It had been three days since Jesse had eaten. Although the man had brought her a small tray of cold cereal and toast every morning, she would only pick at the food. She never ate more than a mouthful, keeping her hunger at bay. She would take the glass of water, and when Clyde wasn’t looking, pour it onto her pillow. The foam pillow soaked up the water like an enormous sponge. Later, she would use the trapped water to moisten her face and hair, making herself look matted with a clammy sweat.
Jesse looked down at her food and rolled her eyes. Clyde stared at Jesse for a moment. Nadine busied herself at the stove, preparing her own breakfast plate. Jesse sat motionless at the table, her face pale and emotionless, her eyes glued to the pancakes on her plate. Clyde looked away, paying her no more attention as he focused on his own breakfast.
Jesse’s heart was beating wildly. Her nerves were wired, tight as steel, raw as bone. This might be her chance. Her only chance. She couldn’t wait any longer to act.
Very slowly, Jesse lifted her left hand from her lap and began to explore the underside of the kitchen table. It was made of rough pine and square nails. The top of the table had been sanded smooth. The bottom had not. It was rough as newly timbered wood, splintered and uneven. It bristled with sharp and tattered edges. Jesse carefully felt around with her fingers, running them along the edges of the wood until she found what she was looking for. She touched a sharp piece of wood, pointed and jagged, but fairly strong. This would do.
She took a quick glance at Clyde and Nadine. Neither of them paid her any attention. Clyde poked at his ham with his fork.
Jesse took a quick breath and held it. Her heart raced. The muscles in her chest drew tight. Her mouth went dry. Another quick look at her captors. She touched the splinter of wood once again.
With a jerk, she jammed her finger against the sharp spur. She smothered a wince of pain as she felt thick drops of blood forming on the tip of her finger. She took another deep breath and held it, then rolled her eyes back into her head, moaned once, and bit down hard on the inside of her cheek.
She rolled off the kitchen chair with a groan, her body shaking violently, uncontrollably, her eyes wild. She chewed on her cheek once again as red spittle dripped from the corner of her mouth. She quickly jammed her bleeding finger into her left ear, squeezed it tight, then dropped her hand down to her waist, shaking with a violent seizure.
Clyde watched her fall to the floor. For a fraction of a second he remained unimpressed. Then he saw the blood. It spat from the corners of her mouth. It dribbled from out of her ear. It smeared all over her face as she jerked around on the floor. He saw the gaping, unseeing eyes as they rolled back. Jesse’s neck twitched violently and she smashed against the corner of the kitchen table, causing a gash across the right side of her forehead.
He stared down at the quivering and moaning girl, completely confused. He had no idea what to do. It was Nadine who finally sprang into action. Bounding around the kitchen table, she threw herself onto the floor next to Jesse and wrapped her arms around her shoulders and neck in an attempt to keep her from bashing her head against the hard wooden floor. “Don’t just sit there,” she screamed. “Do something!”
“What! What should I do?”
“I don’t know… get a pillow!” Nadine screamed again. Jesse pushed and pulled against the woman’s weight. She moaned and wailed and cried. Bloody spit flew everywhere. Her teeth began to chatter and her eyes rolled back again, leaving only the whites exposed under the eyelids.
Then suddenly, just as quickly as it had began, she went perfectly limp. Her arms dropped to the side of her waist, her legs flopped out across the floor, her head dropped to the side. Every muscle in her body turn to liquid. Her dark eyes stopped rolling, but didn’t close. They stared, unseeing, perfectly blank, brown and tearless. She didn’t move. She hardly breathed, her chest rising in desperate and shallow gasps.
Nadine released Jesse. “What do we do? We can’t just take her to the hospital!” she cried.
Clyde stood and ran from the room. The cabin’s only telephone was in the living area, on the other side of the huge rock wall that separated the two rooms.
“I’ll call Morozov. I’ll call the foreigner. He’s got to know. We’ve got to tell him. Let him decide what we should do.”
Nadine reached down and placed her face next to Jesse’s nose and mouth. She was still hardly breathing. She felt for her pulse at the side of her neck. She couldn’t find it. She didn’t really know where to look.
“I think we’re losing her!” she called out to her husband. “Stupid, stupid, girl!” Nadine sobbed in frustration as she sat herself up on the floor, wiping the spit and blood from her arms against her denim blouse and brushing her hair from her eyes.
From the next room Clyde began to yell. “Where is his number? Where is it? How do I get a hold of Morozov?”
“It’s by the phone. No, wait… it’s in my purse. I think. He called two nights ago and gave you the number. You idiot, I think you put it in my purse.”
Jesse lay perfectly still on the floor, her breath coming in short, gurgling gasps. A tiny dribble of red saliva still dripped from the corner of her mouth. Every few seconds, her left foot would twitch. Nadine was genuinely scared. Not that she cared about Jesse. Her life wasn’t worth a flying wad of spit. But they had been told that they had to wait before they could kill her. He had been very explicit. Keep her alive until I tell you otherwise. And based on what little she knew of the man and his friends, Nadine had a very good idea what the foreigner would do to them if they let her die before it was time.
“Did you find the number?” she called into the other room, fighting the fear in her voice.
“No! It’s not here! You’ve got half a million pieces of junk in your purse. You come find it! I’m telling you, it isn’t here!”
Nadine pushed herself up from the floor and ran from the room.
Within two seconds, Jesse was out the kitchen door. She leaped over the patio railing, dropped the four feet to the forest floor and raced off into the woods, cutting across the hillside, dodging behind thick pine trees and white aspens, wiping the tears and blood from her eyes as she ran. She slanted her path slightly upward, knowing neither Nadine nor Clyde had the physical ability to follow. Not through the brush and trees. Not uphill. Not in the thin mountain air. Under the best of conditions, neither one of them could have kept up with her for more than twenty yards. In the forest, they didn’t stand a chance.
But then again, they both had guns. That was worth far more than a few extra yards.
By the time Jesse was thirty paces into the forest, she had already faded from view. Ten seconds later, she had completely disappeared. Only the distant crack of an occasionally broken branch gave any indication of where she had run.
Clyde and Nadine spent only ten seconds looking through Nadine’s purse before Clyde ran back into the kitchen to check on the girl. He scrambled around the huge stone wall and stopped dead in his tracks. The girl was gone.
His eyes darted around the kitchen. He started to scream as he pulled his 9mm from his shoulder holster. He ran out the screened patio door and onto the patio, gun in hand, held in the ready position. He would kill her before he would let her go! He searched wildly through the thick forest of trees that surrounded the cabin. Nothing. He ran down the patio steps and began to scramble through the trees, running left and then right, jerking his way through the forest.