Willing Hostage Read Online Free

know it was before short-story writing and poetry.”
    The cat licked the last drop from the bowl, then yawned in her face.
    â€œI dabbled. Leah, the dabbler, that’s me. I worked so hard to pay the rent on that apartment I was too tired for hobbies and too broke. I don’t like roommates,” she said pointedly and remembered the tiny bedroom she’d shared with two sisters in the redevelopment house in Chicago. “An apartment is very expensive for one person, even a tiny.… Kitty, are you listening to me?”
    The kitty was washing behind his ears.
    â€œAnd I class you with roommates. Oh, I’ve had plenty of offers, but nobody moves in with me. Get that?” Leah sat back and watched the cat ignore her.
    Dabbling had led her nowhere. She’d scrapped each project after a few weary weeks. Scrap.… Leah turned to the suitcase on the bed behind her. “This time, kitty, I’m really not going back!” She stood so suddenly that the cat arched and spit, elongated eyes widening to a circle.
    Leah opened the suitcase and reached beneath her clothes for the scrapbook. “My only claim to fame. But not something I could display on a coffee table.” She tore out the first page and looked at Leah Harper smiling comfortably in a girdle she didn’t need. Lifting the metal circle above the fire by its handle as she’d seen the manager do, she consigned page one to the flames.
    â€œLook at this.” She displayed page two to her feline companion. “Would you believe that is Leah Lorraine Harper? How could I ever show this to my grandchildren?” The bottom half of Leah, in panty hose, went into the fire. And the next page, and the next … Leah in bras with invisible stuffing in the cups. And one of her hands with a diamond ring … long tapering fingers like her mother’s.…
    â€œOf Iris’ three girls,” she had heard someone say, “Leah is the spitting image of her mother in looks and temperament.”
    â€œI will not be another Iris, kitty. I will never fail that completely.”
    But the cat slept, curled blissfully between the Velveeta and milk.
    Leah burned the scrapbook and threw the plastic cover into the wastebasket. “Here I go, burning my bridges again.”
    The moon lit the encampment when she stepped out of the cabin to look for the bathroom, but there were clouds around it and thunder rolled through the pines.
    The ladies’, and men’s, and the laundry room shared a building. She showered behind a folding screen feeling sleepy again as she groped her way back to the cabin, wearing her coat over pajamas.
    Warm air greeted her as she opened the door. The loud purring of the Siamese seemed homey and welcoming.
    She could barely see the light chain in front of a lighter patch of covered window, had actually started to reach for it before she remembered that she hadn’t turned it off before she left.
    Lightning flashed soundlessly to outline the room and the man at the table, tipped back on two legs of his chair, stroking the cat on his lap with one hand, raising a dark stubby gun with the other.
    â€œTurn on that light and you’re dead,” he warned her.

Chapter Four
    Leah Harper had never had much sympathy for namby-pamby women who allowed themselves to be victimized by men.
    But this was the first time she had faced one holding a gun.
    During the second that thunder detonated over the cabin’s roof, Leah thought of a surprising number of things she could do. She could run for the door, scream, kick the gun out of his hand, overturn the table, pretend to faint.… Could he see her better than she could see him? Was the weapon real?
    Her mother’s often-repeated advice to her daughters had been, “If a man gets funny with you, knock him in the nuts with your knee.”
    But these nuts were well protected by a fat cat and a hard-looking gun. Leah began to sweat. Each tiny pore