Once again, her unease began to spiral toward panic. Was she about to run out of air? Had whoever grabbed her tossed her in here to suffocate?

“Oh God, oh God, oh God,” she whispered as she began to crawl around the room, searching for any opening or other possibility of escape.

On the opposite wall, in the corner, she ran into a small commode. She had no idea how dirty it might be, so she hesitated to touch it once she figured out what it was, but she could tell it was a toilet. There was no tank, but there was a handle and a round seat. There didn’t seem to be an accompanying sink, however. There didn’t seem to be anything else in the room except a cot, which was bolted to the floor, with a lumpy mattress, a pillow and a blanket.

By the time she made it all the way around her small prison, she’d determined that it was only about six feet by seven feet: the size of some walk-in coolers. She was fairly certain it was a cooler, or had been. The walls felt like a smooth, hard plastic. But the presence of the toilet and the bed made her think she hadn’t been put here to suffocate. Those items wouldn’t be necessary if she was going to run out of air.

Forcing herself to stand, despite her wobbly legs, she made a second circuit. The blackness was so complete she doubted she’d find the window she was praying for. It had been daytime when she’d been abducted. No way had enough hours passed for it to be night—not in June. There should be some glimmer, somewhere, and there wasn’t.

Determined to learn as much as possible about her surroundings, to perhaps find a light switch, she kept investigating. There was nothing on the walls, not so much as a picture or a nail. But once she gathered the courage to walk straight through the middle of the room, waving her arms to see if she could determine whether there was a high ceiling or a low one, she encountered a thin chain. It hit her face, startling her before she gave it a hesitant tug.

A small snap sounded and a single lightbulb flickered on, buzzing with the flow of electricity and painting the stark white walls of the narrow room a dull yellow.

Evelyn felt infinitely better just being able to see. Darkness made everything more frightening. But her situation hadn’t improved otherwise. There was nothing else in the small, enclosed space besides what she’d already discovered—nothing except a drain in the floor so the cooler could be easily washed out and what looked like an HVAC vent to one side of the light on the ceiling. As she stared up at it, she realized that she would have air, but her captor had taken great care in selecting and preparing this place.

No way would she be able to escape on her own.