Right. Easier said than done.
Jeri lifted herself and let her weight crash down on the eye bolt. And again, and again, with no discernible effect. I hauled down as hard as I could on the ropes that held me. With my ankles tied as they were I was able to generate even more force on the ropes and the eye hook, but nothing gave. Hopeless.
Jeri jangled on her ropes like a ferret on a hook. A sound, almost a growl, came from her throat.
And then I saw something. Or thought I did, an awareness that crept through a gray haze that had kept my thoughts at half speed ever since I’d regained consciousness.
“Jeri!”
She kept at it, violent, possessed, trying to get something to tear loose.
“Jeri, stop!”
She hung there, breathing hard, staring at me. “What?”
“Hold on a minute.”
“Screw that, Mort. No way I’m gonna wait around until they—”
“Hold on a minute.” I was looking at the beam over her head, at the eye bolt to which her ropes were tied.
“Mort—?”
“See that eye bolt above you?”
Jeri craned her neck upward. “What about it?”
I squinted, trying to focus. The bolt went into the bottom of the beam, an inch from its outer edge. The eye of the bolt wasn’t tight against the wood, not even close. It stuck out four inches below the bottom of the beam, as if whoever had put it in hadn’t been able to screw it in any farther, or couldn’t be bothered. I couldn’t tell how deeply it was embedded, but it obviously wasn’t in all the way. Two inches of threads were still visible. It was a weakness. I explained it to Jeri. Whether or not she could exploit it, I didn’t know.
She stared up at the bolt for a moment, considering, then she turned and faced the wall. A glimmer of life returned to Kayla’s eyes. She raised her head and watched.
Hanging from the ropes, Jeri pulled her legs off the floor, planted her feet against the wall and walked them upward, turning herself completely upside down. She looked like a piston again, exhibiting that colossal strength I’d seen in her gym. But what she’d done so far was the least of what she would have to do.
Hanging upside down, she set her feet against the wall at either side of the eye hook, twenty inches apart, toes touching the underside of the beam. Then she did what amounted to a vertical sit-up while hauling on the ropes, reeling them in until she was in a horizontal crouch against the wall with her feet below the bottom of the beam. Her face was almost touching the ceiling.
She grunted softly, playing the ropes out as she slowly extended her body outward from the wall, standing up, but sideways. A sheen of sweat appeared on her body as the forces built up in her, gravity pulling her down, ropes pulling horizontally. Nothing was keeping her up there but the power in her arms and legs, the incredible strength of her torso.
God, she was beautiful!—doing something I couldn’t have done on the best day of my life. Tendons stood out in her neck. She was in a partial squat, legs not quite straight, suspended by forces I couldn’t begin to calculate. Her thighs looked as if they’d been chiseled out of granite. Muscles in her shoulders bulged with effort, arms corded. Her breasts were compact cambered pads, inches from the ceiling. I felt a sense of wonder, knowing that I had never seen a woman like her before, never would again.
Kayla gaped at her, mouth open in amazement.
Jeri was stretched out almost full length beneath the ceiling. I don’t think she took a breath. I doubt that she could have. Her body was rigid. If I felt any occult force radiating off her—and I thought I did, waves of it—it was pure, blinding love.
Then she began to pull in earnest, deadlifting the eye bolt from the side, using the part of the eye bolt below the beam as a short lever, motionless, a statue of stressed stone. She pulled for our lives. She pulled for love. Christ, she could have lifted the front end of a ’57 Buick.
The side of the beam exploded with a gunshot sound of rending wood. Jeri flew across the room in an arc, falling nearly ten feet to the concrete floor, landing on her back and shoulders with her chin tucked into her chest. I heard her breath go. Her head bounced off the door in the opposite wall.
She lay utterly still. Seconds passed. I thought she was out cold. She didn’t appear to be breathing. Kayla gave me a terrified look, then Jeri’s eyes fluttered open and she pulled her knees up to her chest, rolled onto her side, mouth open, trying to suck air into her lungs.
I didn’t say anything. Nothing would have helped. I listened for footsteps, sounds of Victoria or Winter, willing Jeri to get up, get moving. I didn’t hear anything yet, but I didn’t see how they could have missed that sharp crack of tearing wood. They might have felt it, a shock wave jarring the entire house. A fifteen-inch section of the beam had torn out, leaving a splintery gash of exposed wood.
Jeri got her knees under her, then staggered to her feet. The ropes around her wrists were still tied to the eye bolt, and her wrists were still bound by that figure eight of rope between them. She gathered it all up and stood unsteadily, looking around.
I felt a vibration in the wall behind me, sounds, distant footsteps. “They’re coming,” I said.
Jeri darted past me to the workbench, still trying to breathe. She tucked the unwieldy mass of ropes under her left arm. She got the linoleum knife that Victoria had left on the workbench, then turned and took a few steps toward the door.
The footsteps grew louder.
Suddenly the door burst open. Victoria ran inside, slowing
