After her late breakfast with Marie-Laure, Andrei had escorted her to a room, locked her in and made casual mention that if she tried anything, Damon would be waiting right outside the door ready to shoot her—or worse. Death waited outside that door. She barely noticed the rest of the room. The footsteps in the hallway commanded her complete attention. The footsteps faded and Nora forced herself to breathe, to relax. Carefully she got off the floor and tried the window. That was a waste of time, of course. Elizabeth, having had the childhood from hell, had taken childproofing her home to an absurd extreme. If Nora had a lead baseball and a cannon, she still couldn’t have shattered the window glass. And someone, Damon or Andrei, had kindly nailed the wood to the frame. She was trapped. Nothing to do but wait and stare and pray the day away. And plan. After all, while she believed in the power of prayer, she also believed in having backup plans on the off chance God wanted her to get off her ass and do it herself.
