“Here it is, Levon!”
What the fuck? Oaklyn was sixty yards away, squatting between the bushes of swaying green bean leaves. When she held up the phone and waved it around, all my hope fell into the pit of my stomach. A phone tossed away in a field? That’s what people did when they abducted you.
I hadn’t even closed half of the distance between us when I shouted, “Check the last number called.”
She looked. “I don’t recognize it. Local.”
I looked. “That’s a City Hall number.” Dialing it, a chipper assistant said, “Mayor Pratt’s office.” I hung up. “Why the fuck would he be calling Pratt’s office?”
Oaklyn shrugged. “If he’s as pissed as you say he is, he might’ve been telling him where to meet him.”
“So he could throw his phone into a field?”
My cell went off, a new text. I was so despondent I just half-heartedly looked at it. Oh. A video. It barely registered as I hit the PLAY button. I didn’t recognize the sender. Probably an animated alien telling me I was late with my cell payment.
I was shocked into attention when Pratt’s bulbous face appeared in my screen, almost filling it. “Hello, my dear slave,” he trilled. “You thought you could get the best of me. You were sadly mistaken. You can burn me, and poison me, and blow me up, but I’m always going to have the upper hand.”
“Oh yeah?” Oaklyn snorted cynically.
Pratt kept on. “As you can see, I’ve got your queer little buddy tied up at the moment. He just let his emotions get the best of him as usual, and look what happens when you do that?” He jiggled the phone so I could just barely make out Deloy naked from the waist up swinging from some kind of suspension cuffs, his head lolling forward, maybe even unconscious. I knew those cuffs weren’t made to actually swing from for extended periods. You’d dislocate your shoulder.
“Figure out where he is,” I told Oaklyn.
Pratt faced the camera back into selfie mode. He was immensely pleased with himself. One of the only saving graces was that he still wore his fucking bowtie around his shirt collar. So he hadn’t gotten that far with poor Deloy yet.
“If you value your little homo buddy you’ll make the exchange—your body for his. And oh, what an absolutely delightful body you have, Levon.” Ugh. It looked like he was paddling his own pickle as he thought of my body. “Oops! Sounds like he’s waking up now. Toodle-oo, my delicious slave. To give your dull brain a halfway even chance, I’ll give you one hint. Mrs. Kohlmeyer Presents Dinosaur Reader’s Theater.”
And his smarmy face was gone.
“Let’s get back home,” Oaklyn said right away, “and have Dingo analyze this video.”
I was already three steps ahead of her. I had to half-drag my love across the bean field.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
OAKLYN
I was sick with worry by the time we got back to our house. I mean, I had to go into the bathroom and stick my finger down my throat. The only thing that came out was the watery remnants of an apple I’d had before heading out to the commercial shoot. Because nothing came out, I continued to feel nauseous.
When I staggered out, Dingo was already on top of the video.
“Let me get into his location settings,” said Dingo.
I clung weakly to the back of Dingo’s chair as he clicked around. It was all Greek to me.
“Now what was it the douchemonkey said in the video? I do not want to watch it if I do not have to.”
“Ah—” Levon looked at the ceiling. He was far more professional than me. I was puking, and he kept his shit together. Yet it was him Pratt was targeting. I was embarrassed to be so undone when I was a professional, registered nurse. But it was just the same as if I’d just seen my own son dangling from a pair of fucking handcuffs at the mercy of a perverted psycho. “‘Someone presents a theater’.”
I said, “Dinosaur Reader’s Theater.” I remembered that much, to my chagrin. “Mrs. Someone.”
“All right,” said Dingo. “He must have turned off geotagging. He was smart enough to do that. Shit. Now I’m forced to watch this damned thing.”
Levon wandered out to the back deck while Dingo hit the play button. He seemed to be answering some texts and phone calls. No doubt the whole world had reported in on their progress, or lack thereof, in finding Deloy. Unless someone else had received a video, which I doubted. Pratt wanted Levon.