Turn Me Loose

by Anne Calhoun

  His eyebrows rose. “I’ll wait in my room and head up when you get her downstairs.”

  She climbed the steps to the second floor, then walked through the unused spare room to what looked like a closet door, opened it, and climbed the steps to the third-floor master suite. Her mother and the architect had worked out a way to remove the original walls sectioning the space into two rooms and a bath in between; now the small landing at the top of the stairs opened on her parents’ bedroom to her left which flowed into a sitting area cuddled around a deep window seat that overlooked the backyard. The bath and closet were discreetly tucked away to her right.

  Her mother was sitting in the window seat, a hazelnut cashmere throw draped over her lap. Her blond hair hung lank around her face. Riva crossed the gleaming maple hardwood floor and sat down at the opposite end of the window seat.

  “Hi, Mom,” she said. “I didn’t know you were up.”

  “My head hurt.” A faded smile, a pause. “Is everything coming together?”

  “We’re on schedule.” She reached for her mother’s hand, chafed the limp, cold fingers between her own. Her hand was far too cold for someone sitting in the sunshine under a wool blanket. “How are you feeling?”

  Another pause. “Fine.”

  “Mom.” Her voice was a little sharper. She turned her mother, as unresisting as a small child, away from the sunlight and peered into her eyes. The pupils didn’t move, even though she was facing the darker room. “Did you take something today?”

  “Your father gave me some pills before he left. He said I should take them if I wanted to be his good girl.”

  Warning bells went off in Riva’s head. “Where does he keep the pills, Mom?”

  Her mother lifted a hand in the direction of the bathroom. Riva hurried through the door and flung open drawers and doors to the vanity. She counted over a dozen bottles rattling in the second drawer, with more in the third. Riva stared at the bottles, too many for her to hold in her hands. How on earth had he gotten a doctor to prescribe all of these for her mother?

  Then she sprinted back down the stairs and found Ian on the landing to the third floor. “What’s going on?”

  “Come look in the drawers in the bathroom. There’s enough medication in there to drop a herd of elephants!” She clutched her hair in her hands. “He’s been drugging her. He’s gotten her addicted to Percocet and OxyContin! How could I have done this? How could I leave her here for so long?”

  Ian grabbed her shoulders and turned her to face him. “Riva. You’ve been on a plane, right?”

  She stared at him, so solid and true and real. “What? Of course I have.”

  “Remember the safety check? If the cabin loses oxygen, you put on your own mask before helping your child or anyone else. Remember.”

  His warm, firm hands helped her focus. The little yellow margarine cups, the stretchy elastic bands, the smiling cabin attendants. “Yes. I remember.”

  “You were putting on your own mask. That’s all. We’re here now. We’re going to fix it now. We will end this. I swear to you, we will end this.”

  She stared at him, torn between fear and despair and a wild hope because he kept saying we. We’re here now. We’ll fix this, end this. We.

  They were a we.

  * * *

  “Go sit with your mom and keep an eye out for your dad,” Ian said urgently. His heart soared at the delight in Riva’s eyes when he said “we,” but first he had to get them all as far away from Rory as possible. “He could be home any minute.”

  They took the stairs in a rush, Riva hurrying over to her mother while Ian turned and strode to the bathroom. Riva was right. The drawers in the vanity contained several thousand dollars’ worth of antipsychotics and painkillers. The OxyContin alone was worth over a thousand bucks on the street. Unfortunately, neither the vanity nor the wardrobe nor the shelves and drawers cunningly tucked into the eaves and window seat nor the mattress and box spring nor the nightstands contained Rory’s laptop or any other incriminating notebooks, index cards, tablets. Nothing.

  Ian stripped off his gloves and shoved them in his back pocket. His search had turned up nothing more interesting than a stash of porn tucked behind Rory’s nightstand, a finding he would not be sharing with Riva, who, while he searched, had gently enticed her mother down the stairs with tempting offers of coffee and biscotti.

  His phone vibrated in his pocket. Dad’s on his way upstairs.

  He hustled down the narrow stairwell and crossed the floor to look out the windows at the street below. Rory walked into the little library.

  “Hey, Rory,” Ian said, striving for friendly. “I was just enjoying the view.”

  “It’s a really prime piece of real estate,” Rory said easily. “Have fun today?”

  Ian took a chance. “Yeah,” he said, allowing just a hint of reluctance to creep into his tone. “To be honest, it’s not all I thought it would be.”

  “Really? You’re ready to go back to the IT department?”

  “No way,” Ian said. Determined, this time. “I still want to be my own boss, but I want something a little more exciting than farm-fresh fruits and vegetables.”

  Rory looked Ian right in the eye for a long minute. “Exciting.”

  “You know.” Ian huffed like he was irritated with himself. “I’m tired of being a good guy all the time. All the same guys competing for all the same promotions or projects. It’s all so … boring. I don’t give a shit if I get the next promotion, because it’s all the same bullshit anyway. Once I started boxing, started reading up on the street fighters, met some guys, my horizons expanded, you know what I’m saying?”

  He made like he’d said too much. “Look, I’m not saying Trev’s like that. But in Lancaster, there’s all kinds of interesting deals being made at the boxing gyms, with the guys the boxers know. Trev’s pretty serious. He wouldn’t get into that. But they’re talking about the kind of business, and money, that’s not playing for forty K a year and benefits.”

  “Lancaster’s been a possible expansion zone for me for a while.”

  Adrenaline dumped into Ian’s bloodstream. Yes. Finally. This was it.

  “I’m looking for someone to work for me. I’d hoped that someone could be Riva, but she’s proved … not up to the task.”

  “In the vending machine business,” Ian said, sounding dubious. “That’s … interesting.”

  “That’s only one part of the business.” Rory’s eyes were heavy lidded. “I’m looking for the right guy to run that expansion, and a couple of other sideline jobs.”

  Ian perked right up at that. “A chance to go into business with you? Let’s talk.”

  Rory smiled, almost fondly. “Now?”

  Was he laying it on too thick? Too obvious? That was the trouble with sociopaths. They were impossible to read. “I’ve got nothing better to do.”

  “What about Riva and the party?”

  He put a little mocking into his half laugh. Rory wouldn’t want a potential business partner to be more devoted to Riva than him. He’d love to see Ian ditch Riva for him. “She’s got it under control.”

  “Let’s go.”

  * * *

  They drove through the spring sunlight, the golden glow to the world almost unreal. Rory didn’t say much, and Ian found the silence a little unnerving. Unsettling. His radar was going off like crazy, something was wrong, something was very, very wrong, but he didn’t know what. He was trained to stay with that feeling, deal with it, and do his job.

  He got a text and hit the button on his phone to read it.

  From Jo: Get out of there.

  “Everything ok?” Rory said.

  “Fine. I just need to call a coworker about a problem they can’t fix without me. Look, it’s really not a good time right now,” he said when Jo picked up.

  She kept her voice down. “According to McCormick, Kenny said their Chicago connection was taking a dog to get neutered. That’s code for getting rid of a rival, or a
snitch. Get out, Ian. Get out now.”

  It felt hinky, as Jo liked to say. The bones at the base of his skull were vibrating. He wasn’t in any danger, and if he backed out now, Rory wouldn’t let him in again. Which left Riva vulnerable to her father’s devastating form of manipulation and cruelty. He had his chance, right now, and he wasn’t going to throw it away and hope for a better one to show up at some random moment in the future.

  He went for a hint of impatience. “I’m on my way to a really important meeting. I don’t have my computer with me. I’ll look at this when I get home.”

  He hung up on Jo’s hissed goddammit, Ian. “Database issues,” he said. “I swear to God no one can run the nightly file imports without me.”

  “They’re going to have to learn,” Rory said genially.

  Was he going to take Ian to some warehouse and shoot him in the head? Ian knew the streets they were driving. They were headed straight to Sweet Science. No big deal. When they got to the gym, they walked through the front door. Micah knelt on the floor of the boxing ring, hands secured behind his back with a zip tie. Trev stood over him, his face blank as the cabinet fronts in Rory’s kitchen.

  Ian slowed his step. Jo and McCormick had it wrong. Ian’s cover wasn’t blown. Micah’s was.

  “Isn’t that the guy from that meeting we went to a couple of days ago?”

  “The HR guy?” Rory ducked under the ropes. Ian followed him in, hoping he seemed eager, intentionally staying close to do what he could to deflect attention from Micah. “It is, and it isn’t. He’s actually a cop.”

  Micah wasn’t looking at him. He stared straight at the floor, head down. Ian let out a low whistle. “No way. Um, I don’t want to tell you how to run your business, but isn’t assaulting a cop a pretty risky thing to do? Like, they don’t stop searching until they find you?”

  “I’m not going to assault him,” Rory said, still smiling genially. “You’re going to do it.”

  Just like that, the spot where his skull met his spinal cord started to hum. That was the trick, the evil, the danger. Because no one knew where he was. Jo wouldn’t stop with the phone calls, but it would take time for her to get in touch with the right people at the CPD, and even then, they’d be searching for a Lancaster cop. If they didn’t know about Micah, she might not get them moving in time to stop whatever was going to happen.

  Whatever Ian was going to have to do.

  Get out of this. Get out now, call 911, get an immediate, coordinated response that would be like the fist of God landing on this building. He held up his hands and started backing away, trying to stay in character. “Look, I know I said I was interested in going into business together, but this is way out of my league.”

  A click. Trev held a gun to the base of Micah’s skull. Micah flinched. “Whoa, whoa!” Ian shouted.

  “Did you think this was going to be like kids playing cops and robbers?” Rory laughed, an evil delight in his eyes. “You either get in the ring and deal with him, or Trev blows his brains out. Then he’ll blow yours out.”

  “Why me? I’m not going to tell anyone. I promise,” Ian babbled, staying in character.

  Rory gave him the shark’s grin. “Remember what I said about killer instinct? Let’s see if you’ve got it.”

  Beat him up or he dies. The command was so crazy it took Ian a moment to process it. Rory was ordering him to beat Micah with his bare hands. It was the product of an insane mind, a brutal death for Micah. Landing a single punch would permanently scar Ian to his soul. He’d boxed at the gym. He’d participated in the department’s tournament. But that was with gloves, against men and women he knew were trained to fight, and in the ring by choice. Micah, if he remembered correctly, had never even played contact sports in high school. He was a state champion gymnast.

  Micah looked up at Ian, a desperate challenge in his eyes. Ian climbed in the ring, and nodded at the zip tie. “Cut those off him.”

  “What?”

  “The plastic thing,” he said, trying hard not to sound like a cop, gesturing at the restraints. He threw a quick glance at the front windows. Not a single scrape in the paint covering the glass. No one would have any idea what was going on in here. “Cut it off him. He gets a chance.”

  “Fine,” Rory said, lifting a finger toward Trev, “but if you lose to him, you both die. I guarantee the Chicago Police Department gave him some hand-to-hand-combat training.”

  Trev leaned over and used a bowie knife to cut the zip tie off Micah’s wrists. Micah rubbed them, rolled his shoulders back and forward, trying to regain circulation. Ian stepped into the ring. “Gloves?”

  “Bare knuckles,” Rory said. “Get to it.”

  Micah was no idiot. His gaze flickered all over Ian’s body, studying stance and hips and shoulders, raised hands. He’d know a little bit about punching—every guy did—but Ian was most concerned about showing him how to block.

  “Come on, you stupid motherfucker,” Micah said. “If I’m going down, you’re going down with me.”

  Ian almost smiled. Instead he hit him, feinting with his left before landing a sharp jab with his right. He pulled the punch as much as he dared, but Rory and Trev would both know a real punch from a pulled one. Micah’s head snapped to the side and he staggered a couple of steps. Blood streamed from the cut Ian’s knuckles opened over his left eye. He touched his face, then looked at Ian, incredulous.

  Then he turned and barreled right at Ian. It was an all-out brawl, rolling on the ground, grunting and cursing, Ian howling at punches Micah landed, theatrically swinging his fists and landing in spots that wouldn’t do much damage. Micah’s shoulder rather than his face, his hip rather than his kidney. But every time they drew back, panting, Micah was bleeding from a new spot, a cut lip, his nose. Try as he might, Ian hadn’t been able to avoid landing body blows, gut, ribs, low back. The line between a real fight and a partially faked one still meant two out of three hits landed. They landed softer, or they landed in less sensitive places, but they still landed.

  Micah bulled in close again. Ian aimed for his chest but Micah pulled back reflexively at the last second and Ian’s fist caught him right in the chin. His head snapped back with a sickening crack and he slumped to the floor, unconscious. His breathing started to gurgle. Ian used his foot to turn his head to the side so he wouldn’t choke on his own blood.

  “I need a minute,” he said to Rory, not having to fake his rough breathing. He looked at Trev. “Get me some water.”

  Trev looked at Rory. Rory waited a beat, then nodded.

  Ian swiped at the sweat and blood on his face. “You’ve seen enough.”

  “So has he,” Rory said. “He’ll remember your face, and mine. Kill him.”

  “Fine, but not like this,” Ian said. “I’m sore and I’m fucking tired after the beating your boy gave me yesterday. I’m not going to punch him to death in here. There’s no way you’ll get the DNA out of the ring. Don’t you watch CSI?”

  Rory laughed. Trev came back with a bottle of water and chucked it at Ian. “What are you proposing?”

  “Give me the gun and I’ll drive him somewhere and finish him.”

  Rory used another one of those minimalist hand gestures to indicate Trev should climb into the ring. “With the money I’m going to make on this deal, I can buy another boxing ring. Kill him. You, watch.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The air froze in Ian’s lungs. Trev was in the ring, lifting his arm to aim the Glock at Micah’s unconscious body. A beat of silence followed, interrupted by a harsh, metallic thunking sound.

  An unmistakable shutk-chutk, metallic, weighty, powerful.

  A singular noise, not a buzz or a whine or a thud, but mechanical, insistent, and dangerous.

  The most recognizable sound in the modern world. Rory and Trev turned to look for the person holding the shotgun.

  Ian didn’t.

  In the space between one racing heartbeat and the next, Ian knew everything he needed to know about any
thing, ever, for the rest of his life. Riva was here. She’d come to the club, taken the gun from behind the driver’s seat of her father’s truck, walked into the club, and cocked it. He didn’t know how she knew to come here, and he didn’t care. All he knew was that his soul, wounded and half alive for so long, soared with joy.

  In the split second when Rory and Trev looked for the significant sound, Ian moved without thinking. Fuck boxing. He went straight for the hand-to-hand-combat moves he’d learned from Jamie. He spun low and fast, leg extended, and delivered one hard kick to the side of Trev’s knee. The joint gave a sickening crunch. Mouth open in a soundless wail, Trev collapsed and reached for his knee. Ian punched Trev’s wrist. He dropped the gun. Ian grabbed it and lunged to his feet, then swung the butt of the Glock at Trev’s skull. He dropped to a limp sprawl, unconscious before he face-planted into the mat.

  Ian put himself between Micah, terrifyingly silent and still, and Rory. “Police. Get down on the ground.”

  Rory laughed. “What?”

  “Lieutenant Ian Hawthorn, Lancaster Police Department. Get down on the ground.”

  Casual and calm, Rory turned away from Ian and looked straight at his daughter. “Riva. What’s this all about?”

  Riva’s hands were steady on the shotgun, aimed directly at her father. “You heard him.”

  “He’s got no authority here.”

  “Then I’m making a citizen’s arrest,” Riva said.

  “For what? I’ve done nothing wrong. He’s the one who beat up that cop. Not me.”

  He was walking toward Riva, his face that smiling, sane mask that frightened Ian more than any hopped-up, screaming, incomprehensible junkie. At least you knew what the junkie was thinking.

  “Stop where you are, Henneman.”

  Rory ignored him and continued walking toward Riva. “Did you know he was a cop?”

  “No,” Ian said. He flicked a glance at Trev. Still out for the count. Unfortunately, so was Micah. He could use a Chicago cop right now. “She didn’t know anything. I lied to her.”

  Riva’s stance never wavered. “Shut up, Ian. Of course I knew. Dad, stop where you are right now, or I swear to fucking God, if he doesn’t shoot you, I will.”