Chapter Twenty

~ Jenna ~

Obviously, Todd thinks that since he’s bound me to the chair, I’m immobile.

Think again, idiot. I make short order of hopping the chair over to the desk. I have to be careful because if I lean too far forward, I’ll fall.

I’m well aware that the odds are I won’t be able to free myself before he returns, but I have to try.

He made a fatal mistake by binding my wrists in front of my body. I’m able to grab his keys off the desk and use them to saw through the tape on my feet. I’ll free my wrists later.

Now, I that can move, I have to get out of here.

I grab the gun and take the keys and push through a door on the opposite side of the office where Todd went to relieve himself.

My head is still pounding and my eyes have a difficult time adjusting to the dark after being in a room with bright fluorescent lights, but within seconds, I can make out the outline of benches and large, round metal objects. I’m in a weight room.

My heart hammers so hard I’m afraid I’ll go into cardiac arrest.

Frantically, I look around for another door or a plausible place to hide. I need to find something fast because he’ll be back.

Any second now, I expect him to burst through the door, like an evil, murdering jack-in-the-box.

I have the gun, but I’ll have a hard time firing it with my hands bound. In fact, I’m lucky it hasn’t inadvertently gone off as clumsy and panicked as I feel.

There’s another door on the far wall. I race for it, but my shin hits the part of the weight machine used for leg lifts, sending white-hot flashes of pain up and down my leg.

Todd bellows, “Jenna!” He screams some choice words, and then he goes back to yelling my name. I shake off the pain and push through the door.

I need to find a bathroom or a locker room. Some place where I can go inside and lock the door and buy myself some time to free my hands.

The next room is a large exercise room. It’s cavernous and offers no place to hide. I keep moving as quickly and silently as I can, but before I can choose a hiding place, the overhead lights come on.

I can barely breathe as I fully expect him to round the corner and grab me, but then I see it. Ten feet away from me is a door with a sign that says Ladies’ Locker Room. I dash inside, throwing my full weight against the door and turning the latch on the lock.

It’s not a permanent fix, but it will allow me to get the tape off my wrists.

No quicker does the thought cross my mind when a loud thump sounds against the door.

“I know you’re in there, Jenna. You think you’re pretty smart, but I have another set of keys. If you make me unlock the door, I swear what happens next won’t be pretty.”

I set down the gun. Using his keys, I start working like crazy trying to saw through the tape binding my hands, but due to the lack of leverage, I’m not having any luck.

“Todd,” I yell. “I have your gun and I’ll use it. I swear I will shoot you dead.”

He laughs. “Think again, sweetheart. You might want to check that gun. It doesn’t have any bullets in it. Why do you think I left it on the desk? Do you think I’m stupid? I have the gun with the bullets.”

He fires a shot and I scream. It goes through the door and shatters one of the mirrors.

“Go ahead, scream your head off. No one can hear you. And if you don’t unlock this door, when I get back with the keys, I’m going to make you scream so hard you’ll wish you were dead.”

I had no idea that there was a cap to a person’s level of terror. Maybe it’s adrenaline, maybe I’m in survival mode, but all I can think about is freeing my hands.

I wonder why he just didn’t shoot the lock on the door until it opened. It must mean that he’s not a very good shot or he’s low on bullets. Probably both.

He didn’t know it, but by firing that warning shot and shattering the mirror, he’s not only given me a means to free my hands, but he’s given me another weapon.

After I pick up a shard of mirror and slice through the tape, I look around for another place to hide.

The ceiling.

That’s it.

I enter one of the stalls and step up on the commode. I use the gun to push up and displace a ceiling tile. I’m taking a chance, but I toss the gun and shard of mirror into the space in the ceiling.

If I can’t hoist myself up before he gets back, I’ve just lost my weapons. Even though he claimed that the gun has no bullets, I don’t have time to look and I don’t want to waste a shot if he’s lying.

Because he probably is.

But that’s the least of my worries. He’s back. He pounds on the door and yells, “Unlock this door now.”

I don’t respond.

He growls and I hear what sounds like keys hitting the lock. He growls again. I’m guessing that each time a key doesn’t work, he growls in frustration.

It buys me enough time to summon all the strength I never knew I had, and I manage to pull myself up into the ceiling and replace the tile before he finds the key that opens the door.

I slowly wiggle over to a scant solid place in the ceiling. It feels like a sanctuary among the ceiling tiles that probably wouldn’t hold my weight very long. I have to crawl on my belly with the gun in my right hand and the shard of mirror in my left, but I need to move because it won’t take him long to figure out I’m up here.

I’ve barely crawled six feet, when I hear him bellow, “Where are you?”

Seconds later he starts poking at the ceiling tiles. Desperately, I look around for a place to hide, but the roof is so low all I can do is belly-crawl. There’s solid wall to my left and duct work to my right.

“I know you’re up here.”

His head pops up around where I started. Then he disappears.

As if in slow motion, he pops up a few tiles closer than where he was before. Now, he’s only about three feet away from me, but only his head and shoulders are in the crawl space. Even so, he knows he has me cornered because there’s nowhere else to go.

It’s now or never. I don’t want to shoot him, but if I don’t, he will kill me.

It’s him or me.

“Get away from me!” I scream.

With a shaking hand, I aim the gun at him and pull the trigger.

Nothing happens.

“Stupid girl. Stupid, stupid Jenna. I told you that gun isn’t loaded. But this one is.” He aims his gun at me. I hear a shot and brace myself for excruciating pain or death or whatever happens after you’re shot at close range, but I feel nothing except a ringing in my ears.

Todd’s torso lurches forward. In the split second before he disappears from the hole in the ceiling, his eyes widen and he gasps. Then he falls.

What’s happened?

I don’t know what to do. I’m afraid to move. I’m afraid to speak. I’m afraid to breathe.

“Jenna?” The voice sounds like Jackson. “Jenna, are you up there? Are you okay?”

The chief’s head pops up in the space where Todd was seconds ago and I scream, because at first, I don’t believe it’s Jackson. I’m afraid Todd is back to kill me.

So, I scream and scream, until Jackson’s hands grab my ankles and gently pull me toward the opening.

For a moment, I’m not sure if I died and this is something that happens in the afterlife or if somehow, by the grace of God, I survived.

But then paramedics rush in and put a blanket around my shoulders. They’re talking to me, but I can’t answer. Someone says, “She’s in shock.”

As Jackson and a medic are walking me toward the door, another group of medics clustered in a heap tend to someone on the floor.

It’s Todd.

“Don’t look.” Jackson puts a gentle hand along the side of my face, shielding my view, but I still hear one of the medics say, “Time of death. 10:42 p.m.”

My mom pushes past a uniformed police officer and hugs me.

It feels as if I’m standing outside my own body when I hear myself say, “Riley’s killer…he’s dead.”