High-Heeled Alibi. Sydney Ryan

      Mick stepped back. “You’ve got one minute. I’ll be right outside.”

      He rounded the door, pulling it half-closed behind him. She waited for it to close totally.

      It didn’t.

      “You’re not going to close the door?”

      “Fifty seconds.” His shoulder and arm, the gun dangling in his hand, were visible at the door’s edge.

      “What do you think I’m going to do?” She pulled down her stockings, panties. “Hang myself from the shower?”

      “Forty-five seconds.”

      “Pull out the .44 I keep in the back of the toilet tank?”

      “Thirty-five seconds.”

      “You’re not making this any easier.” She rattled the toilet paper holder, ripped off a length.

      “Thirty seconds.”

      She flushed, pulled up her panties, adjusted her stockings, twisted the hot and cold water faucets all the way open.

      “Ten seconds.”

      “I’m washing my hands,” she yelled back.

      “Five, four…”

      The water stopped. “I’m drying my hands.”

      “Three, two…” The door started to swing open.

      “One,” Bitsy yelled, aimed the value-size can of extra-hold hair spray at Mick’s face and sprayed full force into his surprised blue eyes. She heard a guttural gurgle as she pushed past him. His hands reached for her but, blinded, he only found a fistful of the hairpiece she’d added to last night’s costume. She jerked her head hard as he yanked the opposite way, and the hairpiece ripped loose. She ran. She was down the hall, into the kitchen when he came behind her, spewing passionate oaths aimed at her and her children and her children’s children. She heard him hit something hard and curse loudly. She looked frantically for her car keys but didn’t see them on the table or counters. She was running out of time. Undoing the lock on the side door, she dashed out, slamming the door behind her. Freedom was her wildly delicious, delirious last thought…till she ran head-on into a mountainous, unmoving mass. She bounced back onto the concrete floor and was knocked out cold.

      SHE WAS BEING HOISTED UP under the armpits when she came to. In front of her in her garage stood an angular man with a thin face and hatchet features, pointing a gun casually at the left side of her chest where her heart pounded crazily. Twice in one day. Go figure.

      Bitsy jumped as someone behind her wrenched her arms together and bound her wrists with a hard tie that sliced into her skin. She whipped her head around and found the no-necked brick wall that had stopped her escape. She twisted her head farther and saw the razor-thin wire circling her wrists. Any attempts to escape its hold would only result in slicing through flesh, arteries, veins.

      She turned back to the front. Her gaze careened around the garage. She saw nothing of the blue-eyed, charming-smile son of a bitch who’d gotten her into this mess in the first place.

      Was Mick dead? The thought hit her harder than the mass of muscle behind her. Had the man with the cold fish eyes in front of her killed him with the gun now holding her hostage?

      “Let’s go.” The man gestured with the gun.

      Holding her bound wrists, the gorilla nudged her forward. Control, Bitsy repeated to herself as she was led to a gray BMW. Stay in control. She frantically searched for self-defense techniques. Look for an advantage. The creep behind her was so close, she could feel his erection pressing into her. Her wrists were bound behind her back, but her feet were free.

      The thug gripping her arms released one to open the car door. As he pushed her in, she aimed her spiked heels at his groin and got off a couple good shots to his shins. He let out a yelp as he shoved her down into the backseat.

      “You wanna play rough?” He came at her, his shaved head ducking her flailing feet. His hand came up, struck her hard once, twice. Her head whipped right and left. Her brain rattled.

      “Cut out the social niceties,” the other man growled as he slid into the driver’s seat. “There’ll be plenty of time for that later.” He looked over his shoulder and gave Bitsy a sickly grin that soured her stomach.

      The strong arms shoved Bitsy back into the seat, grabbed her ankles with one hand and circled them with the thin wire. She gingerly prodded with her tongue several teeth loosened by the blows.

      “There, honey.” The ape leaned over her, his thick lips rolled back from his pale-pink gums. The moist smell of male sweat and cigarettes overwhelmed her. “This is only the beginning. Whatever god you believe in, I’ll have you screaming for him before I’m done with you.”

      She screwed up her lips and spat at him. Blood colored the saliva that dripped down his cheek.

      The fist that hit her square in the face and knocked her out cold again was almost a relief.

      When she came to, she was uncertain how much time had passed, but didn’t think much. The blood was still damp on her skin, the pain fresh where the fist had met her face. The ache in her shoulders had not yet escalated from a throb, but her wrists and ankles burned where the wire cut into the thin skin.

      She kept her eyes closed, hoping the cover of unconsciousness would give her captors a false sense of security, perhaps cause them to talk more freely, reveal something useful. Something that could save her.

      The car was moving fast. There was no slowing down for intersections or ninety-degree turns. They must be on the highway.

      “Is she all right?” she heard the driver ask.

      The seat shifted as the heavy man guarding her in the back leaned toward her. She forced her body to involuntarily tip toward the man’s weight. Fresh anger rose inside her as his hateful odor filled her nostrils. She fought to keep her breathing steady.

      “She’s breathing,” the man reported in a bored voice.

      A fingertip scraped down Bitsy’s left breast. Her entire body stiffened.

      “She’s awake.”

      She opened her eyes. An inch away was the man’s oily smile.

      “Rise and shine, sweetheart.”

      She instructed him to perform a technically physically impossible act on himself.

      The driver gave a pitchy laugh. A savage deadness moved into the other man’s eyes, made even eerier by the low, amused rumble that rose from him. The tip of his tongue wet his lips as he moved in even closer. “Soon, sugar pie. And thanks to you, it’ll be even sweeter.” He gave her breast a squeeze, blatant satisfaction filling his fleshy features as he leaned back and lit a cigarette.