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coward who would hear her scream but cut and run instead of coming to her aid?
    Summer hesitated. He finished securing her wrists with a brutal yank that tested the efficacy of his handiwork. Her wrists ached already, and her hands tingled from the beginning effects of lack of circulation. Experimentally, she wriggled her fingers, tried to move her hands. The bra – why, oh why had she opted for the indestructability of an eighteen-hour garment instead of the flimsy nylon lingerie she had once preferred? – dug deep into her flesh. The sturdy elastic bound her as securely as a pair of handcuffs.
    His hands were on her shoulders, forcing her to her knees.
    On the other hand, suppose she didn’t scream. What then?
    That prospect was the clincher.
    Even as she sank to the grassy verge that framed the building, her mouth opened. The die was cast: she had no real choice. Drawing in a lungful of air, she prepared to shatter his eardrums and her own. Her very life might well hang on this one scream.
    Before she could get out so much as a peep, her own blouse was thrust between her teeth. Stunned, Summer choked, gagged, and tried to spit it out, to no avail. The wadded nylon reached so far down her throat that she thought she might vomit.
    She couldn’t vomit. She would choke to death for sure if she did. What she had to do was breathe through her nose. Breathe. Breathe.
    He did something more to her wrists, then tilted her chin up so that she was forced to look at him. The scalpel was clenched pirate-like between his teeth, she saw. The slit that was his eye glittered ferally. His distorted mouth was twisted into a hideous grimace that might, on a normal person, have been a jeering smile. As if he found her terror funny.
    It occurred to Summer then that there was a strong possibility he was not even sane. Suddenly she was very, very glad she hadn’t screamed.
     

5
     
     
    „I’ll be back,“ he said, holding her gaze. The Terminator himself couldn’t have made the threat sound more terrifying. In fact, Summer decided that she would rather by far be facing Arnold Schwarzenegger at his most menacing than the man who loomed over her in real life.
    He released her jaw, stepped away, and vanished around the corner of the building.
    Summer wasted no more than a pair of heartbeats staring after him. Then she tried to get to her feet.
    Her wrists were tied to something – she glanced around to be certain: a faucet. A plain old faucet jutting out of the side of the building. He had somehow twisted her bra so that it not only bound her wrists but tethered her tightly to the faucet, too.
    Damn him. Damn him. She was not going to be able to get away.
    Frantically she pulled and yanked and twisted, fighting to be free. This was her chance to escape. All she had to do was get free of the faucet, and run, and run, and run.
    The nylon in her mouth impeded her breathing. She was struggling so hard that her overworked lungs screamed for more oxygen. Saliva poured into her mouth in a useless effort to combat the cloying dryness from having a mouth crammed full of cloth. Some ran down her throat. Trying not to cough, or gag, sucking in great rushes of air through her nose, Summer deliberately slowed her desperate efforts. She was trying too hard. That had to be it. How difficult could it be to break free of a bra and a faucet, for goodness’ sake?
    Summer scooted on her rump as far away from the faucet as she could and used all her strength to try to yank her hands after her. Her hope was that the bra would break. She yanked again. And again. And again. The bra didn’t break, but her wrists felt like they might. What was the damned bra made out of, she wondered semihysterically, some kind of industrial strength space elastic?
    Just her luck.
    Silendy she cursed the space age.
    Wriggling her fingers, twisting her wrists, she forced her hands into impossible contortions as she fought to be free. Using the faucet as a tool, she sawed the bra