Back and forth.

Suddenly the plastic begins to click as I twist.

Yes!

My hands are sweaty.

My fingers are cramping.

I stick with it.

Ignore the pain.

Back and forth.

Back and forth.

You can do this! Don’t give up.

“Come on.”

Snap!

Suddenly the small plate breaks apart, now in two pieces.

Each with a paper-thin edge.

I can’t help but smile and let out a whoop of triumph.

I know where to start. Not here in the living area, where everything is visible, but in the bathroom. I hurry to the small, closet-like room and open the cupboard door under the bathroom sink. It is small, but screwed tight to the back of the door is a slim bar with hooks on it, to be used to hang a washcloth or small towel. Not much of a weapon, but one that can be easily hidden. Now, if I can just unscrew it.

Carefully, holding my breath, I force the piece of plastic into one of the screws and try to twist, to turn the damned thing.

Nothing.

Not the smallest budge.

Damn!

“Oh . . . no, no, no! This is not going to happen,” I say aloud and despite a new sense of despair I keep at it, banging my knuckles.

Cursing.

Sweating.

And yes, even praying.

I have to make this work!

I have to save myself!

Because, like it or not, no one else will.

I am on my own.

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 15

Riggs Crossing, Washington
December 5

On Monday morning, using the key he’d found hidden on the sill over the door, Rivers let himself into Megan Travers’s apartment. It was just before 5:00 A.M., a time he felt he could be in the place alone.

Mendoza wasn’t with him.

They’d been there before, complete with all the necessary paperwork, and looked over the place under the watchful eye of the apartment manager.

Today, he needed a few minutes in Megan’s home all by himself.

When he and Mendoza had come by the first time, the door had been latched, but not locked. Someone had secured it since.

He made a mental note to check with the manager.

Inside, nothing had changed. The apartment was as they’d left it and was the same cluttered mess as it had been. Dishes and a half-eaten sandwich, along with near-empty glasses of liquid, had been left on the coffee table, while the small dinette table was a catchall for magazines, mail, and coffee cups.

In the bedroom, the bed was unmade, the duvet in a pool on the floor, dresser drawers left open, the closet showing scattered clothes and hangers as if they’d been ripped from the rod.