and put the wallet back in the same pocket. Next, they rolled him back up in the blanket and bedspread and used the tape that Jane had pulled off him to restore the four bindings so his bundle was tight again.
Next, they both worked to unbind and unwrap the second corpse.
This one also had a wallet with money and cards in it, and two knives.
One was like the knife they had used to free their hands.
“It’s like they bought them together. Or this guy liked his friend’s knife and asked him where he bought it,” Karen said.
The man’s other knife was short-bladed but razor-sharp, carried in an ankle rig.
Jane took that too. Then she realized that among the other odors was a tobacco smell.
She ran her hands over him until she found a pack of cigarettes.
“Is there something we missed?”
“He was a smoker,” Jane said.
“I don’t get it.”
“That means he had something to light them with.” She stuck her hand deeper into his pocket. “There it is.” She pulled out a plastic disposable lighter and her thumb clicked it. The light illuminated the cargo bay, and it felt almost too bright after their hours in the dark.
They looked at the bodies and at each other’s bloody faces and hands, and made swift adjustments to the tape strips, rewrapped the second man, and used the tape they’d taken off to make the bundled corpses look the same as before.
Jane released the thumb switch and the truck went dark.
“It’s hot. I’ve got to let it cool off,” she said.
“When it’s cool again I want to get all of this blood off of us.”
“Don’t do it,” Jane said. “When he opens the door, he’s got to see us the way we look now, or he’ll know we got our hands free.”
“Oh, of course. I can’t believe I was too stupid to remember that.”
“What I think we need to do most in the light is be sure there’s nothing in this truck that looks different from the way it looked before he locked us in.
No pieces of the zip ties or duct tape lying on the floor.
We stick leftover tape across our ankles so it looks like they’re still bound together.
We practice sitting down with our hands behind us so our wrists seem to be zip-tied.
We study the way the switchblade knives work, and get used to holding them, so we can use them when the time comes. ”
“Use them?” Karen said. “I don’t know—”
“I’ll teach you and we’ll practice. Usually, the first time people use a knife to fight for their lives, they don’t get a firm enough grip on it, and their hand slides off the handle to the blade and gets cut.
That’s especially likely after the first stab and there’s a lot of blood flowing.
The handle gets slippery. Let’s start with that. ” She lit the lighter again.
Karen stared at the knife in her hand, turned it over and over, pressed the switch to free the catch so she could push the blade against the hard floor and force it back into the handle. She pressed the switch and the blade shot out of the handle again and clicked into place.
Jane held up her identical knife and showed Karen the two horizontal protrusions at the top end of the handle.
“This is the hilt. It can prevent your hand from sliding forward onto the blade. Get the feel of it and learn to grip the handle as hard as you can with your fingers tight against the hilt so your hand won’t move. ”
“I don’t think I can get into a knife fight.”
“You’re brave. These people tortured you to get you to help them catch me.
They wouldn’t have hurt you so badly if you had given in.
But next time they’ll keep torturing you until you’ll do anything for them, or they’ll kill you outright because you’ve served your purpose.
When they get me to Boston, they’ll start in on me to make me give them all my runners.
Then they’ll finish killing me too. To avoid that, we’ve got to kill this man first. It’s a homicide in self-defense.
You’re a lawyer. You know all about this.
” She moved her thumb and let the flame go out.
“Yes,” she said. “It’s a defense I’ve used a few times in court. But—”
“So you understand. There are other things that you need to learn right now. In any kind of combat, but particularly with knives, the one who draws first blood probably wins. Speed is everything. There’s no brandishing or letting him see the knife so he’ll leave you alone or something.
He should never see it until you strike.
The instant he’s vulnerable, spring at him and stab him as hard as you can and keep pulling the knife out as fast as you can and stabbing him anywhere you can reach—face, neck, back, chest, belly, thighs—until you can’t anymore.
Don’t stop when you think he might be too far gone to hurt you. That won’t be true until he’s dead.”
“It’s all so horrible.”
“Yes, it is. But if you understand that this is the only chance for either of us to stay alive, you can do it. The lighter is cool enough again. This time we place ourselves the way we want to look when he sees us. You go first.”
She lit the flame and Karen sat next to one of the bodies with her arms behind her in the same position as when her wrists were bound together.
Jane was at the spot where the truck’s two doors met.
She came forward, adjusted Karen’s pose a little, took the knife handle, and moved it so she had a good grip but the man wouldn’t see it behind her.
“There. That’s good.” Then she let the flame die again.
“Next it’s my turn. When we have light again, sit at the center of the doors and see if I look right or if there’s anything that I should change. ”
After a few minutes Jane handed the lighter to Karen, who took her turn lighting it and adjusting Jane’s pose so her body hid the knife and Jane looked helpless. Then she gave Jane the lighter again.
An hour later, they felt the truck begin to slow down, then felt the transmission downshift.
Jane lit the lighter again. “This is it,” she said.
“Take your place.” She kept the flame lit while Karen returned to the position she had learned.
Then she let the flame die and moved herself to the pose Karen had approved, and relit it. She said, “Do I look right?”
Karen nodded. “Yes.”
Jane said, “Remember to breathe. Inhale through your nose, exhale through your mouth. Not so fast, but deeper. Good. We can do this.”