by a b
“No.” Her voice caught in her throat in a rushed panic. “I need ten percent, right? And I only have one day left. You told me that the cash flows best – you said – “ She couldn’t make herself voice the request. A glint in Blue’s eye meant that he knew what she was asking for.
His work was almost done with this one. He had bent her around his will. Now she was asking, begging for the opportunity to multiply her troubles. He was sure the other Vinyl Men would oblige her. Blue remembered the defiance of her first days; it had been turned around completely. It was good that the room had no mirrors because Tracy would not even recognize the person she had become.
She was now willing to do anything for the opportunity to leave. The boundaries would be tested today. Blue shook his head, imitating pity before leaving the room would strengthen her resolve – make her justify her actions as purely self-preservation. He’d wound up the tail of a wildcat, and whatever rules, whatever roles they made up today would be played by this actress with reckless abandon. It was too easy really, and he might have actually mimicked the final words she said in parting. Words spoken exactly as he expected, right down to the cadence.
“Don’t let them kill me.” She was unable to turn her head far enough to see him. Tracy strained against her restraints but Blue stayed just out of sight.
Outside the room he answered her in a quiet, overly pleasant tone. “I won’t.” He said, and began to hum “Singing in the Rain.” Blue scuffed his feet and thought about how much like sickly sweet sunshine it would be to kill her himself. Not this time, he thought, not this time.
*****
Legacy sat in a room with a group of silo-chested women. It was all silicone and attitude with this crowd, and with the number of administrative gawkers slowly walking by his open door, Legacy perceived that attention was the fickle servant of nature. In other words, it didn’t matter how it got there as long as it was there. Fashion hugged, tugged and stretched sparingly over all the areas that men discover with their eyes. The posture in the room was strangely competitive. It was like all of them were vying for the attention of the straight-laced, square-jawed, Agent Legacy.
He must have been a complete change from the crowd that they usually entertained. He began in a commanding voice. Wagner noticed that all of the pierced belly buttons were suddenly at attention, something Legacy surely would have noticed, had he been looking there. His eyes were on their eyes; his voice was confidential like he was speaking to a room of equals. He worked to give them immediate, unconditional respect, because he needed expert answers and they had the experience.
“I have slowed down four areas on the tape that indicate what I believe to be a significant behavior by our abductors. I could be wrong, but any comments that you have will inform me on how to catch a group of sex offenders that deeply deserve to be in a prison system where they will certainly get similar or worse treatment that they are dolling out.”
The unexpected barb at the end took a minute to sink in, but it was evidently very appreciated by the crowd. A young Latina with a stretched t-shirt that said “sexy” began to tear up laughing. The crowd joined her laughter and the gathering became more like a social hour than a formal questioning.
Legacy had summoned up just enough charm to bring the group to him. He wanted to immediately retreat into his normal detached self, but he knew that this was just the beginning. A curt nod to Wagner who stood at the large television screen that they’d wheeled in for the proceedings. and she began the presentation. She pushed “play” on the VCR and the events unfolded on tape, accompanied by a room filled with comments. Everything was fair game, the voiced conversation with the screen seeming a bit too candid.
“None of the standard viewing positions.” A sassy black tube-topped sexpert criticized. “You want to see this, this and this, and all you see is this.” She paused then huffed. “Nothing special about that.” She pointed to areas on the screen with a perilously long, pink-glitter painted fingernail.
Wagner entered the conversation, her voice sounded more abrupt than she intended “What’s wrong with that?”
Legacy shot her a glance. She knew that he didn’t want their guests to feel like they were among cops.
Tube Top laughed it off, she pointed out angles like a pool shark “Honey, if you got this, this and this going on, you want people to see it! Why else would you want to have it going on?”
Sexy noted, “Look at her face, she didn’t want any of it.” The levity was sucked out of the room.
“What tells you that?” Wagner burst in again.
Sexy squinted, as if she didn’t like the question, “Lots of things.”
Tube Top picked up the thought “She’s got a survival face on. Everybody in this room has gotten themselves in too deep once or twice in their career.”
A young-looking brunette with thick black eyeliner tattooed in a pattern that continued down the smile lines giving her a permanent cat-eye look “Or they get too deep in you. The one in the violet is in no danger of that.” She pointed to Violet, a huge man in all ways but one.
Tube Top had a belly laugh that shook the floor. “That’s unprofessional, that is.”
Legacy could feel the air returning into the room, and with that feeling, he knew that they were ready for the tough questions. “So this strikes you as wrong. You never worked with anything like this?”
Sexy stood and did a little shimmy. “See ‘tese? They’re fake, and I wouldn’t be in fron‘ a tha camera without them. Purple man is wrong as you get for this kind of entertainment.” She looked Legacy up and down. “Let’s say agent, that you are like Purple man under your clothes, that’s aieet with me.” The room murmured agreement and Legacy suddenly found himself being regarded as if he were a prize at auction.
Tube Top snickered “Dress him up as Bo-Peep and I’ll be one of the sheep.”
Legacy gave a wink to Tube Top, and she had to fan herself. Wagner watched through a shocked expression as he played to his audience. Legacy quickly took advantage of his sudden status in the room “I’m curious about this behavior here.”
He showed a section of tape where the girl was blindfolded, then the camera jiggled just before Blue entered the frame holding a sex toy.
The women in the room flinched watching Blue go to work on the girl. A scream escaped the lips of the girl. It poured out of the speaker before Legacy could pause the tape. “This isn’t normal either, I would guess.”
Tube Top “I seen people beg for worse.”
“The action of bumping the camera, it’s the only time he joins the action, I have no explanation for it.” Legacy was frustrated at himself. He scanned the room and found something in the way Sexy stared at the screen. “This make sense to you?”
Sexy started slowly. “I seen somet’ing like that. A producer on my 27th film had a limp biscuit and he got off like that on a girl in the film.”
Tattoo “How many films did you do before you stopped counting? That’s when you know your innocence is lost.”
Tube Top chimed in “I stopped at 150.”
Numbers cascaded into the room. One of the girls counted all the way to 600. Sexy finished the discussion “I counted till 27.”
After four hours of questions and answers, Legacy abruptly thanked the group and moved to the door. As he left the room, he signaled to a young agent standing outside the door with a large cardboard box. Legacy had arranged for FBI windbreakers from the central office gift shop to be sent over. A glance into the room from the hallway revealed that the group of women was overjoyed, fighting over sizes and genuinely thrilled with the show of appreciation. Instead of being pleased, Legacy allowed himself a rare moment of emotional judgment to creep into his mind. Legacy saw the adult film stars for a moment as girls who had fathers somewhere. His daughter was home, waiting for him to return.
*****
There were voices in the hallway minutes before six o'clock. Chess heard the muffled sounds and lost all concentration on her
homework. The conversation was now stationary parked just outside of her door. Now that was unusual. That doorway was a no-talking zone. Moreover, alongside her father’s hushed baritone was a woman’s voice. Chess looked around the room for some sign that the universe at large had been altered in some kind of fundamental way. Before she could fully develop an alternate reality theory that allowed for her father to be talking to women outside of the door of their home, the clock struck six. The locks twisted and released, a percussive progression in perfect 3/4 time. Legacy either had an unconscious devotion to the waltz or a driving need to keep those in straight time waiting for that extra beat.
There was a pause before the door opened, for Chess it was like the tides had failed to pull in the next wave, and the shock didn’t end there. An additional surprise occurred after the door opened. As Legacy entered she could hear footsteps trailing away. It was all but impossible. It wasn’t a chance conversation or brief hallway greeting; someone had actually walked him to his door, and then departed. Legacy never allowed anything to intrude upon his routine. The door closed with a sharp click. Her father walked up and wrapped her up in a warm hug.
“OK now this is getting creepy.” She said in a subversive teenage tone. Legacy nodded noncommittally, he agreed that the world was a pretty creepy place today. It was getting better when Chess extended her arms around him and squeezed back. “What’s up with you today?”
He accepted the fatherly embrace but he must have noticed tension running through her wrists. Chess moved quickly to insure her advantage of surprise, she locked her hands in the small of Legacy’s back and using a Judo move she leaned heavily on her right leg, pulling back her left, to shift his weight.
Chess was top in her class and it was a maneuver that sent her other classmates flying, but with Legacy, it barely rocked him back and forth, turning their hug into a dance. “Almost.” He said, kissing her forehead.
“Do you have time tonight?” Legacy said pulling back with his hands on her shoulders. “We could go to the range –”
“The general rule is that we only go on the weekends.” Chess must have seen something in her father’s expression that made her want to give him a break.
Legacy thought back later that it must have been something pretty strong, because the teenage girl’s response threshold for giving their father a break is almost insurmountable. Instead of offering more resistance, she changed the topic - “Other kids go bowling with their parents.” And made a gun with her forefinger and thumb.
“Other kid’s parents take them to the Ice Capades, do you want to start doing that?” Legacy played upon Chess' deep dislike for anything kitsch or tacky.
“What’s going on?” Chess asked.
“I want to see my daughter shoot. Is there anything more natural than that?” Legacy replied.
Chess stopped and seemed to be thinking it over, there were probably many things wrong with what he’d said, but she wasn’t in the mood for being difficult. Or was she? “Who was out in the hallway? I only ask because I’m not old enough to control my impulse to make you uncomfortable.”
“I have a new case, a live one.”
Chess slipped on her jacket and headed for the door, “If you have something important to do at work you can stay there after hours. You know that.”
Legacy’s voice dipped into a deep baritone, “Nothing will ever be more important than family.” He knew that his choice of words left Chess a void to fill in a word in her head. Legacy noticed Chess pause in thought.
“Again.” Was the word that rattled around the minds of both father and daughter.
They walked out of the house; Legacy patted his jacket feeling for his empty holster. He checked his own sidearm out of the cage everyday when he arrived at work and checked it back in on the way out the door. He would pick up Chess' 38 from the gun locker he had at the range.
Legacy only allowed one gun in the house and it was fingerprint coded to he and Chess alone. There was a microchip in the butt of the gun that wouldn’t unlock the firing mechanism unless it recognized the finger on the trigger from a three directional laser scan that took under a quarter of a second to process. The gun made a decision faster than the owner could squeeze the trigger. Legacy had spent three year’s bonuses on the technology in that gun and it had never been fired.
*****
Wagner was waiting for her drink at a coffee shop across the street from Legacy’s apartment building when she watched him leave. She had just ordered a latte with three extra shots of espresso. The girl at the register had called the drink the “late nighter.” She spoke with a clumsy camaraderie that told Wagner that she thought that the young agent was a fellow student. There must have been a college campus nearby. For some reason, all she felt was anger. She thought “How can people lead normal lives when other people suffer from their inaction.” It was a college student thought.
The male barista looked at Wagner’s hair tightly swept back across her pale forehead and decided to throw caution to the wind. “The all nighter.” He announced flashing his most charming smile. Wagner looked up at his eyes, he was cute, and it didn’t matter one bit to her.
“I’ve decided I’d like it iced.” She pushed the drink back across the bar.
*****
Shivering on the floor of her cell, Laura huddled in a thin blanket ripped off the bed. The restraints kept her arms wrapped behind her. It was a special precaution; she’d heard Blue talk about it. They knew that they weren’t dealing with a helpless victim, and Laura sensed that they liked taking her power away. They’d bathed and prepped her body while she’d lain still as a cadaver. She hadn’t answered the blue one as he’d carefully painted a tattoo onto her inner thigh. She knew that she had less than twelve hours to escape.
Laura found a rough patch of splintered wood on the floor, and she scraped it across the nylon that held her shoulders locked behind her like some kind of iron embrace. It wouldn’t be long now. Like a set of shoelaces the ropes were loosening at the center and she’d soon be free.
That’s when Laura heard the noise.
Chapter 10 Snap, Crackle, Pop
SNAP, crackle, two shots and Chess put the gun down on the varnished wood counter. Her target hung fifteen meters away, a fair test for the accuracy of the nickel SIG 226 that she was using. It was an ugly weapon, but one of the most respected utility handguns in the business - all that her father cared about was that it got the job done.
She heard her father alternating hands and shooting at a target far down range. When the noise subsided he poked his head around the divider.
“You only shot twice.” He said removing his gloves with his teeth.
“You look like you’re snarling when you do that.” She flipped her hair and pushed the button that reeled her target in. “anyway, my man is down and yours is still ready to par-tay.”
“I’ve taken two shots and made it home for dinner.” Chess frowned, she couldn’t help herself. She knew that her reaction fed her father’s obsessive overprotectivity. Was that redundant? She wasn’t sure, but when it came to her father’s health, playing it cool wasn’t an option. He was all she had.
Legacy leaned around and slapped a button that caused Chess' target to approach zipping down a cable and stopping less than a meter away. Two holes, left and right knees “Very funny, left kneecap” he observed. The other one was off center “what happened here?”
Chess used the gun as a pointer “If my guy was an amateur, he went down on the first shot to the left knee, if he’s a professional he’s wearing flexible armor, so I clipped the tendons behind the knee on the second shot. Very effective, and extremely painful. He’s probably looking for some extra strength Advil about now.” She reached around and pushed her father’s button. “Now with your guy, he’s wearing Kevlar and that center mass of nine bullets only slows him down.” The target stopped right in front of Legacy, “Now he’s ready to engage you hand to hand, and you’re out of ammunition.”
> With a wry smile and a flick of the wrist a knife appeared from the inner pocket of Legacy’s vest. Never taking his eyes off Chess he made two surgical thrusts into the paper target. He explains “He’s dead now, and I bet he wishes he’d just stayed down when he took the bullets in the chest.”
Chess smiled looking at the two knife entry points, the ear angled downward to the brain stem, and the throat, clipping the innominate vein and the aeorta. There would be blood coming and going and no oxygen in the brain to process it. She proudly took her father’s warm hand and led him away from the range, not once thinking that she had a very small, very strange family.
Chapter 11 Night Visitor
A click outside door and Laura stopped all motion straining to listen. There it was again, they were coming for her. Laura noticed earlier that there were two doors that were opened before anyone entered the room. An outer security door of some sort, it gave her warning that company was on its way. There was no time to set the table or get ready for guests. She went limp.