The rest of the companions were shackled alongside him. Everybody seemed alive, chests rising and falling, so Ryan turned his attention to the chains. They were inordinately thick, like a tow chain for a boat anchor. The links were clean and oily with not a sign of rust or corrosion. The bolt they looped through was in equally good condition, and not sunk into the mortar between the stone blocks, but directly into the granite.
He noticed a door on the far side of the room, squat and massive, banded with iron. It was a tough barrier, but the lock appeared to be an old-fashioned turnkey. J.B. could probably pick that in a minute.
Once they were off the wall.
To the left were four grilled openings, only blackness visible beyond. But the bars were spotless, the handles gleaming not from constant use, but from being highly polished, with faint traces of wax still in the seam where the brass handle joined to the steel door frame. Damn, but the place was clean.
A collection of chains and ropes hung above a grated drain in the center of the windowless room. That boded ill, evoking images of tortured souls bleeding into the sewer. The drain was very large, nearly a foot across, but still too small for even
Dean to crawl through. A trickle of water flowed into the grating, and Ryan backtracked it to a neatly coiled garden hose hanging from a shining brass wall mount, the nozzle steadily dripping water. The source of his torment.
The one-eyed man licked dry lips, then turned his head away. Staring and wishing would only make his thirst worse. Concentrate on the problem at hand. Recon, then escape. Revenge, if possible.
“Bitch,” he muttered aloud, the tendons of his arms standing out as he pulled against the chains with all of his strength. They didn’t give.
“I have to agree,” Krysty murmured, rattling her chains. “So, she got all of us, eh?”
“And all of our stuff. We’ve been searched by pros.
Krysty gazed at her misbuttoned shirt. “I know.”
Doc came awake with a sour expression.
“Bloody hell” he rumbled. “Captives of the lady ward, I surmise.”
“Everybody okay?” Krysty asked, her hair coiling tightly. “I have a terrible sense of suffering.”
“Yeah, fine.”
“Not bleeding,” Jak said, his tumbling hair almost completely masking his face.
“I am undamaged,” Doc said. “Merely acrimomous.
Dean looked upward. “If that means pissed off, count me in.”
“Whatever that gas was, it moved like lighting,” Ryan said. “Must be predark military stuff.”
“I don’t know of any knockout gas that can strike with that kind of speed. Nerve gas, yes, but nothing that merely incapacitates,” Mildred said. She smacked her lips and looked longingly at the dripping water, then sighed.
Suddenly, Ryan understood what it was there for, and chalked up another point against the blond bitch.
“No wonder she wanted her bike so badly,” Dean said. “I thought it was so she could escape from us.”
“If only,” J.B. grunted, probing the inside of his mouth. “Damn, they got my lockpick.” Then he wiggled his body around. “Not a thing in my pockets. Bet she took the lint.”
No sign of your hat, either,” Mildred added.
“Tell me about it.”
“Call if guards approach,” Doc said, and bracing his long legs against the wall, he tried to force his thin wrists out of the manacles. Sweat broke out on his brow, and tendons stood out on his arms. A line of blood flowed down his wrists and into his sleeve.
For a moment, Ryan thought it was going to work, then with an explosion of breath, Doc stopped his exertions.
“Negative,” he growled. “They have been adjusted for my size.”
“Get close?” Jak asked.
Dean lifted his boots off the floor and jerked downward with his full weight. The chains shook from the effort, but the boy’s hands stayed inside the cuffs. Placing his feet back on the floor, this time, he bent his knees and jumped into the air, to cry out as his fall was arrested by the shackles.
“That was stupe,” Krysty commented. “You could have busted a bone.”
“I was trying to,” Dean told her. “Break a few fingers, and the cuff will slide right off.”