What the hell is this? When he signed up, they had assured him it was strictly confidential.
you are no doubt wondering how i procured your personal information.
No shit.
there will be time to explain that. right now, i want you to know two things: 1. you are not alone. 2. there is a better way.
you don’t have to live the way you’re living, j.s. you don’t have to accept the injuries that have been piled on your family by a corrupt economic system. there are plans in the works to take back what has been taken from us by the wealthy and the powerful. you can be a part of those plans. your actions can have meaning—for yourself, for your family, and for your nation.
what i need from you to get the ball rolling is this: five years ago, you were involved in an unsuccessful class-action suit against safeguard industries, seeking to recover damages for the death of your wife and severe impairment of your daughter. according to the public record, the case was dismissed due to an arbitration clause you and the other patients had unwittingly signed, indemnifying safeguard industries from any harm done by their products.
i need every piece of information you can give me about that case. i need your story, j.s.
reply to this email with the information requested if you would like to help our cause.
if you go to the authorities, i cannot help you. if you try to trace this email—you will fail—and i will not be able to help you.
help us, j.s. help us recover what has been lost. help us build a better world.
MOST SINCERELY,
frogger13
J.S. closes the browser and sits back in his chair, stunned, staring blankly at the stock image on his desktop until the screensaver appears. He watches the color-changing block bounce around the screen for what must be twenty minutes.
Finally, he rises and returns to the kitchen. He places the plate with the uneaten burrito on the top rack of the fridge. His mouth feels dry, sticky. He takes a mason jar, fills it with water, and chugs the whole 32 ounces. Who the heck is this frogger13 character? His first thought is that it could be some kind of trap. Could be the FBI is going after would-be domestic terrorists, rooting out homegrown threats. His brother-in-law has told him about that too, how the feds like to comb the political fringes and take down folks who are looking for trouble.
But if it’s not? If this is legit?
He’s not thinking clearly. He should call somebody. His sister or his shrink—the minister he hasn’t seen in five years, for Christ’s sake—find someone to talk some sense into him. ‘Cause at the moment, that computer is tugging on him like a magnet…
He needs to call someone. One of his buddies from work. The police. Hell, dial a random number—just tap a line with the outside world so he’s not spinning around in circles in his own head.
He should call somebody. He knows he should. But he also knows he won’t.
Because way down deep, underneath the hurt in his back and the aching in his heart, beneath the frustration, the stress and the resentment, he wants what this ‘frogger13’ is offering. He can feel it in his bones. Not revenge. Not money. Not recognition. Nothing like that.
What he wants is for his actions to have meaning. There’s nothing worse than knowing that everything you do is pointless. There’s nothing heavier than that. It’s a burden he’s been carrying for nearly a decade now, growing harder and heavier day by day, week by week, year by year.
And as J. Stanley DeWitt puts his hand on the mouse and double clicks the Firefox icon, he feels an enormous weight being lifted from his shoulders.
12:43 a.m.
The handgun is heavier than it looks. Val knows the weight of a rifle or a shotgun, though she hasn’t held one in decades, but the heft of the revolver comes as a surprise. Do people really shoot these things one-handed?
Back in the day, she had done her share of skeet shooting, but she’d declined when her cousins or friends took their smaller arms into the field for target practice with tin cans, old basketballs, and anything else that looked like it might be fun to destroy. Never one to break the rules, Val would point out that you were supposed to have a permit for hand guns, which none of them ever did.
“You sure you know what you’re doing with that?” says Stanley.
She nods. “Of course,” she says. “I grew up around guns.” It’s half true. She did grow up around guns, but she’s never fired a revolver before. Still, if it comes to it, she’s sure she’ll be able to make it do what it’s meant to do.
She’ll have to be confident of her aim of course. Before handing the revolver over to her, Stanley had emptied five of the six chambers in the cylinder, leaving only a single bullet.
One bullet. This is his insurance policy. She can sit here and guard Dresden, and use this one shot if it comes to that. But if she gets it in her head to shoot Stanley, she won’t be able to protect herself against Dresden when he wakes up. And there’s a good chance the sound of the gun would wake him up. Then she’d be his to prey on—to get back at for the chunk of skin she removed from his arm.
The big guy, it turns out, thinks pretty well under pressure.
One bullet. Would it be loud enough for the neighbors to hear? Probably, but they might not be able to tell where it had come from.
Stanley stands by the door, propping John’s unconscious body against his chest, the rifle held awkwardly in his hand. “I’m out of those zip ties,” he says, “and I left the duct tape in the other room. I’m gonna go put your husband somewhere safe. You just keep that aimed at him until I get back.”
Dresden is huddled in the corner, face planted on the floor, a slow stream of blood flowing from the goose egg on the back of his head.
“You know, this isn’t like the movies,” Val says. “People don’t just get knocked out and then wake up with a little headache. If either of them is out for more than a couple of minutes, it could mean he’s slipping into a coma.”
“I’m… I…” Stanley is breathing heavily, fidgeting and futzing with her husband’s limp weight. “I’m gonna put your husband somewhere, and then we’ll figure it out.”
Use your words, she wants to tell him, as her mother would have said to her, taking on the air of an old-fashioned elocutionist. How can you expect to get what you want if you haven’t the ability to ask for it?
“And what if I just shoot him?” she says.
Stanley’s Adam’s apple rises and falls. “Please don’t.”
He drags John out of the room, closing the door behind them. It’s a risky move he’s making, leaving her here with a gun trained on his erstwhile partner. But it’s not entirely stupid. She’s only got the one bullet. And he saw that she can barely stand. She won’t be able to make a run for it. She could go for one of the panic buttons again, but depending on where Stanley is bringing John she might cross his path. Besides, if Dresden wakes up and she’s out of the room, he might sneak up on her. She’s armed, but he’s got the advantage of mobility.
Dresden is the real threat. That’s how Stanley is betting she’ll see it.
And he’s right. She doesn’t want to take her eyes off him, not even for a second. If he gets out of this room, there’s no telling what kind of kamikaze move he might make.
There is, of course, one way to make damned sure he never makes it out of this room. One bullet is enough to get that job done.
What would that mean exactly? If you’re going to kill a person, it doesn’t get much easier than this. Dresden is silent, still, unconscious. His eyes are closed. He looks almost dead already. There would be no screams, no spitting out curses or begging for mercy. She would just be urging him along, facilitating the process.
It would be so easy. Cock the revolver, aim, and squeeze the trigger. Bang. There wouldn’t even be a reaction, only a lurching of his body and a whisper of breath as the weight of his flesh empties his lungs for the last time.
She reaches her arms out, her right hand grasping the handle of the revolver, her
left hand cupping the handle for support. She looks down the sight. It bobs slightly with her heartbeat, tracing a tiny figure-eight pattern with each pulse. Her hands are shaking but not so badly that she can’t aim. It’ll be a clean shot. She’s no more than ten feet away from him. She can’t miss. Her thumb moves to the hammer…
A phone buzzes. Holy shit. Dresden’s phone—she saw him put it in the pocket of his coat, which is crumpled up on the floor next to him.
Val scoots toward the coat.
The phone buzzes again.
Dresden stirs, groaning. His hand rises to his head.
Val stops. She keeps the gun trained on him. Her heart is beating so fast now that the undulation of the barrel is continuous. Her hands shake madly. The phone continues to buzz.
Dresden begins to sit up. She won’t make it to the phone. She’ll have to shoot him to get to it. Now’s the time to do it. She might not have the heart when his eyes are open.
The phone buzzes again.
Dresden props himself up on one elbow.
Do it. Do it now!
Dresden’s eyes drift open. He squints and raises his arms to shield his eyes from the overhead light. He looks at his forearms, one still bandaged from earlier, the other marred by a fresh wound where Val bit him.
“Fucking hell,” he says. He looks at his coat, where the phone is still buzzing. He leans over to it.
“Don’t you fucking move!” she says.
He looks at her, sees the gun. He’s still for a moment. “Whoa, now,” he says. He shows her his palms.
“Shut up.”
Dresden glances at the coat. The phone has gone quiet. “I’m just gonna…” He reaches over slowly to the coat.
“Don’t move!”
He pulls the phone out of the pocket and flips it open.
“Hand it over,” says Val.
“Don’t do anything rash,” he says. “You know my partner’s gonna be back here any second.”
“Your partner’s the one who knocked you out,” she says. “Your partner’s the one who handed me your gun.”
He nods. “Well, that is a whole ‘nother breed of puppy, ain’t it?”
Val says slowly and quietly, “Give me the phone.”
Dresden takes a breath, letting the air hiss through his teeth. “I’m not so sure that’d be in my best interests.”
“Would it be in your best interests to get shot?”
Dresden cocks his head doubtfully. “If you were planning to shoot me, you’d have done it already.” Val stares at him. “Okay. Okay,” he says. “So the circumstances have changed. The shoe’s on the other foot and so forth. I get it. So what do you say we—”
He retches, unloading a stomachful of craft beer and bile onto the carpet.
“Oh, shit…”
“You’re vomiting,” says Val, “and your pupils are dilated. You’ve most likely got a concussion. You might have subdural hematoma—”
“What?”
“Bleeding in your brain. That could lead to brain damage. Or worse.”
“Good thing there’s a doctor in the house.”
“You need to go to a hospital. My husband wouldn’t be able to help you without the proper facilities. Besides, he may be in the same condition as you.”
“Well. It looks like I’m in a bit of spot then, don’t it?”
“You are,” she says. “I’m not so sure your partner understands just how bad of a spot it is. So why don’t you give me the phone and—”
Dresden shakes his head. “I’m not giving you the phone.” He holds the phone in both hands. “And if you try to take it from me,” he says, “I’ll snap it right in half.”
Val takes a deep breath and considers. “All right,” she says. “Then what do you say we make a deal.”
Dresden raises his chin. “What do you got in mind?”
“You convince Stanley to call this thing off,” says Val. “Turn yourselves in, make a run for it—I don’t care what you do—just get the hell out of my house. If you’re able to get away, good for you. But I want you gone. In return, I’ll go easy on you in my report to the police.”
“Easy on me? What’s that mean, easy on me?”
“I won’t tell them that you… attacked me.”
“And how you gonna explain them bruises?”
Val takes a deep breath. “I’ll tell them that Stanley did it. I’ll say he was the ringleader, that you tried to talk him down, but he wouldn’t have it. I’ll tell them that you tried to help us at every step of the way.”
Dresden’s eyes flash. A twisted grin cuts across his lips. “My oh my. I knew you were the one with the stones in the family, but I didn’t think you had that kind of moxie.” He runs his forearm over his mouth, streaking the red-mottled bandage with a foamy, mustard-yellow line of spit. “Where’d that big son-of-a-bitch get off to, anyway?”
“He’s bringing John to another room. Then he’s coming back with the duct tape.”
“Gonna tie us both up then.”
“That’d be my guess. Unless you can talk him out of it.”
Dresden nods. “I may be able to. He’s been ready to pussy out on this thing since I got here, more or less. But that ain’t the problem, as I see it.”
“What is the problem?”
“The problem is, I’d have no assurance you were gonna follow through with your end of the bargain.”
“Guess you’ll just have to take my word.”
He chuckles. “Now you sound like my ex. No, that won’t do. If we’re gonna do this, I’m gonna need some collateral.”
“Like what?”
“How ‘bout this. That little story you typed up earlier, about your trip to Paris… you tell it to your husband. Then we have an understanding: if you don’t live up to your end of it, that story gets right back to your daughter.”
“Why can’t it be between you and me?” she says. “Why would I need to tell my husband?”
“Gotta make sure he’s on-board too. Can’t risk him singing a different song to the police.”
“Why don’t you tell him yourself?”
“I don’t imagine he’d believe something like that, coming from the likes of me.”
Val tightens her grip on the gun. “And why shouldn’t I just kill you? Or let you go brain-dead from the blood pooling in your skull?”
He shrugs and reaches in the pocket of his jeans. He pulls out his crushed pack of cigarettes.
“No more smoking,” says Val.
Dresden pulls a mangled butt out of the pack and sets it on his lip, letting it dangle unlit. “You won’t kill me. You won’t even let me die, not if you can help it. That’s the thing about you people. You’re happy to sit on the sidelines while every manner of atrocity goes by—war, economic collapse, genocide—but when it gets down to it, you don’t want to get your hands dirty. You’ll throw poor Stanley under the bus, sure—but that’s just talk. Telling the police a different version of the story than what’s maybe, strictly speaking, the truth. But to actually pull the trigger? To watch me bleed out? You don’t got it in you.”
Val feels her chest heaving. “You think you know an awful lot about us.”
Dresden coughs and wipes more spittle from his mouth. “So what do you say? You gonna tell him, or you wanna drag this out a little longer?”
Val thinks. “All right,” she says. “But one more thing: I don’t want any more orders coming from outside. No more communication whatsoever with that frogger13 or anyone else. Agreed?”
Dresden nods. “That sounds reasonable.”
“So why don’t you go ahead and break that phone?”
Dresden’s eyes narrow. “Don’t you think that’d be a little obvious? Make ol’ Stanley suspicious? Come on, partner… we can do better than that.” He pulls the mangled butt from his mouth and looks at it. “I really oughta quit these. The fuckin’ things are killing me.”
Halfway down the hallway, Stanley begins to regret his plan. His lower back is ablaze as he
pulls John along, dragging him by the arms like a caveman hauling in prey, his chest exposed like a big friendly target.
But he can’t stop now. He’s got to get John contained before he wakes up. With the way his back is acting up, he wouldn’t be able to put up much of a chase. If John takes off again, it’s almost certainly game over. They’ll put him away for a very long time. His daughter won’t understand when he doesn’t come home tomorrow. Or the next day. Or the next. She’ll never be able to grasp why her whole world has gone away.
What is he even doing here? He’s never so much as shoplifted in his whole life. He knew it was liable to get a little hairy, but if he’d known it was going to come to this, he never would have signed up. He never would have answered that damn email from frogger13. He would have gone on living—hoping each day that tomorrow would bring some kind of meaning to his life.
What troubles him now, though, isn’t the fear of getting arrested, or even killed. Going down in the name of a good cause—his actions reverberating through the state, the nation, the world—that’s a fate he could live with.
What troubles him now is the feeling that there is no beyond, that their actions have no results—that they’re sealed in this house, disconnected from the outside world. Like that Stephen King TV show with the dome over the town. He feels like they’re sitting in a bubble, a fish bowl, like nothing they say or do is making it out of here.
John groans as Stanley pulls him into the bathroom. Stanley sets him down, wrists still bound behind his back, on the floor beside the bathtub. Then he goes to the medicine cabinet, looking for some ibuprofen—if not something stronger.
John groans again. He begins to rock back and forth. Stanley starts to bend over to him, but a bullet of pain tears through his lower back. He ends up with one hand clutching the rim of the sink, the other flattened against his sacrum, a half-stifled scream whistling through his closed throat and clenched teeth. He clamps his eyes shut. No more bending over tonight.
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