Clover

We have to figure a way out of this and fast. I don’t want to spend the night with this psychopath in the house pointing a gun at us. I also need to find a way to shut off the computer in case Miss Kitty decides to check in on us.

We didn’t tell Lenny that the Wi-Fi is working. I don’t want him to know the police have been called, and I also don’t know how on earth he expects Gage to ‘fix’ his life. He seems to believe he can make things better with the click of a mouse.

More importantly, I need to get Adley away from that gun. Even if she’s upstairs where she can’t escape, it would be better than having her down here if something happens to Gage or me.

We remove our snow gear and stand awkwardly in the foyer unsure of what we are allowed to do now that we are in the house.

“Sit by the fire,” Lenny says swinging his gun to point at the fireplace. The fire is almost gone and needs tending.

“The fire is almost out, can we put another log on?” I ask wondering if I could hit him with said log before he shoots me.

“No, do you think I’m an idiot, woman? We don’t need a fire, this place has heat.”

“Yeah, but it’s better with the fireplace going. We always keep it burning.” He looks at me with narrowed eyes.

“Who are you even? Why’s he got you up here all the time?” Lenny must have been watching Gage for a while to know that.

“She’s the nanny. Adley needed a woman’s presence in her life since her mother is dead, so I hired Clover to help me with her,” Gage says sitting down next to me on the couch.

“Nanny, huh? Yeah, that makes sense now. Kids are a lotta work, you need help. You fuckin her?” he asks laughing like a maniac at his insinuation.

Adley cringes at the word fuck. She knows I only use it when I am very angry or if I’ve hurt myself. I don’t know if she knows what it means in this context.

“Could you not be so crude in front of my daughter, she’s only six years old, you know,” Gage says like he doesn’t have a gun to his head. He needs to be cautious, you can’t just talk like that to crazy men with guns.

“Yeah, I know she’s six years old. It’s been six years since your wifey died and six years I been scraping to get by while you’re livin’ all fancy up here on this mountain. And no, I’m not gonna stop cursin’ for her so fucking shut up.” His voice crescendos, and Ollie’s ears prick up more and more until he is standing by my side instead of hiding behind my leg.

Ollie’s got balls, no pun intended.

“Why didn’t you get another job? You’re a good drummer, Lenny. You have a lot of talent. What happened?” Gage asks.

“What happened?” Lenny laughs and paces back and forth in front of the wall of glass overlooking the storm outside. “What happened is we had to pay for all those gigs we missed because you left us. We had to give refunds for all those tickets. Everybody kept waiting for you to come back like, surely, the almighty Apollo Mercury will be back. He wouldn’t just disappear. But you did,” he leans down into Gage’s face. “You left us swinging in the wind. Nobody wanted us by the time they decided something bad must have happened to you. I tried playing in a band for a year, but they couldn’t get their act together. By then, nobody knew who I was anymore, and I haven’t worked since. My life has been shit because of your selfishness. I’ve wanted you dead for years, but I decided to let you make it right first. If you can’t, I’m gonna kill that little girl of yours and her nanny. Sorry, lady, you got involved with the wrong man.”

Adley and I are sitting on the couch, and Gage is in a chair across from us. I pull Adley close covering one ear with my body and the other with my hand. She doesn’t need to listen to this idiot talk about killing us. I want to tell her that all we need to do is hold out until the storm clears and the police come looking for him. I want to comfort her, give her hope, but for now, covering her ears will have to do.

“Nobody’s going to die. Tell me who you want me to contact, and I’ll do it. Do you have a bank account? I can transfer all of my money to you. I do have one question in all this, though.”

“What?”

“Who’s to say I won’t call the police to tell them you kidnapped my kid after I hand over all my money?”

Lenny walks around the couch and stands in front of Adley and me. He looks at Gage and purposely points the rifle at Adley’s forehead. The color drains from Gage’s face, and I think we all stop breathing.

Adley shrinks into my side and starts to cry. I imagine myself yanking the barrel of the gun aside and Gage pouching on top of Lenny. That’s the way it would go in an action movie. No muss, no fuss, just taking the bad guy down and setting the hostages free.

But this isn’t a movie, and that gun is real. I close my eyes and pray Lenny’s torment will be over soon and that Gage will keep his big mouth shut.

“You do that mountain man, and I hunt you and your little family down and shoot you all in the head starting with little princess here. I’ll make you watch them suffer before I do you. How ya like that plan?”

“Sorry, man, I didn’t mean I was going to do that. Please, take the gun off her.”

“Please. Yeah, that’s more like it.” Lenny removes the gun from her head and walks to the fireplace shoving his hand in his pocket. “Put these on your girls nice and tight then do your own. Don’t try nothing funny like putting them on loose. I’m watching, and I got my gun on the kid.” He tosses a wad of nylon zip ties to Gage, and he looks down at them in his hands.

“Go on now, hands and feet. I can’t have any of you trying to escape.”

Gage stands and comes to kneel in front of us on the floor. “Baby, give me your hands. I promise it won’t hurt, come on, honey, don’t cry,” he says softly trying to comfort his sobbing daughter. He smooths her hair from her face where it’s sticking in her tears, and Lenny gets impatient.

“Knock it off. Do her feet and move on to the nanny,” Lenny snaps.

Gage applies the ties to her wrists and ankles while Lenny looks on making sure he’s getting them tight enough. Then he takes my hands with one hand and lays the rest of the ties in my lap. Right before he wraps the tie around my wrist, he slips something small and square into my hands. I look at him, but his eyes are lowered so as not to attract attention to what he’s just done. He moves to my feet binding them tight before going back to his seat.

“Empty your pockets mountain man. I know you’re probably planning a bunch of MacGyver shit to get yourself free. I ain’t stupid.”

That remains to be seen. Gage empties the contents of his pockets and holds out his hands for Lenny to bind. “Turn around, yours are going on behind your back.”

Shit. I was hoping he would put down his gun, and Gage would have the opportunity to head-butt him or attack. I hold out hope that he will kick him when he binds his feet, but that idea is thwarted when he tugs Gage to stand in front of me pointing the gun at Gage’s chest and orders me to apply the zip tie to Gage’s ankles.

I lean forward and rest my cheek against his powerful leg wishing he would kick the shit out of Lenny instead of letting me bind his feet. He doesn’t make a move. I struggle to keep the small square concealed while I bind his ankles with my own hands in a zip tie.

“Hurry up, lady, what’s your problem?” Lenny asks kicking at Gage’s feet.

“Sorry, I’m kind of handicapped here, doing my best.” He snorts, and I pull the tie as tight as it will go around his feet, which isn’t very tight since he is a big man. The tie is more of a hindrance than a restraint in his case. He could probably snap it without much effort.

“Good, now hop yourself over there and sit down,” Lenny says. Gage does as he’s told falling into the chair with a whoosh. I feel bad that his hands are bound behind his back. He looks uncomfortable.

“Now, this is what’s going to happen. The three of you are going to sit there and be quiet until the storm is over. Then big daddy over there is going to make a few phone calls and do a bank transfer. When I see the money in my account, I’ll leave. But don’t try to call the police for three days. After that, I’ll be gone, and I don’t give two shits what you do. Till then, I got people watching this house. One of ‘em is a sharp-shooter, and the other was a Navy Seal. They know what you did to me, and I’m payin’ them to handle you if you decide to get cute.”

That sounds like a bold-faced lie if I ever heard one. What kind of Navy Seal or sharp-shooter is going to kill a child in cold blood for a half-cocked has-been drummer? The fictional imaginary kind, that’s what.

“No problem, I can do that,” Gage says shifting in the chair. “If you’re hungry, the fridge is full, there’s beer in there, too. I remember how much you like foreign beers. I have a couple of different kinds.”

Lenny sneers. “Course you do, you got money for shit like that. You been up here drinking your fancy beer while I’m having a Schlitz.”

Gage needs to stop trying. It doesn’t matter what he says, Lenny is going to twist it into something negative. As if he can hear my thoughts, Gage doesn’t respond. We all sit in silence, me with Adley tucked against my side, Gage with his hands behind his back, and Lenny sitting on the hearth with his rifle.

I wonder how long he’s been awake. Maybe we can knock him out if he falls to sleep? I wait until he isn’t as focused on us to feel the square cardboard in my hands. Matches. Gage gave me matches! Me, who is terrified of fire. Me, of all people, a book of matches?

Why on earth would he do that?

“Clover?” a familiar disembodied voice says from across the room. Miss Kitty, shit, the internet is back on.

Lenny sits up straight looking around the room for the source of the voice. “Who’s there?”

“Clover? Adley? Are you all right?” Miss Kitty asks.

“It’s Adley’s teacher, she goes to school via the internet,” I say.

“The Internet? So, it’s back on, great.” He stands and holds his finger over his lips indicating that we need to be quiet and points at the computer as he looks at me expectantly. I nod, and he wiggles the mouse and clicks the X to disconnect Adley’s school before we can talk to Miss Kitty.

He thinks he has dodged a bullet from the look on his face. He has no idea that he just did what we needed him to do. She will be suspicious that we didn’t answer her call and even more so that we exited out right away. She’ll call the police again, and hopefully, they will make an effort to get up the mountain in the storm now that an entire family is missing and not just one child.

“Apollo, kick off that tie and get over here,” Lenny says to Gage.

Gage looks at me and then to my hands. He wants me to do something but what? Light a match and melt the zip tie? Then what? Lenny will smell it. I’ll probably burn myself. No, I’m sure I’ll burn myself. And what on earth will I do when I’m free? Lenny doesn’t have the body mass that Gage does, but he’s a hell of a lot bigger than I am.

He jerks his feet and the tie snaps before he stands and crosses the room to Lenny. How are we going to overpower this guy handcuffed?

“How am I supposed to transfer the money with my hands behind my back?” Gage asks. Yeah, how’s he supposed to do that?

“Get your little brat to type for ya. She goes to school online, she’s gotta know how to type.”

Adley looks up at me with terror in her eyes. She was handling this better before she had a gun pressed to her head and we were handcuffed. Now she’s trembling and frozen with fear. “Adley, baby, come help Daddy type some things on the computer so Lenny can go home.”

“It’s going to be okay. Your daddy will be right next to you.” I hate lying to her. She sees it in my eyes. She knows I’m full of shit. “She needs her feet free to walk,” I say. Lenny scoffs before walking over and using his giant hunting knife to cut the tie. She follows him at a distance to the computer and listens while her dad gives her instructions on how to get into his bank account.

I need to get these cuffs off. Gage wants me to. I don’t know why, but he does. “I need to go to the bathroom,” I announce. “I can hop to the one off the kitchen if that’s okay with you, Lenny.” I know it’s too much to ask him to remove my ankle ties when he’s just done it for two of his three hostages.

“Wait until we’re done,” he barks not even looking in my direction. He’s concentrated on the screen where Gage is pulling up his bank account.

“It’s um, kind of an emergency,” I lie.

“Too bad.”

I bite my lip thinking of how I’m going to get out of this room.

“Gage, I want to apologize ahead of time for your couch. I haven’t had my medicine today and…”

Lenny turns. “What medicine?”

Gage looks over at him and then at me. “She has irritable bowel syndrome, man. She doesn’t take her meds, and she gets uncontrollable diarrhea, like bad.”

I fake looking mortified, and Lenny shudders. “Yeah, okay, go shit or whatever. Nasty. Why are you dating somebody like that?” he asks Gage like they’re big buddies again.

Gage shrugs. “Love, what are ya gonna do?” Lenny scrunches up his face, and if I weren’t so scared, I’d laugh. He’s a grown man afraid of a little poop. Oh well, it’s working to my benefit. I can’t complain.

The threesome goes back to the computer, and I scoot to the edge of the couch and stand on wobbly feet. When I’ve got my balance, I start to hop toward the bathroom that is down the hall and out of Lenny’s line of sight.

I pass Gage’s office and grab onto the doorjamb to steady myself and glance in at his desk. I’ve never gone inside, but he mentioned once that he keeps his EpiPens in the top drawer of his desk. That seems like something worth having as a weapon in case things go south with Lenny.

I look back into the living room and find no one is looking my way. I quietly hop to Gage’s desk and slide out the middle drawer. Right in the middle is a box containing four EpiPens. I grab one and open it sliding the pen out and stuff it under in the front of my pants. It’s hard with my hands bound and holding a book of matches, but after two tries, I get it in there. I don’t think one would do much, so I work on grabbing two more and putting them with the first trying not to make any noise. Quickly, I close the drawer and move into the bathroom.

Inside, I lock the door and maneuver the matches in my hands until the flap is open. My heart is pounding against my ribs. All of this is so reminiscent of that day when I was ten, lighting a whole book of matches on fire, watching my house burn to the ground with my family in it. I feel faint and bend to rest my elbows on the vanity while I get my bearings. When I am breathing normally again, I stand and give myself a hard look in the mirror. You can do this, you have to or we’re all going to die I say to my reflection.

Then I go about ripping off a match and laying the book on the counter striking strip face up. I could easily strike the match with one hand while holding the book down with the other, but I’m so scared.

A rug caught fire when I dropped the matches last time. I look down at the rug under my feet and kick it aside before pulling every match out of the book. I sweep them aside away from the empty book, and with shaky fingers, I light the match and lay it on the counter burning and hold my wrists over the flame to melt the zip tie.

It smells terrible, and instantly I worry that Lenny will smell it and come barging into the bathroom to shoot me. Don’t be silly, they’re in the living room, he can’t smell this I tell myself and light another match. Five matches later, the zip ties haven’t melted, but I have some nice burns to show for my effort. Shit, this isn’t working.

Think, think, think, how do I get out of these damn things? Maybe there is something in the drawers that will work? Yes, why didn’t I think about that before?

I open the drawers under the sink. Nothing, but in the back is a small manicure set with pink and purple stickers on it. It must be Adley’s. Inside is a pair of cuticle nippers, perfect. I hold them awkwardly inward and cut my hands free and then my ankles.

These will work to get Gage and Adley free as well. They’re small enough to hide in my sleeve and sharp as hell. I slip them inside the cuff of my shirt and adjust the zip tie around my wrists before hopping back into the living room.

Now what? I have three EpiPens, and I’m not restrained anymore. Lenny needs to believe that I’m still bound. I hold the tie at the cut end inside my hands, keeping them together, so it appears to be intact. My wrists sting where they’ve been burned.

I flush the toilet and clean up my match mess. I haven’t touched a match, other than Adley’s giant fake one, in fourteen years. Even though they didn’t burn through the zip ties, I feel like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders.

Quickly, I review the directions on how to use the pen and stuff it back into the waistband of my pants. I was trained on them in high school when I worked at a summer camp, so I know the gist of it. I need to hit him with two at the same time to stun him, so we can tie him up. Gage’s feet aren’t bound anymore, but his hands are. I need to cut him free fast so he can unarm Lenny.

The storm is still raging outside, so we can’t leave. We have to restrain Lenny and wait for the authorities. Will these flimsy zip ties hold him? They didn’t hold me. Although, we aren’t stupid enough to fall for an IBS excuse like he did. How can a grown man be afraid of poopy pants anyway?

I open the door to the bathroom and stop to adjust my cut zip tie around my wrists one more time.

“It’s ‘bout time, I thought you had the runs, you shoulda been in and out,” Lenny says with a sneer from across the room. What an asshole.

“Sometimes you think you’re done, and you’re not,” I sing from my spot on the couch trying to make light of his snarky comment.

“There, everything I have has been transferred into your account, Lenny. You can let us go now,” Gage says.

Lenny chuckles. “Yeah right, come on man, you got more than that. I want it all.” He pokes Gage between his shoulder blades hard with the rifle.

“No, that’s it. I don’t work, Lenny. I’ve been living off the money I had when Constance died. I paid for this house with her life insurance, and I’ve supported us with what I had in savings since then. We don’t buy stuff or go on vacations because that money needs to last forever or until I find a way to support us without singing.”

“I don’t believe you. This place is swanky, it had to cost a million bucks easy, and you gotta have somebody handlin’ your cash, making you more money. You’re holding out on me, motherfucker.” He aims his rifle at Adley again, and her whole body begins to tremble, urine trickles down the side of the chair she’s sitting in at the computer desk, and Gage’s eyes fill with the rage of a father seeing his child being tortured.

This is it, Lenny is flustered. I need to take advantage of the moment. I flick the loose zip tie from my wrists and shake the nippers free from my cuff dropping them in the process.

Gage has taken a step toward Lenny. He’s so angry, he isn’t thinking about the gun to his baby’s head, but I am. Lenny is yelling, and Gage is closing in on him ready to do damage any way possible. I dart around the wall that runs behind the fireplace and race to the end of the room under the stairs positioning myself behind Lenny.

I take out two of the EpiPens popping off the blue safety caps and chanting to myself blue to the sky, orange to the thigh like I was taught in my first-aid class. Gage is yelling now, and things are escalating. I have to move.

Charging into the room armed with an EpiPen in each hand, Gage’s eyes swing to me, and Lenny begins to turn. I dart behind Lenny before he sees me and stab him in the neck on both sides. Please, God, let it hit his carotid artery on either side so that the medication will shoot straight to his heart.

“Clover!” Gage yells as Lenny’s arm comes up to bash me across the face, but it’s too late. He’s already feeling the effect of the epinephrine, and he’s going down.

Blood flows from my nose like a faucet to the floor where Lenny is convulsing. I stare in shock unprepared to see a man die before my eyes. “Clover, get away from him,” Gage yells kicking the rifle away from Lenny’s twitching body.

I take a step away, but I can’t take my eyes off of him. He is staring at the ceiling with glassy far-away eyes gasping for breath and pulling at the collar of his shirt.

“Cut me free. We need to call for help!”

“Clover, Clover, help Daddy!” Adley’s voice cuts through my moment of hysteria, and I run to the couch where the nippers lie on the floor. I snatch them and hurry back to cut Gage and Adley free.

He grabs the rifle in one hand and Adley in the other while herding me to the kitchen. “Holy shit, Clover! What did you do?”

Without a word, I reach under my shirt and pull out the last EpiPen and hold it up. “Epinephrine delivered straight to the heart can be fatal,” I murmur in a voice that I don’t recognize.

“You’re in shock. And your nose is broken. Sit.” He guides me to a seat at the island and sits Adley on top of it next to me. “You stay right here. I’m going to see if he’s dead.”

“Daddy, no, don’t go!” Adley takes hold of his shirt clinging to him like a baby monkey.

“It’s okay, baby. I need to make sure he can’t hurt us anymore.”

“Let him go, he’ll be right back,” I say robotically. She releases her grip and switches her focus to me.

“You’re bleedin’ a lot.”

“I’m okay, doesn’t hurt.”

We watch Gage carefully cross the room to look at Lenny. He isn’t moving anymore, but his eyes are still open. The gasping has stopped, and he appears to be dead.

“Check for a pulse,” I say. He leans forward lifting his chin to peer down at Lenny’s still body. When he is satisfied there is no movement, he squats down and feels for a pulse. “He’s gone,” he says softly, and I almost feel guilty for killing his old bandmate.

Almost.

He stands grabbing a blanket from the back of the couch and covers Lenny’s body out of respect? Or disgust? Maybe both.

“Is h-h-he d-dead?” Adley stutters.

“Yeah, honey, he can’t hurt us anymore.” She burros her face into the curve of my neck and sobs.

“Thank you, Clover. He was a bad man…” She cries, and I hold her tight watching Gage cross the room to the refrigerator where he removes a bag of peas.

“Tilt your head back,” he says to me and hands the peas to Adley. “Hold these on her nose, baby. I have to call the police.”

She looks at me, and I take the peas pressing them on my nose. “Ouch!” I say flinching. I haven’t had time to process the pain until this moment.

Adley looks worried and hops down off the counter. “I’ll get another towel.”

I should stop her. I should keep an eye on her. She’s in shock, too. She’s back before I can stop her, though, handing me a dish towel. I hold it under my nose where blood is pouring out. “I should lay down.” She takes my hand, and we go to the couch. I can’t help but look at the lump on the floor where Lenny’s body is hidden under the blanket.

I killed a man. He is dead, and I am the reason why. I don’t like the way that feels settling in my chest. Why? Why couldn’t he just ask for a little help? Gage would have done that. I’m sure of it. He’s a good man, he didn’t mean to hurt anybody, but sometimes you can’t see the forest for the trees. His pain was too great, too encompassing, too… big. And now I get to live with this for the rest of my life.