Emily
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, Emily 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 Dane 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 Charlene to arrive for her interview, Emily's phone rang. Dane ignored it, and he couldn't exactly let Emily answer, either. “It's probably Jas,” she said, “calling because she's worried about me.”
“She called earlier,” Dane replied. “Edward’s calling now.”
“Barker?” she asked, rolling her eyes. “Asshole.”
Soon, he got a call on his phone from Charlene. 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.
Charlene knocked at the door a short while later. Dane nodded to Emily, 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.”
Emily 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! “Dane!” 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 Charlene 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!” Charlene gasped, as she leaned back against the wall, hand daintily pressed against her chest as she tried to catch her breath.
This was Emily's first good look at Charlene. She was a little older than Emily had expected—maybe in her mid-thirties. Her skin was olive, her hair ebony, and Emily 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?” Dane 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 Emily as it taped-up centerpiece, Emily had a moment of clarity. Those were laser sights on guns that were searching all over Dane'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.
# # #
Dane
“Off the record,” Dane said as, gun still in hand, he led Emily into the living room, “I have no intention of hurting anyone, and definitely not Emily. 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, Charlene.”
“Right,” Charlene 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.”
Emily made a wordless noise, getting their attention. Her eyes went to Dane'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,” Emily groaned as it came free. She immediately fixed her eyes on Charlene. “He's telling the truth. Believe me, he is. This is about BioSphere trying to cover up their trials on Hymalete and the damage they've caused with the medication. Nothing more.”
Charlene raised an eyebrow and shook her head. “I've heard it all, now.”
This was it, Dane realized. This was his moment. But there was no way he was going to do it without Emily. She was the key in all this, and he knew it.
“You ready to start recording?” Dane asked Charlene. “I have a feeling we don't have much time.”
“Uh, yeah,” Charlene said, digging in her bag and pulling out her phone. She sat down in a chair adjacent to Emily 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 Emily. “Ready when you are. Go ahead, state your name and who you are, so there's no question on authenticity.”
Emily leaned forward, still taped up. “Emily West, current CEO of BioSphere.” She looked to Dane.
“Me?” he whispered.
“You're the one at the center of this, aren't you?” Charlene 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. “Dane Bishop, former Air Force Lieutenant.”
Charlene moved the camera back to Emily. “Go ahead, Ms. West.”
Emily 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. Bishop 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 Jas 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 Jas on, though, the story aligned close enough to reality that there were no hitches in her story at all.
“You're contending that Edward Barker, the head of sales, and the board of directors, are setting you up to take the fall for Hymalete, and its poor performance?”
“As far as Edward Barker has said,” Emily 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?” Charlene asked.
“My personal email. I have the files.”
“Anything else?” the reporter asked, eying them both very carefully, glancing down to Dane's pistol still in his hand.
Emily shook her head, then changed her mind. “Actually, one thing. I want you to understand that Dane's not a bad man. Not at all. He's doing this out of love—”
“Okay,” Dane said, as he brought the gun up and pointed it at Charlene. “We're done here. Time for you to go. You tell Edward Barker to get the money together, and get ready for a phone call from me.”