W is for Willow

Sheriff Clayton Nazzaro is trying to find Pepper who went missing from Malcolm Sinclair’s book club. He tracked down one of the women, Jessie Belmont, whom Pepper had been sitting with along with Malcolm and Sophia Lyons. She gives Clayton some surprising information. Sophia had been wearing a scarf on the morning of the book club outing that is later found around the victim’s neck. In the meantime, Pepper is trying to escape from wherever she is being held. She has managed to get the scarf from off her face by using the jagged wall of rock, but her face is bleeding from it.

***

Pepper’s eyes grew accustomed to the dim light cast from random bulbs strung along wires that hung from the ceiling. She wiped the blood from the side of her face with her shoulder. By the racks of bottles she was obviously in a wine cellar. She could see a tunnel leading out of the room in two different directions. If she was under Malcolm’s prohibition built house on Spirit Lake this was probably how the smugglers got the liquor out unseen. If this was true, then one way led to the outside and to the lake.

The room was obviously used but who came down here? Malcolm? A servant? Did Malcolm take her because he figured out she was a cop who was on to him for Margie Webster’s murder and not Hazel Brewster, book lover? How long had she been here? She stopped wearing a watch when she got her cell phone and she could feel that was no longer in her pocket. And what about her gun? She could no longer feel her Sig Sauer 380 in her leg holster. Although her kidnapper thought to take those, they didn’t check to see if she was wired. Not that it mattered. There was no way any sound would get picked up through all this rock.

Tossing all this in an endless loop in her mind made it seem like hours had passed—more likely she misjudged the time. Pepper scanned the room for anything that could be used to get her restraints off and get the hell out.

A small willow wood table and chair was the only furniture in the underground room made of rock. On top of the table was an empty glass and pitcher of water. She so needed to make her way over to it to quench her thirst, if she could only stand up. Her wrists were zip tied behind her back but it looked as though another scarf was all that held her ankles together. She could make good use of a wine bottle if she could maneuver herself over to one of the racks.

Pepper rolled on the uneven stone floor until she was close enough to grab a bottle from behind and slid it out of the shelf. Making sure she had a good hold of it, she swung as hard as she could. She missed. She swung again and this time hit the wooden shelf. The glass shattered onto the floor. Now if she could just get her ankles near the jagged bottle neck.

***

Today's word - W is for Willow - is brought to you by  Teresa Cypher

 This post is part of April's Blogging From A-Z Challenge and Camp NaNoWriMo. The rest of the A-Z bloggers can be found pinned in the links section of my sidebar. Hope to see you tomorrow!