Twenty-Five
Whitney Howard clicked the Shut Down icon on her computer screen and felt her pulse scatter. It was official now. All afternoon, as the seconds clicked excruciatingly past on the white face of the clock above the water cooler, she’d been able to pretend that this evening was a bad dream, and nothing more. The day had dragged, and she knew her smiles had been brittle. Karen and Jill in the neighboring cubicles had bitten at their lips and given her curious glances, knowing something was wrong, but too polite to pressure her. They were just acquaintances, here at work, and not true friends.
But suddenly, her computer screen went blank, there was nothing else to do at her desk, and this was happening. This. Her fool’s errand.
Her palms were slick; her breathing was erratic. She swore she felt the fat bundle of cash, solid and heavy as a brick weighing down the purse in her lap.
Her gaze slid to the framed photo beside her computer. Her brother, Jason, his cute, plump wife, Madelyn, and their two girls, Charlotte and Ashley. Jason was tan and lean and handsome in the picture, on that May afternoon three years ago, at the barbecue where Madelyn had tried to set Whitney up with a dull-faced coworker. Three years – before the car accident, before the pain pills…the heroin. Before Jason had flushed his entire life down the john.
Jason was the reason for the cash in her purse, her entire life savings – which was fairly impressive for a twenty-year-old paper pusher, if she said so. Jason was the reason for the phone call she’d received two days ago: “You have forty-eight hours to come up with the cash your brother owes me, or I’ll start sending him home to his wife in pieces.”
What could she do? She had no parents, no husband, no children…not even a cat at home. And Jason had a family who depended upon him…even if he was a junkie. She’d made peace with that, finally, whispering the word to herself. Junkie. Her brother was a junkie, and he was going to be hacked to bits if she didn’t take money to the address the man on the phone had given her.
Whitney pulled in a deep breath and got to her feet. Her legs almost gave out, weak as water with nerves. But she made herself walk down the row of cubicles and hit the elevator button.
“Heading out?” Mark asked, appearing beside her, making her jump. “Whoa, you okay?”
She glanced over at her coworker, his round freckled face and his headful of carrot orange hair. “I’m fine.” She forced a smile that crumbled.
“You don’t look so good,” he said with his usual honesty. He was one of the kindest people she knew, but had a knack for awkward observations. “Are you coming down with something?”
“I don’t think so. Just tired is all.” Just terrified is all, more like it.
Mark reached up to touch her forehead with the back of his hand, motherly concern shining in his eyes. “You sure?”
She smiled, for real this time. “I’m sure.”
They rode down in the elevator together and Mark proved a great distraction, telling her about the date he had coming up on Friday, a gamer chick he met online playing World of Warcraft. She laughed along with him as he described his perilous journey to the mall to find a new outfit for the occasion, and she assured him it would go well, and that his date would find him “completely charming.” He blushed at the praise, going red beneath his freckles.
Mark walked her to her car in the dark lot, ensured she was safely inside with the doors locked, and waved before he headed off to his own ride.
Then she was alone with her fear again.
“It’s okay,” she whispered to the dash. “It’s going to be okay.” She cranked the engine and took off.
Fifteen minutes later found her in a seedy part of town with flickering streetlamps and chain link fences, pedestrians lounging suspiciously back against parked cars as she crawled through the residential streets. She’d expected the address to belong to a business of some sort, but instead, 4657 was a small white clapboard house with a narrow front stoop and a carport.
“No,” Whitney said to herself, shaking her head violently back and forth. “Oh no. Hell no.”
She watched movies. She’d seen innumerable episodes of CSI in syndication. Money drops were made in public places, shopping bags placed in trash cans; envelopes left in restaurant booths while shady men watched from over at the bar. They didn’t happen in tumbledown houses in bad parts of the city. She wasn’t going in there. She wasn’t. She’d never come back out.
But what about Jason? Madelyn? The girls? Their lives – their life together as a family – was worth more than her own. Yes. But the answer couldn’t be approaching this house. She’d call the number back, demand a different meeting place; she’d call the police right now and have them descend on this location, bust down the door with their ram and haul her brother out of whatever back room he was being held in.
She was reaching for her iPhone in the cup holder when someone knocked on her driver’s side window.
Whitney swallowed a startled shriek, head whipping around.
A man loomed beyond the window, dressed in dark clothes, face obscured by shadows. “Put the phone down,” he said, voice penetrating the thin glass.
She froze, but didn’t comply. This was such a stupid damn mess…
“Put the phone down!” he shouted, and then she saw the silhouette of the gun in his hand.
Okay. No arguing with that. She dropped her phone into her open purse and showed him her pale palms.
“Open the door.”
She undid the locks and popped the latch, and he opened it wide, cold air funneling into the car, bringing with it the sour, sweaty smell of the man standing above her.
“You the sister?” he demanded.
She had to swallow before her tongue would work. “I’m Jason Howard’s sister, yes.”
“Did you bring it?”
“The money? Yes.” She reached toward her purse.
“Hands where I can see them!”
“Okay, okay.” She took a deep, shaky breath through her mouth. “Please…” Her chest tightened with panic. “Please just take it. I can wait here for my brother.”
He made a sound that might have been a laugh. “Get out.”
~*~
Inside the small, grubby house, Whitney stood beneath the gaze of two heavy-bodied armed men, while a third counted out the bills she’d brought on the kitchen table. The man doing the counting was smaller than the other two, clearly hired for his brains rather than his brawn, a slight bald patch on his head glowing and greasy beneath the overhead lights. She latched her hands together on the handle of her purse and tried to ignore the droplets of perspiration rolling down her back, beneath her clothes. She prayed and prayed, and then prayed some more. She should have gone to church when her grandmother was still alive and urging her to go, she reflected. Maybe she’d be better at praying.
The room was silent save for the soft whispers of each bill settling onto the table. One after the next. And then they stopped, and the man looked up at her, two neat stacks in front of him. All the money she had in the world.
“You’re short,” he said.
Panic lanced through her. “W-what? Are you sure? I-I counted. I counted it twice. Six-thousand, seven-hundred. It’s all there.”
He gave her a small, grim smile, flashing nicotine stained teeth. “That’s supposed to be seven-thousand, seven-hundred, sweetheart.”
“What?” A low buzzing started up in her ears. “No, there has to be some mistake. On the phone, he said six. I heard six…”
“You heard wrong.”
~*~
He no longer had to wonder what it was like to be behind bars. Maybe because he was no good at being an outlaw, because he was too careful, because he was a pussy, Tango had never even spent one night in lockup. Funny, because of all his brothers, he was the one best equipped to get put away and deal with all the indignities prison entailed.
But this wasn’t prison, where there were guards, gang alliances, and at least some semblance of order. He had a hard bunk, and a toilet, but this was some place of Don Ellison’s design. No club brothers on the inside to join up with, no trading cigs for protection, no flashlights and nightsticks to come to the rescue.
The hard chill of the concrete floor was seeping through the seat of his jeans, slowly lowering his body temp until he began to shiver. His cell was wall to the right, to the back, a view of another cell through the bars to his left. And of course the bars straight ahead, hard stainless steel, not even wide enough to allow his arm passage.
He’d come to in here, head throbbing from the blow to the back of it, the memories of his assault fuzzy at the edges. That SUV, and the car behind, men emptying out of both and blocking his path. He’d resisted, but he was just one against many, and fighting hand-to-hand had never been his strong suit. Now, if they’d wanted lap dances…
He groaned and wiped his hands down his face. He was a hostage. Damn it.
A sound somewhere above him, like a door scraping back. Footfalls, breathing echoing off the concrete. Dread coiled tight in his belly as he listened to a descent and then an approach. They were coming for him so soon. He knew what that meant.
But then two goons came into view, a captive held between them, a small, shuffling girl with a mane of dark hair hiding her face, her head downcast. She was dressed in jeans, tall boots, and a brown blazer that was smudged and torn at one front pocket, like they’d been rough with her.
Her guards marched her into the cell beside him, shoved her roughly down, and locked the door, neither of them sparing him a look as they left again. More footfalls, scrape of the door again. And then it was quiet, save the shuddering draw of breath in the cell beside him.
“Are you okay?” he asked, like a total idiot. But he had to say something to the poor girl.
She sat up, slowly, as if she were sore, gathered her legs in front of her, and pushed her hair back. She was very pretty, and very young. Very young. Her eyes were full of tears, but there was no evidence that any had slipped down her face. She took another deep breath and glanced over at him, wary.
“Not really,” she said.
“Me neither.”
She dashed the back of her hand beneath her nose. “Why are you here?”
“Hostage. You?”
“Same. Do you know where we are?”
“No idea.”
She sighed. “Damn.” Her eyes flitted over again. In a semblance of unnecessary bravery, she said, “I’m Whitney.”
He almost smiled. “Kev.”