Page 100 of Pied Sniper

What?I wanted to say but I couldn’t form the word and the ringing in my ears got louder until, just like before, I lost consciousness again.

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“Hey! Wake up!” Something jabbed my side.

“Huu errr arrr,” I moaned.

Jab, jab, jab.“Wake up! Hey! Lady!”

I blinked my eyes, finding them crusty again. As I raised some shaky fingers to my head, one of my eyes felt swollen. Not so bad that I couldn’t pry open my lids, but bad enough that my vision was fuzzy. What happened to me? I took a few deep breaths, and the memory came swimming back. Someone hit me! A man? Yes, a man. He hit me outside the cabin. Then I woke up somewhere cold and hard and… no, the memory beyond that escaped me.

“Where am I?” I asked, the words spluttering from my parched mouth.

“I think we’re in some kind of shed.”

I blinked again, rubbing my eyes with my bound hands before rolling onto my knees, then into a seated position. Nausea roiled through me. Moving was horrible and I sighed with relief when I rested against something hard and solid. The woman opposite me was bound at the wrists with handcuffs and she huddled against the wall. Her hair was straggly and her face was dirty. A gash above her eyebrow had dried blood. She wrapped a moth-eaten, plaid blanket around her shoulders. I knew exactly who she was: Tiffany Rose. Except… I blinked hard, trying to remember. Didn’t I see her inside the cabin? She was dressed differently. I remembered seeing her in nicer clothes and looking clean and comfortable. So what was she doing here, all dirty, tied up in a shed with me?

“What are you doing here?” I asked. Moving my fingers from my cheek, I held them up to the sliver of light that was coming through a gap in the ceiling. My fingers were bloodied but they looked dry and uninjured; the blood had ceased to flow from the wound on my cheek some time ago. How long had I been here? As I patted my face tenderly, I located a definite lump on my cheek and my left eye throbbed. Getting thumped in the face totally sucked! I checked my nose, finding it the right size and shape. That was a relief. I had such a cute nose.

“I was kidnapped,” said the woman. She sniffed and let out a loud sob. “I’ve been held inside here ever since.”

“You were? You have?” I mumbled as I squinted at her. She definitely looked like Tiffany. But the woman I saw in the cabin also looked like Tiffany. Were there two of them? Or did I see someone else and only thought it was her? I glimpsed the woman in the cabin for barely a minute at the most before the painful blow to my head interrupted me. “Are you hurt?” I asked, unsure what to believe.

“They shot me! I lost a lot of blood but I don’t think as much as I first thought. I doubt the bullet hit any arteries because I feel okay although sometimes I get a little dizzy. I guess that’s from the blood loss. They patched me up.” She peeled back one side of her shirt, showing me the bandages peeking through. They looked fresh.

“That’s good,” I said. “Are they treating you okay?”

“I guess so. They’re pretty scary but they bring me food and water. They forced me to make videos to ask for the ransom money. They said they’d hurt me if I didn’t!” Tiffany stifled a sob, her shoulders shaking. “They might anyway if they don’t get the ransom!”

“How many of them are there?”

“I don’t know. Two, maybe? Three or four? I’m not sure. They blindfold me sometimes.”

“So you’ve seen them?”

She hesitated. “They always wear masks.”

“And you’ve been trapped in this shed the whole time?”

“Yeah, since they brought me here.”

“Never in the cabin?”

“What cabin?” she asked, frowning.

“There’s one across the courtyard. At least, I think that’s where it is. I believe we’re in the shed opposite it.” Judging by its size, it seemed to be the same shed I observed earlier. Yet, when I investigated it before, I didn’t hear anyone inside.

“I didn’t know that,” she said softly. “Did you go inside the cabin?”

“No.”

“Did you look inside?” She peered at me from under her thick lashes.

I hesitated. I didn’t like the questions she asked me. They seemed off somehow. Not the kinds of things a kidnap victim would ask. She did not ask my name or did I know where we were? However, I wasn’t a full book on whether that was the right line of questioning. So I lied, “I don’t remember. I got knocked out pretty hard.”

“Oh.” She paused, shivering, and looking around before fixing me with another intent stare. “So you didn’t see anything at all?” she asked.

“I don’t remember anything. Someone hit me really hard.” I tugged at the rope binding my wrists. It was tied securely but my knife was in my jacket pocket and I could still feel it. They hadn’t searched me properly before tying me up and tossing me in here. That could work to my advantage.

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