Riptide

she sat up and swung her legs off
    the bed.
    "You try anything and I'll put a knife into your leg, high up on
    your thigh. I know just the place that won't show much, but the
    pain will make you wish you were dead it's so bad. There wouldn't
    be hardly any blood at all. Yeah, forget about skinning your arm.
    Don't try to see me, Rebecca, or I'll have to kill you right now, and
    that's the end of it."
    She didn't know how she managed to walk, but she did. Then as
    the strength came back to her feet and legs, she wanted to run, run
    so fast she'd be a blur and he'd never catch her, never, never.
    But she didn't, of course.
    The bathroom was just off the bedroom. He'd removed the
    doorknob. When she was through, she paused to look at herself in
    the mirror. She looked pale and drawn and gaunt, her hair tangled
    around her head and down to her shoulders. She looked vague and on the edge, like a woman who had been drugged, knew it, and
    also realized, at last, that she might very well die.

"Come out now, Rebecca. I know you're through. Come out or
    you'll regret it."
    "I just got here. Give me some time."
    There was nothing in the bathroom to use as a weapon, nothing
    at all. He'd even removed the towel racks, cleared everything from
    beneath the sink. Nothing.
    "Just a moment," she called out. She raced back to the toilet and
    fell onto her knees. It was old. If the big screw that held the toilet
    down had ever had a cap on it, it was long gone. She tried to twist
    it, and to her utter surprise, it actually moved, just a bit. It was
    thick, the grooves deep and sharp. She was choking, sobbing deep
    in her throat, praying.
    She heard him, just outside the door. Was he touching the door?
    Was he going to push it inward? Oh, Jesus. "Just a second," she
    yelled. "I'm not feeling too well. That drug you shot into me, it's
    making me nauseous. Give me just another minute. I don't want to
    vomit all over myself." Turn, damn you, turn. Finally, finally, it came
    free in her hand. It was thick, about an inch and a half long, deeply
    grooved, and those grooves were sharp. What to do with it? Where
    to hide it?
    "I'm coming," she called out as she gently pulled some thread
    loose in the hem of her nightgown. "I feel a bit better. I just don't
    want to vomit, particularly if you're going to tie my hands again."
    If he'd been standing by the bathroom door, he wasn't now. He
    was back in the shadows when she came out. She couldn't make
    out a thing about him. He said, his voice deep, ageless, "Lie back
    down on the bed."
    She did.
    He didn't tie her hands over her head.
    "Don't move."
    She felt the sting in her left arm, right above her elbow again,

before she could even react. "Coward," she said, her voice already
    becoming slurred.
    "Filthy coward."
    She heard him laugh. And again, he licked her, her ear this time,
    his tongue slow, lapping, and she wanted to gag, but she didn't because
    her mind was beginning to float now, and it was easy and
    smooth and the fear disappeared as she just fell away from herself.
    No time, she thought, as what she was and what she thought
    were slipping away, like grains of sand scattering in a wind. No
    time, no time to stab him with that screw. No time to ask him
    again if he was this Krimakov who'd been cremated. No time for
    anything.

    Adam stood there in her open bedroom doorway. She was gone,
    simply gone. "No," he said, shaking his head. "No. Oh God, no!
    Savich!"
    But she was gone, no sign of her, nothing at all.
    It was Sherlock who said as she sipped a cup of black coffee, "He
    used the tear gas as a diversion. While we were all outside looking
    for him, he simply slipped into the house and hid in Becca's bedroom
    closet. Then he probably drugged her. How did he get her
    out? Our guys were back in position by the time we came back inside.
    Oh, no, get everyone together! We weren't exactly organized
    when we were looking for him outside. Dillon, who was assigned
    to the back of the house?"
    "Jesus,"Adam said. "No, damnation, no!"
    They found Chuck Ainsley in the bushes twenty feet from the
    back of the house. He wasn't dead. He'd been struck down from
    behind, bound and gagged. When they peeled the tape off his mouth, he said, "I let him creep up on me. I didn't hear a thing. He

was fast, too fast. Oh God, what the hell happened? Is everyone all
    right?"
    Savich said matter-of-factly, "He took Becca. Thank God you're
    not dead. I wonder why he didn't just slit your throat, Chuck?