Zach did not cry long—it took too much effort. He was tired and weak. His eyes dried quickly in spite of the tears that had dampened his blindfold earlier, as if every last drop of moisture had been squeezed from his eyelids. He moaned a while, but even that pitiful exertion required more energy than he could sustain.
The rag in his mouth had a repulsive, bitter taste, hardly better than the filthy thing the Asian men had gagged him with yesterday. Both legs shook at the knees as he shifted his weight between them, his hands roped together around the pipe. He could slide his hands up and down it, and that gave him more relief than he had had last night in the shed—but it was little enough relief, all the same.
He sagged against the pipe, despondent. Grandfather had warned him, and Grandfather had been right—the Asian men had found him again. And this time, they had taken Grandfather, too. No one else knew he was here; no one knew where to find him—not Mom or Dad, not Uncle Ben, not Derek…if they were even looking for him.
Grandfather had been right about the kidnappers; he must have been right about Mom and Dad, too. They really did want Zach gone. On the phone, Zach had believed they wanted him back, wanted him forever… But it must have been a trick. They were just hoping to catch him and send him far away—on the ship that would be ready in six hours—so he could never return.
Confused and exhausted, his breathing rough from despair, Zach knelt on the floor. He wished he could go home. He wished he had a phone right now so he could call Mom and Dad and make them tell him the truth. He would offer to stay away, to go with Grandfather, if that was what they wanted—they could have their peaceful lives without him, if only they would make the kidnappers leave him alone.
Mom… His eyes were shut behind the blindfold, but he squeezed them tightly anyway, thinking of her. He could almost feel her messing up his hair the way she liked to do. He didn't dislike it anymore. It was…how had she explained it? It was a way she could say "I love you" without words.
She does love me, Zach tried to convince himself. Her hands tell me all the time. But doubts lingered… "Maybe we can find another place for you, then!"
If only he had a phone—well, and no gag to keep him from speaking to her. What would she say? Maybe she had changed her mind; maybe she would want him to come home. She would say, "Hey, kiddo, we're coming to find you. Remember what Uncle Ben said about searching for the lost sheep? You're the sheep, and we're searching. Paws misses you. You can play with him as soon as you get home. But then you'll need to take a bath and clean your room, okay? We're having tacos…"
Was it a bath night? Zach couldn't remember. The last day had blurred into a fuzzy nightmare. When had he last eaten a meal? Yesterday, lunch at school, a full day ago. His stomach felt hollow, all shriveled up from emptiness.
Dad… Dad would say, "Your Mom and I are worried about you, pal. We need to find a way to get you home, all right?... You're tied up and can't get loose, huh? All right, work the problem. See if there's anything you can do while we're looking for you…"
Work the problem.
Zach sniffled and opened his eyes to the blackness behind the blindfold. Dad would say to work the problem.
He took a deep, calming breath, then another, and listened. Machinery vibrated all around him, motors turning and humming. He could make out several distinct sounds, so he must be in a room with several pieces of equipment running at the same time.
Work the problem. He stomped a foot; the floor beneath him was hard, probably concrete. He twisted his hands upward to where he could just feel the pipe with his thumbs and fingertips. It was metal, about six inches wide, and it didn't budge when he pulled on it with all his weight; there would be no breaking it. He felt up as high as he could; it was perfectly smooth and stretched as high as he could reach. Working his hands back down it, he explored it in the other direction, to the floor. It was smooth here, too, and just before it reached the floor it joined another pipe that angled away from him.
He felt the angle where the pipes joined. "Ow!" he cried suddenly into his gag. Something had pricked the heel of his hand. He twisted his fingers inward to find what had pricked him—a flat piece of metal with a sharp edge. Sliding a quarter of the way around the pipe to feel it from another direction, he found that it stuck out the length of his thumb from the pipe. Something with grooves was attached to it—a bolt, perhaps, to hold the pipes together.
He tested it, pressing on the flat part—it held fast. New hope shot through Zach's body. He lowered himself to his knees and elbows and shifted so that the rope binding his wrists crossed the sharp metal point. He scraped the rope as hard as he could against that point. Nothing happened; the rope was thick. He repeated the motion. Still nothing. Again, again—he worked the problem, just like Dad would.
He counted a hundred scrapes of the rope against the metal, then checked his bonds. They were still tight, unyielding. Feeling them with his fingertips, though, he noticed something new—several threads stuck out where, before, the rope had been smooth. There was a sort of dent in the rope now. He was cutting through it!
He attacked the rope again, slicing and slicing it against the sharp piece of metal, working with renewed vigor. His stomach muscles screamed at him, hunched over for too long in this one position, but he ignored them. This was the only way he could reach that sharp point that could cut through the rope, that lone hope for escape. He gouged the rope again and again, minute after minute, praying that this would work—and quickly, before the Asian men returned to take him to Thailand.
At last he felt a silent snap and, with one last tug against the sharp metal, the rope fell away and his hands fell apart. He was free! Rolling onto his back, he relaxed his arms and those furious muscles in his stomach, but only for a few seconds. Then he sat up and felt for the knot behind his head that held the gag in place. It was tight, but at last he worked it loose enough to pull the gag from his mouth. He spat out the bitter taste and reached to undo the knot that held his blindfold.
Slipping the blindfold from his eyes, he blinked, tossed both rags to the floor, and stood to look around. A dim light emanated from panels on a couple of machines. At least six machines surrounded him, each adding to the clamor, and pipes extended between them and up through the ceiling to the ground floor. There was only one way out of the room, a door at the opposite end.
Zach hurried to the door and reached for the knob, then hesitated. What if the Asian men were standing guard outside? They would tie him up worse than before and he would never escape. He could hide behind the machinery instead and wait until they came, saw that he was gone, and left again—but no, he decided, they'll just search for me in here until they find me.
He would have to risk it. A trickle of light seeped through the crack beneath the door; he lay down on his stomach to peer into it. There were no feet on the other side of the door, though the Asian men could be standing off to the side and out of sight.
Zach climbed back to his feet and turned the doorknob as slowly and silently as he could, opening the door half an inch. No one was there. He opened it a little further, just far enough to peek around the doorframe. The entire corridor was empty.
Encouraged, he stepped into the corridor and closed the door silently behind him. He looked both ways. There were four more doors down here, but the only clear way out of the basement was the stairway down which the Asian men had brought him and Grandfather.
He stepped quickly down the hall toward those stairs, but a voice pulled him up short. It was Grandfather's voice, speaking to someone from the opposite end of the hall. The last door there was open part-way.
"It is a satisfactory arrangement," Grandfather was saying. Someone replied in a tone too low for Zach to make out the words.
Grandfather rescued me, Zach thought. He hesitated a moment, then made his decision. Reversing direction, he tiptoed to the last door and peeked inside, careful not to let more than one eye
show around the doorframe. Grandfather sat in a chair against the far wall, facing the door. The two Asian men were there, looking fearsome as they stood over Grandfather, their backs to Zach. Grandfather was still tied up.
"That information was most useful," Grandfather replied to one of the Asian men. "It's fortunate that you were watching at that moment, that you heard their argument—" Suddenly, Grandfather's eyes flicked to the door, and he saw Zach. "Zechariah!" he cried out in astonishment.
The two Asian men spun as one. Spotting Zach, they leapt toward the door. On instinct, Zach slammed the door shut and fled down the corridor.
"No, Zechariah!" he heard Grandfather cry out behind him. "They will kill you!"
But Zach was already at the stairs and sprinting up them. He bolted out the door at the top and onto the ground floor, where he sped down the hallway and crashed through a door at the far end just as the Asian men emerged through the stairway door behind him.
He found himself outside, in a brick-paved alley than stretched left and right. Rain pelted him. It felt wonderful, like freedom.
He ran to the left. The Asian men exploded out of the building a few seconds behind Zach, yelling when they saw him.
Zach raced up the alley as fast as he could go. He had thought he had been running his fastest when he had bunted that home run, but that was nothing compared to this. Desperate energy surged through his body. He rushed by a group of people who gaped at him. They were standing by a wall pasted with globs of…chewing gum? The bizarre sight jogged a memory. The Gum Wall—Mom and Dad had brought him here once. Before he could recall the occasion, one of the Asian men yelled again, and Zach darted ahead, uphill as the alley became a tunnel.
The tunnel curved to the right beneath a building for a few yards, then opened up into rain again. On his left, a stairway climbed up steeply from the alley, and without looking back he cut toward it and bounded up the stairs two at a time.
He reached the top just as the Asian men came into view in the alley below him. One of them saw him. Zach rushed ahead, jostling through a mass of people moving in every direction. Some were standing and watching something, and in a panic he forced his way between them only to find himself face-to-face with displays of fish and other seafood-on-ice that blocked his path. The Gum Wall, the fish—he knew where he was! He was in Pike Place Market, at the store where the workers threw the salmon!
But he couldn't stand here. With a speedy glance he found a concrete stairway descending into the building below. There were more stores down there. He sprinted to those stairs and hurried down them. Had the Asian men seen him?
Not taking any chances, he turned at the bottom of the stairs and ran down a narrow hallway, found more stairs and took them, and reversed his direction again, anxious to lose the Asian men.
He neared an exit that opened to the rain outside. Just before the exit he spotted a green, unmarked door left part-way open. The room behind it was dark. He ducked into the room, pulled the door shut, and locked it. He listened, his ear pressed against the door—but there was no sound on the other side.
After a few seconds, his eyes adjusted to the near-darkness. As in the room where he had been tied up, a little light filtered through the crack beneath the door. It was just enough for him to make out an extra-large trash can with wheels on the bottom, stationed on one side of what turned out to be a janitor's closet about twice as big as Eddie's. He climbed into the can—it smelled horrid, but at least it was empty—and pulled the lid closed above him. He felt trapped again, but at least this time he had trapped himself.
Panting heavily, he waited. Several times he heard talking and movement in the corridor outside, and once he heard what he thought might have been large feet running past. But no one came in. After several minutes, his forehead sweaty and his back damp from exertion, Zach began to relax. He had lost them. He decided he would stay here and hide—hide until the Asian men had given up looking for him and gone away.
*****