She glanced at the screen. Sasha was passing her free hand through the second looped zip-tie. Once she tugged that one tight, she wouldn’t be able to rip the bag away no matter how desperate she became.

Rather than answer me, the woman repositioned the keyboard and began typing furiously, entering code. Her screen shifted from the video of Sasha to a scrolling set of digits and numbers while all of the other screens showed Sasha yank her right wrist tight, securing the loop.

++++

Sasha couldn’t hold her breath any longer.

She let out what was left of her air and tried to breathe in again, but the plastic bag suctioned in and sealed the air off, pressing up tightly against her lips.

++++

All at once, two of the men in the basement scrambled forward and went at Calvin, who was standing between them and the door. He spun with surprising agility and drove his foot down against the side of the man on his right’s knee, and it crumpled, sending his assailant to the ground.

The other man tried to hold Calvin by the back of the head, but my friend threw an elbow at the man’s nose, connecting hard enough to send him reeling backward.

I whipped out my SIG. “No one else moves!”

++++

Sasha found herself yanking frantically at the zip-ties, but she couldn’t free herself.

Here it is. It’s too late. This is happening now.

++++

Though I didn’t want to watch, I needed to see if someone else was present or if something might appear on the screen that would give me a clue to where Sasha was, so I didn’t turn away from the monitors.

“Hurry up!” I told the woman who was typing, the only chance we had at the moment to save Sasha. “We need to stop this now!”

The bag had steamed up from the moist air Sasha had exhaled, but the terrible mechanics of this means of death took over as she did her best to draw in more air, and each time she tried, the plastic closed up tightly over her nose and mouth.

++++

Sasha had grown up hearing that those who commit suicide go to hell, but she hoped that God would forgive her, would know her heart, would see that she was doing this only to save Greer, and she prayed that the Almighty would not hold it against her.

Backup wasn’t coming.

“Greater love has no one than this . . .” She heard the scriptural words deep in her soul, echoing through the years from the time when she still went to church. “That he lays down his life for a friend.”

This was how she was going to die.

Sasha kept her eyes open.

She wanted to view the world for as long as she could before it all went away.

++++