Escape is impossible without the code and my palm print.
She swore at the door and the electronic panel that was currently dark. Unlock this door.
As soon as its safe, I will.
When this door opens Ill
I understand your distress. You will not be harmed in my care.
Becca shivered. Something about the voice, the cadence of it, felt both familiar and frightening. I wont make the same promise to you.
The basics are stocked for you, the gravelly, distorted voice said. Meals will be provided three times each day.
When left to her own devices, she didnt eat three regular meals each day. What makes you think Ill eat? A hunger strike might be her fastest way out of this room.
Eating is your choice, the voice replied. But I will not allow you to harm yourself.
Oh, thats your job, huh? She crossed her arms to hide her trembling hands. What do you want? Money? Had one of her notoriously bad dates gone off the rails in an effort to get her fathers attention? Name your price. Shed gladly give up the password to her untouched trust fund account in exchange for the code to leave this well-appointed prison.
No, the voice said. Cooperate and this will be over soon.
Cooperate with a faceless kidnapper? No way. Buddy, this wont be over until Im free and youre locked up in a prison cell, she shouted at the ceiling.
The speaker crackled once and went silent. The vault-like door remained closed. Knowing the effort was futile, she walked to the panel and poked at it again anyway.
One dead end did not a hopeless situation make, she told herself, not quite believing it. She couldnt bring to mind any situation quite as bad as this one.
Her fathers film company had been detained once in Turkey. It had been a miserable and uncertain forty-eight hours under house arrest, before all the paperwork was considered acceptable to the authorities and they were allowed to leave.
As stressful as that had been, this was worse. Here, she was alone, trapped by someone who had yet to make any real demands. She felt her molars grinding on the tension and forced herself to take a few calming breaths.
Shed survived worse things than this. Turkey had been dangerous. Working the story with Bill in Iraq, right on the Iranian border, had been a huge risk. Anymore, dating was akin to Russian roulette. No way was she going out of this life in the role of a helpless captive.
What do you want from me? she shouted at the door.
The silence built and built until she ended it with a loud, long scream worthy of the worst horror flick. Cutting loose, she released all her bottled-up fury into the sound, imagining her captors ears bleeding from the assault.
He might be in control for now, but there had to be something here she could use against him. Her dad had gone through a horror flick phase and shed learned a great deal about improvised weapons on those sets. Not to mention all the time shed spent with prop masters, learning how to fashion amazingly realistic things with little more than duct tape and a good idea.
Her captor had been smart enough to confiscate her high heels. No matter. That was only the first, and most obvious, option. She reviewed the small room through a new lens, with the primary goal of escape.
The love seat wouldnt be much help, unless it had a pullout option. It didnt. She examined every inch of the shelves and the items they held. The CD cases could be sharpened with a little effort.
For at least the tenth time since shed woken up, she reached for her cell phone and felt that swell of panic when she didnt find it. How pathetic to be so dependent on a device no bigger than an index card. Shed noticed that her captor had also stripped the space of any technology that could be used to communicate with the outside world. Not even a remote for the television remained.
That meant careful planning and forethought. Was all this for her specifically, or just because she was unlucky girl number whatever? She battled back another surge of fear and blinked away the tears threatening to turn into a pitiful sob. She would not let this bastard watch her cry.
Having noticed two surveillance cameras, she retreated to the bathroom, which was the only place he couldnt keep an eye on her. Maybe no cameras in the bathroom qualified him as a decent sort among the kidnapper set, but it did
little to improve her opinion of him.
* * *
PARKER WATCHED THE woman carefully through the two cameras hed installed in the room, feeling better now that she was moving around so well. Fighting back was another good sign.
The drug hadnt kept her down long, thankfully. In the two hours hed watched her sleeping off the effects, he hadnt come up with an acceptable explanation to offer if he had to take her to an emergency room. The only friend with medical training he trusted in a situation as sticky as this one lived in Nevada, and also happened to be the third man on the blackmailers list.
Her blatant search for something to use as a weapon left him smiling. She didnt give a damn that her captor knew what she was up to. Grit and courage were traits he admired. He shook off the sensation. He didnt want to admire anything about Rebecca Wallace. She was a means to an end and he should stop wasting time coddling her.