I wake up to the smell of deli meat and mustard.

I look up, hoping that I’m in a Subway or a Jimmy John’s. Instead, I see a big bald guy shoving a sandwich into his face. I realize at once that it’s not from Subway or Jimmy John’s.

“Is that homemade?” I ask.

I try to point, but then I realize my arms are tied up. My legs, too. I’m hogtied on the floor.

The bald guy eyes me, but he keeps chewing. He finally swallows and says, “Yeah. Now shut up.”

My stomach rumbles. “Living alone,” I say, “I could never justify making my own. You buy the lettuce, tomatoes, onions...bread...you get a few really good sandwiches out of it, but after a few days, at least one thing starts going bad. The bread gets stale, or the lettuce gets soggy...then you’ve gotta decide if you want to eat a substandard sandwich, or if you want to replace the one ingredient that went bad.”

“Shut up,” he grunts.

“If you replace the ingredient,” I say, “then you risk that another ingredient goes bad the next day. Then you’re playing whack-a-mole, and you realize that you might as well just go to Jimmy John’s and get a quality sandwich for five to eight dollars, depending on which one you order--”

“My wife makes them,” the guy says. “I don’t gotta deal with any of that shit.”

“Nice,” I say. “Maybe I should marry a girl that works at a sandwich shop.”

“Pretty sure you’re not making it out of this place alive,” he says, taking another big bite. “Sandwiches are the least of your worries.”

My chest tightens up. I struggle to loosen my bindings, but they seem to just get tighter the more I fight.

“Cynthia’s a black widow,” I say.

“She’s something, alright,” he says.

“You know about black widows?”

“Those the spiders that kill the male after they mate?” He wipes mayonnaise off his mouth with a napkin.

I nod. “She mated with me, and now she’s going to have you kill me for her.”

He narrows his eyes at me. “You fucked her?”

“Well,” I say. “It wasn’t PIV, but we did have sex.”

“PIV?” he says. “Is that like AIDS?”

“That’s H-IV,” I say. This guy is an idiot. “PIV is penis-in-vagina sex. Cynthia gave me a blowjob, which is called oral sex, so we still had sex--”

The bald guy laughs so hard he has to put his sandwich down. He gasps for breath after the laughter dies down, and then he looks at me. “Man, you’re going to die a virgin. That’s sad.”

“You think oral doesn’t count as having sex?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “Nah, man, not really. I got my first blowjob when I was twelve. It didn’t make me a man.”

I feel my eyes watering, and I bite my lip to hold back the tears. I really don’t want to die a virgin. Even male spiders who get their heads bitten off at least get to score first. PIV score, that is. Do spiders have penises?

“If she’s a black widow,” the guy says, “then I’m her fangs, and you’re the thing on her ass that makes the web. She doesn’t do anything herself, just gets other people to do everything for her.”

“Did she…” I find myself asking, but I trail off.

He narrows his eyes at me.

I figure I might as well ask. “Did she make you hurt Amber?”

He shakes his head. “Not yet, but she didn’t do any ransom or anything. You only kidnap someone if you want to ransom them, or if you want to hurt them.”

I really shouldn’t care about Amber at this point. Maybe it’s just the guilt I feel for putting her into this situation--for luring her into Cynthia’s web--but I feel horrible pain in my heart for the hurt I’m causing her.

“She’s not...torturing her?” I croak out.

“Nah,” the bald guy says. “Not yet. I think she wants to get Liam here first; make him watch.”

Liam. I feel a shred of hope now. That guy will go ballistic. Hell, he might even be strong enough to take out this bald guy. He could rescue Amber...and he’d have to rescue me, too, right?

“Liam can pay you more,” I say. “You know that, right? He’d pay you--”

The bald guy shakes his head. He points to his sandwich. “I told you my wife makes these. Cynthia got another guy like me to take my wife hostage. If I don’t do exactly what she wants, my wife is gone. No amount of money in the world would get me to turn on her, you got it?”

Shit. Liam really is my only hope. I just have to pray that he’ll rescue me instead of beating the shit out of me and leaving me for dead.