Page 35 of Booked for Kidnapping

After reading my book for a while longer, I went to work dismantling the arches forming the roof, taking a vicious delight in creating literary destruction before I began working on my next challenge, which involved creating a tiered version of my castle, which would put the open gap in my arch roughly where I’d find a window. Figuring out how to create a shield from the cameras tested me, and I ultimately used a stack of books to pin a blanket in place before crawling back inside, creating a staircase of books to where I wanted to check the wall, and taking frequent breaks to read in case anyone was monitoring me.

When I confirmed my eyes didn’t play tricks on me thanks to a strong illusionist working magic on me, I dismantled my castle, moved it to a new location, and repeated the process, making a new design each time in the hopes my captors would realize I ventured perilously close to joining the ranks of the insane due to cabin fever.

Sometimes, I set up my castle away from the walls to help trick anyone who might be watching. Sometimes, I built something other than a castle in a futile attempt to alleviate the brutal crush of boredom. Sometimes, I abandoned my castles halfway through building them, retreating to my nest to take a nap.

Often, I forgot to eat anything beyond the first meal after I woke from my gas-induced slumber. I knew better, but I struggled enough with finding the motivation to seek out some route of escape. I blamed my faltering common sense, which struggled to survive in the onslaught of relentless monotony.

Time lost meaning sometime after beginning my quest to find a route of escape, but my castle-building scheme bore results. Like in the bathroom, the window featured plenty of space for me to crawl through. Unlike in the bathroom, once I penetrated the illusion’s barrier, the magic failed to thwart me. I could understand why. Without constant surveillance in the bathroom, more magic and trickery was required to keep me in place.

I praised myself for my common sense, as my window was positioned on the third floor, which would make an uncontrolled tumble a dangerous and likely lethal affair. Fortunately for me, the house was a mix of brick and stone, offering footholds for the industrious to use during an escape. Better yet, I spotted no signs of an alarm system.

I could open the window, slide out, and make my break for freedom. Even better, I would only have to cross some twenty feet of neatly trimmed grass to reach the security of the woods. In bad news, I couldn’t spot another house anywhere in sight, which led me to believe I’d been either taken to the country or to somewhere like the Hamptons, where the wealthy could have access to excellent restaurant food while using cleverly placed trees and manmade forests to guard their slice of heaven within spitting distance of New York City.

To play to my captor’s expectations, I emerged from my latest marvel of book architecture, investigated the room in general, took a bath, peeked in the cooler but opted to wait for one more hot meal before staging a break for freedom.

With a little luck, nobody would believe I had found anything, and I’d retreat with a book to the window, crawl inside my book fort, and stage the appearance of taking a nap, something I tended to do within my creations.

All that was left to do was wait.

I took three baths, built a moat for my latest castle using books with blue covers, and added two towers before my wait bore fruit. As always, the sedatives left me foggy after I woke up, but I ate, investigated the cooler as usual to discover the regular assortment of sandwich fixings. I wrinkled my nose, determining from the amount of ice, slices of bread, and general condiments, they expected me to go at least six or seven meals—at least. I could probably make the food stretch for four or five days if needed.

I closed the cooler, shoved it in a corner, and took yet another bath to maintain the illusion I meant to adhere to my regular patterns. Assuming someone watched me, they would see me do as always. Once cleaned, I rummaged through the offered clothes, picked a pair of jeans, and dressed in one of the wraps, picking a thicker material in the hopes I wouldn’t freeze to death. The outdoors hadn’t looked like fall or winter, but late spring could pack some nasty surprises.

Until I staged my escape, I wouldn’t know.

I picked the sneakers as my footwear of choice, hoping they’d have better grip than the thin-soled flats. With no other reasons to delay, I retreated into the castle, set the stage so anyone watching would believe I’d settled in for a nap or to read, and targeted my next obstacle: the handcuffs.

As suspected, once I peeled away the fluffy material, which had been sewn closed with loose stitches, my hand slipped free of the metal. I scraped a little skin off, which I considered a victory, all things considered.

Aware there might be an alarm system I couldn’t see, I pawed at the frame in search of the small boxes that detected if a window opened, finding nothing. I tested the latch, which opened with no resistance. Holding my breath, I lifted the window up.

It slid up, and all remained quiet.

The screen popped out with little effort, and I eased it against the wall, so once outside, I could finagle it back into place, not perfect, but enough to trick anyone who might glance up and expect to see a screen in place. The trick would be crawling out the window without knocking over my castle or revealing I intended to leave the house. Had the window been smaller, I doubted I’d be able to manage, but I could, assuming I stuck my head and part of my shoulder out first, then eased my leg through, better positioned myself, and scooted out without tumbling to a premature demise.

The last time I’d tried a stunt so brazen and stupid, I’d been Bradley’s bodyguard rather than his future wife, and I questioned if he’d still want me to be his wife once he learned I’d escaped out a window in a rather precarious fashion.

My right foot complained in a low-grade ache I dare use it to do something as reckless as escape from a third-story window, but as the ache fell far short of my criteria for pain and actual injury, I clacked my teeth together, resisted the urge to curse, and jammed my toes into the cracks between the brick until I could stay balanced with the help of one hand or my elbow, while I strained to position the screen back into place. I discovered a tab on each side, which gave me the leverage needed to cram it into the space.

Something magnetic at the top of the window helped secure the damned thing into place, and with a pull of each tab, I managed to restore the screen into its rightful place.

“Damn,” I whispered, raising a brow at the little trick the homeowner had done to keep bugs out of their home. Later, I would thank the assholes for their nice house design. I’d also steal the hack and make sure the bugs stayed out, although I’d use stronger magnets and the screen version of Fort Knox. In New York, cockroaches could fly.

I could see one of those bastards taking the top of the screen out with the current magnet.

With one obstacle out of the way, I adjusted my hold so I wouldn’t smash my fingers between sill and frame, strained to reach up, and slid the window closed, wincing at the thump. To my delight, the bounce of the wood against the sill jarred the latch into the locked position.

Before my luck could change, I secured a hold on the window’s frame and began the tedious process of easing my left foot down to find a lower foot hold. Once I found one, I lowered my right hand, found a brick sticking out farther than its neighbors, and gripped it. Fortunately for my nerves, the place seemed to use actual brick in the construction rather than a flimsy veneer.

A veneer might have sheared away from the actual building under my weight, which would have ruined my day in a hurry.

When the brick turned to stone, my job became easier, as the designer had opted for a textured surface offering me a lot of hand and foot holds. I slid down the wall, landed on the ground on my left foot to spare testing my right, and headed for the trees.

Rather than attempt to run, I strolled over as though I belonged there, slid around the first sizable tree I encountered and let out a breath before staying still and waiting for any sign of the house stirring after my escape. I counted my breaths until I reached five hundred before I peeked around the trunk.

The house remained still and quiet. If I hadn’t known better, I would’ve believed the place to be owned by some couple with a kid or two. From what I could see in through the windows, the owners appreciated rustic living.

Instead of a frame of books and darkness, the window I’d crawled through appeared to be in some sort of office or study, with gauzy white curtains and a lamp offering light. Sometime much later, after I located the nearest public library, figured out the date, recovered from the shock of my long-term captivity, and made a game plan, I would appreciate the amount of effort someone had put in containing me.