A three-legged dog! Nick is here and he brought Trygg with him! He’s searching for me—but how will he ever find me? What if he was already here? What if he came when I was still unconscious? What if he already gave up and left? And what if he hasn’t searched this barn yet—what if he still comes by? How will I know it’s him and not the other man—the one who said he’d kill me if I make another sound? I can’t even scream—I can’t take the chance.

Alena felt a knot tightening in the back of her throat. She was beginning to understand the full extent of her dilemma: Nick was searching for her, but he brought the wrong dog. Trygg was a cadaver dog, not a search-and-rescue dog—she was trained only to detect the scent of death. “Not even a drop of blood,” the man said—that meant there was no scent for the dog to find. Nick and Trygg could have already searched this barn; Nick could have easily missed an old dirt-covered threshing floor, and Trygg could have walked right over it without ever finding the scent—at least not the scent of death, and she would alert on nothing else.

Alena stopped. Trygg is here to find me, but she has nothing to find.There’s only one answer: I have to give her something to find.

I have to bleed.

She struggled to her feet again. If there was only some way she could scrape the skin from her knees or elbows, but it was impossible. She couldn’t swing her legs and she couldn’t bend her arms at all—she’d never be able to generate enough force to break the skin. She rubbed her shoulder against the wall again. She felt no cracks or splinters at all—the boards had been polished smooth through years of use. She could rub up against them all day and never take off the skin.

She turned and faced the wall. There was only one other option— her nose. She had to drive her face into the wall hard enough to cause her nose to bleed.

She slowly leaned forward until her forehead touched the wall, measuring the distance. She straightened again, cocking her head back a little to make sure her nose would take the full brunt of the force— then she stopped. The throbbing in her skull felt like a knife stabbing into her brain—how could she purposely ram her face into a wall? The pain would be unbearable.

But she had no choice.

She stood there for a full minute, summoning up all of her anger and determination—then she squeezed her eyes tight and slammed her head like a hammer against the wooden surface.