Abby
With the news helicopters beating their rotors overhead, and the SWAT trucks pulling up outside to form a nearly impenetrable ring of guns and steel, Abby quickly realized how important she was in the grand scheme of things. In less than two hours, they had her entire neighborhood on lock down, with media vans and satellite uplinks dotting the landscape.
To be honest, she almost felt bad for the neighbors. Except for the Johnson family, on the left. They always let their dog shit in her yard, then denied it afterward. They could go fuck themselves.
For appearances sake, she and Zed had decided that she needed to be tied up in her chair again, but, this time, down in the living room with all the curtains drawn. They needed to keep everything on the up and up, like this wasn't just some stunt designed to draw media coverage. Although, even if they tried to pull the curtain back and yell, “Surprise! You've been duped!” at this point, she didn't think anyone would listen to them.
Still, this was definitely not turning out exactly the way she'd hoped. She was growing increasingly worried that things were spinning out of control. He'd never said anything about SWAT, or these many police showing up.
The whole time they waited for Kara to arrive for her interview, Abby's phone rang. Zed ignored it, and he couldn't exactly let Abby answer, either. “It's probably Jackie,” she said, “calling because she's worried about me.”
“She called earlier,” Zed replied. “Mark’s calling now.”
“Letterman?” she asked, rolling her eyes. “Asshole.”
Soon, he got a call on his phone from Kara. He answered it, spoke to her for a moment, then hung up. “Okay,” he said. “She's coming in. You ready for this?” He stretched out a long strip of duct tape and tore it off, ready to put it over her mouth.
Of course she wasn't ready for this! Any of this! But, still, this was the only plan they had going for them, as fraught with danger as it was. “Yes, sir,” she groaned.
She was getting really tired of the tape over her mouth. She much preferred the neck tie.
Kara knocked at the door a short while later. Zed nodded to Abby, then headed up to the front. She strained her neck back, craning so she could get a view of the door. It was far from perfect, but she could at least get a good profile of him as he drew his pistol from his shoulder holster and peeked through the peephole.
“It's her,” he said, before unlocking the door and throwing it open.
“Inside,” he barked, as he reached out to grab the reporter and pulled her inside the house. “Now.”
Abby could see something on his shirt, a sharp, electronic red dot like one of her old professors used to use during lectures. She narrowed her eyes, trying to get a clearer view of it. Yeah, it was a laser pointer. Definitely.
Why would someone be . . .?
Oh no! “Zed!” she wordlessly screamed through the duct tape, kicking as best she could to get his attention.
He glanced down at the dancing red dot and, faster than a cheetah after a pot of coffee, he snatched Kara in front of him, covering his body. He scooted back inside, using her as a human shield, and slammed the door shut, throwing the deadbolt back into place.
“Oh my fucking God!” Kara gasped, as she leaned back against the wall, hand daintily pressed against her chest as she tried to catch her breath.
This was Abby's first good look at Kara. She was a little older than Abby had expected—maybe in her mid-thirties. Her skin was olive, her hair ebony, and Abby could tell from across the room that she had large, expressive green eyes.
“Well,” she groaned, taking it all in stride. “That was exciting, wasn't it?”
“Are you hurt?” Zed asked brusquely as he looked her up and down, pistol hanging at his hip.
She shook her head. “No, I'll live.”
As the two of them walked down the entry hall and back into the spacious living room, with Abby as it taped-up centerpiece, Abby had a moment of clarity. Those were laser sights on guns that were searching all over Zed's body for the proper place to shoot. This was going to end badly. Like, Bonnie and Clyde badly.
The man she loved wasn't going to make it out of this alive.
# # #
Zed
“Off the record,” Zed said as, gun still in hand, he led Abby into the living room, “I have no intention of hurting anyone, and definitely not Abby. In fact, I care about her a great deal. I'm just trying to get my brother's story heard. When the Times turned down the story, despite the evidence I'd gotten, I didn't know what else to do, Kara.”
“Right,” Kara said, clearly skeptical as she glanced down at the big automatic pistol in his hand, “I hope you understand that I'm a little doubtful of your claim.”
Abby made a wordless noise, getting their attention. Her eyes went to Zed's, and she gestured to her mouth with her fingers, the only parts of her hands she could still move.
She was right. Let it come from her lips, not his. “Right,” he said. “Well, here, take it from the horse's mouth.”
The woman he loved glared at him a little bit for his poor choice of words as he removed the piece of tape from her mouth, gently peeling it from her upper and lower lips.
“God, I hate that shit,” Abby groaned as it came free. She immediately fixed her eyes on Kara. “He's telling the truth. Believe me, he is. This is about Pharma-Vitae trying to cover up their trials on Dimalerax and the damage they've caused with the medication. Nothing more.”
Kara raised an eyebrow and shook her head. “I've heard it all, now.”
This was it, Zed realized. This was his moment. But there was no way he was going to do it without Abby. She was the key in all this, and he knew it.
“You ready to start recording?” Zed asked Kara. “I have a feeling we don't have much time.”
“Uh, yeah,” Kara said, digging in her bag and pulling out her phone. She sat down in a chair adjacent to Abby and fiddled with the device for a moment. She held it up in front of her, saying her name, the date, and where she was recording. With it still recording, she focused the phone on Abby. “Ready when you are. Go ahead, state your name and who you are, so there's no question on authenticity.”
Abby leaned forward, still taped up. “Abby Winters, current CEO of Pharma-Vitae.” She looked to Zed.
“Me?” he whispered.
“You're the one at the center of this, aren't you?” Kara asked, as she trained the phone's camera on him. “You might as well be on record here, too.”
He ran a hand through his hair and scratched at his chin. “Zed Hesse, former Air Force Lieutenant.”
Kara moved the camera back to Abby. “Go ahead, Ms. Winters.”
Abby took a deep breath, going back through her memory and organizing all her thoughts into as succinct a story as possible.
“It all started, I think, about a week ago, when Mr. Hesse showed up at my office. At least, my part in this did . . .”
Over the next few minutes she retold the story, more or less, as they had told Jackie the day before. She left out all the kidnapping details, all the sex, and the other minor events, like the dog collar. From the point of Jackie on, though, the story aligned close enough to reality that there were no hitches in her story at all.
“You're contending that Mark Letterman, the head of sales, and the board of directors, are setting you up to take the fall for Dimalerax, and its poor performance?”
“As far as Mark Letterman has said,” Abby reminded her, “the directors are involved, or at least have knowledge of what is going on with that specific product line. Have I been able to see any direct evidence? No. But, the evidence on the drug trials themselves, I think, speaks for itself. And I have plenty of that.”
“Where?” Kara asked.
“My personal email. I have the files.”
“Anything else?” the reporter asked, eying them both very carefully, glancing down to Zed's pistol still in his hand.
Abby shook her head, then changed her mind. “Actually, one thing. I want you to understand that Zed's not a bad man. Not at all. He's doing this out of love—”
“Okay,” Zed said, as he brought the gun up and pointed it at Kara. “We're done here. Time for you to go. You tell Mark Letterman to get the money together, and get ready for a phone call from me.”