An Eye for an Eye Read Online Free PDF Page B

cry but the tape muffled it and made it no more than a whimper. And now she was fully conscious.
    And now she was afraid.
    She was down on the floor in the back seat of a car and the smell she smelled was dust and matting and grease and oily metal, a car smell, but not her car. The car was not moving. It was parked somewhere—inside, she thought—and she seemed to be alone in it. There was a blanket over her, not quite covering her face. It was musty and thin. She was terribly cold. Her face and head throbbed. She wondered if her jaw was broken. She started to cry, but she was too afraid for that, too deeply in trouble. The tears froze in her before they got fairly started.
    She tried again to move, to get up and see where she was and whether there was any hope of getting away. But her hands had been tied some way to her ankles behind her so that she was perfectly helpless. The tape on her mouth shut off a good deal of breath. She was exhausted in a very few minutes and the pain in her face was making her sick. She lay still. Perhaps for a little while she fainted. She murmured Ben’s name over and over, and she thought, He’ll be so frightened, I’ve got to get away—
    It was very strange to be where she was and not to know why.
    She tried to remember the man. But she had not paid much attention to him. He was just a man. Tall, coarse-looking, blondish. A type, but she hadn’t noticed any details. She was sure she had never seen him before. Why would he do such a thing? Was he crazy, a maniac?
    Rape.
    Was that what he wanted? Had he already done it, while she was unconscious?
    In a panic of apprehension and disgust she took stock of her person as well as she could. She was all right. Her clothing wasn’t even disarranged. He hadn’t touched her, except to tie her up.
    Was he saving her for later when she would be wide awake, knowing fully what went on?
    Oh God, let me get out of here. Please let me get out.
    Through the window of the car she could, by twisting her head around, see the upper part of a plank wall. The car was in some land of a shed, probably an old garage. Light came in through the cracks. It was still daytime, then. She thought if she could only make a noise someone might hear her and come. She tried for a while to work the tape off her mouth by rubbing her head against the floor, but it was no use. She tried shouting anyway, but that was no use either. She tried again to get her legs and arms apart. She tried until the effort became a madness, a fury, a blind hysterical striving that lost all meaning and then subsided to a feeble twitching and finally to quiescence.
    Al Guthrie came and looked at her during this period but she didn’t know it. He made sure his tapes and cords were holding and went away again.
    When Carolyn looked for the second time at the cracks of the plank wall the light had dimmed and she knew that it was late in the afternoon. About now she would be driving into town to get Ben. He would wait for her, and wait—
    Poor Ben.
    She did not fight her bonds again. She understood that she was not going to get free of this particular trap until the man who had put her here came and took her out, for whatever reason he might have.
    She waited, lying small, lying still, like a newly caught animal, trying not to think. Not about herself and what might be going to happen to her. Not about Ben, dear beloved Ben who would be out of his mind with worry. Not about anything. Just waiting.
    The light got fainter and fainter and disappeared. It was very quiet. She thought there were sounds of cars and voices and doors slamming, infrequent and far away, but enough so that she believed she was not in the country. Occasionally, much farther off, she could hear train whistles. One thing she was sure of. They could not have come very far from Woodley.
    She lay in the pitch-dark and waited. Calm. Quite calm. I ought to be screaming and raving with fright, she thought. Why am I lying here like this so