A Time to Run by J.M. Peace

directed Vanessa. She started clicking and tapping, the aerial view of the house disappearing behind another screen.
    â€˜Have you got enough for a search warrant?’ Bill asked.
    Janine shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. All we’ve got so far is a girl running late for work, not answering her phone. I’m waiting on the results of the phone triangulation. That may help. Also, CCTV from the pub might show us something. We should be able to confirm exactly what time she left. We’ll also be able to see if she walked out alone. I don’t know how far out the front of the pub the footage extends. If we’re lucky, it might go as far as the road.’
    â€˜OK, get onto the footage. See if someone can view it today, even if they can’t burn us a copy,’ Bill asked.
    Janine looked across to Jake. He was leaning in to the computer screen in what appeared to be a ploy to get closer to Vanessa. ‘There’s a job for you, Jake,’ she said.
    Saturday 10:53 am
    Sammi’s legs were on autopilot, tapping out a steady jog, but her mind was in overdrive. This was not the way it would end for her, alone in the forest with some pasty-faced city-slicker barman. She must outsmart him; there had to be a way to get out of this.
    Was there something she could say to make him spare her? Clearly pleading for mercy would be a waste of breath.
    What was his motivation?
    Power?
    Hatred?
    What could she offer him that met those needs and overrode his desire to kill her?
    Sammi turned the concepts over in her head, but wasn’t sure there was an answer. She once heard a story of two men who had abducted two teenage boys. As the first boy was being killed, the second boy pretended to side with the killers against his friend. The killers spared him, believing his instant conversion from victim to partner in crime.
    How could she put herself on his side, convince him she was evil too? Should she offer him sex, say she found this game exciting and titillating? Pretend she wanted to do it again, that she wanted to become his girlfriend so she could play sadistic games with him on a regular basis? Would he want to believe this, that there was a woman who found his domination sexy?
    Sammi didn’t think sex was his chief motivator. It was more about power and control. Could she offer to help trap someone more prestigious or exciting than herself? Could she say she knew someone famous and would deliver that woman to him in exchange for her own life? Had she slipped that low, to try to bargain with a psychopath?
    Everything seemed futile. Sammi felt certain when the barman was close enough, she would be so terrified that the powers of speech and logic would probably desert her.
    Sammi knew from her training how the mind and body could react in extreme situations and she’d experienced firsthand some of the more mild symptoms. The first time she had encountered a man armed with a knife she had stammered so badly while calling to him to put it down, that he had called back ‘What?’. One time after a violent arrest, her hands had been shaking so badly that she’d kept dropping the tiny handcuff key even after they’d reached the watchhouse.
    So there was likely to be a loss of fine motor skills, then there might be auditory exclusion, where she wouldn’t register what was said to her. She may have memory lapse, confusion, detachment or withdrawal from the situation. On the other hand, she may also have superhuman strength, or experience everything in slow motion, her brain running double time to process all her options. She had to consider all eventualities.
    One thing was certain. Her life depended on her playing it right.
    Saturday 11:08 am
    Janine’s phone rang. It was Pam from Intel on the other end.
    â€˜I’ve got the results for Sammi’s phone,’ she said. ‘The last outgoing call was 4:22 pm on Friday. I checked the number. That call was to a number