The world around us is silent, as if nature is watching us with bated breath. I’m surprised the loud and rapidthub thub thubof my heart doesn’t spook an equally loud bird in a nearby tree—and send it squawking in alarm.
We finally make it to the front passenger door, and I slowly open it. It’s not locked, which I take as a positive sign.
Too bad it’s the only positive thing about this escape attempt. The key isn’t dangling in the ignition.
At the realization we’re screwed, it feels like someone hurled a boulder at my stomach, knocking me on my butt.
Double damn.
Okay, Plan A didn’t work. Now I just need a Plan B.
I glance up at the sky, in case Plan B is written there. If it is, the thick clouds and falling snow are obscuring it.
Keeping my head down, I search the passenger side of the car for anything that might help us. But there’s not much I can look through without drawing attention to myself.
Tabitha’s shivering uncontrollably. We both are. We need to go somewhere warm, or else we’ll be popsicles before we have a chance to get the hell out of here.
Once Tabitha and I have finished hunting through the car, I glance at the house, mentally inventorying everything I noticed in the living room during the short time I was in there.
“There’s a phone in the living room,” I tell her, keeping my voice low. “But I don’t know if the landline actually works.”
“Are we talking about the same place where those two men are currently holed up?” She flashes me an irritated, you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me scowl.
“That’d be the one. All we need to do is take them out of commission. Even for a short time. And tie them up.”
Right—that sounds easy enough.
The execution? That might be a whole different hockey game.
For the next few minutes, we brainstorm ideas until we narrow it to one strong possibility.
All right, it’s the only possibility we come up with. It’s getting too damn cold to think. And if we don’t act now, we might never have another chance. Our hands are turning into icicles.
Great, if we were Elsa fromFrozen.
This situation is made worse because part of our plan involves making snowballs. We work as quickly as possible, doing our best to ignore the cold.
I imagine I’m in Hawaii, building a sandcastle with the hot sand.
I’m sorry to say that visualization exercise is a bust.
“How’s your throwing arm?” I ask Tabitha once we’re finished.
“Pretty good. I used to be a pitcher on my high school softball team. I wasn’t the star pitcher, but I could hold my own.”
That’s good enough for me.
I can’t throw a baseball to save my life, and right now, that’s preciselynotwhat we need.
She sets up in position, and I pick up a large branch from the ground. It’s thick with smaller branches and twigs poking in all directions.
I let out a hard breath. “Okay, you ready?”
“Ready.”
Cautiously, I creep through the deep snow to the porch, praying the men don’t spot me. I slowly mount the steps, hoping they don’t creak.
I listen for a brief moment to the sounds from inside, then channel my inner-Ninja-slash-world-series-winning-baseball-player self.
