She tried to calm herself, but her heart was pounding. Her head ached above her hairline where it had banged into the door.
Calm yourself, Nikki, she said to herself. Slow breaths. Assess the situation. Start by listening.
And when she listened, what she heard only made her heart pound louder.
She heard what sounded like dental instruments being set out on a tray.
Chapter Seven
To keep herself from getting swept away in a current of panic, Nikki Heat clung to her training. Fright wouldn't get her out of this alive. But fight would. She needed to be opportunistic and aggressive. She pushed her fear away and focused on action. She repeated silently to herself: Assess. Improvise. Adapt. Overcome.
Whoever was arranging the metalware was nearby. Maybe two yards away. Was her captor alone? She listened, and it seemed so. And whoever it was seemed very busy with the small-sounding tools.
She didn't want to call attention, so, without making overt movements, Heat flexed her muscles, slowly tensing herself against her bonds, knowing she couldn't rip free of them, but testing them, hoping for some sort of give, anything that would betray some area of weakness in the duct tape. All she wanted was a little slack somewhere, anywhere-at her wrist, at her ankle-just a quarter inch of play to give her something to work at.
No luck. She was bound efficiently to her chair at the upper forearms, wrists, and at each ankle. As she ticked off each point of restraint, she replayed her memory of Lauren Parry indicating each place on Cassidy Towne's autopsy template. Her own were identical to that diagram.
So far, the assessment of give sucked.
Then the sorting stopped.
A foot scraped, and she heard two hollow heel strikes on uncarpeted floor as someone came near. The footfalls could have been the heels of a woman's shoe, only they seemed more substantial. Nikki tried to remember the layout of Rook's loft-if that was even where she was. He had rugs everywhere except the bathroom and kitchen, but that flooring was slate. This sounded like hardwood. Maybe this was the great room where he held his poker games.
Cloth rustled beside her, and she could smell Old Spice aftershave right before she heard the voice in her ear. It was a man, forties, she guessed, with a Texas drawl that would have been appealing in other circumstances. It was a crisp, simple voice that would make you feel comfortable about buying the man's church raffle tickets or holding his horse. Gently, calmly, he asked, 'Where is it?'
Nikki made a small mumble against her gag. She knew she wouldn't be able to talk, but maybe if the Texan thought she had something to say, he would remove the gag along with her hood and shift the dynamic at least that much. Heat wanted to create an opportunity she could capitalize on.
Instead, he said in his smooth, relaxed tone, 'Talking's going to be an issue for you just this moment, isn't it? So let's do this. Just nod if you'll tell me where it is.'
She had no idea what the man was talking about, but she nodded. The flat of his hand struck her immediately on the tender spot where her head had met the front door, and she whimpered more in surprise than pain. Heat detected motion and tensed for another blow, but instead she got a strong whiff of Old Spice. And then the voice. Quiet as before, and even more chilling because of its calm folksiness.
'Sorry, ma'am. But, see, you were fibbing, and even in New York City, that dog's not gonna hunt.' This Dr. Phil act was all about dominance, and Nikki had a response. She shot her head in the direction of his voice and butted some part of his face. She braced again, but no blow came.
The man simply cleared his throat and took two steps away from her on the hardwood. The hollow-sounding heels made sense to her now. Cowboy boots. She heard a clank of something metal, and the boots approached her side. 'Now, I believe you need a reminder about the reality of your situation,' he said. Then she felt something like the point of a pencil come to rest on the flesh of her left forearm. 'This'll help you along those lines.'
He didn't break the skin, but with the needle-sharp point he scored a line along her skin until he reached the duct tape binding her wrist. He held it there, applying just enough pressure to cause pain without puncturing her. And then he removed it and stepped away, only to come back and stand close to her. Something clicked, and a small motor like a dental drill, or one of those cordless tools they sell on infomercials that cuts nails in half, revved in a high-pitched whine bedside her ear. Nikki jumped and instinctively jerked away from it, but he clamped her in a headlock with his muscular arm. He slowly brought the tool closer and closer to her ear. When it touched the cloth of her hood, vibrating, spinning, chewing fibers, he shut it off. Silence. He put his mouth close to her again.
'You think about that till I get back, now. And when I do, no lies, ya hear?'
She heard the bootfalls again, but this time they went in the opposite direction. When they hit rug, they softened but kept going until they faded away, disappearing into a back room, she guessed. Heat listened, wondering how far the man had gone. Then she bent as far forward at the waist as she could and flung herself upright, feeling her hood inch upward from the momentum of her rise. Before she attempted another flip, she stopped to listen. The boots were approaching again. They clomped when they reached the hardwood, and she felt her slacks rustle as he went by. He paused, and she wondered if he had seen the slight rearrangement of her hood.
Apparently not, because next came the jingle of keys, and then the hard soles crossed the stone of a kitchen floor. From that aural sequence she pictured herself definitely in the great room off Rook's kitchen. She got confirmation when the front door in the entry off the kitchen was unbolted and closed and she heard the teeth of the key insert into the lock. As soon as the tongue of the deadbolt shot, Nikki went to work twisting her head to get the hood off.
It wasn't moving. The cloth was loose but hung too far down onto her shoulders to work off without the use of her hands. She stopped, held her breath, and listened.
The elevator hummed distantly and whined with a slight squeal when it came to a stop. When she heard the metal accordion doors open and close, she went to work wildly shimmying her upper arms. Concentrating her efforts on her right side, she pinched a fold of cloth between her chin and her shoulder, then extended her neck to push upward with the top of her head, slipping the hood up an inch. It was only an inch, but it worked, and so she repeated it until an inch more moved up. After three reps, light started to show underneath the hem. Nikki wished she had access to her mouth to grab it with her teeth, but this would have to do.
She bent for one more flip, and that one succeeded in raising the hood above her eyes, as if she were wearing a hoodie. Nikki shook it off her head and rested while she looked around. Her chair was positioned in open space between the kitchen counter and the oriental rug and the dining table where Rook held his weekly poker nights.
Nikki's heartbeat leveled off, and she went at the task of getting herself to the counter. Careful not to tip the chair over, which would only strand her turtled on the floor, she bucked her body side to side and created enough momentum to shift the chair across the floor a few inches. Heat started to worry she would run out of time before the Texan came back, and she threw more weight into her next motion and started to tip. She almost went over, but managed to get all four feet of the chair down with a slam. It was enough of a scare to settle her into more even movements. Think inch, not inches, she repeated, creating a rhythm. Inch, not inches.
When Nikki reached the counter, which was even with her jawline, seated as she was, she began to rubbing her cheek sideways along its edge. On one of her strokes, her face actually squeaked along the polished granite. The friction made her cheek burn. But it was also causing the ragged edge of the duct tape to catch where it met her skin and curl slightly with each pass. To shut out the pain of the abrasion she thought about the prize that waited on the countertop, inches away: the cordless drill and a half dozen picks and dental tools.
The tape started to give on the left side where she had been working it. Nikki used her tongue, her jaw, and her face muscles to work at it between strokes until she had created a small opening at the corner of her mouth. When she had freed enough tape to create a loose flap, she extended her neck and twisted until her cheek was just above the countertop. Angling slowly, carefully, Nikki lowered her cheek onto the counter and pressed. The tack on the sticky side of the fold of duct tape held to the granite. Keeping her face pressed down hard on the cold surface, Heat swiveled her head left to right, and when she came up, the entire strip of her gag had peeled off and was stuck to the counter.
