by R. J. Blain
I could open the window, slide out, and make my break for freedom. Even better, I would only have to cross some twenty feet of neatly trimmed grass to reach the security of the woods. In bad news, I couldn’t spot another house anywhere in sight, which led me to believe I’d been either taken to the country or to somewhere like the Hamptons, where the wealthy could have access to excellent restaurant food while using cleverly placed trees and manmade forests to guard their slice of heaven within spitting distance of New York City.
To play to my captor’s expectations, I emerged from my latest marvel of book architecture, investigated the room in general, took a bath, peeked in the cooler but opted to wait for one more hot meal before staging a break for freedom.
With a little luck, nobody would believe I had found anything, and I’d retreat with a book to the window, crawl inside my book fort, and stage the appearance of taking a nap, something I tended to do within my creations.
All that was left to do was wait.
I took three baths, built a moat for my latest castle using books with blue covers, and added two towers before my wait bore fruit. As always, the sedatives left me foggy after I woke up, but I ate, investigated the cooler as usual to discover the regular assortment of sandwich fixings. I wrinkled my nose, determining from the amount of ice, slices of bread, and general condiments, they expected me to go at least six or seven meals—at least. I could probably make the food stretch for four or five days if needed.
I closed the cooler, shoved it in a corner, and took yet another bath to maintain the illusion I meant to adhere to my regular patterns. Assuming someone watched me, they would see me do as always. Once cleaned, I rummaged through the offered clothes, picked a pair of jeans, and dressed in one of the wraps, picking a thicker material in the hopes I wouldn’t freeze to death. The outdoors hadn’t looked like fall or winter, but late spring could pack some nasty surprises.
Until I staged my escape, I wouldn’t know.
I picked the sneakers as my footwear of choice, hoping they’d have better grip than the thin-soled flats. With no other reasons to delay, I retreated into the castle, set the stage so anyone watching would believe I’d settled in for a nap or to read, and targeted my next obstacle: the handcuffs.
As suspected, once I peeled away the fluffy material, which had been sewn closed with loose stitches, my hand slipped free of the metal. I scraped a little skin off, which I considered a victory, all things considered.
Aware there might be an alarm system I couldn’t see, I pawed at the frame in search of the small boxes that detected if a window opened, finding nothing. I tested the latch, which opened with no resistance. Holding my breath, I lifted the window up.
It slid up, and all remained quiet.
The screen popped out with little effort, and I eased it against the wall, so once outside, I could finagle it back into place, not perfect, but enough to trick anyone who might glance up and expect to see a screen in place. The trick would be crawling out the window without knocking over my castle or revealing I intended to leave the house. Had the window been smaller, I doubted I’d be able to manage, but I could, assuming I stuck my head and part of my shoulder out first, then eased my leg through, better positioned myself, and scooted out without tumbling to a premature demise.
The last time I’d tried a stunt so brazen and stupid, I’d been Bradley’s bodyguard rather than his future wife, and I questioned if he’d still want me to be his wife once he learned I’d escaped out a window in a rather precarious fashion.
My right foot complained in a low-grade ache I dare use it to do something as reckless as escape from a third-story window, but as the ache fell far short of my criteria for pain and actual injury, I clacked my teeth together, resisted the urge to curse, and jammed my toes into the cracks between the brick until I could stay balanced with the help of one hand or my elbow, while I strained to position the screen back into place. I discovered a tab on each side, which gave me the leverage needed to cram it into the space.
Something magnetic at the top of the window helped secure the damned thing into place, and with a pull of each tab, I managed to restore the screen into its rightful place.
“Damn,” I whispered, raising a brow at the little trick the homeowner had done to keep bugs out of their home. Later, I would thank the assholes for their nice house design. I’d also steal the hack and make sure the bugs stayed out, although I’d use stronger magnets and the screen version of Fort Knox. In New York, cockroaches could fly.
I could see one of those bastards taking the top of the screen out with the current magnet.
With one obstacle out of the way, I adjusted my hold so I wouldn’t smash my fingers between sill and frame, strained to reach up, and slid the window closed, wincing at the thump. To my delight, the bounce of the wood against the sill jarred the latch into the locked position.
Before my luck could change, I secured a hold on the window’s frame and began the tedious process of easing my left foot down to find a lower foot hold. Once I found one, I lowered my right hand, found a brick sticking out farther than its neighbors, and gripped it. Fortunately for my nerves, the place seemed to use actual brick in the construction rather than a flimsy veneer.
A veneer might have sheared away from the actual building under my weight, which would have ruined my day in a hurry.
When the brick turned to stone, my job became easier, as the designer had opted for a textured surface offering me a lot of hand and foot holds. I slid down the wall, landed on the ground on my left foot to spare testing my right, and headed for the trees.
Rather than attempt to run, I strolled over as though I belonged there, slid around the first sizable tree I encountered and let out a breath before staying still and waiting for any sign of the house stirring after my escape. I counted my breaths until I reached five hundred before I peeked around the trunk.
The house remained still and quiet. If I hadn’t known better, I would’ve believed the place to be owned by some couple with a kid or two. From what I could see in through the windows, the owners appreciated rustic living.
Instead of a frame of books and darkness, the window I’d crawled through appeared to be in some sort of office or study, with gauzy white curtains and a lamp offering light. Sometime much later, after I located the nearest public library, figured out the date, recovered from the shock of my long-term captivity, and made a game plan, I would appreciate the amount of effort someone had put in containing me.
I never would have been able to escape with a booted foot; I would have fallen, probably to my death, attempting the climb down. However much I disliked how long I’d waited, I would convince myself of its necessity. Once I had a better idea of what was going on, what the news had to say about my kidnapping—if it had anything to say about it—and took better stock of my situation, I would make a plan. With a little luck, my plan would involve reporting to a police station to announce I’d been kidnapped and would really like to contact my family and friends.
Time would tell.
NINE
A sign directed residents to the local library.
My plan on locating and making use of a public library hinged on being close enough to civilization where libraries existed. Deep in the country, the nearest library could be an hour or farther away—by car. The presence of woods surrounding the home I’d been held captive in could pose a problem, if the woods weren’t the specially planted tracks of nature owned by the wealthy trying to preserve their privacy.
It could go either way.
Once confident I hadn’t drawn attention leaving, I shuffled from tree to tree, keeping out of sight of the property as much as possible.
My luck held. I walked far enough my right foot complained over the unaccustomed exercise when the faint blare of a car’s horn promised something was ahead. I followed the sound, and the gradual noise of busy streets welcomed me to somewhere far from home.
Home lacked cacti, palm trees, and redwoods,
and whomever owned the woods near the house had cultivated a lie, one reminiscent of the east coast. After a brief walk along a trail, I discovered the cars came from a road skirting the ocean, and judging from the surfers, the long stretches of sand, and mixed lot of license plates, most of them from California, I’d been dumped in paradise, not far from where I’d spent months recovering from the accident.
My heart skipped several beats before settling into a galloping pace in my chest, and I forced myself to focus on my breathing and stare at my right foot, which had survived its second visit to California. Wiggling my toes and showing off my foot, in a proper shoe rather than a boot or a cast, helped to convince my struggling brain and rogue emotions I hadn’t been grabbed by a vengeful doctor pissed off I’d surpassed expectations.
According to Dr. Geran Avers, I had been a complete waste of time and money, and he had zero reason to hold me hostage in some nice house near the coast and fix my foot free of charge. While I’d lost more than a few of my memories, the one of Bradley advocating for my on-going survival and recovery remained.
Vengeful doctors would not help my foot.
When I could take deep breaths without feeling like my heart would burst out of my chest, I decided to join the beach goers enjoying the sun, the sand, and the waves. To remove one of my more distinctive features, I took off my glasses and pretended I could see without them, stuffing them into my shirt with only one of the arms sticking out.
I suspected I would need new glasses anyway, a reality that freaked me out almost as badly as the idea I’d once again lost months of my life to something outside of my control.
To keep my anxiety from making a reappearance, I focused my thoughts on those around me, listening to the murmur of conversation, the squeals of children playing in the surf, and laughter of family and friends enjoying their time together.
Most wore jeans to combat the slight chill in the air, only the brave few went into the water to attempt to surf, and most lounged on the sand on towels and blankets to soak up the sun.
The waves suitable for surfing came few and far between, although the patient were rewarded for their wait.
Rather than soak up the sun, I prowled the area in search of direction, hoping I’d stumbled across one of the many state beaches littering California. The state beaches might have a map of the local area. A map would offer me a better clue than California license plates. Upon closer investigation, I learned I had found a public beach, which offered bathrooms, showers, and general facilities to beachgoers. I had no idea who paid for it, as parking was free in the main lot.
Then, because I could have good fortune, a sign directed residents to the local library, which was a hop, skip, and a jump from the ocean. According to the sign, I would have to go around a single block to reach it, using the local post office as a landmark.
As I had no idea what time a small library near a beach might close at, I headed there first to get a better feel for how much trouble I’d landed in. Luck once again favored me, as the library was closed three days of the week, but it was open. I stepped inside, where the librarian, who wasn’t at her desk but prowling around the small place, greeted me with a smile and asked if I needed anything. I shook my head, mumbled a thanks, and wandered around to get a feel for the place, spotting several public computers scattered around the main room, most of them available for use. I picked one with a window view of the street, delighting in the presence of people going about their business.
Fortunately for me, I could use a computer without my glasses on, although I needed to bump the font size up to account for the damage to my vision. I began with checking the date, to discover I had been held captive for almost nine months. The shock of the passage of time froze me in place, my gaze locked on the innocent enough month.
Late January in California reminded me more of spring in New York, before the heat and humidity sank in its brutal claws. I hadn’t put much thought into what people in California did during the winter. Had I not checked the calendar two extra times to make certain I wasn’t hallucinating, I would have believed it to be March, maybe early April.
Losing time in the hospital had been one thing, easy enough to accept and adapt to when I could focus on proving my doctors wrong and refusing to quit on my foot or myself. I’d quit on Bradley, something creeping its way to becoming a major regret in my life.
Losing almost nine months, trapped in a room with nothing but books for company, would haunt me. What could I have done in nine months? How much had I missed?
What the hell had happened?
I began my search on the internet, and as my life had been put on hold at the point some devilishly cute goats had gotten loose, I started investigating New York goats. To my dismay, the goats and my subsequent kidnapping had made the headlines due to a murder attempt I couldn’t remember. Somehow, Senator Westonhaus had emerged unscathed, and I had been the reason why.
While the library was a small branch, they’d gotten digital news subscriptions for most major newspapers, and the first article gave me a rundown of what had happened.
It had begun with a bunch of goats, and it had ended with a street bombing, a failed shooting, some gas-based sedative, and a small radius hand grenade, the kind meant to deter crowds rather than kill. The grenade had mildly injured five people and three goats with no loss of life. In the resulting chaos, I’d disappeared along with Senator Westonhaus.
I couldn’t figure out why the would-be killer hadn’t taken a second shot to kill Senator Westonhaus, but someone had captured my act of heroism on video. Despite having a crippled foot, I’d seen something, something that had sent me barreling into the senator. According to the video, I’d been shot again, although in the arm. When I checked the spot, somewhere I didn’t usually look at, sure enough, I found a thin, pale line marking where I’d taken a round.
The senator, unlike me, had been rescued by the FBI some eight hours later.
I regarded the scar with a frown, wondering how long I’d spent sedated following my intervention with the senator’s murder. Then again, the new intel did a lot to help me cope with my long-term captivity.
I hadn’t been able to save Senator Maybelle, but I had made a difference. One man lived because of something I’d noticed—of something I’d done because I’d noticed something amiss. I’d have to weigh the cost of consequence later, sometime after I found my way home and got a better idea of what had happened and why.
To add to my problems, at the same time of the bombing and in an entirely different city, the serial killers had struck again, murdering Representative Islanney in front of his Washington D.C. residence, witnessed by at least five people. Islanney’s murder confirmed what most had come to believe: I couldn’t have saved Senator Westonhaus in a different state and kill someone at the same time, thus permanently removing me from the list of suspects.
The pictures the media provided showed me with my glasses, a hell of a lot less gaunt, and using my medical boot and cane. Even if someone spotted me with the same gaudy glasses on, I doubted anyone would recognize me, even my own mother. Nine months without a haircut hadn’t done me any favors, either.
According to the article, I’d been marked missing but presumed dead. A short time after the declaration I was likely dead, Senator Westonhaus had opted to announce his last-minute candidacy for President of the United States. The date put his announcement during the first week of November, at the very last minute candidates could announce their run. He had even gone so far as to martyr his fellow bill signers, using their deaths—and my disappearance—as fuel for his campaign fire.
I scowled, as my actions at Senator Maybelle’s ill-fated rally were included, supporting Westonhaus’s platform, which involved a complete overhaul of the current rating system, further paving the way for the bill he’d helped bring to life.
My disappearance and presumed death bore some fruit; part of Westonhaus’s platform involved a donation drive to send exsanguinators to medical scho
ol, his campaign paying for the entirety of their education. Curiosity got the better of me, and I clicked the article’s link to the application for exsanguinators to see what sort of criteria he thought was needed for people like me to be useful in hospitals and medical care. Apparently, any confirmed exsanguinator with a demonstrable ability to manipulate blood could apply.
As nobody discovered they were an exsanguinator without blood being manipulated in some fashion or another, he used me to transform society’s opinion of us. Rather than toting us as weapons, he pitched us as healers. Then, as he couldn’t seem to stop making use of me as an example, he’d rounded up a collection of people I’d helped in my hospital volunteering ventures.
I spent five minutes of thought on the situation before I decided either the senator was a master opportunist or he’d been involved with our kidnapping, using the donation to the library as a way to lure me into a place we could go on a well-planned trip. An experienced farm hand wouldn’t have left so many goats without halters, and while it was possible the driver had gotten lost, it was equally probable he’d gotten lost on purpose.
Not a day went by when somebody didn’t get turned around in that area.
The article made a token mention of the Hampton family, and it mentioned nothing of my parents. The politics of my disappearance dictated the entire tone of the piece, and everything within served a purpose: bringing attention to Senator Westonhaus’s presidential campaign.
I returned to the search engine, skimming every article I could find on Westonhaus’s campaign to discover I’d become a foundation for his run, something that could only happen with me out of the way. In the months following the announcement of his run, the news had quieted.