feel for his surroundings before anyone knew he was conscious. He couldn’t be certain but he thought that someone shared the room with him. After coming to, he’d heard movement, the sound of a door opening, the hum of conversation, then what sounded like someone coming back into the room. He hadn’t heard anyone leave, and things had been silent for a while now. He thought he’d heard other noises coming from farther away, yet even those sounds had stopped now, leaving a silence that seemed as if it might stretch into forever.
He remained still for several more minutes, which taxed his resolve as the hard floor and awkward position had generated a sharp pain in his side, along with an arm that he knew would go through a severe bout of pins and needles once he was able to extricate it from beneath him. After a while, the fact that he couldn’t concentrate on anything but his growing discomfort forced Jack to test the waters.
His first effort involved trying to move his hands, which were pulled behind his back. He raised his eyebrows when he felt what appeared to be a full range of motion; his captors hadn’t bound him. The surprise gave way to a sigh, though, when he realized the lack of bonds hinted at a prison secure enough to render secondary measures unnecessary.
He took a breath and tried to push himself up, grimacing against the pain. His first attempt was unsuccessful, but a second try brought him upright. And while that position was the one that offered him the best chance of escaping, it also sent a wave of pain through his skull. He frowned beneath whatever blocked his vision as the reason for the sudden headache came back to him.
He wondered where the man was who had pushed him into the wall. It was a sobering thought that did much to get him moving. His hands free, he raised them to his head and found the edge of the fabric that blinded him, but it was pulled too tightly for him to work his fingers in. He moved to the back and found the knot and tried to find someplace to loosen it. Several seconds of worrying with it produced nothing aside from accentuating the pain in his side. Irritated, he again moved his hands around to the front, grabbed as much of the fabric as he could with his fingertips and yanked downward with all of his strength, rewarded when he was able to liberate his eyes.
The problem was that all that greeted him was darkness.
With the blindfold resting on his nose, he squinted into the blackness but couldn’t see anything. Instead of moving, he stayed where he was, letting his eyes adjust. It seemed like a long time before he could differentiate one shadow from another, disparate shapes that could have been anything. And once he’d decided that the shapes wouldn’t resolve any more than they already had, he began to move.
Jack stood on legs that rebelled against the effort, and the pain in his ankle came back with a vengeance. He wobbled a bit but steadied himself with a hand against the wall next to him. The surface under his fingers was rough, likely cement, bits of it crumbling beneath his touch.
He took a few careful steps, mindful of kicking anything, and irritated that his eyes were taking their time adjusting. He walked the length of the wall, skirting what felt like a wooden chair, and when he reached the corner he started down the adjoining wall. While this one offered no obstacles, neither did it provide a door. When he found the third wall he again changed direction, his easy passage thus far causing him to walk faster—which added to the pain when his shin came into contact with something solid.
Peering into the darkness, he could make out a long irregular shape, like a table with several items piled on top. He was starting to walk around it when the table moved. Jack took an involuntary hop away before he registered he’d done so. Consequently he allowed plenty of room for whatever he’d bumped his shin on to resolve into a much taller shadow that looked decidedly man shaped.
A very large man.
After a few moments during which neither Jack nor the apparition made a move, the other man took a step forward. There was something about the way he advanced, the outline of the body coming into sharper focus, that tugged