were secured in front of her. Slitting her eyes, she studied the bonds and saw one of those plastic handcuff things.
When she heard a door open, then footsteps approaching, she tried to relax, willing herself not to tense up as she imagined one of the hard-faced men standing over her.
“She still out cold?” a voice inquired.
“Far as I can tell.”
She forced herself not to react when a large hand grasped her shoulder and shook her.
She heard his breathing, but he said nothing more as he remained where he was for several heartbeats, then turned around and withdrew.
Her mind circled back to the problem of where she was—exactly. In a van? She could feel the vehicle moving, more up and down than from side to side. The movement didn’t seem like a car.
She focused on the odd motion, then choked back a gasp when she realized where she must be. In a plane. Oh Lord—they were flying her somewhere. North? South?
All she knew was that they were in a hurry to get her away from the city.
She struggled to hold back the sob trying to claw its way up her throat. As she clenched her fists, she tried to plan her escape. Cracking her eyelids, she looked around in the dim light. She was in a low, narrow compartment, hardly high enough to stand up. A small plane. There were no windows in the immediate area, and only a dim overhead light made it possible to see anything. It looked like she was in a cargo hold, only it couldn’t be like the hold where they put the luggage on a big aircraft, because then she’d be freezing cold, wouldn’t she? No, this was simply the back of a small plane, where someone had thrown a thin mattress for her to lie on.
Cautiously, she sat up, then began looking for some way to free her hands. The bulkheads were unadorned metal. Working by touch, she found a sharp place where two seams joined. After a quick glance at the forward door, she raised her hands and began sawing the thick plastic band back and forth over the protruding metal, praying that the guy who had come to check on her wasn’t going to come back and see what she was doing. Progress seemed to take forever, but she figured out that if she angled her hands, she could make a notch in one side, then a larger cut.
When she felt a shift in the way the aircraft was flying, she knew they must be getting ready for a landing. The band wasn’t quite cut through yet, but maybe that was good. It was almost done, and if she turned the cut side inward, she should be able to hide her progress.
As the plane kept descending, she laid down again, drawing her knees up and her head down, pretending she was out of it but preparing herself to escape when she got the chance.
They touched down none too smoothly and bounced along a runway before braking to a stop. Then she heard the door at the front open again, and a man come through. Probably the same guy who had checked on her before.
“Come on,” he said. “Time to get up.”
She made a moaning sound.
“You awake?”
When she didn’t answer, he shook her. “Awake?”
“Sort of,” she mumbled.
He opened a hatch in the bulkhead, and she saw dim light outside. It looked like early morning. Did that mean they’d been flying for the rest of the night—or had they not taken off right away?
“Give me a hand,” he called out.
Another man—probably the pilot—came from the front, and together they muscled her down a short flight of steps that had swung out when the hatch opened. They set her on her feet, and she wavered as they held her up, pretending she was weaker than she really was as she looked around.
She saw a stretch of tarmac, a couple of buildings to her right, and beyond that, trees.
A small rural airport? Did the people running the place know there was a kidnap victim arriving, or didn’t they give a damn?
“Looks like our ride is here.” The man who had first come to check on her pointed to a long black car parked at the side of the runway. A Lincoln Town Car or