Page 67 of Vanishing Point
What was she going to—
The silence in the room was interrupted by something outside. A kind of… A dog was barking outside. Vi held her breath.Please. Please. Please.
“What the hell is that?” he muttered. “No one should be around here for miles.” He moved back into the kitchen, with absolutely no regard for Dianne’s body on the floor. He grabbed his gun, then disappeared into the hallway. Probably getting those bullets Dianne had mentioned were in the bedroom.
He returned, loading the gun as he walked. He didn’t even look at Vi. Just went to the front door and disappeared outside.
Vi wanted the dog barking to be some kind of sign, some kind ofhelp…well, as long as Eric didn’t end up shooting the help. But she also knew it didn’t matter what happened out there. On the chance Eric came back and the dog barking meant nothing, she had to be free.
She got her tiny board from under her legs and positioned it under her knees again. She realized she was crying when the tears fell off her cheeks and landed with aplopon the wood.
She ignored it all and got to work. Pushing the plastic of the zip tie against the sharp tip of the nail over and over again, as many times as she could, making as many holes as she could.
Maybe he’d come in and catch her. She didn’t care. Dianne still hadn’t so much as moved or made a sound. God, she had to be dead.
It wasn’t going to be Vi. She wouldn’t let it be her. She wouldn’t let herself be a victim for one more second. She wouldn’t abandon her child. She wouldn’t lose a future with Thomas. A future forherself.
But the door flew open. Vi scrambled to hide her lone hope for escape.
“Someone let their damn dogs run loose,” Eric was grumbling. “Stupid country hicks.” He kicked the door shut with his leg. He marched back to the kitchen, without even looking at Vi, so she was able to keep subtly moving her board under her legs.
Eric leaned the gun in the corner, then reached down and grabbed Dianne’s lifeless body.
He dragged her body over the floor. She was nothing but limp limbs. Vi wanted to look away, but something kept her glued to the morbid sight.
He shoved the body against the door. A human block. “There. Let anyone get pastthat,” he said, oh-so-pleased with himself.
But Vi could only stare at Dianne. Was she hallucinating or was there still the faint rise and fall of Dianne’s chest?
“Now you. You can’t be anywhere near these windows until I know for sure no one’s lurking around out there.”
Vi tried to think clearly as he came for her. This was better than what he’d been planning just a few minutes ago. She hoped.
He grabbed around the zip tie on her ankles and began to drag her. The plastic dug through her pants and into her skin. She tried to hold back the whimper and the sting of pain, therough scrape of floor against her back, the bruised shoulder blade from yesterday.
But shedidwhimper, and he laughed and laughed all the way to a door in the kitchen. He opened it with another loud slam. Inside the dim closet was an array of shelves and some random kitchen items. A broom, a mousetrap, some canned goods. It was some kind of pantry.
He’d dragged her as far as he could from her feet, but she still wasn’t fully in the pantry. So he started using the boot of his heel to push her body into the pantry. Then he kicked her once, luckily on a more padded part of her leg so it didn’t hurt as much as he’d probably like. But she got the hint. She pulled her leg in so that she was completely in the pantry.
“Sit tight. We’ll have fun later.” Then he slammed the door. The closet was completely and utterly dark. She couldn’t see. She couldn’t do anything to free her legs. The doorknob jiggled, so he must be doing something to lock her in here.
But she had put a lot of holes in the zip ties around her wrist. If she could find something in the closet to hook around the tie and then use her bodyweight to pull and put enough force on it, it might break where she’d weakened it.
And then her hands would be free. Which wasn’tmuch, but if Eric left that gun loaded, and in the kitchen, just a few steps from this pantry door…all she had to do was get out, grab the gun, shoot.
But none of it mattered unless she broke these zip ties, so she set out to do just that.
Chapter Twenty
Thomas arrived at the address Jack and Carlyle had originally taken to search. It was a lot like the one he’d just been at. A kind of overgrown entrance, and Thomas really would have missed this one if not for Jack’s patrol car parked out front, half in the ditch since there was no shoulder along the road here. Jack and Carlyle were standing in the ditch.
Thomas pulled up behind him and was already getting out of the car evenashe pushed it into Park.
Jack wasted no time to explain the situation.
“Like I said in the message, we got here and did a quick canvass. The rental car that my deputy pulled over this weekend was parked behind the… Well, it’s kind to call it a house anymore. After I left you that message, we let the dog out, just to see if she’d get a hit for Vi specifically. The dog alerted that she smelled Vi with a bark.”
Thomas didn’t like that. A bark could alert those inside of police presence, especially someone like Eric whowaspolice, and could have experience with K-9s and how they worked.
