Free The Escape Diaries by Juliet Rosetti Page B

tasted the name, like a foreign food you try, then discreetly
spit into your napkin. “That’s . . . different. And you’re from—where was
it again?”
                “Quail
Hollow. Over in the southwestern corner of the state, near the Mississippi?”
                “Oh,
yes. Kip tells me your people owned land there?”
                “Just
a dairy farm.”
                “A
farm! That’s so very all-American.”
                I
didn’t know until later that Vanessa’s fact-finding foray was phony; she’d
already found out everything about me, having hired a private detective firm to
track down every last detail about my life, including the boys I’d dated in
college.
                But
Vanessa would no more have admitted to invading my privacy than she would have
admitted to using a less than fifteen hundred thread count for her sheets. No,
we had to go through this bizarre catechism, Vanessa peppering me with
questions designed to point out the fact that I had no right to breathe the
same rarified air as herself and her son.
    “So tell me about
your parents,” Vanessa said. “Kip said your father is . . . umm . . .
debilitated?”
    I aimed a
reproachful look at Kip. I’d wanted to personally explain my dad’s medical
condition. Later, when I grew to know Vanessa, I discovered exactly how
difficult it was to keep anything from her. She was like a skilled
interrogator, one who used velvet-lined thumbscrews and psychological torture.
    “My dad was
injured in a farm accident,” I explained, choosing my words carefully. “He
suffered brain damage. He recovered, but still has short-term memory loss.”
    Vanessa muttered
something meant to be sympathetic, but I picked up the subtext: mentally
defective parent.
                The
interrogation went on. Vanessa grew larger and taller. She was looming over me,
demanding to know why I hadn’t eaten her cookies. “I was up all night baking
them,” she boomed. “And you will eat them!”
                Cramming
a fistful of cookies into my mouth, she ground them against my clenched teeth.
The cookies were sprinkled with cockroaches writhing in their death throes
because the cookie dough was poisoned. Then the poison reached my system, because
I felt a sudden stabbing pain in my ribs.
                “Get
up!” Vanessa snarled. “Get up and take your medicine!”
       

     

     

     

     

     

Escape tip #8:
    Offer your captor something he wants . . .
      more than
kinky bondage sex.
           

     
                         
                “Get
up!”
                I
opened my eyes. The tines of a pitchfork jabbed against my ribs.
                Oh,
shit!    
                The
pitchfork was gripped in the baseball mitt hands of the man standing over me.
He wore baggy bib overalls over a bare torso, a Jung Seedscap, and
clodhopper work boots caked with manure. He had a farmer tan: hands, forearms,
and neck deep copper, everything else fish belly white.
                “You’re
that escaped lady convict,” the farmer said. He had a voice like boiling
gravel. “That Mazie Maguire. You’re all over TV. Big reward out for you.” He
grinned, his bright blue eyes glittering in a firecracker-red face. “Kee-rist,
I can’t believe my luck—that reward is gonna buy me a brand-new manure
spreader.”
                I
rubbed the bleary out of my eyes, hoping this was still part of my nightmare.
                “Move,
dammit!” Snatching me by my hair, he jerked me painfully upright. He tossed
aside the pitchfork, twisted my left arm behind my back, and marched me out of
the shed, using my arm as a steering lever. My attempts to wriggle out of his
grip only made him crank my arm to a higher level of pain. Dimly I took note of
my surroundings: sheds, corncribs, some reeking pens,