Page 70 of A Very Titan Christmas
“The timing’s off on this,” a man said. “Not to mention it’s fucking cold.”
Another man laughed. “Pussy.”
“Fuck that. I signed up for a simple job. Not babysitting in a blizzard.”
The door opened, and Rachel pretended to be asleep. But her heart hammered. She needed to take a deep breath. Panic tightened around her rib cage and squeezed the air from herchest. She heard two sets of footsteps and then the door slam shut.
“If you fuckin’ killed her—”
“She’s not dead.”
“But if you did before it’s time, they’re gonna have your ass. Not mine.”
Before it was time to kill her? She replayed his words and wanted to scream, but she sensed the man crouching down in front of her. She thought he was holding a hand in front of her nose. She could feel his warmth. Did unconscious people shiver? Would these guys know she was awake one way or another? She couldn’t stop shivering.
“She’s still breathing for now.” The man let out a callous chuckle. “The only thing they’re gonna do is pay me a nice Christmas bonus when the summit is canceled.”
“There were easier ways to get Porter to cancel, and that’s all we were supposed to do.”
“I’m telling you, the opportunity presented itself, and it was far easier than anything proposed so far. So you should thank me. We’ll be home for the holidays.”
The other man snorted. “You’re going to have to do something with her before yougo home for the holidays. Idiot.”
He nudged her legs with his boot. “She’s not going anywhere. Let’s get out of the fuckin’ cold and check in.”
Check in with whom? If they were part of her father’s security team, she was screwed. They could lead searchers astray. The door opened and slammed shut again. The voices trailed off. Rachel forced herself to sit still until she was certain they were gone. She needed a plan to escape and find help.
The whirring sound of a snowmobile crested and faded as her captors left. Her stomach sank. The men had gone, but they’d left her somewhere that required snowmobile access. Thosesnowmobile trails could be new and unmarked, but this place… She looked around. It had been there for a while.
The winter silence surrounded her. She tried to hear the distant roar of the snowmobile and was met with complete, unnerving quiet. Rachel was alone, cold, and in zip ties. She’d been left in the woods like a forgotten package.
But she wasn’t helpless.
With a grunt, she rolled out from under the tarp and got to her knees. Her body protested. Stiff muscles ached. The quick movement exacerbated her headache. She paused to get her bearings and ignored the way her pulse pounded. The cause wasn’t fear of the men but a surge of adrenaline. She was ready to figure out a plan.
Her most significant problems were the elements and the zip ties. Now that the tarp had fallen away, she realized it had been holding in more heat than she had imagined. Her teeth chattered. Rachel swallowed over the swollen ache in her throat. She had to think, or she would freeze to death.
Where was she? The shed was stocked with gardening equipment. Rakes, shovels, and garden loppers—rusted and hanging out of reach but the answer to her zip tie problem.
She half hopped and half scooted across the dirt floor and grasped a gardening hoe, holding it between her tied hands. She tried to lift the loppers off the hook but had no luck. Shivering affected her strength. “Fuck! Come on.”
She gave up on finesse, let go of the hoe, grabbed a shovel, and slammed it onto the hook holding the loppers. The strike was erratic and uncoordinated, but that was all she had in her. She beat the damn thing over and over until the hook detached from the old wall. The loppers fell to the ground.
She pried the blades of the loppers apart with her chin and bound hands. The rusted blades might’ve worked on shrubbery, but the zip ties might be more than they could handle. Still,Rachel shoved the rusty blade between her bound hands and sawed.
She might as well have been using a nail file, though the activity warmed her slightly. Hours seemed to crawl by. The plastic frayed. Finally, the zip tie snapped. She fell back, exhausted and victorious.
She rubbed her wrists. The tie had chafed her skin, and she had welts, but other than that, she was good.
Carefully, she used the loppers to remove the zip ties around her boot and ankle. Free from the bindings, she rotated her ankles and then tucked her bootless foot under her butt to warm it. She wrapped the tarp around herself again, needing to figure out the next part of her escape plan.
Her sock-clad foot was hurting from the cold. She pulled off her boot and shoved it onto that foot. She couldn’t walk well with a boot on the wrong foot, but the relief was instant.
Rachel rested for as long as she dared before searching the little shed so she could come up with an escape plan. Gardening gloves and an old Silverberry Ridge Resort maintenance shirt were unexpected finds. She pulled the shirt on and donned the oversized gloves. Neither provided much warmth, but they would add layers of protection for when she trekked across the snow.
She found a large pile of used brown burlap sacks, blue plastic bags of peat moss brightly decorated with pink and yellow flowers, and a discarded net that had once held bulbs. The burlap sacks were thick and itchy. The plastic bags were waterproof but couldn’t insulate against the cold. All in all, not much in terms of footwear.
Rachel switched her boot to the proper foot and tore the flap from a cardboard box, fastening it to her other foot with duct tape and twine. She tied the net around it to help keep it in place, then wrapped the peat moss bag around her foot. Anotherline of tape and twine helped keep the bag in place, and voila, a makeshift boot. It was hard to walk in, but it would keep her feet dry and semi protected from the elements.
