The Perfect Alibi - Blake Pierce

CHAPTER ONE

Caroline Gidley, crouched in a tight ball, used her inner thighs to hug herself for warmth. Even though it was late spring, it got chilly at night, especially under her circumstances.

It was crazy that she could even think of them as merely “circumstances.” But after four days tied up in a dog crate, wearing only her bra and panties, with just a thin blanket to cover her, this had somehow become her new normal.

It had started so innocuously. She’d been walking to her car after leaving work when a man asked for directions to the freeway. They were in a busy public parking lot and he was so unassuming and hesitant when he approached that her initial wariness faded quickly. She started to answer, turning and pointing back east.

Before she even realized it was happening, he was on her, placing a thick cloth over her mouth and nose. As she lost consciousness, she saw him pop the trunk of the car next to hers. She had one final thought as he shoved her in and slammed the trunk door closed.

He parked right next to me. He planned this.

When she woke up, she was in the crate, in just her underclothes, with her hands bound together in front of her by tight, thin bungee cord. She had looked around her surroundings and quickly determined that she was being held in some kind of dilapidated building. Loose wires hung from the ceiling and some windows were broken. There was no interior lighting and the fading sunlight suggested that it had been several hours since she was taken.

Almost on cue, the man had walked in through a thick metal door. Her heart began to thump almost audibly. She could smell her own fear. She tried to set that aside and focus on her abductor.

As he got closer, she’d noticed several things that she’d missed in that first, brief encounter. He was clearly wearing a wig. His thick, dark hair reminded Caroline of a 1980s heavy metal rocker. His wild beard was also obviously fake. So was the large, putty nose he wore. She doubted he even needed the thick-framed, tinted glasses he had on.

When he got close, he smiled and she saw that he was wearing false teeth as well. His getup was so over the top that she suspected it was intentionally meant to be ridiculous.

“Hello, Caroline,” he had said, speaking with a slight lisp that she assumed was due to the teeth. “This is the only time you’ll see me. From now on, you’ll be blindfolded. I haven’t gagged you but I will if I have to. If you try to remove your blindfold at any time, I will bind your hands behind your back instead of in front. If you try to escape, I’ll have to…hurt you. I don’t want to do that.”

“Why are you doing this?” she had asked, trying to keep her voice from betraying her terror.

“You wouldn’t understand. Your type never does.”

Then he’d pulled something out from behind his back. It was some kind of dart gun.

“Please,” she had begged, her voice cracking. “You don’t have to do this.”

“Remember the rules,” he had told her impassively. “Follow them and this will go much better for you.”

Without another word, he’d fired the gun. Caroline felt a sharp stinging sensation in her left thigh. Then everything felt heavy. Her eyes drooped and again the world faded to black.

When she woke up the next time, she was blindfolded, as he’d promised she would be. The initial wave of panic she felt in those first hours eventually gave way to hope as she tried to gather whatever information she could. She kept track of time by when he brought her meals, by the relative warmth in the building, and by the slivers of light that peeked through the blindfold.

At regular intervals, he would return, his shoes echoing on the concrete floor of the empty space. No matter how hard she tried to fight it, the sound made hyperventilate. She heard him unlock the padlock on the crate, slide open the containment bars, open the metal dog door, and drop two bowls on the floor. Because her wrists were bound, Caroline was reduced to lapping up the food and water from them like an actual dog.

He never let her go to an actual bathroom. Instead, she would have to remove her underwear and go in a corner of the crate. He would intermittently enter the room and hose her and the floor