“We know you’ve got methamphetamines in there,” I shouted. “Come out with your hands up and make this easy!” I knew no such thing, but I knew it’d get one of two responses, and I hoped for it to be the one that most harmonized with my needs.
“I don’t have meth in here,” the outraged Scotsman said, coming around the corner with his hands up, and speaking a little more clearly, but not much. I’d crept up to just next to the door while he’d made his way over to it, and as soon as he emerged, ready to protest his innocence at what was clearly a huge mistake, I jumped him.
There was a difference in how I approached this guy versus how I would have approached a bad guy, and it was night and day. I caught his arm and dragged it down, clamping my left around his wrist as he walked out the door beside me and wheeling him around to put my right forearm squarely against his left elbow. If he didn’t move where I wanted him to move now, I could really do some damage to his joint, and like most people do when you put them into a painful situation where their arm could break in about two seconds, his gut got the point before his brain caught up.
I whirled him around and put his face in the wall—but gently. Mostly. “Hi,” I said, once he was good and planted there, not moving. “Know who I am?” I dropped the Edinburgh accent.
He nodded sharply. “Uh huh.” That I understood instantly.
“I’m going to take some of your things,” I said. “Some clothes. Some food. And I’m gonna hang out here for a while. I might borrow money when it’s all said and done. You’re okay with all this, right?” I asked extremely sweetly, though I did still obviously have him in a position where I could shatter his arm like a candy cane against concrete.
“Uh huh,” he said, nodding as best he could with the wall in his face. He really rubbed against it, like he wanted to shave the first layer of skin off. “Take whatever ye want.” Man, his accent was thick.
“I’m going to tie you up now,” I said. “Don’t scream, and you won’t get hurt. Fair enough?” He nodded. “Do you live with anyone?” I doubted he had a girlfriend by the state of this place—clothes were strewn across the floor, dog toys everywhere—but he surprised me with another nod. “Who, and when will they be here?”
“Kytt,” he said, smacking his lips together. “She gets home from work around six.”
“Okay. That’s fine. I’ll be out of here well before Kytt gets home,” I said, nodding along with him. “So she’ll find you here tied up, and you’ll have a fun story to tell all the reporters. You’ll be famous.” For about five seconds, I didn’t bother to add, Until I assault some other poor schmoe, or wreck a town while passing through, and the media forgets about my last grievous offense in favor of the next one. “What’s your name?”
“John,” he said, blinking. “John Clifford.”
“All right, John,” I said. “You have any rope I can tie you up with?” He shook his head and I sighed. “Clothes it is, then.”
I trussed him up with a bunch of old flannel shirts, tying them tight enough that he wasn’t going to easily get out, but not so tight it’d cut off circulation. The truth was, clothing was a terrible choice for binding people, because ideally whatever you used would produce chafing and resistance so they didn’t try and worm their way out. Clothing was too smooth for that, the fibers easier to rub up against repeatedly in the course of wriggling your way out, but I did the best I could with what I had and knotted it meta-tight, to the point where the sleeves sounded like they were going to rip off.
Once I was done getting John all bound up, which was mostly for psychological effect since he could most likely have escaped them with concerted effort, I led him like a submissive puppy into the next room. “Do you have any duct tape?” I asked, something I should have asked earlier. Duct tape wasn’t much better for binding than clothes, honestly—you could escape duct tape with a reasonable amount of torsion against it—but there was a profound consequence to mentally surrendering, and I wanted John to experience it fully, so that he wouldn’t do something dumbass like try to escape. Because that would really put a kink in my plans for how today was going to go.
John nodded toward the kitchen, and I dutifully led him back there and found the duct tape. I wrapped him up tight around the wrists, then checked the knot on the clothing. It wasn’t coming off easily, and he seemed fearfully impressed, so I just left it along with the double precaution of the tape. I led him back toward the bedroom, not willing to let him out of my sight for long. Once there, I started to raid his closet.
Well, Kytt’s closet, anyway. John was too tall for me.
Kytt looked to be a few sizes too tall for me, but unlike Goldilocks, I didn’t have a “just right” third option to choose from, so I made do by rolling up Kytt’s pant legs. Archie wandered around the entire time, not looking particularly upset by the fact that I’d bound up his master and was now raiding his mistress’s wardrobe. He came up and gave me a sniff, like he was trying to decide if whatever scent Kytt offered—it smelled a little lilac-y to me—was better than the sweat of meat that was my signature. He didn’t seem impressed either way, and licked my ankle until I put my shoes back on.
I’d kept John’s face in the wall while I changed; no threat or anything, just a subtle physical reminder as I turned his head for him that I could break him into tiny, tiny pieces if he pissed me off. I wasn’t going to threaten him at all verbally, though he would probably not realize that until later, if ever. Words were slower than pressure applied to a sensitive joint in getting a point across, after all.
“Mind if I hit up your fridge?” I asked once I was done, pulling John off the wall and pushing him toward the living room/kitchen again.
The sound he made was awfully discomfited, but it squeaked out politely enough, and clear, thankfully. “Help yourself.”
“Thanks,” I said, and pulled him along, Archie trailing in my wake, to finally, finally, get something to eat, and settle in for a few hours until I needed to make my way to the airfield so I could get the hell out of this country before anything worse could happen.
7.
Reed
To her credit, Isabella didn’t ask me if I’d seen the news when I came walking in. She probably didn’t need to, because we’d been together long enough at this point that I was sure she could see the gears turning just by looking at my face. The smell of her perfume wafted lightly through the air of our small apartment in Eden Prairie, just a few short minutes from my work.
And the gears were turning. They’d been turning the whole drive home.
“How was your day?” she asked instead, her Italian accent ever present. I didn’t notice it most of the time, unless she was yelling. Then it tended to get really pronounced. She asked neutrally, without a hint of irony, or leading, like she really just wanted to know.
I pondered my answer as I plopped down on the couch next to her. My white collar was already unbuttoned, my tie loosened appropriately, as though I’d been swilling liquor behind the cafeteria at a school dance with the other guys, instead of crammed in a hot bullpen watching cable news report over and over that my sister was the subject of a manhunt in another country for more crimes that I was pretty sure she didn’t commit.
“Like someone wiped their ass on my toast,” I said, picking a random metaphor out of the air. It made her frown in contemplation, which I took as a failure, because I’d been hoping to lighten the moment. “Like crap,” I said, and the frown lessened a degree.
She nodded. She didn’t have to ask if I’d seen. “What are you going to do?” she asked instead.