She called Garcia and told him to meet her at her loft.

Chapter 33

HELL HAD SWITCHED colors; now it was white.

He came and went. He periodically removed the gag, let her drink tepid water or juice, and sealed her mouth back up. She didn’t know how long he’d kept her in the blue bedroom, tied to the posts. Days?

Then he shot her up with something that knocked her out again. When she came to, she found herself flat on her face on his bathroom floor. The odors that had nauseated her during the assaults also permeated the snowy tile beneath her. Wanting to get her face away from the stink of his soap and cologne, she rolled onto her side and curled her knees up to her chest.

While she was unconscious, he’d changed her binds and gag. Now a strip of duct tape covered her mouth like a giant bandage. More of the stuff twined her wrists together so that her hands looked like those of a silver mummy, palms locked together in permanent prayer. The bastard knew what he was doing; she couldn’t use her finger-nails as tools. She didn’t look down, but it felt as if her legs were just as thoroughly bound. Why had he bothered to untie the ropes and take her off the bed, only to rebind her with tape and dump her in the john? Maybe he got a rise out of finding new ways to subdue her, the sick bastard. Perhaps it was because she’d been emptying her bladder on the bed, forcing him to change the sheets. Too bad she had nothing in her bowels. Her stomach rumbled and she ignored it. Being hungry was at the bottom of her tally of woes.

Number one on the list was the large white object sitting on the floor beside her. The tub. He’d been talking about it, what he’d do to her once he dropped her in it. The thing towered over her like a menacing iceberg. Was it filled with water? She tried not to think about it.

The bathroom door was closed. She heard no sounds coming from the other side, not even the soothing radio voice, her invisible companion in this blue and white hell. Finding her position uncomfortable, she started to lie on her back, but felt something preventing her. A loose corner of the duct tape from her mouth was stuck to the tiles. Maybe she could keep working it and peel off the tape. She pressed the side of her face into the floor so the tape really caught and then rolled her head down onto the tiles. She could feel the tape peeling away. Throwing her whole body into it, she rolled until she was facedown on the floor again, and kept rolling.

She found herself on her back again, this time free of the gag. Closing her eyes, she caught her breath. The effort had left her nude body covered in perspiration but rejuvenated. She’d removed the tape over her mouth. With time, she could free her hands and legs. How long was he going to be away? She visualized him dead in a car crash, his body slumped against the steering wheel, broken and bleeding. The image energized her further.

Raising her hands to her mouth, she hooked her teeth over the tape and tried to create a tear in the wrap. There were too many layers, and her teeth weren’t sharp enough. She dropped her hands and ran her eyes around the cell, searching for something she could use to slice the tape. He’d been careful, her jailer. There was nothing sitting on the floor itself, not even a wastebasket or toilet plunger. Even if she could get on her feet to reach for something, there was no medicine chest in the room, only a mirror hung over the sink. The top of the toilet tank was loaded with colognes and aftershaves; the creepy fucker had more perfume than a woman. If she knocked down a bottle, she could use the broken glass to cut her bindings, like in the movies. Forget it. He’d probably hear the clatter and come running.

The shower door was closed, but she knew there was nothing useful in the stall. While the water pummeled her during her first trip to his bathroom, she’d had plenty of time to study the cubicle and its contents. One bar of Ivory in the wall-mounted soap dish. Two washrags hanging from the neck of the showerhead. A small window made of glass block positioned high up on the wall, near the ceiling.

Perhaps the metal edge of the glass shower door would work. She rolled onto her side, grimacing when the wad of tape pulled at her hair. Rather than traveling with her, it stayed stuck to the floor. She braced her feet against the base of the tub and used it for leverage to propel her body toward the shower. She curled her legs under her and rolled onto her knees. Slowly, she raised her torso so that she was in a kneeling position in front of the shower.

Sweat streamed down between her breasts, collected under her armpits, and beaded her upper lip. What would he do if he found her like this? Would he kill her right then and there?

After a couple of minutes, she mustered enough courage to slide her taped hands up the glass and over to the door handle. She’d have to open it carefully, or she’d end up falling backward onto the floor. The handle was the size and shape of a toilet paper tube, sliced in half lengthwise. She inserted her taped fingers into the curve of metal and slowly pulled toward her. The pop of the door unlatching echoed in the tiled chamber, and she froze. No devil materialized, and she mouthed a silent Thank you, God.

She opened the door a little wider and slipped her fingers out of the handle. She pressed the outside edge of her taped hands against the edge of the shower door as if she were pleading for mercy—in a real sense, she was—and started to move her hands up and down in short, quick strokes. She concentrated on the edge of the binds. If she pulled her hands apart as hard as she could, she found she could create a small gap between her wrists. The tape that stretched between the gap was a good place to rub, a weak spot, and she could see the very beginnings of a tear.

As she worked, she kept an ear tuned to the bathroom door. If she heard him thumping around in the bedroom, she’d lower herself onto her belly to keep him from seeing her hands or her mouth. He’d assume she was still out and perhaps leave her alone, giving her time to finish the job. Once free, she’d kill him. She didn’t know how. Maybe she’d come up behind him and strangle him with his own belt. If she could find the crap he’d been shooting into her body, she’d use it to knock him on his ass. She’d fill the tub and dump him in, do him the way he planned to do her. He’d be the one the cops would find floating.

Chapter 34

STEPPING OFF THE elevator, Bernadette was startled to see Garcia standing in front of her condo talking to her caretaker. The shaggy-haired Harold Winston was in his usual workday outfit of bib overalls while crew-cut Garcia was in his dark suit, white shirt, and conservative tie. A study in contrasts. She wondered what in the world the two men had to talk about, and then it occurred to her: Harry was gossiping with Garcia about the bums in the basement. Her boss didn’t need to be reminded of that mess, and she quickened her pace. She got to her door as Harry was piling on the excuses for the busted front door.

“So then I told the association folks that all the hardware around here is shit, the doors are shit, the windows are shit, and they’d better start looking at replacing—” Harry halted his diatribe as she came up to the pair.

She looked at Harry and smiled a tight smile. “What about my dishwasher, Harry? Is that shit, too? When you gonna fix that?”