I'm strapped down so tight, I can't move an inch

"I don't know. I haven't opened my eyes yet. My eyelids feel like lead. Hold the line a minute."

"'Hold the line'? I was woozier than I thought. I concentrated hard, took several deep breaths and dumped adrenalin into my bloodstream to try to neutralize the drug. In books, everyone wakes up from being drugged with a bad headache. I seemed to have a more considerate kidnapper. Whatever he used left me with only a dopey feeling and a bad taste on the back of my tongue. While I concentrated, the fog parted and the fuzziness faded. Soon, I felt able to peek out at the world and see what was going on.

From the moment I opened my eyes, I knew I was in deep shit. The wooden beams, the rock walls, the glowing brazier, the smell of charcoal, hot iron, stale sweat and other, more disgusting things; all of this told me that I was in the hands of someone truly dedicated to his hobby. What kind of person builds his own medieval torture chamber? I was afraid the answer to that was obvious �� the kind of person who is really into torturing people.

"Where are you?" Neeka asked.

"In a dungeon, as far as I can tell. A very authentic-looking one, too. It's got rock walls and torches and there's a big iron thing with hot coals and what looks like branding irons in it. Where are you?"

"Riding around the park, looking for you. I can't get a fix. You could be anywhere."

"In an hour, he could have taken me just about anyplace."

"Maybe not. You faded out when I got more than a mile away from the park. You're probably still in the area. He wouldn't risk carrying his victims very far, would he? I bet you aren't more than a few blocks away from where he grabbed you. Can you move? Can you get out?"

I tried to sit up. I tried to raise my arms. I tried to lift my legs. It was all a no-go. I could move my hands and feet, but not my arms or legs. I could raise my head, but I could not sit up because there was a wide strap across my upper chest and shoulders. I felt another one across my hips and there seemed to be one on each thigh and each calf and both my upper and lower arms. I was pinned very effectively to what felt like a metal examining table. There was worse news, however.

"Neeka? I'm naked. He took my clothes. I can lift my head, but that's about it. It feels like I'm strapped down on a big metal table. I can just see the edge of it. It looks like it's made in the outline of a person."

"Is he there?"

"Not at the moment. I can't see behind me, but I don't hear anything but the fire burning in the brazier. You might look for the smoke. With all the fire, it's pretty warm in here. It feels like being at the beach in July."

"Can you get free?"

I tried. I tried very hard and I tried harder than that, but I got nowhere. The straps looked like the nylon webbing stuff that seatbelts are made of; only these were at least six inches wide. Regular seat belts are made to hold against thousands of pounds of pull. These straps didn't even need to be very strong, because I could not get any leverage to push or pull against them. It seemed like the restraints were there as much to keep me from hurting myself as I struggled as to keep me from getting free. I tried to decide what that implied about what was going to happen to me, but I was still to groggy from the drug to think clearly.

"No. I'm strapped down so tight, I can't move an inch."

"Do you want me to call for help?"

I thought about it. Help would be nice. Rescue would be wonderful. For a moment, I indulged in the luxury of hope. Then, the reality of my situation sunk in.

"No. Unless we can figure out where I am, it would be useless. Remember, they've searched before and found nothing. He's been at this for long enough to feel safe and maybe he's so well hidden that we'd have to turn the whole city upside down to find him, but maybe he has also gotten complacent. Maybe he'll make a mistake and I can get free. I'm OK so far. Let's just wait."

"OK, it's your call. I'm going to park near where you were when he attacked you. I'll be ready if you need me."

"Thanks." It was with a great amount of reluctance that I cut off our mental contact. But I knew that my best chance of getting out of this alive would be to focus completely on my situation and exclude any outside distractions. Neeka understood this too, and while I was certain she listened in to what I was thinking, she kept perfectly quiet so as not to distract me.

I experimented by trying to move in various directions to see if there was any slack that I could exploit. The table shifted slightly as I struggled. It seemed to be hinged in various places to allow it to bend and the legs to pivot independently, but I could shift it only a fraction of an inch in any direction. Whoever built it had gone to a lot of trouble and taken his time doing it. This guy was very detail-oriented.

I tried twisting my head around to see more of the room. There were wooden trestle tables with what looked like tools on them. There were also boxes and bins. A row of pegs on the wall held an assortment of whips in various lengths and types. I hoped that those were just set dressing, like I hoped the brazier of hot coals with its cluster of metal rods sticking out the sides was also just a prop. With my head turned as far as I could get it, I noticed that there was a big bellows-thing on the floor under the metal brazier. It looked like it could be operated by foot to blow more air into the glowing bed of coals. Apparently red-hot wasn't good enough for this guy. He needed things hotter; and that was another bit of information that I could have gone without knowing.

As much as this place looked like a movie set, I kept remembering that whoever built it was not into play-acting. He had done some very real and very nasty things to some very unlucky girls, and now it looked like I was going to find out for myself just what those nasty things were.

If this were a movie, that would have been the bad guy's cue to come into the room. This wasn't a movie, however, and I had a long time to wait. A knot of fear grew in the pit of my stomach until it threatened to crawl up my throat and choke me. I started breathing so hard I almost hyperventilated myself into a faint. With a certain amount of difficulty, I got control of that before I passed out.

It came to me that maybe I wasn't as smart or as brave or as strong as I thought I was. I had fallen into the same trap as every other girl this guy had captured and now I was stuck on his working table, waiting like a fly in a spider's web for him to come along and devour me. Neeka was right. I had gotten cocky. I had lost much of the fear of things that I should have stayed afraid of and now that looked like it might just be a fatal mistake. The thought that I might die in this awful place scared me almost as much as the fear of being seriously hurt by some lunatic and I started hyperventilating again.

While I was working to control my breathing, I became aware of my heartbeat. It sounded like a drumbeat inside my head. The more I listened to it, the louder and faster it got until I felt that my heart would explode in my chest. That brought on another bout of paralyzing fear, since I knew I was quite capable of doing things to myself that I might not be able to undo before it killed me. That was humiliating. If my captor didn't do me in, I might let my own fear do it for him.

The understanding that I was falling victim to my own psychosomatic reactions was a nice intellectual victory, but I still had to fight to regain physical control. Every time I thought I had managed to get on top of things, something else distracted me. The sound of the coals cracking and metal popping startled me each time it happened. I imagined that I heard things crawling and slithering around me, just out of my sight. The flickering light from the torches made everything in the room seem to move and I jerked my head left and right, expecting to catch something in the act of creeping up on me.