to kill me?” she had some trouble forcing the words past a throat constricting with panic.
She gripped the door latch so tightly she thought it might leave a permanent mark in her hand. Not that it would matter if he was about to kill her shortly. Surreptitiously she tried the door, but it was child locked. She couldn’t get out unless he let her out.
She tried to take long even breaths, rather than shallow gasps. She thought back to the single class she’d taken on hostage situations. She’d travelled to war zones, often in places where terrorism was a real threat. It had seemed smart at the time to take a class on hostage negotiation in case she ever found herself in a situation that would demand that kind of skill. Between her panic and the fact that she’d taken the class about five years ago, she couldn’t recall all the steps, but a few filtered through the terror.
Talk to the person holding you, humanize yourself in their eyes.
“I’m thirty-four.” She looked directly at him as she spoke. Again, not so much as a twitch gave away that he was listening, but she was going to try anyway. “I’m a neurosurgeon in Montréal, Canada, but sometimes I work with Doctors Without Borders. We travel to other countries to help bolster the health-care system during times of crisis. I have a cat named Fitzwilliam Darcy, but we call him Fitzy. He lives with my mom when I’m not at home. He’s a really good boy, he always eats all of his food, and he uses his litter box. Sometimes he gets out and causes havoc in the neighborhood. He’s a big guy and he likes to hunt so he’s brought home some pretty big birds.”
Shaun was babbling, but she didn’t know what else to do. She tried to clear her thoughts and start over. Jozef wouldn’t care about her twenty-pound beast of an orange tabby. She had to somehow convince him that she was more valuable alive than dead. She needed to give him something of value, something he could relate to.
“I’m the only person my mom has left. My dad passed away a few years ago of pancreatic cancer. There was nothing we could do but watch him deteriorate.” She closed her eyes and summoned a picture of her father in her mind. He was a big man, much bigger than either Shaun or her mother. He wore glasses, almost always had a serious expression that covered a playful nature. He taught neuroscience at the University. His funeral had been massive with mourners from all the different communities he’d been part of including faculty and students from the university, colleagues from the hospital, and volunteers from various charitable organizations. He was so well loved. She needed that unconditional love and support right now, to get through whatever was coming her way. “My mom was devastated when he died, it took a lot to get her on her feet again. She needs me. She hates that I travel into war zones, she’s terrified something will happen to me. Without me, she won’t have anyone.”
Despair pierced her as she realized not a single word was getting through. He continued to drive, though he was slowing down. If she was going to convince him, she had to do it now, before they got to their destination. She frantically searched for something, anything, that could sway him. Then she landed on it, their rare form of communication.
“You knew that I knew sign language, didn’t you?”
His eyes slid to her for a second, then flicked forward.
“I’ve been trying to figure out how you knew to target me,” she continued. “You knew that I could understand FSL; that’s why you picked me, isn’t it? But how did you know?” When he didn’t answer, she continued, “You saw me with that kid, didn’t you?”
Shaun had stumbled over a child, around ten years old, begging for food vouchers outside of a shop. She’d kneeled on the ground next to him and tried to talk to him, but he’d shaken his head and pointed at his ears. Sadly, it wasn’t uncommon for either temporary or permanent hearing loss to occur from the concussive force of a bomb.
Shaun had used sign language with the boy. He’d tried to follow her hand movements, and she realized that he was just learning sign language. She convinced him to come with her to the hospital for a quick check up and to learn