Page 32 of Booked for Kidnapping

Even touching the section of wall proved to be problematic. Much like colliding into a brick wall at a run, the illusions thwarted me.

It didn’t take long for me to accept the truth: unless I could see the window—and what was beyond it—it remained out of reach as an escape option. In theory, I could attempt to bust out with my eyes closed, but I had no way of knowing if I was, in actuality, in a basement or somewhere much higher.

I’d fought too hard to live to die being stupid and reckless.

To complicate matters, once I tried to bust out, I expected I would only have one chance to make a break for freedom.

I lost track of time, an inevitability considering how often my captors knocked me out in order to access my prison, bring meals, and make certain I wouldn’t kick the bucket on them. At some point, one of them had thought to check my foot—or bring in an accomplice to check it.

My meals began including pills I recognized as antibiotics and a potent painkiller. The painkiller, a welcome relief when I couldn’t defeat the infection, slaughtered my concentration, making my plans to further investigate a way out an impossibility rather than a mere challenge.

While I’d kept the infection from worsening, I hadn’t won the battle. Every time I drained the infection away, it came back with a vengeance, something I blamed on stress.

From the day of the accident that’d almost killed me, pain had been a constant, but the infection in my foot drove me to the limits of my tolerance. I suspected being busy had helped me cope.

Working in the library gave me purpose. I’d never handled sitting around doing nothing well, and after reading every book I’d been offered five times over, I wanted to scream from general frustration, start unraveling the blankets so I could braid with the threads, so I could do something with my hands, and otherwise escape the monotony of sitting and waiting.

Cabin fever sucked.

I gave credit where credit was due, however: whoever had snatched me wanted to keep me alive. Every now and then, my nest was replaced with clean sheets, blankets, and pillows, and more books would appear to keep me company. After at least twenty-one doses of the first antibiotic, the pill changed to a new one I hadn’t seen before, a monster likely meant for horses rather than people.

I assumed the last check had pissed off my captors as much as it pissed me off, and they wanted to try a new tactic to rid me of the infection determined to stick around. I wished them the best of luck conquering what I couldn’t.

My ongoing illness served to remind me magic couldn’t do anything, nature had a rather annoying tendency to thwart those who attempted to circumvent its intent, and I would never be free of the past that’d taken so much from me.

Stupid foot. Stupid me for fighting so hard to keep my stupid foot.

Prosthetics existed, and thanks to my relationship with the Hampton family, I could even get a good one. However, I refused to give up on my battered foot quite yet.

I hadn’t come so far to quit so close to the finish line.

The pill packed a punch, reducing my coherent time between meals to a bath and a few minutes with a book before I returned back to sleep, unable to muster enough energy to manage anything else. If the cameras in the upper corners recorded me, my captors got a show of me dragging my ass across the floor, where I slithered into the bathroom rather than walk like a dignified person.

I’d worry about my dignity and pride another day, when I could be bothered with hopping around on one foot.

With no ability to keep track of time, I had no idea how long I spent in a drugged daze. At one point, someone stole away my medical boot and replaced it with a plaster cast with a printed warning note to avoid getting it wet and that it would provide support and could bear my weight.

I lost my chance to bathe, attempting to puzzle out what had been done with my foot and why they’d replaced my boot with a cast. Worse, the painkiller or antibiotic scrambled my magic enough I couldn’t even tell if I had an infection.

Unfortunately for me, the piece of paper proved ineffective for picking a handcuff, even when I rolled it into a tight tube. The attempt amused me despite my awareness I could strip off the fluff on the cuff and pull my hand out with little issue.

Maybe the camera would capture my hope for escape and remind them that, even when drugged, I put thought into how to acquire my freedom.

Somehow, I would.

Somehow.

EIGHT

I’d heard the lecture a few too many times.

When I finally escaped my captors and made a run—or I hobbled—for freedom, I would go out of my way to avoid ever being sedated again. It was one thing to wake up with a clean nest and a meal, but it was another to discover somebody had seriously fucked around with my foot without my permission.

I wanted to scream and yell at the bastards for taking away my cast, but I put a lid on my complaints for one simple reason.

Somehow, I had a foot, and it was a mostly intact one. When nature called enough I was forced to make the journey to the bathroom with my chain in tow, I got up to one foot with the help of the pipes.

A few new scars indicated somebody had gotten feisty with my abused right foot. The pale lines, on a part of my foot my doctors typically avoided for whatever reason, led me to believe somebody had decided to try something new. The lack of a boot or a cast terrified me.