Blood Noir - Laurell K. Hamilton [138]
The urge to roll over and see if he was in another part of this room was so strong that I tensed up, and now my pulse was higher. Shit. My hands clenched before I could stop them. So much for pretending to be asleep.
Then, distant, like there were doors and rooms between us, I heard a man’s voice, yelling, “Where’s Lorna?” I didn’t know the voice. Then came a voice I did know. Jason was yelling, screaming actually, “I don’t know!” Then he was just screaming.
That did it. Fuck caution. I sat up and discovered that my body still ached some from the abuse I’d given it in the hotel room. But it didn’t hurt that much; I was healing, and if I didn’t get us out of here, things would hurt a hell of a lot more.
I was in a small bathroom with a stool and tub/shower combo behind me. There was a sink with cabinet and mirror to one side. I looked up near the ceiling for cameras. If they had cameras on me, I was sunk. I was no expert on surveillance, but I couldn’t see anything that looked like a camera. Most people didn’t put shit like that in bathrooms. If you were a good guy, it was illegal and an invasion of privacy. You could go to jail for it in a lot of states. Of course, these guys were already looking at kidnapping and assault. I wasn’t sure they’d sweat a little sexual perversion charge.
Jason screamed again. I crawled on my knees to the cabinet. It had to be a private residence; they wouldn’t have let Jason scream like that in a hotel. Which meant that underneath the sink should be some very dangerous and potentially useful things. Please, don’t let them be the kind of people who put everything under the kitchen sink. Or worse yet, don’t let them have thought to remove all the fun stuff.
I prayed as I turned around and opened the doors with my bound hands. When I had the one door opened, I turned around to see what I had to work with.
There were two bottles that were caustic and had warnings about not getting them in your eyes, and poison if swallowed. The poison part wasn’t helpful with vampires, but the eye damage was. It wouldn’t damage them the way it would damage a human, but it would hurt, and maybe give me a few seconds to do something more permanent to them. I’d had success with throwing shit in a vampire’s eyes before. If I could get my hands undone, that was. If I couldn’t manage that, then it didn’t matter how many goodies were under the sink; I was screwed.
Jason screamed again, just one long ragged sound. It pushed my pulse into my throat and made my body jerk. The jerk made me think about what held my wrists. It was a flex-cuff. That’s basically a great big twist tie, sort of. There was a drawer to the side of the sink.
I stood and turned my back to the drawer so I could open it. Please, let there be a nail file or something in here. Please.
When I turned and looked, it was even better. There was a pair of small manicuring scissors. Someone up there liked me. It’s harder than it sounds to use tiny scissors behind your own back to cut through a pair of flex-cuffs. It’s doable, and it beats the hell out of trying to saw through them with a metal file, but it’s still a lesson in frustration. Of course, the frustration could have been because Jason kept screaming. He’d scream, I’d jump, and I’d have to readjust the scissors. I finally had to close my eyes, so that I could concentrate on just the scissors on the plastic, and I forced myself to stop jumping every time Jason made a bad noise. What the hell were they doing to him? I forced myself to not follow that line of thought. My imagination was way too vivid to be helpful. I’d get my hands free, and then we’d save Jason. Simple, easy, sure.
The scissors bit through the last piece of the cuffs, and my hands were free. I’d been concentrating so hard on it that for a second I didn’t move. I let out the breath I’d been holding and opened my eyes. Then I very carefully let my hands come forward. Sometimes when you’re cutting through things behind your back, when you free yourself, you