Free Set Free by Anthony Bidulka Page B

Mikki had died. Perhaps from injuries sustained during the initial abduction; perhaps by accident during her incarceration; even, perhaps, by her own hand. With nothing left to trade, the kidnappers had disappeared. Gone to find another payday with another victim.
    Now, I knew better. For reasons I’d probably never know, the kidnappers had decided that picking up the money was too risky. They were right. They’d spotted the police and FBI on the first attempt, and maybe the second. They knew that they would have been caught, eventually. Maybe this had been their first time. Kidnappers have to start somewhere, and no library or bookstore I know of stocks a copy of Kidnapping for Dummies . They realized they were on the losing side of the game and needed to cut their losses and run.
    No one could be so monstrous as to kill Mikki, an innocent thirteen-year-old girl. Who could have so dark a heart? Even the Huns hadn’t been able to kill me. Mikki’s abductors would not have hurt her either. No. They would have broken camp and run, taking Mikki with them, eventually stashing her someplace. Just as I’d been stashed in a rectangle in the Atlas Mountains.
    Where was she?
    Finally, something worthwhile to think about.

Chapter 18
 
 
 
    After three days with no bread being delivered through the doorway, I knew the plan.
    With only water left to sustain me, the Huns—or whoever was on the other side of the locked door—were waiting for me to starve to death. It was perfect, really. And who could blame them? All they’d wanted was to make some quick cash by kidnapping a rich, spoiled American, and instead they had ended up with a lifelong dependent. Not a good deal for them. They didn’t have it in them to outright murder me. But to let nature take its course once food was out of the picture? I guess, after weeks of thinking about it, they’d decided their consciences could live with that.
    I didn’t really mind anymore. What had been happening in the rectangle wasn’t life. It was merely inadvertent survival, one breath following another. Still, I’d kept on drinking the water and eating the bread, feeling grotesquely euphoric when it arrived accompanied by olives, the flavor exploding in my mouth with near-hallucinogenic vividness.
    At most there were three of them. The first one, a perfect, salty-meaty-oily orb, would disappear down my gullet before my eyes had time to register its existence. The second soon after. By the third, I’d attempt to exert self-control.
    With the olive soaking in its bed of succulent juices and the shorn crust of bread carefully arranged on a cracked ceramic plate, I’d scurry to the shaded comfort beneath my slanted roof. Once settled, I’d pick up the slippery drupe and admire its dark color and the sensual texture of its skin, glistening with translucent oil, pungent and spicy. My trembling fingers would hold it out in front of me, as if it were the world’s last remaining Fabergé egg. I would extend my tongue and wait for the intoxicating impact of taste buds against olive, savoring the sensation for as long as I could.
    Eventually I would rub the olive against my teeth, as if testing a pearl. Finally, sinking it into the fleshy nest of my mouth, I would suck away the olive’s oily residue from my fingers, then bite down and consume the tantalizing fruit. Immediately after, I would toss a morsel of bread into my mouth. I’d let it sit there, absorbing whatever essence remained of the olive and its flavors. Although nowhere near the heavenly sensation of the olive itself, the subtle replica had its own gifts to share in prolonging the experience.
    I don’t even like olives.
    Ordinary and commonplace become extraordinary when commonplace is gone. And in the extraordinary are moments of joyous escape.
    Could a man who got so excited over olives be prepared to die?
    My most fervent hope was that whoever had Mikki would give her an olive. Just one. Or, better yet, Reese’s Pieces