Hostage

10

Vaughan’s hands were still cuffed behind her back, but her legs were free now.

Sozinho guided her to the bathroom.

The water to the motel room had been shut off, probably years ago from the look and smell of the place, but someone had positioned a portable camping toilet on the floor next to the bathtub.

There was a partial roll of cheap-looking paper on the closed lid.

“There you go,” Sozinho said.

“I need my hands.”

“Sorry. You’ll just have to do the best you can.”

Vaughan took a step forward. She was dizzy, and her tongue felt as though it had been coated with some sort of toxic chemical. Her jaw hurt where Sozinho had punched her.

“You going to stand there and watch?” she said.

There wasn’t much light in the bathroom, and Vaughan knew that if she closed the door there wouldn’t be any. She didn’t like the idea of fumbling around in the dark, but she figured being out of Sozinho’s line of sight for a couple of minutes would be her only chance to do what she needed to do.

“I’ll turn my head,” Sozinho said.

“No. I need to shut the door.”

“Not going to happen.”

Vaughan thought about making a move right then and there. She was close enough to Sozinho to stomp on an instep or kick him in the groin, but he’d taken her shoes off while she was unconscious, and she was concerned that she might injure her feet if she started using them as weapons. Then she wouldn’t be able to run.

And she needed to run.

She decided to be patient and proceed with her original plan.

“It’s not like I can go anywhere,” she said. “There’s no window in here, so what do you think I’m going to do? Kick my way through the wall or something?”

“Why couldn’t my assignment have been to kidnap a male officer?” Sozinho said, clearly annoyed with Vaughan’s demand for privacy.

He reached over and grabbed the knob and pulled the door shut.

“Thank you,” Vaughan said.

“Just hurry up.”

Vaughan immediately crouched down and rolled onto her back. The floor was hard and cold and it reeked of urine. Vaughan wondered if vagrants had broken in at one time or another. Surely Sozinho couldn’t have singlehandedly caused the place to smell so bad in such a short time.

Vaughan had gained a little weight over the past few months, and her uniform pants had gotten a little tighter. Her fortieth birthday had come and gone and she wasn’t quite as flexible as she used to be, but with a great deal of effort she finally managed to bend her knees to her chest and thread her feet under the handcuff chain.

Now her hands were in front.

Her heart was pounding, and she was a little short of breath. She promised herself that if she got through this she would start spending more time at the gym and less time at the Second Street diner. No more bacon and eggs and toast and hash browns before driving home and climbing into bed after every shift.

She stood and started feeling her way around the bathroom, trying to be as quiet as possible. She ran her fingers along the edge of the vanity, and then over to the top of the toilet tank. Not the plastic portable thing, but the original toilet that had been plumbed in to the motel room. She tucked her fingers under the overhang and lifted the lid off the tank. It made a slight clinking noise, but Sozinho didn’t say anything, and he didn’t come barging through the door, so he must not have heard it.

The lid was heavy and cumbersome with Vaughan’s hands bound so closely together. Straining, the muscles in her fingers and wrists burning toward complete exhaustion, she wrestled it up and rested it on the top of her head so that one of the smaller sides of the porcelain rectangle was pointing toward the door.

She took a couple of deep breaths.

“Okay,” she said, a hot bolus of adrenaline surging through her veins. “I’m done.”

As soon as Sozinho pushed the door open, Vaughan stepped forward and slammed the toilet tank lid into his forehead like a club. The lid shattered. Most of it fell to the floor, but a few slivers found a home up around Sozinho’s hairline, and a nice big ugly shard stayed in Vaughan’s grip. As Sozinho staggered backwards, Vaughan moved in and swiped at his head and opened a gash along his left cheek. He shouted and shrieked and pressed his hands against his face, ineffectively trying to stop the flow of blood from multiple wounds.

“I’m going to kill you,” he said, pulling the pistol from his waistband and firing wildly in her general direction.

Blood trickled over Sozinho’s eyebrows, and he probably had a concussion from the vicious blow to the head. His ability to aim straight had been adversely affected, but Vaughan knew from experience what one bullet could do to human flesh, and she didn’t want any part of it. She’d gambled with an act of aggression, but her best bet now was to get away from Sozinho as fast as she could.

Trying to use the deafening blasts to her advantage, she ducked down low and slung the jagged chunk of porcelain aside and went for the door. She frantically slid the security chain out of its slot and twisted open the deadbolt and ran out onto the concrete sidewalk in front of the room. Squinting against the afternoon sun, she darted into a large open area that led to an outdoor lounging deck and swimming pool. She figured her best chance at freedom was through a stucco archway on the other side of the courtyard.

The pool had a blue vinyl cover stretched over the top of it, faded from the sun and stained with rust where it snapped onto the edges. As Vaughan ran past it, she noticed that she was leaving a trail of blood.