Clare held up one of the pamphlets and the letter. “Can I keep these? If the police get involved-” Lisa’s dismayed face stopped her. “Not that they necessarily will. But I’d like to show this, unofficially, to the chief. He’s a friend of mine. He might have some ideas about finding her.”
Lisa was shaking her head. “I don’t want to get anybody in trouble. I know how the cops are. Nothing’s ever unofficial.”
“Have you thought that it might be the other way around? What if Millie met with these people, decided she didn’t want to take part in whatever they were planning, and they’re holding her against her will?”
“Riiight.” Lisa’s face showed what she thought of that idea. She swept the pamphlets off the wine crate and held out her hand for the remaining papers.
“Please?” Clare said.
Lisa sighed. “Oh, all right.” She shoved the pamphlets into the drawer. “But you don’t mention my name. I didn’t show these to you, and I don’t know anything about it.”
“Deal.” Clare sniffed. One of the skillets was beginning to smoke. “We’d better get back to breakfast. ’Cause God knows none of those men is about to feed himself.”
The duct tape wasn’t coming off. She had tried stretching it, rubbing it against the edge of the door lintel, working her hands back and forth until her wrists were raw. Nothing.
Using the bucket had been a nightmare of complications. It had taken her five tries to stand upright, a feat she accomplished finally by rocking back and forth on her aching arms until, in a kind of reverse somersault, the velocity of her forward roll brought her to her feet. She hopped all the way to the wall to keep herself from falling forward. Standing, she discovered that the stretch of duct tape between her ankles served as a shackle, and she was able to shuffle slowly to the bucket. Getting her sweatpants down was a matter of plucking with her almost-numb fingers and hopping up and down, but when she lowered herself over the pail, she lost her balance and tumbled over. She had to go through the whole rigmarole again, this time with her sweats sliding around her thighs and the bucket rolling across the floor.
Once she was erect, she shuffle-walked to the bucket and, with tiny kicks and nudges, shoved it against the wall. She couldn’t figure out how to get it upright with her hands behind her back and her feet only inches apart, so she thudded painfully to her knees and head-butted it into its final position. It was there she discovered she could get to her feet by leaning hard against the chilly stone wall and forcing her feet under her. She kept her arms and back to the wall this time when she squatted. When she was finally able to relieve herself, it felt like a victory on par with winning the Tour de France. Civilization one, barbarism zero.
Scootching her sweatpants back up with the help of the wall, she considered what to do next. At least using the bucket had given her a goal. Now she was down to two choices: collapse into a motionless heap or find some way to get out of her cell. Since she had already done the motionless heap thing, an escape attempt seemed to be in order.
That was when she discovered that duct tape, the handyman’s friend, was a lot more resistant than she had ever realized.
All right, if she couldn’t saw, stretch, or slither herself free, maybe she could get out while still bound? The arrow slits were at an easy height; standing, she could look out any one of them and see sunshine and bare- branched trees and sky. They opened wide into the cell, maximizing light, but their external openings were narrow enough to repel invaders-or prevent determined children from killing themselves while playing King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Besides, even if she could wiggle her way between the constricting stones, where would she be? The view from the arrow slits showed the tops of the trees. And she knew from painful experience there was no handy fire escape.
She dismissed the curving wall with its deceptively open windows and considered the door. She had read a book once where someone freed himself from a locked room by removing the door’s hinge pins. These hinges were large, faux-medieval things, stretching a quarter of the way across the face of the door. The pins holding them in place were topped by pointed iron finials, reminding her less of the Middle Ages than of the tops of flagstaffs. She shuffled to the oak slab, turned around, and slid down until her hands touched the triangular top of a pin. She pulled it. Nothing. She twisted it. It moved. She twisted the other way, then tugged and pulled, her thighs straining with the effort of squatting. The pin moved upward. She felt like Galileo-
She attacked the pin again, this time twisting and teasing and scraping it upward, bit by squeaky bit, her arms shaking, sweat slithering under her flannel shirt. More and more of the narrow metal dowel rose from the hinge until she could feel it wiggling loose, and with a final pivot and pull she had it. She bent forward and straightened, her long thigh muscles complaining the whole way. She stood upright, swaying slightly, letting her heart, which she hadn’t realized had been pounding, slow down to normal. Letting her legs stop shaking, letting her shoulders relax.
The hinge pin was cold and heavy between her fingers. She let it go. It rang and rang again against the stone floor before coming to rest next to her boot.
“One down, one to go,” she said, and that was when it hit her. She whirled, staggered to catch her balance, and stared at the door. Stared at the top hinge, the uppermost hinge, the curlicued, black-iron, hand-forged hinge whose pin sat at the same level as her head. Her hands, taped behind her back, twitched. The pin might just as well have been on the ceiling for all that she could reach it.
The disappointment, the
She kicked one hobbled leg in fury. The duct tape yanked against her ankles, and the lower hinge pin rolled across the floor with an old, hollow sound of iron on wide wooden planks. She blinked. Sniffed hard. Stopped crying. Looked at the pin, six or seven inches long, slender enough to conceal in her sleeve. But heavy. One end flat, circular. The other-pointed. She looked again at the door with its unreachable hinge. Okay. She didn’t have way out.
She had a weapon.
Clare was finally seeing a look of admiration on John Huggins’s face. Unfortunately, it was for her cooking.
“This is great,” he said around a mouthful of French toast. “You have to do this for our annual firehouse breakfast fund-raiser.”
Clare made a noncommittal noise that was swallowed up in the clink and clatter of forks hitting plates and spoons stirring coffee. She cleared away an empty jam jar and the denuded butter plate and headed back to the kitchen. Maybe if she rooted way in the back of the fridge, she could find another stick of butter. She was head- down, checking out the produce bin, when she heard the door open and close. Whoever it was simply stood there. Saying nothing.
It struck her what she must look like, presenting rump-out like a primate in a
Russ lifted his eyes to meet hers. “Hi.”
“Hi.” She gestured toward the Frigidaire humming behind her. “I was looking for more jam.”
He grinned suddenly, wiping ten years off his face. “Don’t let me stop you.”
“Huh.” She cocked her head. “What, exactly, did you come in for?”
He stepped toward her, and she could swear that she felt the air moving, giving way. He stopped before he got too close. He was good about that. They both were. “I thought you might need some help.”
She wiped her hands on her pants. “I think that’s my line.” She pointed toward the pantry. “Take a look in there, will you?”
He nodded, ambling to the pantry and clicking on the light. “So what do you think of Haudenosaunee? I bet you love this kitchen.”
