Back on Solid Ground (5 page)

Stacy shook
her head to clear it.  Her breakfast was churning and she was going to be sick
if she didn’t give her mind a rest.  She decided to lie down for a minute, and
she didn’t wake up until the next morning. 

Stacy woke up
feeling stronger and ready to make a plan.  She decided to go nose around.  Stacy
walked out into the hall and noted that her room was the last door in the long
hallway.  She opened the door directly across the hall from hers and peeked
inside.  It was another bedroom suite, as big as the one she occupied, and
furnished just as nicely.  There was no sign that anyone had been in the room
recently, so she closed the door and went on to the next. 

Bedroom
turned junk room. There were rolled up sleeping bags, camping gear, boxes of
magazines, a dinosaur computer, dust-covered speakers.  It looked like Stacy’s
storage space.  She moved on. 

Linen closet,
everything folded perfectly.  Definitely a woman’s touch. 

She moved
back across the hall and opened the door adjacent to her room.  Another
bedroom, this one with twin beds, and again, no sign of life.  Empty hangers in
the closet; no soap in the bathroom.  Stacy surmised that she must be in a
guest wing of the house that was used infrequently.  It had that cold
unlived-in feeling like the rooms that never get used in a big house.

Stacy passed
the stairs and continued down the hall.  She opened the first door on the right
and entered a large sitting area with leather couches placed around an Oriental
rug.  She froze, realizing that she had just walked into someone’s living
quarters.  There was an office with a computer just off the sitting room, and
further past that she could see what she presumed was the bedroom.  There was
definitely a lived-in aura about the room.  It had a fresh scent, like soap or
maybe after-shave; like someone had just showered and walked through the room. 

Stacy didn’t
think anyone was in the bedroom, but she couldn’t be certain.  She knew she
needed to get out before she got caught, but she was going to check out the
desk before she left.  There could be some clue as to why they had taken her. 
She tiptoed over to the office area and scanned the desktop.  Pencil cup,
stapler, hole punch, note pad.  Nothing relevant.  She pulled out the top
drawer, but it was a junk drawer crammed with pens, scraps of paper,
paperclips, a deck of cards, a Swiss army knife, a screwdriver, and rubber
bands.  Stacy pocketed the army knife and closed the drawer. 

She pulled on
the top right drawer but it wouldn’t budge and neither would the one underneath
it.  They were locked.  She pulled out the middle drawer again, looking for the
key, but stopped cold. 
Footsteps.
  She pushed the drawer back in
without making a sound and looked for someplace to hide. Someone was coming out
of the bedroom.   Stacy crouched down beside the desk and held her breath.

Eli walked
out into the sitting area with a towel wrapped around his waist.  He opened up
a small refrigerator and took out a bottle of orange juice and up-ended it,
then sat on one of the sofas, propping his feet on the coffee table. 

Shit,
thought
Stacy. Her legs were cramping from squatting and she broke into a sweat. 
Good
grief, it looks like he’s about to take a nap!

Eli closed
his eyes and thought about the last 36 hours.  Things had not gone perfectly,
but all in all it had been pretty good.  The girl was a problem.  They never should
have brought her with them.  He thought about the look on Niki’s face when she
slapped him in the kitchen and he laughed out loud.  It was worth the trouble
just to see her torment his brother.  He got up and stretched and walked back
into the bedroom.

Stacy waited
until she no longer heard footsteps, then stood up and shook out her legs.  
She tiptoed back through the sitting area the way she had come and slipped back
out the door into the hall.  Falling against the wall outside, she let out a
huge sigh of relief.  She was mentally drained, but could feel the rush of
excitement running through her body.  She moved across the hall and went for
the next door. 

Stacy cracked
the door and peeked in, listening for any sign of life.  The room was silent but
lived-in.  Someone else’s living quarters.  She looked down the hall to make
sure no one was coming and stepped into the room.  The layout was much the same
as the one across the hall, but the furnishings were different.  The inside
wall was covered with a mirror, making the room look enormous.  This sitting
area was much more colorful than Eli’s.  She wondered if the men chose their
own décor – if the furnishings reflected their personalities – and then she
admonished herself for giving a shit.  There was no separate office in this
suite, but a table set up on a diagonal in the corner apparently served as a
work area.  From a business standpoint, the view out the window would be a
terrible distraction if someone was actually trying to work.  She decided this
must be Jason’s room.

Stacy thumbed
through a stack of stuff on the table, but there was nothing enlightening.  A
couple of old magazines, Thursday’s
San Antonio Express-News
, and the
owner’s manual for some stereo equipment.  She was wasting time, there was
nothing useful.  Stacy turned to leave but something caught her eye.  There was
a jacket draped over a chair.  Her blood started to race again.  She grabbed
the jacket and searched the pockets.  Nothing, nothing, nothing. 
A pistol
. 
Her heart skipped a beat.  She took the 9mm out of the pocket and held it up. 
It was cold and heavy and felt like an old friend.  She made sure the safety
was on, and put it in her pocket.  It weighed down the pants, which were
already too big.  Stacy put the jacket back where she had found it and made a
beeline for the door.  She held her breath as she opened it, and looked down
the hall before stepping out.  Still no sign of life.  Stacy quietly closed the
door behind her and walked quickly back down the hall towards her room.  She
stopped at the stairs to make sure no one was watching, then ran as fast as she
could back to her room. 

Stacy went
into her bathroom and closed the door, then pulled the gun out of her pocket,
and held it up to examine it.  It was a Beretta 92.  She depressed the magazine
release and removed the magazine, then she racked the slide back to make sure
there wasn’t a round in the chamber.  She examined the magazine, verified that
it was a 10-round and that it was fully loaded, then slid it back into the
pistol.  She rechecked the safety, then scanned the room for a place to hide
the weapon. 

Mel
Gibson, Tequila Sunrise
, she thought.  She removed the lid from the toilet
tank and checked inside.
Yuck
.  No good, the parts were too flimsy to
bear the weight of the gun. 
Definitely not under the mattress
.  It
would be the first place they looked when they noticed the gun was missing. 
She decided to hide it in a plant on the balcony, so she wrapped the weapon in
a washcloth and buried it safely out of sight. 

Stacy was
pumped. For the first time since her foiled escape, she had her confidence
back.  Now she needed to search the remaining living areas.  

She left her
room and made her way downstairs.  She knew that the kitchen was to the left,
so she went down a wing to the right.   The first door she opened was an
exercise room, equipped with a treadmill, a stationary bike, a weight machine
with pulleys and some free weights.  The entire outer wall was windows, and the
view was incredible.  There was nothing of use to her so she moved on.

Stacy had
just put her hand on the doorknob of the next room when all of a sudden it
turned in her hand and the door swung open.  It threw her off balance, and she
fell into the room, landing on the floor at someone’s feet. 

“What the
hell!”
exclaimed a startled Niki.  Stacy looked up at him defiantly.  With
dry hair it was much more obvious where he had taken the scissors to it.  “What
do you think you’re doing?” he asked. 

“I’m moving
freely through the house,” she retorted, then added, “I was feeling banished
.
”

Niki was
impressed with her quick response.  He offered his hand to help her up, but
Stacy refused it. 

“In the
future, you are to confine your movement to rooms which are not behind closed
doors,” Niki said harshly.  “Is that understood?” he asked, his green eyes
penetrating.

Stacy got to
her feet and held his stare.  He could be ruthless if he wanted to be.  She
quickly scanned the room before he grabbed her arm roughly to usher her out the
door.  There was a whole wall of bookshelves filled with books.  She wouldn’t
have figured him for a reader.

“Is that
understood?” he repeated louder.

“Yes,” she
said, jerking her arm away, “it’s understood.”  She stepped away from him and
went further into the room but Niki grabbed her by the arm again and pulled her
back towards the door.  She was determined to get a good look at the place
before he booted her out, and he was determined not to let her.

There was a
separate office much like the set-up in Eli’s room, and the computer was on. 
If she could get 30 seconds alone in the room she could send an e-mail to
someone.  She knew that it was going to be tough since she had been caught
snooping.  They would be on their guard now and probably wouldn’t let her out of
their sight.  Plus, Niki was being really mean about finding her there.  She
had taken him for a pushover when he didn’t hit her back after she slapped him,
but she had figured him wrong.  He was cold and mean, and even a little scary. 

“You like to
read?” she said, trying to buy time.

Niki didn’t
fall for it.  He shoved Stacy out the door roughly and closed the door behind
them, then he marched her down the hall, dragging her by her arm until they
reached the bottom of the stairs.  She was struggling to get out of his grasp,
but he was gripping her arm too tightly and she couldn’t get away.  By the time
Niki released her, Stacy was furious.

“Don't you
ever
drag me around like that again!” she yelled, the echo traveling down the
hall and up the stairs.  She rubbed her arm. “Look what you did,” she said
angrily, showing him red marks on her arm in the perfect shape of his fingers. 

“You’ll
live,” he said, unsympathetically.

“You’re a
bully,” she said, and when she didn’t get a rise, she added, “You’re a bully,
who likes to beat up on helpless girls.”

“Well then
let me go rustle up some
helpless
girls because there sure aren’t any
around here,” he spat.
“
Helpless like a
rattlesnake!
” he muttered
under his breath.

Carlos and
Jason had come from the kitchen when they heard Stacy yelling, and Eli was
coming down the stairs. 

“What’s going
on?” Eli asked.

“I caught her
snooping around,” Niki said.

“He
specifically told me I could move freely through the house,” Stacy said.  She
turned to Niki, “Are you going to deny that you said that?” she asked in
disbelief.

Niki could
kick himself for making such a stupid comment.  What in the world had possessed
him to say that?  But he knew what it was.  His reaction to tears had always been
his weakness, and that day had been no exception.  He had made that comment
when the girl was distraught as a means to calm her down. It was certainly not
an open invitation to go snooping around the house.   He had been sympathetic and
she had thrown it back in his face. 

“I think we
have clarified what I meant by that,” he said, glaring at Stacy, enunciating
each word.

Stacy could
tell that Niki was furious, and as much as she would have loved to egg him on,
she knew when to stop.  There was no point in making him any more angry with
her than he already was.  Her mom always said you catch more flies with honey
than vinegar, so she decided to change tacks.

“I’m sorry,”
Stacy said, trying to sound innocent. “I was just looking around.  The house is
so beautiful.  I really thought that you said it was okay,” she said, as
convincingly as she could. Stacy rubbed her arm to make sure the other three
saw where Niki had manhandled her, but none of them seemed to care. 

“I’ll escort
you back to your room,” he said coldly.

“I don’t much
care for your escort service,” she retorted, unable to keep up the charade. 
She rubbed her arm again where bruises were already beginning to take shape.
“Can I at least get something to eat before you make me go back to that
room
?”
she asked.

“You make it
sound like a jail cell,” Eli said, baiting her.

“Well, do you
have a better name for it?” she said, shooting spears with her eyes.  “I
am
a prisoner here, am I not?” she said in as nasty a tone as she could muster. 
She was still mad about her hair, and just looking at Eli pissed her off.  She
should have slapped him when she had the chance. 

He knew what
she was thinking: “Hey, you look kind of like Raggedy Anne,” Eli said, and he
and Niki laughed out loud.

Stacy turned
on Jason.  “Did you tell him that?” she asked angrily.

Jason held
his hands up. “He came up with it all on his own,” he said, unable to stifle a
smile.

Stacy glared
from one to the other and it dawned on her that Eli and Niki had to be
brothers.  Their hair and eyes were different, but the shape of their face and
their bone structure were identical. “Well doesn’t it just figure that the two
of you would be
brothers
. God, your poor mother.” 

Niki and Eli
were too busy laughing to respond. 

Don’t get
mad, get even,
Stacy thought.  “Well, can I get something to eat or not?”
she said.