[Ambrose]

II. BAILEY WAKES UP. THE DINNER. ESCAPE FROM ALCATRAZ.

When Bailey opened her eyes, all she saw was white. Her vision seemed to swim and she thought she must be having one of those weird dreams again; in this one she was flying through the clouds and everything was kind of hazy as dreams typically are. But then she saw something else. She could make out a light red and green pattern stretched out in front of her; the pattern was blurred as though it was hovering only an inch from her face. She concentrated harder and realized the red things were roses and the green were stems, interlocking to form a sort of web-like pattern. Then it dawned on her. She was looking at the floral design of her bedroom cover. I’m still in bed, she thought, feeling a sudden rush of coziness and warmth. Her mind continued to wander: It’s Saturday morning and I’ve probably slept in. Caitlin will be coming soon. Crapola! Caitlin will be coming soon! I need to get ready.

But when she tried to take the covers off, she realized she was somehow wrapped up in them, sort of rolled up tight like a human burrito. A funny thought came to her then: she thought of a time when she was little how she had liked to build blanket forts with her friend Aubrey and how afterwards one of them would be elected Godzilla and would be tasked with destroying their afternoon crafty work while the other hid inside, wrapped up in blankets, feigning shrieks of utter peril. Maybe we are playing that game again, she thought ecstatically, somehow oblivious to the fact that she was now twenty-four and had not spoken to her friend in over ten years. It took her a minute or so to get free and when she finally unrolled herself, she half-expected to see Aubrey standing beside her with her socks over her hands in imitation of monster paws and a snarl caught on her eleven-year-old face. But Aubrey was not standing beside her. Not by a long shot.

“Hello,” a voice said.

There was a man standing over her. He looked to be in his late fifties or early sixties judging by the lines in his face. His hair was gray-black and unkempt, and he was sporting the beginnings of a beard. She could not help but think he bore a striking semblance to many of the bums she had run across downtown pestering her for change, face all wrinkles and in desperate need of a haircut. But the look of his face was not of guilt and pleading but, she thought, one of quiet satisfaction–the face of a mute kid after he has unwrapped his present and has discovered that it is just what he wanted. And all that satisfaction was concentrated in a set of dark brown eyes. His eyes possessed the delight that his face was lacking. And now those eyes were staring right at her.

“Where am I?” Bailey demanded. At this, she looked around. She was in a bedroom, but not the sprawling white-carpeted room with the four-post mahogany bed that she had grown accustomed to. The walls were cement, reminding her uncomfortably of a large prison cell. There were clothes and papers littering the floor. To her left there was a bookshelf which was filled to capacity with innumerable dusty volumes, seemingly on the verge of overflowing, and off to her right there was a small dingy twin bed. It was his bedroom maybe. Her breath suddenly caught in her throat as a single thought skittered over the surface of her mind like an insect gliding over water: I’ve been kidnapped.

“My name is Jonathan Cooper.” The man said in a pleasant enough voice. “But you can just call me John, or Coop.” He smiled and extended a hand, as though they had just met under perfectly normal circumstances.

Bailey began to reach for his hand out of habit and then reconsidered. If she had been kidnapped, which she was beginning to suspect, she did not intend to offer any kind of courtesy to her kidnapper.

“Are you kidnapping me?” She said, fighting a lump that had risen in her throat.

John or Coop or whatever stared at her a moment and then his smile finally faded. “I had hoped you would not see it that way. At least not entirely. You see-”

“How the fuck am I supposed to see it?” She interjected. She stood up quickly. She was suddenly aware of the fact that she was still dressed in her green exercise clothes. She felt a faint dizziness. All at once, she lost her balance and he reached out and caught her.

“That’s the chloroform wearing off that you are feeling. I had to give you a big dose.”

When she finally grasped what he had said, she pushed him away hard.

“You drugged me?” She spat. Aren’t you just the real charmer? Twin balls of rage had appeared at her temples. She felt slightly uncomfortable raising her voice to a total stranger, but she was going to all the same.

“Look, see, I-” he began, motioning with his hands like a salesperson trying to reiterate a proposal. The satisfaction was quickly draining from his eyes and he looked all the more haggard.

“I DON’T GIVE A FUCK WHAT YOUR REASONS ARE.” Bailey snapped. She could not remember having ever been this upset. The girl who took after her mother had come stomping through a door in her head. And when she’d entered, the furnace there had taken off, spitting sparks every which way. “LET ME GO, OR ELSE…” Or else what? But it did not matter, she was using The Voice and she was going to get her way.

That was when a cold and hefty palm collided with her left cheek, making a loud smack and spinning her head around like her neck was made of rubber. It was John’s palm. John had slapped her.

She turned her head back to look at him. The place where he had slapped her tingled like she had recently been given a shot of Novocaine. She felt a thin thread of something cold spilling from the corner of her mouth down her chin. She touched it with her finger and saw that it was red.

“Honey, I would watch that mouth if I were you. I don’t know how things worked in your world, but around here, you run your mouth like that and you’ll be sorry. Don’t believe me? Just say something else.” His meaner side, which had been disguised before, popped out like a turtle from its shell. And this turtle snapped.

Bailey was taken aback. Her cheek was now a light purple, which she had the fortune of not being able to see and the pain was starting to come in eye-watering spurts. It felt like her whole head had been pressed firmly against a waffle iron. She could almost see herself glowering at Coop. She must have looked like a toddler throwing the tantrum of the century, with one hand cupped to her left cheek and her eyes busy carrying on the most vicious glower she could muster. She did not say a word.

“Much better,” he said. His previous calm had been restored and those dark brown eyes regained a bit of their lost satisfaction.

In light of his lashing out, John now looked more like a manic junkie than a bum–a junkie who would not hesitate to rob her in order to score some more dope. Just give me your wallet, pretty thang. Just give it to me and I won’t hurt ya none. For the first time ever, she feared for her life.

“Now, here’s the breakdown,” he said. “Dinner will be at six. Until then, you’re free to stay in here. There’s a bathroom behind you. You might have to jiggle the handle on the toilet a little–the thing’s older than I am.” He gave an odd sort of laugh. Perhaps in part because her face did not lighten, he added, “I’m going to lock the door. If you need anything just give me a shout. I’ll be close by.”

She knew John must have seen the agony in her face. And what did he expect? She was being held like a prisoner, like an animal at the zoo–her. Bailey Demont Shrotabaker. Never in her life had she been treated with such indecency, such immorality. She began to speak up and then thought better of it. He’ll just slap me again, the bastard. Like I’m some dirty animal.

With that, John turned and left the room. She listened dejectedly to the click of his shoes crossing the cement floor. Finally, when she heard the door lock shut from the outside, she began to cry. He had this all planned, she thought despondently. He knows my daddy’s rich, and he’s going to slap him with a big fat ransom. It all had happened so suddenly and felt so unfair. The tears rounding out her cheeks were like a bitter confirmation. Could things get any worse? Feeling like the unluckiest woman in the world, she went over to the bed, threw herself onto it and promptly shut her eyes.

* * *

It was five till six, according to the clock in the kitchen. Coop was putting the finishing touches on the salad, pouring a little oil and vinegar into the bowl of romaine lettuce that was interspersed with diced tomatoes, carrots, green peppers, olives, and chunks of feta cheese. Dinner was spaghetti, one of the few meals he knew how to cook to his satisfaction and which he thought was fit for company. He put down the bottle of vinegar and wiped his hands with a paper towel. Then, with one more glance to the dining room table, he went to get his Guest of Honor.

Bailey was lying in bed, her face buried in a pillow. When she looked up at him as he came in, her beautiful blue eyes were bright red at the corners and her cheeks were still wet from crying. He felt a sudden sharp pang of guilt, and feared it was only the first of many to come. Here was this astonishingly beautiful girl, reduced to tears and left to cry into her pillow. And he had done this. The consequence of his actions was now beginning to dawn on him. He had once written an article for the San Francisco Chronicle about Mexican migrant workers on a farm outside San Jose, and had likened it to a concentration camp. Now a vivid image came to mind: he imagined a Nazi soldier standing watch over a death camp, spotting a gorgeous young Jewish lady in the yard, her frail white hands resting under her chin, sulking–a vestige of life amidst the ravages of death. Surely he had the power to end it. But had it not been him that put her here in the first place?

His mind wandered deeper. He had kidnapped this woman, but why? He knew there was a reason he had wanted her so bad, like the way he had wanted Lacey Jones. But this time the reason was different. He had wanted Lacey because he had thought he had been in love with her. That was a long time ago and he had been young and naïve then, but dammit if he hadn’t loved her. And now this girl had come into his life and had reminded him of someone he once cared a great deal for. Only this time it had not been a romantic kind of love–in fact, he could not quite put his finger on just what kind of love it had been–and he did not care to remember more than that. Because to him, there were a few memories that were like splinters, and this particular one was set in real nice and deep. Pulling on it would result in the most excruciating pain imaginable. And quite frankly, he did not think he could stomach it.

“Dinner’s ready,” he said, trying not to sound harsh and apathetic but doing so all the same.

Bailey only showed the faintest sign of recognition. When she finally did speak, it was in a hoarse whisper, and she was looking more at her pillow than at him. “I’m not hungry.”

As if channeling some unknown part of him that knew how to deal with this variety of stubbornness, Coop went over the bed and sat down beside her. She immediately pulled away from him, her face turned up in a sneer.

“Look,” he said. “You hate my guts, right?”

She looked at him for a moment and then nodded her head.

“And you hate being locked up here against your will, am I correct?”

She nodded again.

“Then why make it any worse on yourself by going hungry. Tell ya what, come and get some food and afterward you can come right back here and start hating me again.”

She looked at him with the suspicion of a child on her way to the dentist after being told she need not worry a bit. It’s just a small filling–painless, really. And it will all be over in a jiffy. Then the suspicion slowly faded. The knowledge that she had not eaten anything since that low-fat latte this morning had obviously persuaded her, and she got up.

The two of them walked into the dining room. Coop pulled a chair for her and she sat down in it reluctantly, arms folded across her chest. Coop thought the reluctance was more of a show at this point, and soon after he brought out a plate of spaghetti topped with a generous helping of meat-sauce and set it down in front of her, he saw that it was. She looked it over querulously at first, arms still glued beneath her breasts. It suddenly occurred to him that she might be a vegetarian, but this thought was immediately banished when his Guest of Honor grabbed a handful of noodles with her bare hand, fingers dripping with tomato sauce, and began stuffing it into her mouth. Coop was immediately dumbstruck.

She went on eating her spaghetti this way, handful at a time, oblivious to the fact that Coop had not yet touched his and instead was sitting with his elbow bent and fork still hovering over his plate on the other side of the table, staring at her. By the time she had cleared half her plate, her face looked as bad as her hands and the front of her green sport tee could have earned her the role of a murder victim in one of those gruesome horror movies.

“How is it?” He said, failing to conceal an amused smile.

Bailey said nothing in reply, instead went on shoving another large helping into her mouth. After she was done, she wiped at the sauce smeared around her mouth with the back of her hand. Coop found this gesture, curiously enough, perhaps the most unladylike.

After dinner, Coop escorted his Guest of Honor back to her room where she immediately woke from her spaghetti-induced trance and went into the bathroom to clean up. He left her to it, locking the door on his way out, and returned to the kitchen to do the same, feeling bemused and impressed by the girl’s voracious appetite.

I didn’t think she had it in her, he thought to himself. But somehow, just the same, he supposed that was a lie.

* * *

Bailey had never made the acquaintance of a woman named Lacey Jones, or known that she had once held a guy’s Special Buddy hostage with a Swiss army knife after he had whipped it out and tried to have his way with her in the back of his Volkswagen, but she would have appreciated that kind of feminine tenacity just now. She held the butter knife (which she had stolen from the dinner table when John had gotten up at one point to get her a glass of water) in her right hand above her head and her wrist was bent so that the sharp edge of the knife lay flat against the screen. The window had been the kind that swung up and down, and she had had to strain her fingers to push it up to the ceiling where, by a stroke good fortune, its rusted hinge kept it propped open. Her left hand was clutching the side of the bookshelf for balance. She had turned the bathroom waste bin upside down and was standing on top of it on her tiptoes. The room she was in was sparse of furniture: no night stand or dresser, and she had tried to move the bed over but it had a solid wood frame and was painfully heavy. It occurred to her to try to climb up the bookshelf, which was conveniently located next to the window, grasping the shelves as one would grasp the rungs of a ladder, but she feared the extra weight might cause one of the shelves to snap and break, or worse, the whole thing to topple over, the bookshelf along with the many encyclopedia-sized volumes squashing her like a bug.

After a couple minutes of labor, at which point her wrist began to ache furiously, she managed to make a three inch wide cut in the screen which was situated about a foot above her head. Her room was in the basement of the house, which meant that her window (which was little more than a two-foot wide, foot tall rectangle cut from the top of the cement wall) probably sat just above ground level although she could not quite see the ground from where she was. What she could see were the tips of a few tall trees that might have been Pine or Spruce, leading her to believe that wherever she was, she was far from the city.

She kept thinking John was going to burst in at any moment, grab her by the waist and throw her kicking and screaming to the floor, at which point he would probably take the liberty to slap the shit out of her again. She tried to vanquish this thought, but it kept popping in and out of a little hole in her mind, like a sinister little mouse tempting that hungry cat called panic. Meanwhile, the waste bin, which was made of plastic, was starting to depress under her weight. She worked faster, until her wrist burned as though the muscles there had been turned into sandpaper and sweat cropped up on her forehead. She remembered a scene from a movie where a man had tried to chisel his way out of his concrete jail cell at Alcatraz using only a small pick he had somehow managed to smuggle in. She suddenly felt a great deal of compassion for that man.

Fifteen or so minutes later, she had managed to cut all the way around the perimeter of the screen. The swath that she had cut out fell easily inward, continuing its descent all the way to the cement floor. She then began to wonder if she would actually be able to pull herself up from this position. She decided to use one of the upper shelves of the bookshelf to boost herself up. Besides creaking a little under her weight, the wooden shelf on which she placed her left foot showed no other sign that it was going to break nor did the bookshelf–which she could feel was actually quite solid beneath her left tennis shoe–give threat of tipping over. With some effort she was able to get both arms wrapped over the cement ledge and stick her head out through the window.

She saw grassy dirt that was almost at eye level. Without taking time to enjoy the view, she found the next shelf with her foot, putting her even with the screen and began to slide her head and torso through. She was half way out when she realized she was stuck. She had to twist her body to reach the shelf and now her hips, which were at an angle, no longer had enough clearance. Realizing what she had to do next, she took her left foot off of the shelf and let her left leg swing back to meet her right so that she was balancing all her weight on her stomach. The sharp metal frame of the window dug into her flesh, making her grimace. For one agonizing moment, she thought she would not be able to pull herself through, that she would be stuck like this, dangling from the window with her butt sticking out like some unfortunate cartoon character. Finally, after a few labored grunts, she managed to pull herself free.

The ground was cold and muddy where she put her hands, and she stood up with a light shudder. Her arms were warm and sore from exertion and she thought there was probably a red line indented in her flesh beneath the belly button–she lifted her green spaghetti-stained sport tee to confirm it. She was in the backyard and it looked to have rained sometime recently; the evening sky was choked by gray clouds. She thought the place would have looked dismal enough in better weather. What had once probably been a nice cement patio was now cracked and vying for existence against a throng of weeds. Her eyes moved across a lone shovel, leaning delicately up against the side of the house, hidden underneath a snare of dense cobwebs; a bright green snake lay coiled beside it–where its head should have been, there was a rusted steel sprinkler. Her eyes continued to roam beyond the patio, where there was a small yellow inflatable pool (which was now partially deflated), covered in grime and filled up with rain water and beyond that, a swing set that looked equally dilapidated. The whole place was overgrown with knee high grass. The presence of the pool and the swing set unsettled her deeply.

The yard was not fenced in and her eyes immediately swept the landscape beyond, moving wearily over the clusters of Ponderosa Pine–the name which she remembered from when her dad had pointed them out to her on one of their long-ago trips to Yosemite National park–and came to a rest on the line of gray mountains in the distance as though to confirm her suspicion that she had, in fact, left the city.

She had no clue where she was, but she knew it must be a ways out in the country, maybe even as far as Mariposa County. The rocky hills and orange thickets of wildflower suggested that she was somewhere in the central part of the state. In any case, she did not have time to think about that now; her first and utmost priority was to get the hell away from here–and fast.

Her first instinct was to run, but for all she knew, she was miles out in the middle of nowhere. There was a puddle-riddled dirt drive winding off from the house to the west, which she had spied by creeping carefully along the side of the house to the front, dodging the windows. The road was surrounded on both sides by flat open fields–she thought briefly that she might be in Napa Valley, wine country, but the mountains seemed too close for it. If she were to take off down that road, it could easily be hours before she reached a convenience store or a gas station or something. And somewhere in the back of her mind she just knew John would check up on her before then, and what would he do if he discovered she was not there? He’d come after me in his truck, like a bat out of hell, she answered her own thought bitterly. And he would catch me. Of course, she could leave the road and hide, but what good would that do? She did not have a phone or a map, and there was a good chance it would rain before dark. And although it was springtime, the air had a habit of creeping down into the low forties in the evening, and if it so happened that she became stuck out in the country somewhere after the sun disappeared and she was soaking wet, she could easily get pneumonia. No, I’m going to have to go inside and look for a phone, she thought finally. She did not particularly want to try her luck, lest John should sneak up behind her like he had done before (and had nearly scared her to death) but she knew well enough that calling the cops was her best bet. Even if she was captured afterward, there would at least be the hope that they would come and rescue her. And while John might slap her again, she didn’t believe him to be a killer. A bit loony for sure, but not a killer. Plus her dad would want evidence that she was alive, meaning she was too important in the scheme of things to just be offed anyway.

She slid, her back to the house, as stealthily as a commando on a covert op toward the sliding glass door looking out on the patio. Her heart was thumping furiously in her chest, and she thought randomly of the energizer bunny that just keeps going and going and going. When she was a foot from the glass, she stuck her head out cautiously to look inside. She saw the dining room table where they had had dinner less than an hour before. She had a clear view of the kitchen and could see that there were dishes set aside by the sink; the one closest to her had a single noodle dangling off of it in a loop like a miniature jump rope. John was nowhere to be seen.

The door was unlocked (and why shouldn’t it be? the guy lived in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere) and she edged it open, thinking: It’s now or never. Without hesitation, she slipped inside. The dining room overlooked the kitchen, and the half-moon light hanging over the table was on, casting a warm glow that painted everything a soft orange. She went into the kitchen, quickly scanning the island and the cluttered countertop there for a cordless phone that she could simply swipe and then run and hide somewhere with but did not find one. She noticed that the kitchen counter, like the room in the basement, was cluttered with about a gazillion papers–many had sticky notes attached to them. She wondered briefly how she had failed to notice this little oddity before and decided she had been much too hungry and much too distressed at the time to have cared. A fleeting thought came and went: maybe he’s a writer. The papers were not just confined to the counter either: there were a dozen or so pinned up on the wall with thumb tacks. She even spied a few notes that had been written on a yellow legal pad taped right to the ceiling. What a complete nutjob! She thought. Still, she could not suppress a feeling of astonishment. She felt a little like a paleontologist who has just discovered a new species of dinosaur. He must have had to stand on a ladder to put those ones up.

Every thanksgiving since she could remember, her family drove up (or sometimes flew up) to her Aunt and Uncle’s house in Portland, Oregon. Her uncle, who was five years retired, had taken up writing as a hobby and would entertain her with one of his stories whenever she came to visit. They were mostly mystery stories; her favorite had been one about a poor salesman named Leonard Leroy, who decides one night–after a couple of glasses of scotch–to leave his wife who he suspects of cheating on him. His wife is asleep in bed, so he decides he will leave her a note on the coffee table explaining why he left her–a note that she would find the next morning, in addition to his absence. He thus sits down at his desk and sets forth to write the note, laboring long into the night, trying to convey just how angry he is with her. The only problem is that the note quickly turns into two notes, and then three, four, five, until finally he realizes that there is not enough paper in the world for him to write down just how much he has come to despise her. So he kills her instead. This image of Leroy’s desk littered with notes–all written in painstakingly small print–came to her now. And then she spotted something that looked like a manuscript, resting on top of a few scattered papers. Under other circumstances she might have been tempted to go over and flip through it, but right now she was looking for the–

And then a toilet flushed.

Her heart fluttered in her chest and her stomach tightened up. She felt like she was suddenly strapped into a roller coaster with no breaks. A single thought–a word–crested the waves of startled confusion that had suddenly formed in her mind: Shit.

Without thinking, she slipped into the living room which sat adjacent to the kitchen and ducked behind a burgundy sofa chair that resided there. She might have found it bitterly ironic had she known that John, only hours before, had been hiding behind a chair to wait for her. She clamped a hand over her mouth to muffle her breathing. She waited. The bathroom door opened; she could hear the familiar rustling sound of water refilling the tank in the toilet. Then the door shut, and there came the faintest squishing noises, like a sponge being squeezed over and over again as John moved down the carpeted hallway. After a moment, that sound was replaced by another: the thump, thump, thump of his feet on the linoleum in the kitchen. Like a harbinger, a tickling sensation had popped up in her throat and she felt a fit of coughs coming on.

She heard the refrigerator door open, and decided to make her move. She sprang as agilely as she could from her spot behind the chair, slunk across the living room and into the hall–not looking back to see if John had seen or heard her–and slipped through the last door at the end which was propped open slightly. She flicked on the lights. She was in a bedroom. There was nightstand by the bed. The roller coaster she was on was now careening around a corner at breakneck speed. Any second now, the damn thing was going to derail and she would go flying off the track. And then she saw it: a smooth black phone nestled in its black cradle. She felt a jolt of relief radiate throughout her body like a sugar high. She closed the door and locked it as the roller coaster began to slow down.

She picked up the phone, expecting to hear dead silence like in the movies but got a dial tone. Her fingers instinctively dialed the number that she had known by heart since she was six years old: 9-1-1.

She waited.

“Sonora 911, what is your emergency?” The female dispatcher on the other end of the line said.

“Please help! My name is Bailey Shrotabaker and I’ve been kidnapped. I’m being held at a place out in the country… uh, I’m not sure exactly where, can you trace this call?” She said.

“Hold on,” the dispatcher said. And then after a moment, “I see you at 14 Blandry drive, off highway 49. Ma’am, can you get to a safe place in the house?”

Before Bailey had a chance to answer, someone had begun pounding loudly on the bedroom door. It was John. And by the sound of it, John was a new kind of furious.

“You slippery little cunt!” John bellowed. She imagined his manic eyes shrinking to dagger points. “I knew I couldn’t turn my back on you for a second. You open this fuckin’ door right now, you hear? Or help me God, I’m gonna break it down and come in there and strangle you.”

The roller coaster had rumbled back to life and was off again. She felt the threads of panic flowing back into her, cinching down around her lungs like rubber bands. When she spoke it sounded like another person’s voice was coming out, “Please, help me, he’s at the door and he’s trying to get in!”

The pounding grew. She could no longer make out the dispatcher above the constant BAM-BAM-BAM. It was as if she had somehow been transported to a construction site, and outside some Joe Nobody was busy pounding a nail into the door. Lunch in five minutes, gotta finish up. And then came the loudest bang yet; it sounded like a small satchel of C4 had been detonated outside the door. She screamed and dropped the phone.

[Jimbalaya]

A funny thought came to her then: she thought of a...

Need a capital 'S' on 'she'.

He looked to be in is late fifties or early sixties

Guess this answeres my question in part one. Also, you're missing an 'h' in 'his'.

“Who are you and why am I here?” Bailey demanded.

I wonder if it would work better in two seperate sentences. Also, I would think a more appropriate question would be "Where am I?" 'why am I here' indicates that she actually knows where she is and is not really surprised by it. Just an observation.

“How in the fuck am I supposed to see it?” She interjected.

Could possibly omit the word 'in' in this sentence. Personal preferance I suppose.

“You drugged me?” She spat. Aren’t you just the real charmer?

Missing a set of quotation marks here, unless the second line was a thought, as you stated, that would be in italics. But if it is a thought it might be a good idea to ad 'she thought' in there somewhere.

The place where he had slapped her tingled like she had recently been given a shot of Novacaine.

Novocaine, you mean?

His meaner side, which had been disguised before, popped out like a turtle from its shell. And this turtle snapped.

Nice image!

Bailey was taken a back.

Should be aback.

She saw grassy dirt that was almost at eye level. Without taking time to enjoy the view, she found the next shelf with her foot, putting her at even with the screen and began to slide her head and torso through.

I didn't think 'putting her at even' made much sense. Maybe omit 'at' and it would work fine.

“Please help! My name is Bailey Shotabaker...

I can't remember the exact spelling, and I'm too lazy to go look, isn't there an 'r' in her last name?

And the suspense keeps building! What a great read, Ambrose! For such a long piece of writing there were surprisingly few errors. These are the few that I found, that's not saying that I got everyting, but I read it through top to bottom.

The imagery you create is amazing. It's like being at Bailey's side. I'm rooting for her! Can't wait for the next piece!

[Ambrose]

Great edits, BT. Glad you're enjoying the story so far. The next part is going up.

[Venomous Vixen]

Another great one, I did not see that needed correcting except this

“You drugged me?” She spat. Aren’t you just the real charmer? Twin balls of rage had appeared at her temples. She felt slightly uncomfortable raising her voice to a total stranger, but she was going to all the same.

Was the second part in her head or did she say it aloud... if aloud obviously it is missing the quotes. If not it is a bit awkward, though I noticed you mentioned you had some stuff in italics before, perhaps this was one of them.

Off to the next.

[xtremelady]

In some areas your description is so full of flavour that in a few spots the lack of becomes glaringly obvious; I do realise you are switching viewpoints quite a bit and well done for this is a smooth transaction.

Just a few thoughts;

I found her seemingly lack of fear quite surprising – even the most spoilt woman would have felt a good amount of fear, after all not all kidnap victims make it out alive – things can go wrong. I know you said at one point afraid for her life – but her thoughts expression afterwards didn’t quite back it up. – he is one man – she isn’t chained – what caused her compliance and stop her running for the door – attempting to get past him? Nothing in his description made him seem overly tough.

The dinner table scene seemed out of kilter...I know here we view it through Coops eyes; if her cell is in the basement – where was the dining room – was he nervous she might escape? Did her gaze appraise her surroundings –I also felt she was a bit too accepting of her circumstances – lack of questions at this stage seemed to hit me 2. Wouldn’t she want to know details of how much money, and if there were others in on it with him? etc

The attempted escape was good and you left it in an excellent place – leaving us to wonder what he does to her and how he explains it to the police. Over all an excellent second chapter/part

[RENA HANDS]

I strongly believe that the ***s should be centered and proper paragraphs prior and following be adjusted accordingly.

Again, the ***s should be centered and the proper paragraphs prior and following be adjusted accordingly.

Maybe say…Bailey had never made the acquaintance of a woman Lacey Jones, (nor) known that she had…(?)

Should not Thanksgiving be capitalized?

AMAZING! Just BRILLIANT! You really know how to hold/deliver the suspense. Another rating of 5/5!

[Gurdit]

“You drugged me?” She spat. Aren’t you just the real charmer?

Isn't that direct speech in need of quotation commas?

Just give me your wallet, pretty thang. Just give it to me and I won’t hurt ya none.

You throw in these neat little pseudo-dialogues every now and then, and they really add to the effect. But when you don't give them any special formatting of any kind, you're basically making them part of the narration. I think you ought to perhaps put them in italics or something.

like an animal at the zoo–her. Bailey Demont Shrotabaker.

This part appears to be slightly poorly constructed to me. I can see the obvious attraction of giving her name its own sentence, since it adds to the effect. However, grammaticallly, I don't think it's flawless. Or even if it is, it's rather clumsy.
Also, it should not be "her", since "her" is an object. In this case, Bailey's the subject, which means it should be "she".
Maybe something like:
like an animal at the zoo. She-Bailey Demont Shrotabaker.
I don't think that's perfect either, but just trying to make a suggestion anyway.

He felt a sudden sharp pang of guilt, and feared it was only the first of many to come. Here was this astonishingly beautiful girl, reduced to tears and left to cry into her pillow. And he had done this. The consequence of his actions was now beginning to dawn on him. He had once written an article for the San Francisco Chronicle about Mexican migrant workers on a farm outside San Jose, and had likened it to a concentration camp. Now a vivid image came to mind: he imagined a Nazi soldier standing watch over a death camp, spotting a gorgeous young Jewish lady in the yard, her frail white hands resting under her chin, sulking–a vestige of life amidst the ravages of death. Surely he had the power to end it. But had it not been him that put her here in the first place?

Yowza! That's just amazing on so many levels. On the one hand, your characterization of Coop's beginning to shape up, and shape up pretty well, in-keeping with the first part, where you've mentioned how he was nervous about kidnapping her, and also in-keeping with the cross-bridge analogy. Apart from the indirect brilliance (the characterization), the apparent is brilliant as well, in that the writing is top notch. No flaws to pick, flowed wonderfully with good imagery.

I also liked the part after she got out of the house. Her various choices and her logical approach to each one of them was pretty good. And the bit about the energizer bunny was an awesome little touch as well.

(and why shouldn’t it be? the guy lived in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere)

The narrative here is following Bailey, so it should be in the kinda language and tone that she'd use, and honestly, "bum-fuck" to me appears to be the kinda term she would have stopped using years ago. Just a plain "fucking" would be better, perhaps.

Compared to Part 1, no offense, this part read much better. It flowed really well for the most part, and there were some gems of sentences or phrases that this entire chapter was peppered with. Again, in the end, there was the Joe Nobody dialogue "Lunch in five minutes, gotta finish up!". If you'd put that in italics, it would have set an even more urgent tone to that sentence, which would perfectly have suited the atmosphere being created.

The rollercoaster metaphor, again, was well done for the most part, and I really can't complain much. If I absolutely had to say something about it, I'd say this...
The roller coaster is hurtling down at breakneck speed, taking bends and god knows what, and all this is happening when she's yet to make her way into the bedroom or shortly thereafter. I think when John starts pounding on her door, the rollercoaster should have done more than just re-started. It should have gone down faster, brakes failing, perhaps the wheels sparking against the rail, or perhaps it came loose, hurtling its one scared, horrified female passenger, wearing a stained green sweatshirt hurtling towards the ground, and BOOM!

I also liked the little tidbit about Leroy, the writer-murderer. When that paragraph started, though, I wondered where it would be going.

By the way, way to go with the cliffhanger ending. I don't know whether to whack you on the head for it, or to applaud you for being cheeky that way.