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her
wrists, securing them in place.
    Oh God, Blaze thought, her
gut twisting in horror.  He’s tying me up…  She knew what happened to
women who got tied up in the woods, a hundred miles from the nearest road.
    Jack released her wrists,
fully-bound, and started on her ankles.  Blaze twisted and strained against the
cloth strips, but whatever else he was, he’d probably been a Boy Scout—he tied
a damn good knot.
    “You are going to jail ,
asshole!” Blaze cried into the shirt, in desperation, as she felt him finish
with her ankles. 
    Jack flipped her over again, his
face strained with anxiousness.  “I’m not gonna hurt you,” he said again,
almost a babble.  “Just wanna talk, okay?  Iron some things out.  Nothin more
than that.”  Then, as if her six-foot-four, two-hundred-pound frame weighed no
more than a carryon backpack, he flipped her over a muscular shoulder and
started carrying her back to the lodge.  Blaze flailed and kicked as best as
she could, but she might as well have been batting at a bear with a feather for
all the affect it had on him.
    Jack took her up the porch steps,
stepped inside the threshold, and, after scanning the woods beyond the yard
nervously, yanked the door shut behind them.  As soon as they were alone in the
gloomy basement, Blaze felt a lump of dread forming in her gut.  She stopped
kicking, knowing she was probably going to need her strength.
    He walked over to the wall beside
the woodstove—across the room, she noticed, from a roughly beastie-sized hole
in the drywall—and set her down on the floor with surprising gentleness.  Then
he stood up and scratched at the back of his neck, swallowing hard.  “Jesus,”
he muttered, “but that gives me the willies.”  He seemed to shake himself, then
peered out the window nervously.
    This is where he rapes me,
takes my valuables, and buries me in the hill, Blaze thought, realizing for
the first time where Bill and Susan Olson had most likely disappeared off to. 
The elderly couple who had owned the Sleeping Lady before her were probably
even then buried out in the woods somewhere, rotting in their nice, neat little
graves.
    Instead of ripping off her
clothes, however, Jack squatted in front of her almost carefully, his green
eyes cautious.  He cleared his throat.  “You…uh…really didn’t have any idea
what I was talking about, did you?”
    She glared at him over the gag.
    “I’m gonna pull the shirt out of
your mouth,” Jack said, “But don’t scream, all right?  You’re all right. 
Nobody’s hurt.  I haven’t assaulted you and buried you in a hill.  Let’s just
talk about this like reasonable adults, all right?” 
    Blaze’s heart thundered at his
last comment and she felt her nostrils flare as she tried to get enough air.
    For a moment, Jack looked to have
second thoughts.  Then, reluctantly, he leaned forward and freed the gag from
her mouth.
    “You are so dead,” Blaze blurted.
    Jack froze, looking somewhat
unnerved.  “Oh?  Why’s that?”
    “When the police find out about
this,” Blaze began, “you’re going to go to prison for the next thirty years. 
Kidnapping, assault—”
    “The police.”  Jack scoffed, and
the complete disdain with which he did so shut her up.  Blaze hesitated,
the wind thoroughly swept from her sails with the realization that he
absolutely did not care what the Alaska State Troopers had to say about
his little misdeeds…probably because he planned on going down in a blazing
shotgun-battle on his back porch. 
    Jack leaned closer and tilted his
head to the side as he peered at her, like a wild animal giving her a closer inspection. 
He made a couple gentle sniffs of the air between them, then frowned.  “You’ve
got no one else coming for you, do you?”
    The certainty with which he said
it made Blaze go utterly stiff.  “Bruce Rogers and his wife know exactly where
I am.  My realtor knows I bought this place, and if I turn up