Trapped

“Martin!” he impotently cried. “You promised!”

“I’m a killer, Captain Prendick. Certainly you could have guessed I’m a liar as well.”

Prendick screamed at the gridiron tipped over, dropping him face-first onto the burning coals.

Kong opened his eyes. He’d gotten exactly one hour of sleep. Not ideal, but it would do. He got out of bed and went into the toilet. The whore was tied up in the bathtub. She’d died sometime during his slumber. No big loss there, but an inconvenience. Kong had desired a shower, but he found bathing with corpses to be distasteful.

He brushed his teeth, shaved, combed his hair, and dressed in his new clothes, perfectly timing the completion of the Windsor knot on his tie with the knock at the door.

It would appear that even American Chinese worked at being punctual.

He greeted the two new arrivals in Mandarin, and was pleased when they answered back in kind. Kong hadn’t met either of them before, and didn’t plan on seeing either of them again. One held an oversized metal briefcase, the other a large, empty suitcase. This also pleased him. They had planned ahead.

“The whore is in the bathtub,” he told them, using his native tongue. “Next time, send someone with a stronger constitution.”

The man with the suitcase nodded, apologized, and hurried to the bathroom as Kong turned his attention to his companion.

“Show me,” Kong ordered.

The man placed the briefcase on the bed, popped the latches, and opened the lid.

Kong stared. He didn’t so much as flinch, but he was shocked that something worth so much money was so small.

Kong told the man to leave, so entranced by what was on the bed that he wasn’t even aware he’d used the word qing, meaning please, as if making a request rather than a command.

The man bowed, then hurried into the bathroom. The shower came on—the men rinsing away the blood. A minute later, the duo were lugging out a bulging and obviously heavy suitcase.

Kong paid them no mind as they left. There were also papers in the briefcase, but Kong didn’t bother checking them, knowing they were in order. He closed the lid and shook his head, marveling at what Westerners considered valuable. For the same price he could get a hundred such items in China, any of which would make this pale in comparison.

But then it would be difficult to carry a hundred items in one small case. He gave Plincer a modicum of respect for his ingenuity. There weren’t many items that were portable, legally obtainable, could easily pass through airport security, and were worth twenty-five million dollars.

Kong didn’t bother checking his watch because he already knew the time in his head. His plane would be in a little over an hour, enough time for him to endure a bland, banal representation of what people in this country considered breakfast. Hopefully one of those garish airport restaurants served Wulong tea, though he wasn’t holding out much hope.

He picked up the briefcase and headed out, confident that he was about to take the first step in changing the future of China, and by extension, the future of the world.

Laneesha opened her eyes. But she couldn’t see anything, only feel a sharp yet empty throb.

That was because her eyeballs were gone.

Sara wasn’t a religious person. She understood the social and psychological needs that religion sated. Apart from a few late night college gab fests with fellow psyche majors fueled by wine and pot, she’d managed to avoid having to justify her godless convictions.

But locked in the trunk, relieving the biggest horror of her past and waiting to experience one that would be even worse, Sara gave herself over to a higher power and prayed for death.

She prayed hard, with all she had, chanting the phrase over and over in her head until please God let me die became one long, endless word, ends running into beginnings running into ends.

She tried to help God along, hyperventilating to the point of dizziness, trying to suck up the last bit of oxygen in the trunk.

letmediepleasegodletmedieplease…

When that didn’t work, possibly because the trunk wasn’t air tight, Sara tried holding her breath, willing her body to give up, picturing her brain cells dying and bodily functions ceasing through the sheer force of determination.

That didn’t work either. Sara sobbed for a while, alternately being assaulted by terrifying memories of the past, self-hatred at her own naivete for loving and trusting and being married to a monster, and the despair of what would happen to the rest of her kids, and the horror of the tortures yet to come. The darkness nipped away at her soul, the heat and cramps making the claustrophobia even worse than when Paulie Gunther Spence abducted her a lifetime ago. The feeling of helplessness was so encompassing, so powerful, she lost all sense of anything else.

The shift was gradual. The sobbing abated, mostly out of exhaustion. The darkness remained, but became a tiny bit more bearable. Anger snuck into the mix, jockeying for position against fear and guilt. It built slowly, and Sara embraced it, fed off of it, and added a fuel she didn’t have when she was eleven years old. Responsibility.

This wasn’t just her life on the line. There were children involved. Children she’d pledged to help and protect.

She couldn’t do either while stuck in a trunk.

Sara stretched out a crick in her neck, shifted her weight, and began to test her bonds. The rope was thin, nylon, the same type the ferals had used to string up Martin.

Should have let the bastard hang there.

She let the anger carry her forward, twisting her arms, trying to get some play in the rope to slip out. Her wrists became slick, first with sweat, then with blood, but the knots were simply too tight.

Then she remembered the nail clippers that she’d shoved into her back pocket while at the campsite. Were they still there, or had Martin taken them?

Sara shifted again, bending her knees to give her hands more room to work. Her fingers dug into her pocket and touched the small metal object.

Small, but packed full of hope.

They weren’t the best tool for the job, and Sara couldn’t see what she was doing, but she opened up the clippers and began to slowly nip away at the rope binding her left wrist.

It was slow going, and involved intense concentration. The clippers were slippery, and the repetitive motion made her fingers cramp and throb. But she kept at it, clipping a few nylons threads at a time, and after five minutes of exhausting work she was through the rope.

It freed her left arm, which was one of the greatest feelings Sara had ever experienced. But her right wrist was still tied to her legs, the multiple knots Martin had used still holding tight. Sara attacked the rope again, using her left hand. But it lacked the control, and strength, of her right, and after ten minutes she’d only gotten halfway through.

Self-doubt returned. Martin could come back any minute. He might even be in the room right now. Maybe he left her the nail clippers on purpose, seeing if she’d try to escape, waiting for her to come out. He’d fooled Sara for six years without her suspecting a thing. Clearly he was capable of anything.

The darkness pressed down on Sara, getting into her nose and mouth and ears, reminding her what was going to happen.

Keep cool. Stay focused. You can do this.

She doubled her effort, fighting the cramps, imagining the clippers were a tiny alligator, relentless, tenacious, biting, biting, biting—

I’m free.

Sara didn’t bother with her ankles. She turned onto her back, pressed her feet against the top of the trunk, and pushed like she was doing the mother of all leg-presses.

The trunk lid creaked, then popped open, drenching Sara in beautiful, magestic light.