her gasps, she was aware of a distant pounding that wasn’t just her throbbing head, and then ripping sounds.
“You were right, your friends have come looking for you,” she heard Barry’s furious voice from what seemed a long way away. He loomed in suddenly to slap something cold and sticky over her mouth before wrapping her wrists and ankles together with something that held them immobile.
“You wait all nice and comfy here. I’ll talk to them and then be back to deal with you in a minute.” Then he was gone, shutting the door after him and leaving her lying in a heap.
“Hang on, I’m coming,” she heard Barry’s voice drifting up to her through the holes in the floor.
Get up, the familiar voice in her head shouted, though it was hard to hear it over the roar of blood in her ears as her pulse raced. She tried to force her body to comply, dragging her knees to her chest so that she could shift her bound legs beneath her and prop herself into a sitting position. But even that small effort made her head spin.
Through the haze she heard the now-familiar shriek of hinges that was the front door opening and realized she had only a few moments to try to pull herself together.
Focus! James knows something is wrong . . . that’s why he’s here . . . don’t let him leave without finding you!
Her vision began to clear, and she realized in relief that while Barry had used duct tape to bind her wrists, in his haste he’d left her arms in front. She could rip the tape from her mouth and scream for help . . . or could she? As her dizziness subsided, she saw that the tape covered not just her wrists but her hands as well, plastering them together in a prayerlike pose that left all but her fingertips immobilized.
Frantically, she began scrabbling with her fingernails at the edges of the silver tape on her face that stretched almost from ear to ear. As she did so, she was aware of voices drifting up to her, the holes in the floor channeling the sound to her as clearly as if she was in the same room.
“Uh, hi,” she heard Barry say, his tone one of friendly bafflement. “I wasn’t expecting guests.”
“We are looking for Darla,” came James’s chilly response. “I spoke to her on her phone less than thirty minutes ago. She said she was here, and that she was on her way back to the store. Unfortunately, she never arrived.”
“Well, I—”
“Quit stalling, Mr. Eisen.”
This voice was Jake’s. Thank God James had had the sense not to come alone!
“You’ve got about three seconds to tell us where Darla is,” she threatened, lapsing into cop mode, “and then I’m calling 9-1-1 and Detective Reese, in that order. One, two . . .”
Darla could hear the steel behind her words and knew that Barry had met his match. But the man didn’t seem inclined to admit it.
“Wait a minute,” he replied, sounding confused. “Darla was here, yes. I heard her talking to you, Mr. James. But then she left in a hurry. Didn’t she call to tell you what happened?”
“I tried calling her on the way over,” James replied, “and I got no answer.”
Darla had finally loosened a corner on the tape gag. Now she began tugging on it, tears springing to her eyes as the top layer of her skin seemed to pull off with every inch of tape that she managed to dislodge. Had she been able to get a better grip, she would have ripped it away in a single agonizing motion. Instead, she was forced into this slow torture.
“Mr. Eisen, you look like you’ve been in a fight.” This was Jake’s voice again, sounding colder still. “You mind telling us how you got blood on your neck and your shirt sleeve?”
“I’m trying to explain.”
Now, Barry sounded politely exasperated, and Darla could picture him giving them a deprecating shrug.
“Darla came over here looking for her cat. She got a call from you”—Darla assumed he was indicating James—“and said it was an emergency at the store. But as she was leaving, we heard a cat meowing out by the Dumpster. We ran to check, and it was Hamlet. He was injured. His back leg looked pretty messed up. We assumed he’d been hit by a car and crawled there to hide, like cats do.”
“Hamlet’s, like, hurt?” The incredulous voice belonged to Robert,