Hostage

“I used a plastic grocery bag to protect my skin against the chloroform. I put the bag over my foot and trimmed off all the excess plastic, and then I put the sock over the bag. I wasn’t even thinking about DNA at the time, but of course-”

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” the man in the black leather jacket said.

“It’s a little hard to think when someone is telling you that you only have five minutes to live.”

There was a long pause.

“My contact in Hope said that the officer found the sock,” the man in the black leather jacket said. “She didn’t mention anything about a plastic bag.”

“The wind probably picked it up and blew it away,” Sozinho said.

Silence.

Sozinho figured he probably had less than two minutes now. His heart was hammering in his chest. He reached up and wiped the sweat from his forehead with his free hand, looked over at Vaughan lying there on the floor by the bed with a pleading expression on her face. She needed to use the restroom, and Sozinho certainly wasn’t going to be able to help her if he was dead.

“I’m going to deactivate the circuit again,” the man in the black leather jacket said. “But don’t forget it’s there. I can switch it back on at any time.”

Sozinho let out a sigh of relief.

“Thank you,” he said.

The man in the black leather jacket disconnected. Sozinho set the phone on the table, tucked the gun into his waistband, and went back over to where Vaughan was lying on the floor. He crouched down and started unwrapping the tape on her legs.

“What was that all about?” she said.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Okay. I won’t. But you need to worry about getting me to the bathroom, or there’s going to be a wet spot on the floor.”

Sozinho finished unwrapping the tape, and then he helped Vaughan get up.

10

Vaughan’s hands were still cuffed behind her back, but her legs were free now.

Sozinho guided her to the bathroom.

The water to the motel room had been shut off, probably years ago from the look and smell of the place, but someone had positioned a portable camping toilet on the floor next to the bathtub.

There was a partial roll of cheap-looking paper on the closed lid.

“There you go,” Sozinho said.

“I need my hands.”

“Sorry. You’ll just have to do the best you can.”

Vaughan took a step forward. She was dizzy, and her tongue felt as though it had been coated with some sort of toxic chemical. Her jaw hurt where Sozinho had punched her.

“You going to stand there and watch?” she said.

There wasn’t much light in the bathroom, and Vaughan knew that if she closed the door there wouldn’t be any. She didn’t like the idea of fumbling around in the dark, but she figured being out of Sozinho’s line of sight for a couple of minutes would be her only chance to do what she needed to do.

“I’ll turn my head,” Sozinho said.

“No. I need to shut the door.”

“Not going to happen.”

Vaughan thought about making a move right then and there. She was close enough to Sozinho to stomp on an instep or kick him in the groin, but he’d taken her shoes off while she was unconscious, and she was concerned that she might injure her feet if she started using them as weapons. Then she wouldn’t be able to run.

And she needed to run.

She decided to be patient and proceed with her original plan.

“It’s not like I can go anywhere,” she said. “There’s no window in here, so what do you think I’m going to do? Kick my way through the wall or something?”

“Why couldn’t my assignment have been to kidnap a male officer?” Sozinho said, clearly annoyed with Vaughan’s demand for privacy.

He reached over and grabbed the knob and pulled the door shut.

“Thank you,” Vaughan said.

“Just hurry up.”

Vaughan immediately crouched down and rolled onto her back. The floor was hard and cold and it reeked of urine. Vaughan wondered if vagrants had broken in at one time or another. Surely Sozinho couldn’t have singlehandedly caused the place to smell so bad in such a short time.

Vaughan had gained a little weight over the past few months, and her uniform pants had gotten a little tighter. Her fortieth birthday had come and gone and she wasn’t quite as flexible as she used to be, but with a great deal of effort she finally managed to bend her knees to her chest and thread her feet under the handcuff chain.

Now her hands were in front.

Her heart was pounding, and she was a little short of breath. She promised herself that if she got through this she would start spending more time at the gym and less time at the Second Street diner. No more bacon and eggs and toast and hash browns before driving home and climbing into bed after every shift.