by Amelia Wilde
“Sure.” I pushed my glass to the center of the table, watching the bubbles dance in the golden liquid as he poured. I brought the glass to my lips.
“Don’t drink it,” Thor said.
I looked up. Thor stood behind the waiter, holding a gun to his ribs. I widened my eyes.
What was happening? Did they not like the service? Usually that would be reflected in the tip.
Odin ripped a piece of duct tape from a roll and slapped it over the man’s mouth, then yanked a gun from the man’s pocket and set it on the table.
Thor pulled out his wallet, handling the man roughly.
Odin yanked the man’s head back by his hair. The man’s eyes looked rabid. “How many out there?”
The man mumbled frantically under the tape.
“What’s going on?” I couldn’t believe the change in Odin and Thor, as if they’d transformed into dangerous militants.
Thor searched through the man’s wallet and extracted an ID. “Always so convenient to know where a man lives. On account of the propensity to give wrong information.”
Odin jerked the man by the hair. “Fingers. How many?”
I backed up.
“Fine,” Thor said. He walked over and opened the sliding door to the balcony. The night sounds burst in the window on a rush of cool air. “Off you go. One.” A pause. “Two.”
The man held up his hands.
“Where?”
The man mumbled.
“Fuck up and we’ll waste you right here.” Odin ripped the tape from his mouth.
“Seven in the hall, two at each exit,” the man blurted. “You can still walk out of here. Get Barzun. We can negotiate.”
“Fucking-g negotiations.” Odin practically spat the word. “Fuck them.”
The waiter addressed me. “I don’t know where you came from, but I know you’re not part of this. You can help yourself. These guys won’t help you, but you make this go—”
“Enough.” Odin grabbed the champagne bottle and squeezed the man’s cheeks together. “Drink.” He poured champagne into his mouth. The man spit and struggled.
“Now.” Thor shoved the gun into the man’s temple and the man started glugging and then he coughed. Odin clapped a hand over the man’s mouth, forcing him to swallow, and then they force-fed him some more.
I pulled my bathrobe tight around me. The man stumbled back, seeming to lose his balance, and then he just collapsed onto the floor. Thor knelt beside him and pulled open one of the man’s eyelids. “Strong stuff,” he said.
Odin duct taped the man’s mouth and hands and dragged him off.
“What’s going on?” I said. “Did they chase us here?”
“This isn’t from the robbery,” Thor said, pulling on his pants. “It’s from something else. Get your clothes on.”
“Are they cops?”
“No,” Thor said simply.
I gathered my clothes and pulled them on with shaking hands. “Seven guys in the hall?” I said. “What are you going to do? He said you can still walk out of here.”
“He was lying, Isis.” Thor snapped a pack around his waist. Odin was back and he put one on, too. Fanny packs. I’d have given them shit for being uncool if I hadn’t been so freaked. “They wouldn’t let us walk out of here. We wouldn’t make it to the elevator.”
“But they’re from the government?”
“In a manner of speaking,” Odin said, tossing a rope out the balcony, attaching part to the wrought iron railing.
“We’re going over?” I asked.
“No, we’re going up. Come on.” Thor pulled me down a hall, down into the far bathroom and started pulling off ceiling panels until he got to a locked hatch. Odin climbed up onto the side of the tub and worked at a lock with some tiny tools that looked like dental instruments.
Thor put a hand on my shoulder. “We’re going to leave you up on the roof and you’ll stay there. You’ll be safe there. They don’t even know you exist right now. The recon man was surprised by your presence. Did you see that, Odin?”
Odin grunted his assent.
“He expected three guys, and he got two guys and a girl. And he’ll be out for a day.”
“But the first room service waiter saw me.”
Thor shook his head. “That one was a real waiter. They keep their noses down. Plus we gave him two fifties.”
Odin shoved open the hatch.
“What about you guys?” I asked.
“Up.” Thor made a step with his hands. I took off my heels, strapped them around my wrist, and scrambled up into the dark space above the ceiling after Odin.
“Sub-roof,” Odin whispered.
The place was humming with pipes and fans and machines and it smelled like oil, and it had a low ceiling, like a paradise for mechanically inclined gnomes.
The rough concrete floor was cold on my bare feet.
Thor hoisted himself up and he and Odin took great care to replace everything from above, making the bathroom ceiling look as normal as possible, I guessed. All the better to make people think they’d gone over the side.
We climbed up a ladder through a ceiling door and emerged on the dark rooftop in a forest of mammoth metal fans and blowers of different shapes and sizes. The roof was covered with a black semi-spongy substance that felt warm under my feet. Wind whipped my hair and my heart pounded. I felt as if we had stepped onto the edge of the world.
Odin pulled a phone from his pack and made a call. He looked at Thor, shaking his head. “Fuck me. Hey, Z, get out and get to the car now. We’re up top. Visitors. Call us, dammit!” He stuffed his phone back in the pack. “They thought he was in the suite. You heard.”
“They thought he was there,” Thor confirmed. “Definitely.”
Odin got up and moved away from us, walking bent over like he was in a war zone, careful footsteps across the dark roof.
“What’s happening?” I asked breathlessly.
“A lot of highly trained guys are down there, and they’re looking for us. I’m sorry we brought you into this.”
“Thor.”
“Here’s what you need to remember—we forced you up here, okay?” He clutched my shoulders. “We terrorized you, cut your hair, kept you drugged, got it? Act catatonic and too upset to talk about anything. If they’ve hooked you up with the stunt you pulled in the traffic jam, there was a gun on you. Okay? But don’t volunteer it. Act traumatized and silent. Repeat after me, ‘I can act traumatized and silent for as long as I goddamn want.’”
I stared at him, confused. “What about you?”
He shook me. “Say it!”
“I can act silent and traumatized as long as I goddamn want.”
“Months if I want. They can’t fuck with me if I don’t talk.”
“They can’t fuck with me if I don’t talk,” I said. “Don’t worry. But what about you?”
“We’ll find Zeus. Get to the van. Try not to make a hot exit.”
“I can still be your hostage,” I said. “Wouldn’t that help?”
“It only helps if they want the hostage to stay alive. These aren’t cops, remember?”
“They wouldn’t care if I got killed?”
“They’d prefer it,” Thor said. “Witnesses tend to complicate things.”
My blood raced. Everything seemed surreal. This wasn’t a game any longer.
“Zeus is still in the workout room?”
“Yeah,” Thor said. “But he’s not answering. Which means he’s heavy into his workout or he’s got trouble. But the recon guy seemed to think he was in our suite so…look, we just don’t know. We can’t let him go up to the suite, that’s all. We have to get down there and warn him.”
“You can’t go back in!” I said.
“We won’t leave without Zeus. It’s not how we do things. We don’t leave each other behind.”
“No matter what?” I asked.
“No matter what.”
Meaning, they’d die before they’d leave each other. Shive
rs came over me—primal shivers—the kind you get when you glimpse something majestically bigger than yourself. It’s here I think I fell in love with them. Not individually, but the gang itself and their fierce loyalty to each other.
Odin was back. “Maybe drop into a room on the east?”
Thor sighed.
Odin tried another call again. “Fucking-g answer!” he whisper-yelled at the phone.
“You can’t go back inside and get him without risk, but what if I did?” I asked. “You just need to warn Zeus, right?”
Thor shook his head.
“You said they don’t know me. They’re watching for you, but not me. For all they know, I’m a hotel guest. I can’t pop down to the workout room?”
“Pop down how? No,” Thor said.
“It’s not like I have anything at stake.”
Odin pulled out his phone and stared at it. “If we hadn’t split up we’d be on the highway.”
“They’re probably in the room by now aren’t they?” I said. “These guys wanting to kill you. And then they’ll start searching the hotel.” And apparently they didn’t mind about killing hostages. Oh, I didn’t like these guys.
“They’re not in the room yet,” Odin said mysteriously. Lord knows how he knew. My guys were masters of knowing things—dirty and otherwise.
I got up and scurried across the roof to the other side, just as Odin had, and looked over. You could see balconies below—the top-floor balconies were maybe ten feet down. And far beyond was the pool. Tiny people swam and drank under lights, unaware of the drama above. I wanted to do something to help my guys. In my mind they were my guys now.
Thor caught up. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“You could lower me, right? To that balcony? People never lock their balcony doors. I saw that on TV. I’d just walk through and take the elevator down. You said nobody knows who I am. This would be easy. For me.”
“What if somebody’s in the room?” Odin asked, watching my eyes.
“I’ll look, and if there’re people, I’ll go to the next one.”
“It’s a long way down to be swinging between balconies,” Thor said.
“Are you being sexist? The girl can’t do it? I’ve rock climbed. I’ve bungee and ski jumped. I’m already there. Just lower me. Seriously, I can’t walk through the hotel? No. I can. You guys can’t. But I can. I’m Isis, bitches!”
Odin scowled.
“Still,” Thor said.
“I’ll be the messenger. But it won’t be free, of course. You’ll owe me. I’ll want something in exchange.”
This got their attention. I’d noticed that they were more apt to take me up on things when I demanded something in return, locked them into a bargain. This was a group that operated, in a strange way, on consensual bargaining.
“What’s the favor?” Odin asked.
“It’ll cost you twenty thousand dollars.”
“We have that.” Odin exchanged glances with Thor. Something passed between them. “Let him freak,” Odin said, even though Thor had said nothing. “Let him.”
Zeus, he meant.
Thor closed his eyes. So if I started participating like this, it would upset Zeus? But I could do it so easily! This was nothing compared to the ski jump.
I put my hand on the edge—black tar, still warm from the day. “Who has the van keys? How will you get to the van?”
“Just get the message to him, we’ll handle the van.” Odin held a phone out. “Star two is Thor. If you get to him and see that he’s in trouble, keep walking to the pool door and prop it open, then call us and describe the trouble.”
Thor hissed out a breath.
“She volunteered,” Odin snapped. “She’s a big girl. It’s not a hard task for somebody not afraid of heights. Ice, you just get to the workout room and tip off Zeus.” He told me where it was as he pulled a coiled wire out of his pack, hooked one end to something, and handed me a pair of gloves.
Thor gave him a look.
“We’ll share your gloves,” Odin said.
He turned to me. “Go two floors down, not the top. It’ll be safer. Can you do that?”
“Sure.”
Thor said, “You’re sure?”
“I’m thrilled, frankly.” In fact, I was greatly enjoying the feeling of being up on top of the ski jump, about to get exhilarated. I put on the gloves and made sure my strappy shoes were secured around my wrists. “Once I’m inside, should I take the elevator?”
“Definitely,” Odin said. “Be normal. And if you can’t find him, assume we’re gone, and do whatever you need to do to look out for yourself.”
I took hold of the wire and climbed over the side. The gloves gave me great traction—I hoped my guys would be okay with just one glove each. Slowly I slid down, gently repelling off the balcony and sliding on down to the next one. I hooked a leg over, then another, and I was there, feeling very Bond girl. I crept over and slid the door a titch—unlocked. The room was dark, which meant it was empty, or the occupants were sleeping, in which case they’d hopefully continue sleeping. I yanked the cord to show I was set, took a breath, and crept in.
Luck was with me, or else the low hotel occupancy rate—the room was empty. I walked to the door, slipped on my high heels, and went out into the hall, smiling sunnily at a family I passed.
I had no doubt I looked all mussed, but I figured my poise and confidence reversed the effect…until I stepped into the elevator and saw in the mirror panel how dirty my clothes had gotten on the roof. Basically, I looked like a mud wrestler with lots of poise.
I stabbed the LL button and brushed and straightened myself best I could, while studying the map on the wall that showed how to get to the exercise room. The thing took forever to get down. I rushed out, hurried past the pool, down a small hallway, and burst into the exercise room.
And froze when I saw the three bodies slumped in the corner.
Somebody grabbed me from behind and clapped around my mouth.
A man’s voice. “Shh. It’s me.”
Zeus.
He let go and I spun around. “Odin and Thor are up on the roof,” I said, sticking the phone out at him. “Star two for Thor.”
“What are you doing?” he said.
“Getting you a message.”
“No, no, you can’t. No.” He grabbed the phone from me. “Dammit.”
You’re welcome, I thought as Zeus stabbed the buttons and proceeded to have a mysterious and angry conversation, all o’clocks and coordinates. His keen green gaze knifed through me. Then he walked to the window and looked out over the indoor pool on the other side of the glass. The pool was closed, lit dimly by lights from elsewhere. Blood covered his left arm. I stared at the bodies. Were these men all dead?
What was I doing?
I turned away from them and studied the dozen or so weight-lifting machines. From Zeus’s clipped conversation, I got that he had been just about to steal upstairs to warn Thor and Odin. None of these guys would leave without the others. A phone lay broken on the floor.
It was here I felt something cold on my neck. I stiffened in fright as a hand grabbed my hair. “You move and you bleed.”
A haze descended over me.
So the guys on the floor weren’t all dead.
Zeus turned, looking annoyed, like we were disturbing him or something. “Later,” he said.
“Drop the phone,” the man said to Zeus, holding me in front of him, knife to my throat. I tried not to panic, to move, even to swallow as the blade bit in. The whole room seemed too bright.
Zeus smiled coldly. Instead of dropping the phone, he took a few steps toward me, and casually raised a gun and pressed it to my forehead.
I gasped.
“She moves and she bleeds?” he said. “Okay. And so do you.”
I felt like I was seeing the scene from outside my own body, everything slow, surreal.
“I mean it,” the man said.
“You guys still using tungsten shot?” Z
eus continued. “My guess is yes, and that this bullet from your friend’s piece will pierce clear through her skull and right into your jugular. Shall we test it?”
My knees went liquid. The tick of the wall clock became deafening.
Zeus’s eyes were cold on mine. “How long have we known each other, honey?”
“Uh…” I couldn’t think. A day? No, less….
“Go ahead, tell the man the truth.”
“S-since this morning. Around eleven.”
Zeus sighed. “Hopefully my partners gave you a satisfying sendoff. I am sorry about this.”
“What?”
He winced, as if preparing to shoot me. Expecting spatter, I realized with horror.
“No!” I cried.
The man shoved me. The knife was off my throat and he was backing away, moving behind a workout machine, apparently deciding stacks of metal weights were more bulletproof than my skull.
I put my hand over the place the knife had bit in. Blood. But not much.
Zeus stalked toward the guy and followed him around and around the largest weights machine. The man kept going in circles until Zeus simply pushed the thing over, crashing it sideways. Then he jumped over it and kicked the guy.
In the face.
I’d never seen anything so bluntly violent. It was nothing like a karate kick—no jumps or spins, just Zeus’s foot coming out of nowhere and snapping viciously up into the man’s face. The man convulsed on his feet and then simply crumpled down on top of the machine and rolled onto the floor.
I covered my open mouth with my hand. Was he dead?
Zeus whipped a towel over his shoulders to hide his bloody arm.
“Thank you,” I breathed. I guess.
“Thank you?” Zeus came toward me now, eyes dark and ferocious. “I would’ve just as easily killed you. I would’ve done it in a heartbeat—don’t you ever doubt it.”
“What?”
“I do what I need to do to protect the group, and that doesn’t include you. I know you’re having fun playing bank robbers right now, but that’s something you need to understand.”
“I was delivering a message, not trying to join your group.”
Zeus shoved the gun and the phone in his sweatpants pocket. “We gotta get out of here.” He stalked out through the pool area. I followed him. We went through a series of doors, and then out into the cool, starry night. I touched my neck. It wasn’t bleeding as much.