With an unspectacular jolt, the cable ties gave way and Sam's right hand hit painfully against the concrete floor of the cellar.

Sam pushed a hard, triumphant "yes" into the silence of her prison. The good old fate, here it was again and had torn Sam into the most different emotional swirls. When Sam no longer believed he could align anything with the blade against the hard-wearing plastic of the cable ties, fate had given her a long nose and showed her that she was once again on the wrong track and knew nothing at all.

Sometimes Sam thought there might be a god and a devil and they both made fun of poking Sam like a ball. Both uncertain whether Sam now rather belong to the light or rather the dark side. She was probably in the gray no-man's-land, and neither side had a keen interest in her person and what she was doing.

But for religious meaning or nonsense she was now missing the time. Sam turned to her knees and braced herself. She shifted her weight to her feet and sat down on the chair. On this occasion, she looked at the cuts on her right hand, all except for a two cuts were superficial and bleeding barely. Now only the ankle cuffs.

The rope was thick and looked stable. When she tried to untie the knots, she broke off a fingernail. The knots were too tight for her to release them with her hands. Sam looked down at the blade that had already been helping her with the cable ties.

In her mind she scolded herself that she had not put the blade in her trouser pocket, so she could have saved herself from laying down again and fishing for the blade. But her euphoria had just been too big. The only question was whether she could afford such emotional mistakes in the long run.

With liberated hands, the procedure proved ridiculously easy and after a short while Sam sat bent over in her chair and worked the thick ropes with the blade. Impatiently she watched as she had to make an estimated 20 cuts to cut through single, thin fibers of the rope.

The blade appeared to be significantly blunted when working on the cable ties. At this rate, she would need at least half an hour to finally move freely. But at least she could fool Summersby into being completely tied up and try to attack him when he approaches her.

Sam interrupted her jerking to bring the chair back to its starting position 20 cm from the wall. Damn, the overturned table, Summersby might not notice that the scalpel-like thing was missing, but he would immediately register the overturned table and not approach it carelessly.

Sam sighed and hopped back into the middle of the room, returning everything to its original state. Time consuming but rewarding. She did not want Summersby to shoot her in the chest with a shotgun from three yards away. He was probably in his shop right now, sitting there like a fat spider on the web, waiting for new victims.