“We’ve discussed this. He’s the reason we don’t have the money we wanted. If he’d just played along from the beginning, we’d have everything we needed. He’s also the one who could give evidence to send us to jail, so you’re here to help stop him.”
Then he did something that made every bone in my body tense—he rubbed his fucking chin with the muzzle of his handgun, then turned it slightly and used the front sight to make a rasping noise that was loud in the empty space. It might have been a bad moment to make a note to search online if I got out of here alive, but would it be that loud in a normal environment? Like a room filled with furniture, or one in a location where there were noises from traffic?
Anything he was going to say was stopped by Sadie moaning and shifting beside me, signaling to us all that she was awake again.
With a grin that didn’t seem as confident as it had only minutes before, Chantal watched my friend wake up. “Well, well, look who’s back.”
Sadie wisely didn’t say a word, but out of the corner of my eye, I could see her glaring at the bitch. The silence was almost eerie as they stared at each other. I came from a big family, and even when we all moved into our own homes I didn’t get silence like this. Then again, it was probably why I heard the click of the safety on one of their guns. What I didn’t know was if it was being put on or being taken off. Judging by the way she stiffened beside me, Sadie had heard it, too.
“Chantal,” the man called, moving into her and rubbing her back. “I think we should make the call now to get him here. That’s what the plan was, so let’s get it out the way.”
“No,” she growled, looking back over at me. “I want to have some fun with her.”
“You can do it after he gets here. Where’s the phone?”
Shrugging his hand off almost violently, she spun back round to him and hissed, “I said no.”
Using their argument to her advantage, Sadie nudged my knee with her foot and then looked up at her hands, showing they weren’t tied anymore. Somehow, she’d undone the knot and left a loose loop of the rope around her wrists so they wouldn’t notice.
I’d apparently been kidnapped with MacGyver.
“How’d you do that?” I mouthed, glancing over at the couple who were now yelling at each other.
A scuffle beside us almost made me crap my pants. I mean, I seriously thought about it and had to clench to stop it. Listening to all the stories from my family and what various members had gone through during their problems, not once did any of them talk about what I would call Sphincter Fear Reaction Purge Syndrome. It was a real thing because I swear even Sadie looked like she was clamping down when it happened. I wasn’t going to be the first person to do it, though. Oh, hell, no. There’d be no hiding it either if I got out of here, so I’d have to live with the stories for the rest of my life.
As it turns out, the scuffle was the man grabbing Chantal by the throat and shaking her hard enough that her head bobbled around. It looked painful as hell—thankfully. Then, taking a handful of her hair with his other hand, he pulled her out the door, kicking it shut behind him.
Sadie moved quickly, reaching out and undoing the first knot on my rope. “I’ve got brothers, honey, if you don’t learn to undo knots, you don’t get to go and meet the guy you fancy for a snog in the park.”
“They used to tie you up to stop you meeting guys?” And I thought my brothers were beasts.
With a gentle snort, she whispered, “They tried to. They’re as shit as these two at doing them, though. My brother also. had to learn knots when he first joined the Navy, so when he came home, I made him show me how to do them, too. Gran had a washing line in the garden that kept falling down when she put laundry on it, and he taught me a knot that’d be easy to undo but would keep that bugger in place.”
With one last tug, my hands were free, and I was rolling my shoulders and shaking them out to get the feeling back in them. “Why are we talking about your washing and you kissing guys?”
“You asked,” she shrugged. “Okay, coming from a country that doesn’t have guns, which one of those should we be most afraid of?”
The answer to that question was simple. “Both. They both have bullets in them, so they’re both a problem.”