Just then the windowless door opened again, and the guard came back. She had her phone off to the side, hidden under the folds of the blanket, so he couldn’t see it. Angling it as well as she could, she continued to snap photos, hoping that he didn’t notice as he bent down, picked up the tray, and walked out without saying a word. Quickly she pulled the phone back up and studied the pics that she took. A couple good ones were here but only one shot of his profile, and one showed his face slightly in shadows. But then she clicked on the last one and smiled.
“There you are,” she whispered. Knowing that she still had no way to get the messages out to anyone, she opened up emails and quickly prepared as many of the emails as she could with the photos attached, explaining her circumstances.
Regardless, she knew that, if she escaped, or if her phone ever connected with cell service, someone would get her messages. Stuck as she was down in this dark basement, chances were it wouldn’t happen until they moved her, which meant she also had to keep her phone hidden. She sure didn’t want to remind them that she had her cell.
She thought about that for a long moment and then tucked the phone inside her sock, under her pants leg. With her socks pulled up over the bottom of that leg, she hoped her phone would remain with her.
Not ideal but it was something. She lay quiet, grateful to be warm, when she heard the voices again. Frowning, she slipped out of bed and made her way to the door, wishing she knew exactly what her captors were up to. She strained at the words. A bit of English and a bit of Ukrainian she thought, or a Turkish dialect she didn’t know. However, most she could understand.
“How long are we keeping her?”
“I don’t know what the plan is,” her guardsman said, recognizing his voice.
“I think it’s foolish,” said someone else, a woman.
“That’s enough out of you,” her guard snapped.
They spoke in hushed tones after that, but the argument raged on. Zadie wondered if she could use that to her advantage. Maybe find an opportunity to cause further disharmony between her captors.
She needed a chance to get a message to someone. A window in the wall revealed some light outside, but the window was superhigh up, and her bed was chained against the wall. So she couldn’t twist the bed frame, lift it, or turn it in any way to give her a boost up there. And, as long as people were outside her door, if she could move the bed, they would definitely hear her.
Sighing, she looked at the bars on the window and the glass behind it. She had to try. Would she have another chance to escape? She made a running leap to jump up the wall and to grab at the bars with her hands. Surprisingly she caught them. As her body slammed into the cement, she shuddered at the pain.
She managed to pull herself up. As such, she rested ever-so-slightly on the wide windowsill. The wall was made out of thick concrete, enough so that she could rest her body weight upon the ledge. She studied outside, noting the windows were at ground level. So she was in a basement. Although a window was here, the glass itself she could get through but not with these bars on the inside, which was why they had locked her in here, she assumed.
She studied the grounds outside, wondering if she truly was in the same place as her parents. It looked similar, but that wasn’t any guarantee. She could be at any one of the neighboring estates as well. Hell, she could be in a neighboring country.
Finally unable to hang on any longer, she awkwardly dropped to the floor.
With her knee scraped and her body more bruised than she expected, she slowly limped her way back to the bed, where she pulled up the blankets around her. She curled up on the tin cot as the door opened suddenly. She startled in surprise and stared up to see a woman glaring at her. “Who are you?” Zadie asked quietly.
The woman motioned with her hand to be quiet. “I don’t want you here,” she snapped. “I don’t think you should be here.”
“Then let me go,” Zadie said.
The woman shook her head. “I can’t do that.”
“Then I can’t help you,” Zadie said, the cold and fatigue hitting her again. Just that effort of looking out the window had exhausted her. “I’m hurt. I’m sick, and I’ll die on you in here.”
“And that might be the best.” The woman nodded.
Zadie stared at her. “Are you so heartless?”
“No,” she said, “but I’m a survivor. This is a foolish venture.”
“Do you love him?” Zadie asked with insight.
The woman just glared at her.
Zadie nodded. “Yes, you do. Otherwise you wouldn’t do this.”
“Not this one,” she said. “His brother is my husband.”
“And I’m sorry then. That means your father-in-law is the one in jail. Is he Turkish too?”
Surprise lit the dark depths of the other woman’s gaze. “Yes. You know about that?”
“I understand that’s why your brother-in-law is doing this,” she said, “but I don’t know why holding me makes any difference.”
“Not only won’t it make a difference,” she said, “it shouldn’t make a difference. His father is bad news.”
“So why does he want him free?”
“He doesn’t believe that he is bad news,” she replied sadly.
“Then help me get loose,” Zadie retorted. “Let me go. Otherwise that monster will be free too.”
“I can’t let you go,” the woman responded. “He would know who helped you.”
“So we make it look as if the doctor did it.”
The woman stared at her in surprise.
Zadie shrugged. “Surely that would be easier to do than have you be responsible.”
The woman stared out across the window and shook her head. “No,” she said, “there is no place for you to go.”
“You let me worry about that,” Zadie said slowly, leaning up so that she sat against the back wall, and she studied the woman’s face. “I promise I won’t come back here.”
“No,” the woman said, “you won’t, but you’d send somebody.”
“But I don’t have anybody,” Zadie said. “You know that.”
“Your parents.”
“They are prisoners in their own right,” Zadie said harshly. “I made the mistake of coming to see my mother, who may be very ill.”
The woman stared at her in surprise. “We heard nothing about this. Why didn’t we?”
“It won’t make the news,” Zadie said with a wave of her hand. “You know what that’s like. They don’t want anybody to play on their sympathies.”
“This is true.” She turned abruptly, headed out the door, and called back quietly, “I will think on it,” slamming the door hard behind her.
Zadie sank back on the bed. She’d done what she could; she didn’t think it would be enough, but it was a start. It was actually a chink in their armor. Maybe, just maybe, Zadie could make that work.
*
“Do we have any idea if they snatched her from the property?” Zack asked.
“The satellite only gave us vague details of vehicles coming and going, nothing showing where they snatched her.”
“No tracker anywhere to identify her on the move?”