Page 132 of Family Jewels

“What are we gonna do, Rose? My only thought was to send him as far from the office as possible and hope we either get loose or someone finds us. When he comes back without it, he’s gonna be fit to be tied.”

“I know,” I said. “But you bought us some time. Probably thirty to forty minutes, don’t you think?”

“Yeah. But he taped us up pretty good.”

“I still have the pepper spray in my hand,” I said. “I tried to hide it with my other hand when he taped my wrists. Apparently it worked, but it won’t do us much good in this situation.”

“Maybe not . . .” she said. “Does it still have that key chain attached?”

“Yeah.”

“When you first got it a couple of months ago, the ring had some sharp edges. Does it still?”

I ran my thumb over the metal can, trying to find the key chain. Sure enough, I felt its metal edge against my skin. “I know where you’re goin’ with this, but I’m not sure I can maneuver it around to saw through the tape, let alone use it to cut the tape on my wrists.”

“Just try wiggling your hands and wrists to loosen the tape first,” Neely Kate said. “We might not even need the sharp edge.”

We both spent several minutes wiggling the tape, but neither of us made much progress.

“If we were standing, I could break this easy,” Neely Kate said. “I learned how to escape getting tied up when I was a kid.”

I stopped my efforts. “Why were you tied up as a kid?”

She ignored my question. “We need to hurry, Rose. We’ve already lost fifteen or twenty minutes. We can’t be here when he gets back.”

“We can talk while we work on it.”

“No,” she said, her voice tight. “I can’t think about that right now. We need to focus on getting free.”

What on earth had happened to my best friend when she was living with that sorry excuse of a mother? I’d had a heap of my own abuse as a child. The woman who’d raised me used to lock me in the closet whenever I had visions, and sometimes she’d beat me with a wooden spoon, but I was certain Neely Kate’s experiences had been much, much worse.

Within fifteen minutes, I’d gotten my wrists loose enough that I could almost wiggle the hand without the pepper spray through the hole.

“Stop,” Neely Kate whispered. “Listen.”

I paused long enough to hear a car outside the office.

“He’s back,” she said. “Are you free yet?”

“Almost . . .” I said, straining to squeeze my hand through the opening and pull it free. It finally popped loose, and I leaned to the side to try to look around the screen, but I lost balance and my chair fell to the ground sideways.

I hit my head and my shoulder when I landed on the hardwood floor. The impact momentarily dazed me, but then I caught sight of a figure on the sidewalk. The headlights from the still-running car were on, casting the man in a backlight that made it impossible for me to identify him. But it was motivation enough for me to pull my act together and start unwrapping the tape from one of my legs.

I’d just started on the second leg—thankful that stingy Homer hadn’t used much tape—when the door opened.

“I can’t stomach liars,” Homer said in an angry voice. “I’m gonna make you pay for wasting my time. Just like Rayna.” But from his voice and his footfalls, he was still standing close to the door.

I crawled over to Neely Kate and helped free her hand from the tape, then put the can in her hand with the nozzle positioned so that she could use it. She kept her hands behind her back, pretending she was still tied up, as I crawled along the wall to the edge of the screen. Homer had left our guns and Tasers on our desks. If I could just get to one, I could try to even the playing field.

“Are you scared yet, Neely Kate?” Homer asked in a menacing voice, and I realized he was playing with us. I heard several heavy footfalls. “You should—” I heard a grunt and then a hard thud. A tube of lipstick shot across the floor, rolling toward the back door.

After several seconds of silence, I crawled around the screen. There was no sign of Homer. Had Jed shown up?

Neely Kate’s desk was only eight feet away, so I got to my feet in a crouch, set my sights on Neely Kate’s gun on her desk, and ran for it, shocked beyond belief when I managed to grab it. I stood, glancing around for any sight of Homer.

Then I found him—on the floor in front of Neely Kate’s desk, flat on his back. His gun lay several feet from his outstretched hand.

What on earth?