In fact, it was weird how Hattie said nothing.
I knew I wasn’t the only one who thought that when Ryn prompted softly, “Hatz?”
“I, uh…you know, my dad really wanted me to be a successful ballerina,” she said.
I knew she was a dancer, and a good one, what with our occupation and all.
I also knew she’d wanted to go professional with that, and not in a zone where she had to take her clothes off to earn her money.
But a ballerina?
Hattie was naturally curvy. Very curvy. I’d never seen a ballerina that was curvy like she was.
Oh boy.
I didn’t have a good feeling about this story.
“How does that factor into whether you’ve been hit or not?” Pepper asked a question she knew the answer to already, we all knew the answer to it, but she asked it gently.
“Well, you know, early on, it’s known whether kids are gonna…make it. Obviously, I…didn’t.”
“So, he…hit you?” Pepper asked carefully.
“He was frustrated. He invested a lot of money and time in my training,” Hattie replied.
Pepper’s voice had risen when she repeated, “Invested a lot in your training?”
“You are fucking kidding me,” Ryn spat.
“Oh, honey,” I whispered.
“So, you’ve got an asshole dad,” Pepper started, now sounding fit to be tied. “Evan has an entire asshole family. I have an asshole ex who brought out the asshole in most of my family. Or maybe it was me getting pregnant young and unmarried and them being high-horse, judgmental, Bible-thumping dickheads and they’d just held their tongue before and not exposed it. And Ryn has an asshole brother.”
Uh-oh.
Ryn had an asshole brother?
We were Asshole Brother Sisters?
I did not like that.
“Pepper,” Ryn muttered warningly.
“How do you have an asshole brother?” I asked Ryn, obviously, case in point, where our asses were at that time, knowing a little something myself about the assholery brothers could get up to.
“He’s not an asshole. He just has problems,” Ryn told me.
“He’s an asshole,” Pepper told Ryn.
“It’s a disease,” Ryn said tetchily.
Oh God.
He had a disease that made him an asshole?
“You’re right,” Pepper agreed. “It’s a disease. Like cancer. But if you get cancer, you don’t deadbeat-brother your sister. You get help for your cancer.”
“It’s a mental disease,” Ryn stated. “That makes things different.”
“It’s alcoholism, Ryn,” Pepper retorted. “And there’s a treatment. I’ve never had to do it, thank God, but I still know it’s no fun doing chemo. But you still do chemo so you can get better and not make the people who love you watch you waste away.”
Whoa.
Harsh.
And Pepper wasn’t like that.
Thus, I could read from that, Pepper and Ryn had had this conversation frequently and Pepper was growing impatient.
Ryn fell silent.
I twisted my hand until I got it into position to hold hers.
I could only grab on to her ring finger and pinkie with my own.
But I held on.
Her fingers curled around mine.
And she held on too.
“I’m sorry, Ryn,” I said quietly.
“He was the best brother in the world,” she replied.
“And now, he’s not,” Pepper noted.
“Pez, cool it, okay?” Hattie said softly.
“I haven’t been a good friend,” I declared. “I didn’t know any of this about any of you. You’re all kidnapped because of my brother. You took my back. And I didn’t make the effort to take any of yours.”
“You get a pass this time, Evz,” Pepper said. “Things have been tangled for you. For instance, all of us tied to chairs, waiting for rescue.”
That was when I fell silent.
Actually, we all did.
Though part of mine was that I was thinking about her calling me “Evz.” She’d never called me that. I’d heard, in passing, them calling each other Hatz, Pez and Rinz, but they’d never called me Evz.
I felt like I’d gone through an initiation.
And passed.
And the crazy thing was, that made me feel good, no matter how tough that initiation was proving to be at this moment.
Ryn broke the silence by saying, “I bet the Rock Chicks didn’t just hang around, waiting to be rescued.”
“Have you seen Luke Stark or Vance Crowe?” Pepper asked. “They soooooooo did.”
I had seen Luke Stark but not Vance Crowe.
But more, I’d definitely seen Danny Magnusson, Axl Pantera, Auggie Hero and Boone Sadler.
Which meant I giggled.
They all started giggling with me.
We stopped when the door opened and the guy who’d been in with us before strolled in.
Behind him came another guy I hadn’t seen before, followed by one of the guys who’d kidnapped Ryn.
The last guy was carrying another chair.
He closed the door behind him.
But it was the middle guy I paid attention to.
Because he scared the shit out of me.
Yeah.
One look at him, he scared the absolute crap out of me.
And, unsurprisingly, he only had eyes for me.
He also came to a stop three feet in front of me.
“I gotta say,” he began, “I been to Smithie’s. And when I went, I was into you even before I knew you were Dirk Gardiner’s daughter.”
Oh crap times three.
One, this tall, beefy, dark-haired, pug-faced, creepy guy with mean and openly crazy brown eyes had seen me mostly naked.
Two, he was into me.
Three, he knew my dad.
“Um, I don’t think you got the memo, bud,” Ryn said from behind me. “But we have protection. The serious kind.”
The chair was set behind creepy guy, who I was assuming was the infamous Cisco, and creepy guy reached around to it.
He flipped it, sat in it in that man-way where he apparently was forced by the laws of nature to straddle the thing to prove he needed plenty of room for his big balls (which might be indicative he actually didn’t have big balls), and he did this stating, “I know you got protection. But, you know, shit is real for me.”
And he spoke all these words to Ryn, but he did it staring at me.
Ryn kept talking.
“By my estimation, you got T minus five minutes before our guys bust in here and kick the shit out of your guys.”
He leaned into both arms folded on top of the back of the chair.
And he continued to talk to me.
“This will be a problem for them considering every entrance and a variety of scan spots outside are rigged to blow.”
As my stomach started to burn, he tipped his head to the side and assumed a smile that made his creepy factor shoot through the roof, which in turn made my skin start to crawl.
Well, one good thing about that, and only one.
It was good we didn’t try to escape.
“Did you know you can buy land mines?” he asked me. “Right here. In Denver. Got a guy, out on East Evans. Front of his shop, he does tailoring and alterations. In the back, though. That’s where the fun stuff is.”
I held his gaze, my stomach feeling sick, my throat feeling funny, like it was drying up while at the same time preparing to conduct vomit.
I did not want Mag to blow up.
I did not want any of the guys to blow up.
I didn’t want any of my girls to blow up either.
And last, I, personally, did not want to blow up.
It didn’t say a lot about me, but in that moment, I was uncertain if I wanted this creepy guy to blow up, but I was leaning toward yes.
However, so I didn’t damn my soul to hell for thoughts such as that,
I had to pull myself together and finesse this situation so no one blew up.
“I think I know what you’re looking for, and I don’t have it,” I told him.
“I know. Your dad does.”
I sat still as a statue and not because I was tied to a chair.
But my eyelids moved.
They did this to do a slow blink.
“Sorry?” I whispered when I could get my mouth working.
“Your dad?” he asked, but it was an answer. “Dirk. Dirk Gardiner. Not sure how it went for him. If Mick told him or if he figured it out on his own. However it went, he knew what you had so he tossed your apartment to find it. He jacked your trunk too.”
“Oh my God,” Hattie whispered.
But I didn’t move.
Didn’t speak.
This couldn’t be true.
My dad was a loser, sometimes a lovable one, most of the time an annoying one.
But he wouldn’t do that.
Not to me.
Not to me.
“So, I think, if I had a kid,” creepy guy continued, “which I don’t, but if I did, I’d probably give a shit about that kid. And if I had something I shouldn’t, and someone wanted it back bad enough to take that kid and do not-nice things to her, and bonus,” he threw his hand out, “to her friends, and do this until I got it back, I’d think about handing over what wasn’t mine.”
“I don’t believe you,” I whispered.
“You should,” he replied.
“My dad doesn’t have that gun,” I said.
“Yes, he does,” he returned.
“How do you know he has it?” I asked.
“Since he told me.”
What?
And again…
WHAT?
I…
Could not.
Believe this!
Ryn’s fingers curled stronger around mine.
Creepy guy, who I now knew for sure was Cisco, kept talking.
“He also told me he wanted five million dollars and he’d give it back. Now, I work hard, Evan. I mean,” another one of those creepy grins, “there’s time to have fun. Gotta carve out time to have some fun. But to get ahead in life, you gotta hustle. I’ve been hustling. Doing it a long time. I’m not gonna hand over money I worked hard for to some lowlife, pot dealer, rock star wannabe player.”
His expression changed.
And at that change, my throat decided to conduct vomit and I had to struggle to keep it down.
And when he spoke again, it wasn’t conversationally.
It was sinisterly.
“You think I’m gonna give my hard-earned money to some lowlife wannabe, Evan?”
I shook my head. “I’ve been giving my hard-earned money to a lowlife wannabe for years and it doesn’t feel all that great. So, no, I don’t think you are, and more, I’d advise against it. It leaves you feeling shitty.”
Surprised at my response, he extended his neck and his eyebrows went up.
But I was feeling a lot less terrified.
This was because I was processing.
Processing the latest load of shit my family had landed on me.
It was my father who did that to my apartment.
It was my father who figured out what Mick had in that bag with those drugs and he’d frantically ripped apart everything I owned to get his hands on it.
My father.
“So, my brother put me here and my father kept me here,” I stated.
“Not sure you should turn up at Thanksgiving,” Cisco suggested.
I’d already made that decision.
“It’s my understanding Dad’s been telling people to leave me alone,” I noted.
Cisco shrugged. “Sure. He is a dad. He just ain’t a real great one.”
He could say that again.
But I made a decision.
“Untie me and give me my phone,” I demanded.
Cisco shot me another creepy smile and replied, “I’m feelin’ some of the time we’ll share together I don’t want you tied, but I ain’t givin’ you your phone.”
“Okay, give me yours.”
He stared at me.
“Listen,” I said. “I can handle all of this for you in about five minutes. I’ll get you that gun and you can let us go.”
“Evie,” Ryn hissed.
I ignored her. “I assume you have my dad’s number programmed in your phone. And actually, that’ll work out better. My call coming from your phone. So I’ll use that.”
Cisco studied me but said nothing.
“Though, I want my phone too, so I can call Mag and tell him not to rescue us,” I continued. “You see, I think you’re getting an inkling that my family life isn’t all that great. But my life life is. I have a new boyfriend. He’s awesome. He’s sweet. He thinks I’m the shit and he tells me that all the time. No one has ever told me that, until he entered my life.”
Cisco’s expression changed again, and weirdly, it changed like he was pissed on my behalf.
I couldn’t give that my time.
I was busy finessing.
“We’re moving in together. And I have a feeling he’s going to give in on where we store the spices. I’ve also realized I have good friends, the best kind of friends you can have. I’m gonna go back to school. Finally, after a lot of crap, I’ve got things to look forward to. I have a life worth leading. And I’m gonna lead it. And I don’t care what I have to do to make that happen without anyone getting hurt.”
I moved my head around to indicate the girls and kept going.
“You don’t know us, but we’ve all been through a ton of shit. Now, you can force us to endure more trauma, and that’d suck, and it’ll be hard, but we’ll survive. We’ll get through. We’ve done it before. All of us. We’ll do it again. Though it’d save a lot of time and a lot of money on therapy if you’d just give me my phone, and yours, so I can handle this for you.”
“I’m feelin’ you. I think I like you. You got spirit. And no matter what people think about me, I don’t get off on hurting folks. At least not folks who didn’t do dick to me,” Cisco replied. “But you gotta understand why I won’t do that.”
“I don’t,” I retorted. “You want that gun. I want out of here. I want my friends out of here. And I want a Textual.”
His head jerked on “Textual,” but I just kept talking.
“So you promise to let us out of here, I’ll get you that gun.”
He started to shake his head, so I kept at him.
“I get shit is real for you. You’ve made shit real for me and my girls. Let’s all breathe a little easier. Just untie one hand. I’m not asking for privacy. I’m not requesting the use of all my limbs. I’m good with the phone. I do one-handed all the time. This may affect my car insurance, but even if I’ve had a few bust-ups, I’ve never dropped a call.”
Cisco held my eyes.
I returned the gesture.
“You can get me that gun?” he asked.
My heart jumped as hope flared.
I nodded, tried not to do it fervently, just confidently, and he watched me do it.
He didn’t take his gaze off me when he said, “Get her bag.”
Yes!
“Mine’s the little brown one,” I called when one of the men moved.
It wouldn’t be that easy, I knew it wouldn’t, but I didn’t like how much harder it got when Cisco tipped his head to the other guy and that guy approached Pepper at my side.
I turned my head to watch him do this and my throat closed automatically against the bile racing up it when he pointed his gun at her head.
She emitted a whimper.
I started breathing in short spurts through my nose.
“So, you know,” Cisco began, and I looked back to him, “I’ll be listening, and if I feel you’re gonna fuck me, you’ll have her brains all over that nerdy shirt.”
“I’m not gonna fuck you,” I whispered.
He cocked his head to the side. “You’re not a l
ot like your dad or your brother.”
I pointed out the obvious. “I’m the black sheep in the family.”
“You’re not scared?” he asked.
“I’m terrified,” I admitted. “I’m also a survivor.”
“Mm,” he hummed, watching me closely as the door opened. “Yeah, I think I like you,” he decided.
Great.
The guy that came back in untied one of my hands and gave me my phone.
“Speaker,” Cisco grunted.
I nodded.
Then I went to Favorites, called Mag and hit speaker.
He answered with a clipped, “Evie. Hang tight. We’re—”
“Hey,” I cut him off quickly. “You’re on speaker, honey. I’m fine. The girls are fine. Everything’s fine. Just back off. I’ve got something worked out with Cisco.”
He sounded incredulous, and maybe a little freaked, when he asked, “What?”
“I’ve got something worked out with Cisco and he’s got, uh…wherever we are wired to blow with land mines outside and stuff. So, you know, just stay safe, stand down and I’ll call you in a bit with directions of where to pick us up.”
“Evie—”
“Be quiet and stand down, Mag,” I snapped. “I have it covered. Just be quiet and listen for your phone. Listen to your phone. I’ll call you.”
I hoped he was now listening to me.
Really listening to me.
“Mag?” he asked.
Okay, he was listening to me. I never called him Mag. I thought of him as Mag, but when his name was in my mouth, he was Danny.
I didn’t exactly know what I was communicating with that, I just wanted to catch his attention and make him really hear me.
“Quiet. Listen,” I said. “Is Axl all right?”
“Yeah, he’s right here with me.”
Thank you, God.
“We’ll be out soon, and I’ll call,” I finished.
I touched the screen, but I didn’t disconnect the call and I hoped like all hell that Mag didn’t say anything, which would mean his words coming through the speaker, because I wanted to get Pepper back to Juno. I wanted the girls to get the lead out and give the guys a shot.
And I wanted to go home to Mag.
Quickly, I put my phone facedown on my thigh and held my hand out for Cisco’s phone.
It was shaking.
I didn’t think this was bad. I wasn’t a trained operative. My hand was going to shake. He’d expect that.
“Get me in your phone and dial Dad,” I ordered. “I’ll get him to talk to you about where he can hand off that gun.”
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