Read Online Always Love a Villain on San Juan Island by Sandy Frances Duncan, George Szanto - Free Book Online Page B

a door closing and, shortly, faintly, a car engine and tires on gravel.
    She grabbed her blanket, brown and white checked, and a book, and returned to her chair. She wrapped the blanket around her shoulders. The book, a mystery she’d been reading, couldn’t distract her. Her attention was on sounds from the rest of the house. Eventually the fridge gurgled on. Then off. Nothing else. As cavernous as an empty house can sound.
    She figured she was alone. How, how to escape. She needed a weapon. A strong weapon. The only possible weapon, the chair. Susanna picked it up and rammed the door with the front two legs. The tubular aluminum cracked off as the force reverberated up her arms, into her tender shoulder. She did it again. Another leg clattered down. The broken ends were sharp. She attacked the deadbolt. Produced only scratches on the bolt and across the door. Both were solid metal. The last chair leg, bent over.
    There was no way out. No way out! She started to shake. The smashed chair dropped to the floor. She started to cry, sobbed, howled, her whole body shaking. She was so cold, the shakes had shivers in them—she made it to the toilet before vomiting.
    No one heard her, no one came. The person who’d left might never return. I’m alone, completely alone, no one knows where I am, I could die here—The green walls wavered and slowly closed in, the corners first like a giant maw about to swallow her—
    In an oubliette , solid green stone walls pressing in, the metal door, the sealing stone—
    She flopped onto the bed, pulled the covers over her shivers and sobs, her images, thoughts jumbled and indecipherable. Eventually, drained by terror and exhaustion, she fell asleep. She lay still, no dreams—
    A scritching sound woke her, a key fumbling at the lock. She sat up, turned around—
    Balaclava, food on a tray on top of a cart. On the cart’s lower level, a green plastic garbage bag. He rolled the cart in, closed the door, threw the bolt. He put the tray on the table, looked at her, looked at the chair balanced on its back edge and remaining leg, looked at two broken legs on the floor. He turned his head and noted the scratches on the door. He crossed to the bed, put the bag down and said, “Where’s the fourth leg?”
    Susanna fumbled it out of the bedclothes. She didn’t remember hiding it. Had she intended to? To defend herself from him? She was so glad to see him, to see someone. She hadn’t thought she would be; she felt her neck flush with anger at him, at anyone, at the situation. If she could grab the chair leg back would she use it on him—
    â€œI told you, there’s no way out except that door.” He’d glanced at it. “It’s strong. As I guess you discovered.” He nodded at the big bag. “I brought you some clothes.”
    She needed clean clothes. She hadn’t changed in three days. He threw the bag onto the bed. She spilled out its contents. Two T-shirts, one green sweatshirt, two baggy pairs of pants, three pairs of socks. Yeah, great. Bought at a thrift shop probably. All warmer than her white dress, anyway. The underpants came in a package of three so were probably new. After he was gone, thinking of him buying les intimes had made her grin. She’d wondered if he’d considered getting her a bra.
    Over the last two-plus weeks, he’d twice mentioned three weeks, the length of time they were going to hold her. Let her go afterward. After some kind of ransom was paid? Her father wasn’t poor, but he’d be hard-pressed to come up with any six-figure sum. Three weeks if the guy was telling the truth. She glanced at her watch. At least they hadn’t taken it away. That and her grandmother’s ring.
    Curiously, now there was no fear. Anger, yes. And her boredom bored her. Her jailer didn’t seem to mean her any harm. Or so his body language said. She still wondered if she could overwhelm