of pain. Posterior ligament, posterior ligament, motherfucking posterior ligament!
Nothing. No give. And she began to suspect-to strongly suspect-that there was more involved than ligaments. There were bones there as well, a couple of pukey little bones running along the outsides of her hands below the lower thumb-joint, a couple of pukey little bones that were probably going to get her killed.
With a final shriek of mingled pain and disappointment, Jessie let her hands go limp once more. Her shoulders and upper arms quivered with exhaustion. So much for sliding out of the cuffs because they were M-17s instead of F-23s. The disappointment was almost worse than the physical pain; it stung like poisoned nettles.
"Shit and fuck!" she cried at the empty room. "Shit and fuck, shit-and-fuck, shittenfuck!"
Somewhere along the lake-farther off today, by the sound the chainsaw started up, and that made her even angrier. The guy from yesterday, back for more. just some swinging dick in a red-and-black-checked flannel shirt from L. L. Bean's, out there playing Paul Kiss-My-Ass Bunyan, roaring away with his Stihl and dreaming about crawling into bed with his little honey at the end of the day... or maybe it was football he was dreaming of, or just a few frosty cold ones down at the marina bar. Jessie saw the dork in the checked flannel shirt as clearly as she had seen the young girl in the stocks, and if thoughts alone could have killed him, his head would have exploded out through his asshole at that very moment.
"It's not fair!" she screamed. "It's just not f-"
A kind of dry cramp seized her throat and she fell silent, grimacing and afraid. She had felt the hard splinters of bone which barred her escape-oh God, had she-but she had been close, just the same. That was the real wellspring of her bitterness-not the pain, and certainly not the unseen woodcutter with his blatting chainsaw. It was knowing that she had gotten close, but nowhere near close enough. She could continue to grit her teeth and endure the pain, but she no longer believed it would do her the slightest bit of good. That last quarter to half an inch was going to remain mockingly out of her reach. The only thing she would manage to do if she kept on pulling was to cause edema and swelling in her wrists, worsening her situation instead of bettering it.
"And don't you tell me I'm toast, don't you dare," she said in a whispery, scolding voice. "I don't want to hear that."
You have to get out of them somehow, the young girl's voice whispered back. Because he-it-really is going to come again. Tonight. After the sun goes down.
"I don't believe it," she croaked. "I don't believe that man was real. I don't care about the footprint and the earring. I just don't believe it."
Yes, you do.
No, I don't!
Yes, you do.
Jessie let her head droop to one side, hair hanging almost down to the mattress, mouth quivering abjectly.
Yes, she did.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
She started to doze off again in spite of her worsening thirst and throbbing arms. She knew it was dangerous to sleep-that her strength would continue to ebb while she was out of it-but what difference did it really make? She had explored all her options and she was still America's Handcuffed Sweetheart. Besides, she wanted that lovely oblivion-craved it, in fact, the way a hophead craves his drug. Then, just before she drifted off, a thought which was both simple and shockingly direct lit up her confused, drifting mind like a flare.
The face cream. The jar of face cream on the shelf above the bed.
Don't get your hopes up, Jessie-that would be a bad mistake. If it didn't fall right off onto the floor when you tipped the shelf up, it probably slid to a place where you haven't got a snowball's chance in hell of getting hold of it. So don't get your hopes up.
The thing was, she couldn't not get them up, because if the face cream was still there and still in a place where she could get hold of it, it might provide just enough slip to free one hand. Maybe both, although she didn't think that would be necessary. If she could pull out of one cuff, she would be able to get off the bed, and if she could get off the bed, she thought she would have it made.
It was just one of those small plastic sample jars they send through