“Sorry, no. Got to protect our identities,” the woman whispered. “Wouldn’t want to have to kill you.”
Diana would swear that was humor infusing her captor’s voice. Okay. This was, bar none, the weirdest kidnapping she’d ever heard of. If these people were so confident that they could joke around with her, then they must have Delphi in custody, too. If that was the case, that probably meant she was just a little fish they weren’t all that interested in. No wonder they could afford to make her comfortable and joke with her. Damn. Damn, damn, damn.
There were a few more rustles in the direction she’d come from, and then what little light seeped in around the edges of her bag disappeared. Complete darkness closed in around her. And then silence. She held her breath and strained to listen for even the faintest sound of breathing. She wouldn’t put it past her captors to park someone in the dark nearby to keep an eye on her.
But as hard as she listened, she couldn’t hear any evidence of anyone else down here. Furthermore, she didn’t feel anyone’s presence. Did she dare make her move now, or should she wait a couple of hours until the coast was definitely clear? Were it just her in trouble, she’d wait. But there was Delphi to think about. Who knew what was happening to her boss? She had to go now.
She wriggled and squirmed, working the decorative belt buckle at the right wrist of her duster around to the side. It took some fancy wiggling of her elbows, but she managed to point the buckle at the cloth strip securing her wrist. How many times she stabbed the sharpened tip of the buckle through the fabric, she had no idea. But eventually, she felt frays begin to tickle her wrist, and the cloth began to weaken. She yanked on it hard a few times. Not quite there. A few more good pokes, and another mighty jerk of her arm, and her hand ripped free. Thank God.
She tore the bag off her head and looked around. It was nearly pitch-black in the cellar, but her eyes were fully adjusted to the dark from inside the bag. The room looked empty. She was lying on an old table with a mattress laid across it. Assorted odds and ends of furniture filled the corners, and cardboard packing boxes were stacked along the far wall.
She rolled on her side and quickly examined the bonds tying down her left wrist. By straining against the ropes around her ankles, she was able to reach the knot that held her left wrist down. It took a few minutes to pick loose the knot by feel, but eventually she got it. She sat up and had her feet free in under a minute. She eased to her feet, relieved to be off that table. Now to go rescue Delphi.
She headed for the stairs. She’d heard one of the steps creak as her captors left earlier, so she took her time, easing her weight slowly onto each step. There. The squeaker. She backed off it fast, and waited several seconds, holding her breath for some reaction to the first, faint squeak of noise it had made.
Nothing.
Stepping over the squeaky step, she glided up the stairs to the basement door. Crouching on her hands and knees, she peered out from under the crack at its bottom. A single pair of black leather boots sat at the kitchen table. Facing the door, dammit. But at least they were narrow and small boots. The woman, then.
She wasn’t going to be able to surprise this lookout. And if they got into a noisy fight, the others would come running. She could probably burst out of here and get out the back door before the other attackers got here. But then, she’d have to leave Delphi behind. And that went against every fiber of her being.
She turned over other possible options. None of them were good.
A chair scraped. Diana lurched back from the door and plastered herself against the wall. Heels tapped quietly on the floor as the woman walked quickly out of the kitchen.
This was her chance! After a quick peek under the door to verify that the room was empty, Diana tested the doorknob. Unlocked. Pretty confident, her captors were. She opened the door quickly and spun out into the kitchen low and fast. She was alone. She moved to the drawer where she’d fetched a knife this morning and did the same again, arming herself with a couple butcher knives and a paring knife stuck in her boot.
She raced down the dimly lit hallway, stopping before the library door. Closed. She eased past it, running up the stairs as lightly as she could. Her heart pounded a mile a minute, and her breath came fast and shallow. The second floor was still dark, and the third floor still glowed with light.
She glided up the third-floor stairs, her knife held out before her.
Murmurs of sound came out of the front office. Its door was cracked open about one quarter of the way. She glided forward along the wall. The voices were too quiet to make out the words, but it surely didn’t sound like a forced interrogation.
The desk and its high-backed leather chair, situated facing the window, were occupied. She caught a glimpse of silver hair over the back of the chair. Delphi, maybe? A couple chairs in front of the desk, between it and the window were also occupied. Black-clothed figures lounged in the chairs. Her captors. Minus their masks.
She gaped in disbelief. She recognized every one of the women she saw. They were all old classmates of hers from the Athena Academy. They were part of S.A.F.E.? How was that possible?
And then the truth hit her, a sledgehammer blow right between the eyes. S.A.F.E. hadn’t kidnapped her at all. Oracle had.
Delphi had set up the meeting with her to deliver her to this team of her fellow Oracle agents. A single question screamed across her brain. Why? What had happened? Why had Delphi turned on her? Unless…
Of course. Her signature next to the altered Oracle programming code. Delphi thought she was part of the plot to kill Gabe. But who’d pointed it out to Delphi? Surely someone had. With everything else that had gone on today, there was no way Delphi had been randomly sitting around browsing through Oracle’s programming code. Who could turn Delphi on one of his or her own agents?
It had to be someone Delphi trusted implicitly. Someone in a very high position of power. Someone who knew Diana very well. Well enough for Delphi to believe out of hand. Like her grandfather.
Oh. My. God.
One of the agents shifted in her seat inside the office, and Diana lurched back to awareness of her surroundings. She had to get out of here.
She headed back toward the stairs, but heard footsteps below her. Headed this way. Crud. She turned and raced on silent feet toward the back of the house. She slipped into the small room there and closed the door noiselessly. She waited behind the door as the footsteps climbed the stairs and headed away from her. Toward the meeting in the front office.
She was poised by the door, just about to sneak out of the room, when another set of footsteps froze her in place. They headed downstairs. She strained to hear them, and thought she heard them descend the first-floor stairs, as well. So much for that escape route.
She locked the door-a pitiful defense against the highly-trained team of operatives outside, but it would slow them down a little. Buy her a few seconds, maybe. She took stock of the room she was in. A bedroom. Furnished not like a room someone lived in, but rather a resting spot for someone who’d worked too long or too late. But the bed had sheets and blankets, and that’s all she cared about.
She tore the bedding off the bed and used a knife to saw through the bedspread as quietly as she could. It took several minutes, but eventually she had enough thick lengths of bedspread and wool blanket to reach nearly to the ground. At least she hoped it would reach. She tied the strips of cloth together and measured them one last time. Her improvised rope should get her within ten feet or so of the ground. No problem.
She tied the end of her blanket rope to the foot of the bed nearest the window. The bed wasn’t heavy enough to hold her weight and would slide over toward the window, but the double-bed’s frame shouldn’t come out the window after her. At least that was the plan.
She checked the window for an alarm and found the inconspicuous metal disk at the side of the frame. She didn’t have the tools to disarm it readily. No help for it. She’d just have to go fast.
She gathered up her blanket rope in her arms and flung up the window sash. As she’d expected, a loud, high- pitched alarm whooped through the house. She tossed the blanket out the window and climbed out after it before the thing had even finished unfurling. She grabbed onto it and began to shimmy downward fast, hand over hand.
It gave an ominous lurch as the bedframe gave way and slid over toward the window with a loud scraping noise of wood on wood. Shouts erupted from inside the house, audible through the open window.
She slid down the blanket to the next knot, burning her hands on the scratchy wool. She shifted grips to the next strip of cloth and slid down that, as well, ignoring the raw pain in her palms.
One more knot to go.
