Page 92 of Shadow of Death
“Aidan—”
“Amy.”
“Please!” she whispered fiercely before going silent. The door had opened; their captors were returning.
The one man, the tall one, walked over to stare down at Amy again. A mosquito buzzed by. He shook his head.
“I’ll get some spray. You’re not supposed to be all bitten up. You know, I’m sorry. We’re not supposed to torture you. We aren’t judges. That’s for later. You don’t know how lucky you are. We had others... Well, only one can really be the key sacrifice. I mean, we’ll try to help your boyfriend, too, but there’s one at each occasion. We’ve tried to help others, I believe, but we can’t do this ceremony for just everyone.”
She didn’t reply.
He walked away from the cot and dug into a bag. When he returned, she caught the smell of something else before he rained bug spray around the area where she and Aidan lay.
Beer. She had a feeling he’d consumed more than one can or bottle.
A few minutes later, his companion walked in. He weaved a little as he walked.
Definitely more than one can or bottle.
As time went by, the two of them kept going out. Of course. It was boring—no television, not even a radio. It didn’t seem either of them carried a tablet of any kind—or so much as a paperback novel.
They were getting bitten. Amy saw the one wince and slap his neck. And they were hot, it appeared.
Sweating.
Weren’t they all?
Night finally fell. She watched the one man lie down on the bedroll across the shack from her and Aidan. She wasn’t sure where the other one was. She imagined he was back out with the beer.
She waited. It wasn’t that long before she heard the man snoring.
She was basically still while testing the ropes that tied her wrists together. They weren’t bound behind her back, but right in front of her.
The two men really weren’t expecting much trouble from a woman.
She brought the knot to her teeth, wincing at the rough feel of the rope, but working away at it. In just a matter of minutes, the knot began to give. A little more effort...
And she was free.
The knot on the ropes binding her ankles was even more poorly tied. That one took just her fingers a few seconds.
She rose carefully, watching the sleeping man and keeping her eye on the door. Crawling down carefully, she reached Aidan’s side.
She clamped her hand over Aidan’s mouth and shook her head.
Aidan’s wrists had been bound behind his back so she twisted him around. But even that knot had been poorly secured, and she had freed first his wrists and then his ankles.
The man on the floor kept snoring.
She shook her head as she carefully moved toward the door and sought out the second man. When she looked outside, she saw he was on a tree stump near the shack with his back and head rested against the outer wooden wall. His mouth was open.
He, too, was snoring.
“Aidan, go,” she ordered.
“Amy!”
“I’m begging you. They’re going to think you are an awful louse, a terrible coward,” she said, managing a wry grin. “You’ve got to get back to Hunter and the others and make sure they know what is going on. And they need to know Don Blakewasin on this, but he wasn’t running anything, he’s dead.”
