ropes binding the archaeologist’s hands, his mind clearly somewhere else. But when Jack’s question worked its way through his other concerns he glanced up.
“Come again?” he asked.
Jack offered a half smile. “The bathroom,” he said.
His captor nodded and gave another tug, yet the bonds would not loosen. Then, with the look of someone just remembering something, he reached into the canvas bag he’d dropped in front of Jack and withdrew a large knife from one of its pockets.
Jack’s eyes widened as it passed in front of his face, close enough for him to see the red now drying to brown on the blade.
“On second thought, I can hold it,” he said.
The man ignored him and brought the knife around behind Jack, where he began to work on the portion holding the archaeologist to the overhead beam. Jack, who considered this an improvement of sorts to his present circumstances, kept his mouth shut while the man worked, and from the heavy breathing he could hear coming from his new liberator he suspected speed was of the essence. When at last the blade sliced through, the man leaned back and studied his handiwork. With a wry smile at Jack, he stood, took the still-bound man by the arm, and helped him to his feet. That accomplished, he retrieved his bag—which Jack noticed had a longer bundle secured on top of it—and then locked eyes with Jack.
“Shall we?” he said, gesturing toward the door.
“Absolutely,” Jack said, although his pleasure at finding himself mobile was tempered by the fact that his hands were still tied and that the Englishman, slight as he was, had a firm grip on his elbow.
When they stepped out into the hallway Jack could see into the other room and did a double take at what he saw. He was quickly shuffled down the hallway and the image was gone. He turned to look at his companion, asking the question with raised eyebrows.
The Englishman shrugged. “When you do what I do for a living, you learn to sleep in some unusual spots and with one eye open,” he offered by way of explanation.
Oddly enough Jack understood exactly what he meant, though the response created another question. “And just what exactly do you do?”
They’d reached the end of the hall, where Jack saw the door leading outside. To the right was an entryway into what looked like a room larger than any he’d yet seen in the house. Instead of ushering Jack out into the Libyan sun, the Englishman directed him into the room.
They didn’t spend more than thirty seconds there. Long enough for the Englishman to needlessly feel for pulses. When his captor bent down to do so, the temptation to flee came over Jack, but he resisted the urge, quickly calculating the slim odds of getting past the closed door, much less making a clean escape. The Englishman straightened and blew out a breath. He ran a hand through his disheveled hair, casting a tired eye around the room, then caught Jack’s eye as if seeing him for the first time.
“The handle’s a bit tricky,” he said. “You wouldn’t have made it.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
Once again the Englishman stooped to retrieve his bag and then started for the door, this time without a hand on Jack’s arm.
“We should probably step it up a bit,” he called over his shoulder. “I don’t know how long it’ll be before he wakes up.”
It took Jack a beat to realize whom the Englishman meant.
“What do you mean ‘wakes up’?” he called after him.
“As in gets up off the bed and comes after us and tries to do to us what he did to Benton and Phillips.”
Jack, who had begun to follow the Englishman, looked back at who he could only assume were Benton and Phillips. With a small shudder he hurried after the other man.
When he caught up with him, he was reaching for the door handle. Soon the two men were outside. After spending so much time in a darkened room, the sun blinded Jack for several seconds before he was able to blink away the glare. When his vision cleared he saw the jeep toward which they were headed, and with that understanding it occurred to him that he was following a man he didn’t know and who had, only minutes ago, been keeping him tied up and subject to beatings by a much bigger man who at any moment might burst from the house for another round of