Body of Trust - Jeannine Colette Page 0,73

his left foot down the leg of the chair that now can be lifted off the ground enough for him to free his left leg that’s tied as well.

Whether he’s gonna run out of here with a chair strapped to his wrists or not is the only thing I think of him doing until he sits back down, folds his right leg over his knee, up close to his tethered hand. His fingers quickly start to untie his sneaker. When that’s done, he picks the shoelace, untied, strand by strand until the entire lace is almost completely unraveled.

Next, he bows down, and with his teeth and strapped hand, he ties a knot at the end of the lace still attached to the last loop of his sneaker. He uses his teeth again to put the other end of the lace through the zip tie, pulling it through and tying the lace of the sneaker on his other foot.

I’m stunned into silence.

Still seated, he lifts his feet in the air and moves them in a bicycle motion, pulling the shoelace back and forth over the zip tie on his wrist, creating friction against the plastic. It feels like he’s doing this for an eternity when, really, it’s probably only been a minute. The plastic of the zip tie snaps, and my jaw drops in surprise.

“You just MacGyver’d your way out of that,” I state in shock.

With his hand now free, he does the same thing with the zip tie on his other hand. He takes the same shoelace, untying it from the shoe and lacing it through the other wrist—faster this time—and then he secures it back on the sneaker.

“How did you learn how to do that?” I ask as he unsnaps the second zip tie.

“YouTube.” He’s up and putting the lace back in his sneaker with speed and precision, tying his shoe back on and waiting by the door.

Jesse stands against the cold wall, a mere shadow in the room. I want to ask how in the world I’m supposed to get out. I don’t have sneakers, nor do I have super secret agent, get out of a hostage scenario training like he does. Nor do I watch nearly as much YouTube as he clearly does.

The sound of thugs talking in the hallway makes my stomach drop. The door opens, and two come walking in.

“All right, Davenport. Time to talk,” one says and then stops when he sees the empty chair. “What the fuck?”

Jesse comes running up against one of the thugs, pulling him into a choke hold, and twists his neck, making him fall to the ground. The other thug pulls out a gun, but Jesse kicks it out of his hand and pummels him in the face and sides.

With them both on the ground, he checks their pockets and produces a pocketknife. “This was my grandfather’s,” he says as he unlatches the blade, rushes over to me, and frees me from my chair.

“You okay?” he asks as he takes my hand and pulls me to a standing position.

“Yeah,” I say.

I watch him pick the gun up from the floor, and he hands it to me.

“You said you wanted to defend yourself.” He takes a gun from the other thug on the floor. “Now’s your chance.”

The steel feels like a hundred pounds in my hand. I’ve never held a gun before, and on first impression, I can say, I do not like it.

Then again, now is not the time to be second-guessing how I feel about guns.

“Ready?” he asks, and I nod even though I haven’t been ready for any of this from the beginning.

Chapter Twenty

Jesse and I creep along gray walls, listening for footsteps and voices. We move together like a covert operation. Jesse is the torch, and I willingly follow his light through the tunnels of the building.

We head through a door and into a room. The old building is empty, except for a few obsolete pieces of factory-like equipment. The corrugated walls are rusted with overhead beams stretched high above.

There are double doors on the other side, painted a dark red. They’re closed, which means we won’t know if the other side is heaven or hell until we push through them. Jesse pushes me to the side as he opens the door like a soldier on a covert mission and checks the space for enemy combatants. When it’s clear, he pulls me with him.

We’re back in another hallway and then run from one to the other