Hunting Human - Amanda E. Alvarez [47]
Beth slowly maneuvered until her feet pressed against the exposed taillight. She felt around with the toe of her shoe, took aim at the opening and kicked as hard as she could. The sharp crack of her shoe against plastic filled the silence around her. Beth strained against the silence of the car. Had they heard her? When she didn’t hear any shouting and the car didn’t slow, she assumed they hadn’t. This was going to be harder—and noisier—than she’d hoped.
Plan B?
Music blared to life in the car, filtering back to the trunk, startling her from her thoughts.
“Yeah, crank that music.”
Five minutes later sweat poured down her face, her foot throbbed and the taillight was still stubbornly clinging to the car.
Damn German luxury vehicles.
She released an exasperated sigh.
Time for plan B.
What the hell is plan B?
Maybe there was something she could use packed in with the spare tire? Fingers extended and groping, Beth reached along the edge of the trunk and pried up the carpet, scooting backward as she pulled the carpet as far back as it would go. Pressing it beneath her, Beth rolled over it and directly into the compartment holding the spare.
Beth ran her fingers around the outer edge, trying to find something useful. Her fingers struck fabric. She pulled the small bag with her toward the taillight, using the meager light to examine her find.
Unzipping the package, Beth rooted around on the inside, pulling out what felt like a manual and something compact and heavy; probably the jack. Fishing around for something a little more useful, Beth closed her fingers around a cool cylinder, about the length of a pencil and as wide as a quarter. Praying for a bit of luck, she twisted the top. A soft white beam of light erupted from the end. A flashlight!
Thrilled with the minor success, Beth pointed the flashlight back into the bag. The first couple of things she pulled out were useless, just some pop-up caution triangles for diverting traffic around a stalled car. But the next item held far more promise. The bag included a small first aid kit.
She used her teeth to tear through the plastic surrounding the kit, popped the lid and pointed the flashlight inside. Band-Aids, some packets of pills and ointments and a small roll of gauze. Nothing to help her out of the zip ties.
As she closed the lid she noticed a small package pressed to the roof of the kit. She dug it out and sighed in relief. Inside a zipped bag was a set of rubber gloves, a pair of tweezers and a tiny pair of scissors, slightly larger than the kind used for manicures. They were metal, not plastic, and seemed sturdy enough to cut through the ties on her wrists. She pushed the scissors between her palms, forcing the blades around the section of plastic binding her hands.
It took long, pain-filled minutes, but finally, the zip ties popped apart. Relieved she rolled to her back and pressed the heels of her palms against her eyes, trying to find the composure to figure out what to do next.
She pointed the small beam of light against the roof and along the walls of her prison, searching for anything that looked like an emergency release.
What? Forty or fifty thousand dollars doesn’t buy you a two-dollar piece of plastic?
She’d have to wait for them to open the trunk.
Fine.
She needed to be in a position to defend herself. Step one was accomplished; her hands were free. Step two had to be to find something to defend herself with.
Beth pushed the scissors into the back pocket of her jeans. They were too small to be an effective weapon, but they might come in handy later. She pointed the flashlight back into the roadside bag, checking for anything else that could be useful.
Nothing.
She needed something offensive. Something to surprise whoever opened the trunk. But what? The flashlight wasn’t heavy enough to…
The jack.
That could work. Beth searched the floor of the trunk for the jack she’d tossed aside.