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The man nodded. “Maybe. It’s something I’m following up on.” He leaned forward and fired up his truck. “Sorry to bother you. You looked sort of like her picture.”
“No problem. Sorry I couldn’t help.” She raised her hand and shifted into gear again. When she was past the truck, she rolled her window up. Looked like Millie. She wished. She supposed that to a guy as old as her dad, any two girls with long blond hair looked alike.
She hoped Millie had an unknown, undisclosed boyfriend. It made more sense than getting lost at Haudenosaunee. And, that selfish voice in the back of her brain said, it would mean she’d still show up on time for the ceremony tonight. Becky shoved the thought away. The ceremony was going forward. Everyone would be there to sign papers and shake hands and smile for the cameras. She couldn’t, wouldn’t, consider the alternative.
Even this trip to Haudenosaunee was going on faith. If she had had any real doubts about the sale going through, she could have called the contractor and told him to dismiss the crew that would be meeting her at the great camp within the next half hour. She glanced at her car’s clock. Make that twenty minutes. She hadn’t canceled. The pla
Then came the hard part of the day. She had to tell her father, as the owner of Castle Logging, that his equipment, which he had garaged over the summer at his most recent cutting site, had to go. The conservancy’s lawyer had asked her to get a detailed inventory, because they would be responsible for any buildings and machinery on the property after the title changed hands. She wasn’t looking forward to getting the document from her dad. As much as she loved Bo
But whether or not Dad tossed her out on her ear, by 7:00 P.M. she was headed for the Algonquin Waters Spa and Resort in her party dress and new shoes. And if Millie van der Hoeven hadn’t shown by then, Becky would by-God go out and find her herself. A fierce smile snapped across her face. Her dad always said she was as hard to budge as an old oak tree. It was time to prove him right.
She considered the blankets. Could they be used to attack somehow? To defend? They were too tough to tear. One was heavy wool, almost a horse blanket, the kind you’d use as a topmost layer on a bed because it would make you itch if it was sandwiched between the sheet and the quilt. The other two were more modern, lofty fake-fiber things, soft and warm. They had satin edging. Now those, they might be useful. If she could figure out a way to rip them from the rest of the blanket.
It was fu
Standing in the chill of her cell, she could see how badly she had been fooling herself. Take away her parents’ homes and the great camp and the private schools and trips abroad. She was still rich. She had a home and a car and a thousand objects filling them both: furniture and clothing and camping gear and books and CDs and pots and pans and sharp, long knives that rested in their own square of cherrywood. What she wouldn’t give to have those knives. Now. Now that all her earthly goods had been reduced to the clothes on her back, an iron hinge pin, and three blankets.
And a plastic five-gallon bucket. When whoever imprisoned her here came back, maybe she could spill pee on their shoes.
When whoever imprisoned her here came back. She had been concentrating so hard on what she could do to get away, she had overlooked the fact that she was missing. Not where she should be. People would be looking for her. Wouldn’t they?
She looked at the blankets. At the arrow slits. At the blankets again. She shuffled to the pile. The heaviest one, she thought. She teased it out with one boot-clad foot, balancing carefully to avoid knocking herself over. Once she had a sizable piece separated from the rest of the pile, she hobbled toward the nearest window, dragging the blanket beneath her boot tread. It was as tedious as positioning the bucket had been-step, scrape, step, scrape-although at least now her full bladder wasn’t making it hard to think. Instead, she was charged with the idea that her unknown captors could return at any moment.
The dense wool blanket unfurled from the pile. She scuttled back, positioned herself at the trailing edge, and booted it across the floor. When she had it bunched beneath the arrow slit, she considered a moment, then dropped to her knees on top of it. Shuffling slowly off the fabric, she bent over like a supplicant before an almighty god and worked her head as far under the blanket’s heavy folds as she could. Butted hard against the stone wall, she pressed upward. The blanket rose. She inched it higher and higher, until her kneeling form made an acutely uncomfortable triangle with the curved wall.
This would be the hardest part. Leaning into the stones until she thought the top of her head would split open, she curled her toes underneath her and pushed with all the strength in her thighs. Her legs straightened, her neck trembled, and, greased by the blanket’s smooth surface, her head skidded upward. She was standing. She shuffled close to the wall. The pi
The blanket was stuck in the middle of the arrow slit. She bent again, rolling her head up against the dangling edge, forcing more material into the opening. It bunched fast. Half of it must be dangling from the outside right now. For a moment, she considered letting it stay like that, but then she realized people might walk by without ever lifting their eyes to see her ba
It worked. The blanket slithered through the window and was gone. She heard nothing except a brief crack where it caught and broke a brittle branch. Was it spread out like a picnic cloth on the ground? Draped over a bramble bush? Hanging from a branch? It didn’t matter. It was large, it was white and red and yellow and green, it didn’t belong out there. Anyone who came by would notice it.
She thought of the way it had bunched in the opening, half in and half out. She looked at one of the remaining blankets, a fluffy, fuzzy lavender. She imagined a searcher spotting the wool blanket on the ground, glancing around, seeing another blanket flapping from an arrow slit high above the ground. Imagined friendly feet pounding up the stairs. Imagined someone saying, Hang on, I’ll have you out of here in a moment.
She shuffled over to the blanket pile and began kicking.