wriggled around for a time until she was able to free her hands.
Jess instantly reached around and attempted to pull the sock from her mouth, but she couldn’t get to it. The duct tape was wrapped tightly around her head and she couldn’t find the end. Jess could breathe and figured the mouth restraint could wait.
She began walking around the room, bumping into odds and ends. When she bumped into what she thought was a desk, she felt around for drawers and found a middle drawer filled with office supplies. She grabbed a pen and began trying to poke a hole through the edge of the tape that was wrapped around her head. She knew that would give a starting point from which to tear the tape. Her attempt was short-lived as she heard a metal on metal sound, resembling a lock being unfastened, from around the corner. A flood of light came pouring into the room from an opened door, revealing solid stone basement walls, floor joists on the ceiling, and barred and blackened-out windows.
Jess ran toward the light, which was around the corner. The first thing she heard was a man’s voice. Jess could see the light was coming from an opened door at the top of a staircase. She heard a man talking as she ran to the side of the stairs and into the shadows.
The stairwell was an open design, poorly made without a wall or railing. Jess still had a gag in her mouth as she prepared the pen. She took the cap off, revealing a ballpoint tip, which was sharper than the cap. She fixed it in her hand with the point of the pen facing down. Jess was preparing to hammer strike her captor using the pen as a shank.
“All right, all right! Calm down, Thomas!” the man yelled to somebody upstairs.
“Geesh, you guys are pushy,” he said as he started descending the stairs.
Jess recognized the voice. It was Scott, the annoying guy from Gorham. Realizing now that she had been suckered, she lay in wait.
Another voice came whipping to the doorway at the top of the staircase. “You had better get your act together before you end up dead, like the others,” the male voice said as the door slammed shut, leaving Scott alone in the dark.
Jess was in the dark again, but she knew her night vision was better than Scott’s. She was creeping around from behind the stairs and into line of sight of Scott. He could not see her and had his hands out in front of him. Scott was walking toward her, feeling for the light switch, which was hanging from the ceiling not too far from his location.
“How you doing down here?” Scott asked. “Are you awake yet? The plan wasn’t to take any prisoners, originally, but when I saw you, I had to have you. Hot chicks are hard to find these days.”
The man was inches away from the hanging pull string that would turn on the basement light. Jess had to act now while she had the advantage. She stood up and backed away far enough to start a good charge toward Scott. No sooner than Scott turned the light on, he was blasted with an attack from Jess. She had charged him and jumped onto him, wrapping her legs around his body. It all happened in one fluid motion. She would have sunk her teeth into his throat if not for the gag, so she utilized the pen in her hand, instead. Stab after stab, she sank the pen into his throat.
Scott struggled little as his attention was on the fact he could no longer breathe or speak. The first strike punctured his trachea, the third strike opened his left exterior carotid artery. Scott fell to the floor and Jess covered his mouth as she took the pen and ran it through his eye and into his brain. Scott went limp and Jess rolled away from Scott’s left side because of the blood still spraying from his neck.
She lay next to him only briefly before she collected herself and began searching his person. She found a holstered pistol and a sheathed Leatherman on his belt. She unlatched and loosened his belt and removed the two items and then attached them to hers.
Jess took just a second to look around
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