Page 22 of Off the Grid
That was a bigif.
“Water?” one guard gruffly asked, voice deep, with an accent she couldn’t place.
McKenzie flicked her gaze to meet his and nodded. She wasn’t thirsty—her stomach was tied in too many knots to drink—but she’d do anything to keep the door open a little while longer.
One of the men walked to the side and disappeared from view. The other stepped forward, reaching for her face. McKenzie flinched back. He didn’t pause. He grabbed her chin roughly, with no care, and tore the duct tape from her lips. She couldn’t help the cry that slipped up her throat. Her skin stung, on fire. The man’s hard eyes didn’t soften in the slightest. He spun her around, sliced through the ropes binding her wrists, and pushed her toward the bed. Fear cut like an open wound across her chest. McKenzie curled her hands into fists, ready to fight with everything she had, but when she turned around, he wasn’t paying her any mind. The guard leaned against the doorway with his arms folded across his chest, watching something out of sight. He blocked maybe half of the opening, which meant the other half was free.
There was no way she’d escape, she knew that much, but maybe escape wasn’t the point—not yet. She needed to see what lay beyond her small cell. How many armed men waited out of sight? Was there a door outside anywhere within reach? Could she locate a weapon of some kind? Information was the only tool she had to work with.
So, she ran.
McKenzie lunged through the opening headfirst, taking in everything she could. An arm grabbed her around the waist, catching her midair. Two seconds flat and she was thrown back into the tiny room. She rolled across the floor, closing her eyes before the endless gray washed away the image in her mind.
There were two more cars parked in the other room, and in front of each were massive garage doors. The wall to the left was covered in gadgets of all kinds, household items like brooms and rakes. There’d been a door on the far side, probably leading into the house, and a man stood within its frame. He had coifed white hair and tanned, wrinkled skin. He’d been wearing a collared, button-down shirt, white with blue pinstripes. The moment she lunged through the door, he glanced up, and through his thin-wire-framed glasses she’d met his dark brown eyes, so deep they seemed black from that distance. The contact had been brief but charged, and she’d never forget the expression on his face before she’d been catapulted back into her prison—alarm.
He was panicked.
But why?
Heavy footsteps thudded. McKenzie pushed against the floor and rose to a seated position, glancing over her shoulder as the guard who’d disappeared tossed a plastic water bottle into the room. It crunched as it landed and rolled across the floor, then stopped at her feet. The door slammed shut with a resoundingbang, leaving McKenzie locked up and alone.
She snatched the water from the ground, took a long sip, and then got down to business. If she was going to get out of here, she’d need some sort of weapon. McKenzie went to the bed first, but it was just a mattress—no frame, no wood, no anything. She glanced up and studied the ceiling, then the walls, then the floor, but the only gap was the sliver of space beneath the door, which didn’t have a handle from her side. She pressed her ear to the opening, but the voices speaking on the other side came through as nothing but muffled groans. Even with her cheekbone pressed painfully against the floor, she couldn’t see through the crack. All she saw were two spots of shadow that she suspected were the feet of one of the guards.
She rolled over, lay flat, and stared up blankly.
What am I going to do?
What am I going to do?
There were no weapons. There was no way out. There were armed men on the other side of the door, and she had no idea where the hell she was. If what Agent Alvarez had told her was true, she wasn’t dealing with fools. The men on the other side of that door were part of the Russian mafia and probably had more experience with making people disappear than she could even imagine.
Oh God.
Oh God.
Panic bubbled beneath her skin. McKenzie was good at keeping her cool. She knew how to compartmentalize, how to focus on what was important and leave the rest for later. But her distractions had run out. Despite being called an ice queen, she was only human, and she was scared out of her mind.
“Oh God,” she moaned softly and rolled onto her side, entire body trembling from the bone-deep chill spreading down her limbs, not from the cold floor, but from desolation. McKenzie hugged her knees into her chest and rocked softly.
Think of something else. Think of anything else.
McKenzie closed her eyes, drawing on the first thing that came to mind—a recipe for palmiers, little cookies made of puff pastry. They were one of her favorites, and they were an absolute bitch to make from scratch, the perfect distraction. Now she just needed something to do with her hands… She forced her eyes open and eyed the mattress one more time.
Sheets. I’ll make some sort of a weapon with those.
I’ve got to.
McKenzie grabbed the top sheet, trying not to think about the last time it’d been washed, and clenched the edge between her teeth. Then she pulled, ripping a strip free. Mindlessly tying knots to keep her fingers busy, McKenzie went over the recipe in her mind. A palmier lived and died by its puff pastry, and the key to that was patience—something she was currently desperate for. The baker needed to make the dough, then flatten the butter, then fold the two together, then refrigerate, then fold, then refrigerate, over and over and over. She imagined she were in a kitchen, not a cage, with a rolling pin, not ripped sheets. She pictured the angles of the folds, the temperatures, the ingredients, the timing, until in her mind’s eye, she was pulling a tray of golden heart-shaped goodies from the oven. McKenzie could almost taste the flaky yet smooth cookie, could almost hear the crunch as she bit down, could almost feel the sweet crumbles dissolve on her tongue.
Going through the steps soothed her racing heart. The familiar routine calmed her, until her head cleared enough to see reason. She stared at the makeshift rope in her hands. It looked more like something Rapunzel would’ve used to repel from her tower than a weapon McKenzie could use to choke someone, but it was better than nothing.
Maybe I can turn it into a lasso or tie their hands or—McKenzie sighed and rolled her eyes. Who was she kidding? She wasn’t freaking Wonder Woman. She was just a girl who was in way over her head.I should’ve listened to Agent Alvarez when I had the chance. I should’ve believed him. Why didn’t I believe him?
Because she hated the police and she loved her job, and in the moment, it had been naively easy to let old prejudices blind her. The prospect of becoming the youngest head pastry chef in New York had gone to her head, ambition too heady a drug to ignore. After all, her job was her life. She didn’t have any friends aside from Jo and Addy. She didn’t have lovers. Her family life consisted of fifteen-minute phone calls with her father and the occasional trip to Greenwich to visit her mom. The kitchen was her all—the one thing that had always been there for her. Kidnapped, alone, and uncertain if she’d survive the night, McKenzie had a realization—if she could go back, she’d give up head pastry chef in an instant to be safe. She would’ve followed Agent Alvarez to that hotel room as soon as he’d offered. She would’ve listened. Jobs came and went. She only had one life.
What if I’ve been wasting it?
McKenzie had no idea how long she sat on the cold floor, holding her makeshift weapon and contemplating the what-ifs, but the heavy thud of a body slamming into the door yanked her awake in an instant. She flinched and jumped to her feet, muscles aching in protest at the sudden shift. Something banged against the metal door again. A pained groan sifted through the crack, finding its way to her ears. Then a grunt, a wheeze, and a strangled sort of cry.
