My eyes prick with every blink, weary both from crying and getting only an hour of sleep since Harper and I were taken. Who am I kidding? I barely slept in the days leading up to our kidnapping. The brain matter behind my eyes aches with exhaustion while the rest of my skull pulses, alternating between rapid beats of fear and flushes of adrenaline.
We have to get out. We have to get out. We have to get out.
Those words roll around my brain. Every time I look at Harper. Every time I think of Cam back at CORE, plotting to find us. Every time I picture Luke’s face. Every time I wonder who might die next if I don’t set us free.
We have to get out. We have to get out. We have to get out.
Timing is everything. We have to try to break free in the middle of the night. We can’t try to escape while people are still awake. Measuring time down here is nearly impossible. I learned how to tell time in my training by using the sun or the placement of the moon or even the North Star. But ten feet below ground, I’ve got just my internal clock and the sounds of the pipes.
After hours of dripping or rushes of water, the pipes have been silent for the better part of two hours. I pray that means everyone is asleep. I’ve set my internal clock to three a.m. At that hour, any night owls should be tucked in but early risers will still be asleep.
I keep telling Harper that we have to be patient. We have to be calm. I told her to try to get some sleep but she refuses. Her body won’t rest; her legs are in a continuous state of spasm.
“Do you think it’s three o’clock yet?” Harper asks for what feels like the millionth time.
I lean my body closer to the pipes, making sure there’s no new noise. It’s still quiet. “I think we’ve got to be close,” I answer quietly as I scoot back to my spot on the mattress. We’ve each refused to move but a few inches since I was returned to our miserable little space. It’s like these mattresses are our lifeboats, buoying up and down in an endless ocean, the two of us terrified to step out beyond our small rectangle of self-created safety. I’ve been desperate to start searching the shelves for something to cut us loose and pick that lock. But I’ve been terrified of a trigger-happy guard walking in and executing us on the spot.
“Time to go?” she asks, her body now rocking back and forth, her eyes growing manic from lack of sleep.
“Almost,” I answer, clumsily pushing my body toward the edge of my mattress. “I have to find something to cut us free from these ties.”
“Like what?” Harper asks, shifting her body onto her knees. “I doubt they keep like big blades or scissors in here.”
“I know,” I answer and rock my body off of the mattress, my hands retied tightly behind my back once I left Fernando in the conference room. At midstep, I look toward the door, listening for any sound. There is nothing. My legs carry me toward the shelves of boxes twenty feet away from us. “There has be something in here that will help. Something made of glass. Or even like a string. If we can find a string, with your hands in front, I’ll teach you how to cut yourself free.”
“Here, let me help you,” Harper answers, picking herself up off the mattress. She turns toward the door and whispers, “Do you think we’re safe?”
“Of course not,” I answer, nodding toward the boxes. “But Harper, we have to try. Once we untie ourselves, there’s really no turning back. If a guard comes in and sees our hands are free, they’ll know we’re trying escape. And this torturous little game Fernando is playing will be over. But we have to risk it. If we don’t try to escape right now…”
My voice trails off, not wanting to finish that anguished sentence, terrify her even more. Harper blinks hard, her eyes red and slick with restrained tears. Finally, she answers, “Okay.”
Harper and I begin looking through poorly closed boxes. With her tied-up hands in front, she flips open one box and I look inside to find deflated floaties and colorful buckets and half-used sunscreens; items for the beach or pool. The next is filled with colorful Christmas twinkle lights. But I can tell just from looking at them they’re plastic. I was hoping for the old-fashioned bulbs that could be broken. But they aren’t there.
“Next,” I say, and Harper opens the next box. It’s filled with race cars and Legos and coloring books. I look on the side of the cardboard box and see his name. Alejandro is written in black letters with the thick tip of a permanent marker. Alejandro, my mind repeats. The name of Santino’s son. The young boy who was killed on my parents’ failed mission last year.
As Harper rummages through the box, I think back to the article written about him in one of the Colombian newspapers. His dark, haunting eyes, his sweet smile, all come back to me, gutting me with a one-two punch. His death didn’t start this war, but it was certainly the catalyst for what feels like its longest, hardest battle: over a year of bloodshed since Alejandro was killed. First the four-year-old boy, then my mother. Black Angel agents. The attempt on Cam’s parents. Our Black Angel trainer Michael. Four of Santino’s guards and Santino himself. Luke. And if we don’t get out of here now, our bodies will be added to that list.
The weight of all of those deaths, all of those injuries, pulls down on my anxious heart, slowing its rhythm, forcing my body to stop in mid-motion. If only Alejandro had lived. I’ll never know if it was the Black Angel’s bullets that took that little boy’s life, but I can’t help but wonder what would have happened had he not been playing hide-and-seek during that hostage rescue.
“Found something,” Harper announces, pulling out a colorful plastic telephone with a rotary dial, big blue eyes, and a red handle. And attached to its end is a long red string.
“That’s perfect,” I answer and walk back toward the mattress. Harper follows, the telephone in one hand and the long string in the other. “See if you can pull it off?”
“Are you serious?” she asks, looking down at the well-fastened cord.
“Yes,” I answer with a nod. “Here, let me sit on it and then you pull. Come on, Harper. You’re stronger than you think.”
I plant my butt on the plastic phone and signal for Harper to start pulling. She stands up, gritting her teeth and pulling hard for about five seconds before the string pops up, throwing her body backward. She stumbles for a moment before catching herself. She holds the string up in the air and for the first time in days, smiles at her accomplishment.
“Great, okay. Let’s get you free,” I say and motion with my chin toward the spot next to me on the bed. Harper sits down on the mattress, the string lying across her open palms. “Now, what you’re going to do is create friction. You need to make a loop and tie one end of the string super tight around the arch of your foot.”
Harper follows my instructions, securing one end of the string around her sock-covered foot. She looks up at me, waiting for the next step.
“Slip that string through the zip tie and then tie the end around your foot,” I instruct, nodding toward the string. “You’re going to create a friction saw with this.”
With her hands tied together, Harper’s fingers shimmy the string through the zip tie. She grabs the red plastic end with her teeth, pulling it through and letting it hang down. She looks up at me again, waiting on my direction.
“Good,” I say. “Now tie it just as tightly to your other foot.”
She pulls her knee forward, tying the string around her free foot, double knotting it, just to be sure. “Okay, now what?” she asks once the knot is tied.
“Now lean yourself back and do the bicycle back and forth,” I say, leaning my own body back to show her just what I mean. “That friction should act like a blade on that plastic and cause it to pop off.”
Harper leans back, bicycling carefully, creating very little friction against the plastic ties.
“You’ve got to go much harder and faster than that,” I say, and Harper begins to move her feet more rapidly, pulling back her own wrists and creating extra tension. Back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth. Finally, the zip ties pop.
“Holy shit
. I actually did it,” Harper says, her voice breathless as she slowly holds up her free hands. Wide-eyed and mouth agape, she examines her palms as if she’s seeing them for the very first time. It’s crazy the basic everyday functions we take for granted until they’re stolen from us.
“Okay, now you’ve got to do the same thing to me,” I say and motion toward my hands behind my back. “Hurry, Harper. Now that you’re untied, we’ve really got to move.”
With Harper free, the bomb has officially been set, the timer ticking closer and closer to detonation. There’s no going back. If they walk in on us now, we’re dead.
Harper quickly stands up and runs the string through my zip ties.
“Same thing?” she asks from behind me. “Tied to both of my feet?”
“Yes,” I answer and hear her hands working quickly behind me.
“Okay, you ready?” she asks.
“Ready,” I answer, my stomach beginning to bubble with anxiety.
I pull hard against the string as I hear it sawing against the plastic. I can feel Harper’s legs moving back and forth, back and forth. After several tense seconds, it pops and my arms fall forward.
“Freedom,” Harper says as I push my aching body off the ground.
“Not yet,” I answer quietly, my warning catching in my raw throat, as I head back toward the shelves. “We still need a couple things. We need something for me to pick the lock and then something for me to use to hit the guard with. You look for something heavy in the boxes, I’m going to check our mattresses for springs or something metal to help pick that lock.”
Harper and I make quick and quiet work with four free hands. She opens up boxes and digs through the contents while I rip back the chewed-up fabric at the corner of my mattress (thanks, puppies). The luxurious fabric doesn’t want to give at first, but I pull and pull and pull until it finally tears, exposing several metal springs, all linked together. I look for a spring in the corner that has fewer attachments and yank on it hard. It doesn’t move. I grab hold of it with both of my tired, aching hands and pull with all the strength I have left inside me. Finally, the spring pops out of place and my body falls backward. I catch myself before I fall onto the mattress, terrified any sound inside this room will alert the guard on the other side of the door.
“This will totally work,” I announce, beginning to bend the wire spring into a curved tool, perfect for picking.
“I think I found something too,” Harper says with a loud whisper, pulling out a long piece of rounded metal from a box. A pipe. She hands it to me. “It’s pretty heavy.”
Despite its hollow middle, it is. I cradle the thick pipe in my hands before picking up one end and slamming it into my open palm. This is definitely enough to knock someone out. As long as I get to the guard first. Because in a gun-versus-metal-pipe fight, I’ll lose.
“This will do,” I say, slamming the makeshift metal weapon into my hand once more for good measure. I look toward the door, eyeing its lock, thankful that there’s only one deadbolt holding us captive. If there was a chain or a bar on the other side, we’d be screwed.
“Okay, I’m going to pick the lock,” I answer, pointing toward the door. “So I’ll need you to hold on to the pipe. But then as soon as the lock is picked, hand it back to me and watch my hands. I’m going to count you down. Then I’m going to need you to pull open the door and I’ll hit the guard over the head with the pipe.”
“Do … do you think he has a gun?” Harper asks, her voice thin with apprehension.
“Of course he has a gun, Harper,” I answer. “Everyone in this god damned house has like three guns on them right now. And they’re asleep!”
“Okay, okay,” Harper says, shaking out her thin, freezing arms before biting down on her bottom lip.
“Listen to me,” I say, my fingertips touching her exposed skin. “Once we get outside of here, we have to be silent. So here’s what we’re going to do. Once the guard is knocked out, we’re going to go up the stairs and then take a left down the hallway. When I went to Fernando’s office, I saw a sliding glass door that leads out to the backyard. That’s our best bet to get out. There are no cameras in that hallway but there could be an alarm on the door. We just have to pray the alarm isn’t on.”
“What if it is?” Harper asks, her eyes expanding. “What if the alarm goes off?”
“Doesn’t matter,” I answer, shaking my head. “We have to get out that door, through the yard and over that fence.”
“There’s barbed wire on the fence,” Harper says, her voice edgy.
“I know,” I answer, placing the pipe on the floor and peeling off my outer layer to give Harper a fighting chance against the barbed wire. “Here, put my sweatshirt on to protect your arms and hands. Whatever you do, don’t touch the razor wire. Just follow me. We’ll have to climb up at one of the corners. There should be a bar and a gap between the razor wire, connecting the fences together. At least, I hope there will be.”
If there’s not, our skin will be shredded. But we just have to do it. We just have to scale that fence. No matter what.
“What about you?” Harper asks, looking down at my now bare skin. “What about your arms and hands?”
“I’ve scaled fences in training camps,” I answer her, thinking back to my training at an Israeli camp a few summers ago where I was trained in the skillful art of climbing both barbed wire and electrically charged fences. “I’ll be okay.”
The truth is, I cut or shocked myself several times before getting it right. I’m hoping my muscle memory remembers how to do it and I can make it over the top of the fence without cutting a major artery and bleeding out.
“Then what?” Harper asks, shaking her head. “It all sounds impossible, but say we take down the guard and get out of the house and over the razor wire fence. Then what the hell do we do?”
“We run,” I say, not having a better answer than that.
My mind keeps circling back to our car ride to the compound. Five minutes down the road, I remember a small village. Maybe we can find a phone there. Even then, I’m not quite sure who to call. It’s not like CORE has a switchboard or something. But maybe we can find someone who can hide us. Who can help us. We’ll just have to pray we make it to the village before Fernando realizes we’re gone. With the desolation of the countryside, it’s the first place they’ll look. But we don’t really have a choice.
“You ready?” I ask.
“I think so,” Harper says, forcing a brave nod. And as I search her face, I realize these could be our last moments together. Our last moments alive. Because once I pick that lock, we’ll come face-to-face with either our first steps toward freedom or our final steps toward death.
My heart tightens as I look at Harper. She could be dead in the next two minutes.
I take a breath, stopping the guilt that keeps attacking my lungs, attempting to fill them and drown me. I will not let it paralyze me anymore. I push that searing guilt to the bottom of my gut and feel it catch in the reignited flame at my core. This guilt must fuel me. It must get us out of this mess.
I pull Harper’s shoulder toward me, wrap my arms around her neck, and pray to a God I’m not even sure I believe in.
Keep her alive. Keep her alive. Dear God, take me. But keep her alive.
“I love you,” I whisper in her ear, putting my hand on the back of her head as she tightens her grasp around my midsection.
“I love you too,” she whispers, her voice muffled by my shoulder.
“We’re going to be okay,” I say and squeeze her harder, hoping that extra grip on her body will force her to believe me even though I don’t quite believe myself. “You ready?”
“I’m ready,” she answers, nodding her head and pulling her body out of my arms, her hands still holding on to my rib cage.
Harper’s eyes meet mine, terror and grit sparking among the hazel. I steady her shoulders in my hands. “We can do this,” I whisper, and she nods. Like she already knows.
I
pick up the pipe and silently hand it to Harper. We turn away from the shelves and tiptoe toward the door. Once we reach it, I examine the brass lock. It looks like a pin tumbler lock, which means it will have a series of pins inside. If I can push each one of those pins aside, I can unlock the door.
My body is at once flushed with relief and then flooded by terror, that dark cloud of dread slipping through my open mouth, coiling around my lungs and freezing my muscles. Every part of me stops moving.
Concentrate. Concentrate. Concentrate, I tell myself, rolling back my shoulders and stopping my body from falling any deeper into its coma of fear. I stare at the lock and shake out my hands. I don’t have time to be afraid.
I steady my hand and slowly stick the metal spring into the lower part of the keyhole. I silently jiggle it against the pins until I feel one. I push with as little weight as possible, careful not to make a sound and alert the guard on the other side. I hear the first pin pop. Four more to go. I push again. Pop. Again. Pop. I turn the screw again. Pop. Last one. Pop.
Okay. Now the deadbolt.
I slowly turn the spring, easing the deadbolt into its holder, the delicate tissue in my lungs burning with my held breath. Finally, I feel the bolt slide into the holder.
Click.
I hear Harper gasp at the sound. That tiny click could give us away. My own eyes expand with panic.
One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three Mississippi. Four Mississippi.
I count the seconds, waiting to hear the sound of the guard standing up on the other side, waiting for the door to fly open and a gun to be pointed at our foreheads.
Five Mississippi. Six Mississippi. Seven Mississippi.
Nothing. I let out a held breath, my lungs scorching, greedily sucking in new air. I slowly slide the piece of metal out of the lock and stick it into my pocket. I hold out my hands to Harper and she places the metal pipe in my palms.
This is it. This is it.
My entire body begins to tingle, fear and adrenaline ripping through my veins, my blood filled with a dangerous heat, like I’ve just downed a gallon of gasoline. I turn to face Harper, taking in her pieces, one last time. Her wavy hair, the beauty mark beneath her left eye, her tiny ears and big eyes. I memorize her face, knowing it may be the last thing I ever see. She holds my gaze, perhaps doing the same. Our chests rise together with matching breaths. I hold up my fingers to count her down.
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