A jiggle, a lift, and Mike was proved right. He pocketed the card, slipped inside, and shut the door behind him. He took a few steps and was reaching into his backpack for his small emergency-use flashlight when he tripped over something square and painfully solid.
“Shit!” he cried, smashing into the floor, the flashlight and the bags flying, jars and boxes thudding and clunking, his sleeping bag bouncing off into the darkness. “Shit! Shit!”
“Who’s there?”
He froze.
“Who’s there?”
It was a woman. Faint and seemingly far away, but a woman. How in the hell had a woman gotten in here?
“Look, whoever you are!”
Christ, they didn’t have some sort of security guard now, did they?
“I don’t care what you’re doing here! I’m trapped, and I need help!”
He climbed to his feet. Now what was he supposed to do? Silently he bent over, feeling for his backpack. He brushed it with the back of his hand and grabbed it. The zippers jingled, a faint noise he heard as a clash of cymbals.
“I know you’re here. I heard you fall over something.”
Maybe he could just stand still. Stay quiet over here by the door. Maybe he could open and close the door, pretending to leave.
“Help me! Please, please, help me! Please!”
Oh, God. He was never going to be able to ignore that. “Hang on,” he yelled. “I’m looking for my flashlight.” He knelt carefully and began patting down the floor, feeling for the narrow cylinder.
“Thank you! Thank you!”
He got a fat bottle and a loaf of bread and something smooth and cool that he managed to identify as a knife before he sliced his palm open. He jammed everything into his backpack. Everything except his flashlight, which was nowhere within reach. “Crap,” he said.
“What is it?” the woman called.
“I can’t find my flashlight.” He had one in the glove compartment of his truck, but he didn’t want to appear out in the open again so soon. Maybe later.
“Talk to me,” he said loudly. “I’ll find you by sound.”
“I’m over here,” she said. “Near the far wall, the one closest to the river. Over here. Watch out for the stacks of pallets and the-”
“Oof!” There was a clang as he ran straight into something large and immovable.
“-the big machinery parts.”
He groaned. “What are you doing here? What do you mean, you’re trapped?” He could imagine maybe one of these machines dislodging and pinning someone. But in that case, he’d expect her to sound like she was in pain.
There was a pause. A long pause. Finally she said, “It’s embarrassing.”
Embarrassing? Like what? The only thing that embarrassed Lisa was stuff like other people knowing she had her period, or that time he told a couple friends about her getting the hair on her upper lip zapped. “Keep talking,” he said. He meant so he could find her, but she took it as an order.
“I met up with someone here. We were going to… do a bondage thing. But instead, he tied me up and left me here.”
Randy felt a flash of heat in his belly. Christ almighty. Maybe she was wearing some weird leather getup. Or nothing at all. Not that he’d do anything. He loved his wife. But Christ, what a story to tell the guys. Then he remembered that he wasn’t going to be telling this story to anyone. Because he wasn’t here.
His eyes had adjusted, and he could make out shapes in the darkness. Still, he almost stumbled across her. She was on the floor, leaning against another stack of pallets. The rectangular windows a story above them shed enough moonlight across the blackness that he could make out her legs, stretched out and covered in something pale. He dropped to his knees.
She was rolled loosely into a blanket, so he couldn’t see what she had on. He couldn’t make out the details of her face, but he figured that was just as well, since that meant she couldn’t see him too well, either.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey.” She sounded like a runner after a race, breathing hard but trying to bring herself under control. “I’m… my hands and ankles are bound.”
He reached for the blanket covering her, not touching it. “You mind if I…?”
“Please.”
He could tell by the way she talked that she wasn’t from here. “What’s your name?” he said, still not touching the blanket.
“M-Mel. Melanie.” She sounded as if she wasn’t sure.
“Nice to meet ya, Melanie. I’m Mike.” He had thought the fake name up while he was crossing the floor. No use hiding out if someone could identify him by name. “I’m, uh, going to take the blanket off now.”
“Okay.”
“I can’t see you very well.”
“It’s fine,” she said impatiently.
Maybe she wasn’t the modest type. He tugged the blanket away, using both hands to unwrap it.
“Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to snap. It’s just that I’ve been tied up like this all day, and it feels as if my shoulders are going to break off at this point.”
He wasn’t interested in her explanations. He was interested in why she was trying to sell him a bullshit story about bondage gone bad. He and Lisa had married right out of high school, and he didn’t have a whole lot of experience, but he knew for sure that no woman would show up for a kinky scene with her lover dressed in a flannel shirt and sweatpants. And hiking boots? He could imagine-just-some guy getting turned on enough by the idea of struggling to undress her to leave the clothes on while he trussed her up. But hiking boots?
His hand slipped down to her wrists, and he felt the unmistakable texture of duct tape. “I need to get my knife,” he said.
“Of course. Thank you. Thank you.”
He stood up and threaded his way back to the backpack and plastic bag. Thinking hard the whole way.
His camping kit had a utility knife, but he grabbed the kitchen knife Lisa had tossed in with the groceries instead. Its serrated edge would go through the duct tape a lot faster. If he used it. He made his way back to her, this time stopping a few feet away, when he could see her outline in the dark.
“I have the knife,” he said.
“Thank God.” There was a quiet clink as she bent forward, like an iron manacle tapping against the cement floor. “Please, undo my hands first. My arms are numb.”
“Yeah. Sure.” He squatted. “Just, I want to know what you’re really doing here first.”
She stopped moving. “I told you.”
He waited, not saying anything. It was what his dad used to do whenever he thought Randy was lying. He wouldn’t argue; he wouldn’t explain why he thought Randy wasn’t telling the truth. He’d just sit there. Quiet. Until Randy broke.
“Cut it off! I told you, I was meeting someone here and he tied me up. I thought it was for fun.”
He squatted, silent. He held the knife out and tilted it until the blade caught a dull gleam of light from the faraway windows.
“Please!”
Part of him wanted to giggle. Who would have thought it, him using his dad’s silent treatment instead of blowing up? He felt strange, grown-up and aware that he was feeling grown-up, all at the same time. Like the first time he and Lisa slept in his parents’ house, after they’d gotten married.
“All right,” she snarled, and he was jerked into the present. “All right. Cut me loose and I’ll tell you.”
“Tell me and I’ll cut you loose.”
She made a noise. “Okay.” She took a breath. “I saw a man kill my brother. He put me in his car and brought me here. I think he’s trying to decide if he’s going to kill me or not.”