by Naomi West
“What do you think?” he asked, as he pulled up the chair and settled in.
She gave him a thumbs-up and took another bite, her stomach growling as the salty, fried bacon invaded her senses.
They descended on their sandwiches like wild animals, tearing through them. They'd both woken up early, and Zed had spent much of the day outside in the garden, while she'd worked in the office. Soon, they were each through the first halves of their sandwich. As Abby lifted her second one to her mouth, she noticed Zed had paused. “You okay?” she asked.
“I've been thinking,” he said. “I think I know how to make the Times run the story.”
Not liking something about the way he'd said it, Abby set her sandwich back down on her plate. “Well?” she asked.
“A hostage situation,” he said, his voice flat and matter-of-fact.
Abby was already shaking her head before he could continue. “No way in fucking—”
“It would force them to cover it, Abby,” he said, cutting her off. “Including the details of what was happening and why it happened. They couldn't be accused of harassing Pharma-Vitae, either, because they'd just be covering the story of you getting kidnapped and held for ransom.”
“Ransom?” Abby asked, laughing.
“Thirty million dollars,” he said. “Should get their attention.”
“Who the hell would pay that kind of money for me?”
He shrugged. “You. Who else? I went through your finances.”
“Of course, you did,” she muttered. “Because you're Zed, the psycho I'm sleeping with.”
He just smiled and shrugged again. “Yep, that's me.”
“I want to send Kara a message demanding the money for your release.”
“Do you know how fast that'll bring the cops down on us? I thought the whole point of this was to get your brother out of prison, not to get you thrown in there with him!”
He shook his head. “It's just four walls, Abby,” he said quietly. “I'd get out eventually. Kai, though . . .”
She sighed and looked down at her sandwich. She'd suddenly lost her appetite and she pushed the plate away. “What if the cops do show up here, though? What if you get hurt, Zed?”
“Why would you care?” he asked. There was no malice in the way he asked it. It was just a question.
“I . . .”
“You what?” he pressed.
“I'm probably pretty messed up in my own way for admitting this right now,” she said, as she reached across the desk and touched his hand, “but I care about you, Zed. I really do.”
“So, you'll help me then?”
“What?” she asked, letting out an exasperated sigh. “No! That's the exact opposite. I'm not going to help you with this!”
# # #
Zed
He could see it in her eyes, even though she didn't use the word. She loved him as much as he loved her. Why else would she not want to involve the cops?
After all these years, after all his time away, and, finally, after all he'd spent chasing after a defense for his brother, he finally had something worth keeping. She was like the calm in the midst of the storm, the first sign that the new dawn was going to be peaceful, and gentler than the torrential night.
She was beautiful, intelligent, successful, funny, and determined. He couldn't have found a better woman if he'd created her himself. And he knew she wanted him forever. It was in the way she begged for the pleasure only he could give her, the way she pleaded for him to be inside her, and even how she crawled into his lap the day after he'd violated her in so many delicious ways.
And he could keep her, too. He knew it. She could be his for the rest of his life. And what a life it would be. He would have money, success, and amazing sex. Of course, Zed would still go back to work, so he could be his own man and earn his own income. The possibilities were endless with this inside and outside beauty.
All he had to do was give up this crusade to save Kai. All he had to do was throw away the last few years of his life, throw his hands in the air, and say goodbye to his twin brother.
There was no way he was going to do that, though. He locked eyes with the woman of his dreams and shook his head. “If you won't help me,” he said, as he reached into his pocket and dug out the dog collar, “then I'll just have to help myself.” He dropped the collar and leash on the desk next to his BLT.
Abby's eyes looked down at the collar, then back to him. “You can't be serious, Zed.”
“I'm serious. When have I not been? Look, if you care about me like you say you do, you'll help me with this. You'll help me get this story out, and you'll help me with Kai's legal fund.”
“But the cops are going to come here looking to put you down.”
He shook his head. “I'll survive the cops, don't worry. I'm not worried about them at all.”
She sighed and shook her head. “Fine,” she said, finally giving into his plan. “What do you need me to do?”
“I need you,” he said, licking his lips again, “back in the chair. And a little roughed up.”
“A little?” she asked, eyebrow raised.
“Not too bad,” he said. “Just enough to sell it.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Zed
Her body certainly looked like it had been abused, even though he hadn't laid a hand on her in anger. The closer he looked at her as she sat in the glaring light, wearing only her bra and panties, he realized how many bruises he'd been leaving on her perfectly marked skin.
“Still think this is a bad idea,” Abby said, as he finished duct taping her into the chair he'd previously used for the punitive timeout sessions.
He stood up in front of her, tape in hand. “And I still think is the best idea we've got,” he replied, as he stretched out a strip of duct tape, producing that weird tape-tearing noise only duct tape can make.
“Are you putting that on my mouth, sir?”
“I am. We need to make it look authentic.”
She sighed.
He leaned down and sealed her mouth shut with the long, silvered strip of tape. He sealed down the edges and brushed his hands down her fingers. “Perfect,” he purred.
She mumbled her thanks as he turned around and grabbed his cell phone. He brought up the video recorder and looked to Abby. “You don't need to do anything. Don't worry about having to struggle or anything like that, okay?”
She nodded, and he hit record with the camera trained back on him, like he was taking a selfie.
“Kara Singh, my name is Zed Hesse. My brother is Kai Hesse, who is on death row for murdering his wife and children while in the midst of a psychotic break caused by years of service in the United States Army. This is a matter of public record. What is not a matter of public record is that Kai was taking a medication named Dimalerax, manufactured by Pharma-Vitae. It clearly didn't work, and may have made his symptoms even worse. Dimalerax is currently being marketed to first responders and service members suffering the same symptoms Kai had, with the promise of helping them to get back to normal mental health.
“What is also not a matter of public record is that Pharma-Vitae has proof on its servers, showing that their medicine doesn't work, proof that they were able to fake their data, and to push the approval process through federal oversight.” He paused, licked his lips, then stuck the barrel of the pistol against the side of his love's head.
Abby flinched as the cold steel touched her temple, her eyes frantically flickering up to the gun. It was perfect enough that Zed was pretty sure she wasn't faking as he moved the camera around to capture her. “I have Abby Winters, CEO of Pharma-Vitae in my custody. If my demands are not met within twenty-four hours, I'll begin cutting pieces off of her, one piece for each hour, so she can understand what losing a piece of yourself to psychosis and insanity feels like.”
He hit the stop button, then switched over to text messaging and sent a copy of the file to Kara Singh's cell phone number. He let loose a deep breath, grateful he'd been
able to do it in one take.
A moment later, his phone began to ring. Kara Singh, already. Perfect timing.
“Zed? Is that you?” Kara said, almost desperately, into the phone. “Zed, what the fuck are you doing?”
“You got my recording, I take it?”
“Of course, I got your recording! What are you thinking?”
“I'm thinking I'm getting you to run the story,” Zed said. “And getting the story the exposure it needs.”
# # #
Abby
Abby squeezed her eyes shut, her breath coming hard and fast as Zed answered the phone. Just listening to his words and hearing the tone of his voice almost made her believe it was possible he'd do that to her—that he'd willingly cut her apart bit-by-bit. She knew, of course, he'd never do that. He'd never seriously hurt her. But, if even she thought he sounded sincere in his promise, what would the world think?
Zed took the phone from his ear and put the call with Kara on speaker phone. “Kara?” he asked gruffly. “Can you hear me?”
“Yes,” Kara said, her voice tinny and hollow in its digitization, “I can hear you, Zed.”
“Do you have a pen handy? I have a list of my demands.”
“Yes,” she said. “I'm ready.”
“Thirty million dollars deposited for my brother, for payment of his defense fund. Admittance by Pharma-Vitae that Dimalerax is a failure. Publication of the true documentation on their experiments. And an exclusive interview with you, Kara. I want a chance to tell my side of the story.”
Kara sighed into the phone. “Zed, do you know how crazy all this is?”
“I don't care, Kara,” he growled. “This is my brother's, and now Ms. Winters', life on the line. If Pharma-Vitae won't deliver, I'll start putting pieces of Abby aside for safe keeping. Maybe they'll be able to explain to their shareholders why their CEO was cut to pieces, but I doubt it.”
“Okay, Zed, okay. I'll see what I can do.”
Zed hit the end button and hung up. He immediately began to help Abby out of her bonds, taking the tape from her mouth and cutting bindings on her wrists and ankles. “You all right?” he asked, soothing her hair with his hand and kissing her.
She leaned her forehead against his. “You're sure about this, right?”
“I better be. If not, this is all going to go out of control really fast.”
Together, they paced the house for the next hour. Zed kept her from the windows with their closed curtains. His phone rang, finally, with Kara on the other line. “Turn on the TV,” she said simply. “You're making more than just headlines, Mr. Hess.”
They flipped to CNN and saw the anchorwoman talking about the hostage crisis. A crawler across the bottom of screen read: “BREAKING: CEO OF PHARMA-VITAE (PHV -3%) TAKEN HOSTAGE IN HOME BY DISTRAUGHT FAMILY OF CUSTOMER ON DEATH ROW.”
“That making enough waves, Mr. Hess?”
“Yeah,” Zed said. “I think it is. Any comment from Pharma yet? They say anything about releasing their papers?”
“Nothing yet,” Kara admitted. “But, I'm sure we'll hear something soon. Oh, and Mr. Hess?”
“Yeah, Kara?”
“I wouldn't try anything stupid. Cops are on their way.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Abby
With the news helicopters beating their rotors overhead, and the SWAT trucks pulling up outside to form a nearly impenetrable ring of guns and steel, Abby quickly realized how important she was in the grand scheme of things. In less than two hours, they had her entire neighborhood on lock down, with media vans and satellite uplinks dotting the landscape.
To be honest, she almost felt bad for the neighbors. Except for the Johnson family, on the left. They always let their dog shit in her yard, then denied it afterward. They could go fuck themselves.
For appearances sake, she and Zed had decided that she needed to be tied up in her chair again, but, this time, down in the living room with all the curtains drawn. They needed to keep everything on the up and up, like this wasn't just some stunt designed to draw media coverage. Although, even if they tried to pull the curtain back and yell, “Surprise! You've been duped!” at this point, she didn't think anyone would listen to them.
Still, this was definitely not turning out exactly the way she'd hoped. She was growing increasingly worried that things were spinning out of control. He'd never said anything about SWAT, or these many police showing up.
The whole time they waited for Kara to arrive for her interview, Abby's phone rang. Zed ignored it, and he couldn't exactly let Abby answer, either. “It's probably Jackie,” she said, “calling because she's worried about me.”
“She called earlier,” Zed replied. “Mark’s calling now.”
“Letterman?” she asked, rolling her eyes. “Asshole.”
Soon, he got a call on his phone from Kara. He answered it, spoke to her for a moment, then hung up. “Okay,” he said. “She's coming in. You ready for this?” He stretched out a long strip of duct tape and tore it off, ready to put it over her mouth.
Of course she wasn't ready for this! Any of this! But, still, this was the only plan they had going for them, as fraught with danger as it was. “Yes, sir,” she groaned.
She was getting really tired of the tape over her mouth. She much preferred the neck tie.
Kara knocked at the door a short while later. Zed nodded to Abby, then headed up to the front. She strained her neck back, craning so she could get a view of the door. It was far from perfect, but she could at least get a good profile of him as he drew his pistol from his shoulder holster and peeked through the peephole.
“It's her,” he said, before unlocking the door and throwing it open.
“Inside,” he barked, as he reached out to grab the reporter and pulled her inside the house. “Now.”
Abby could see something on his shirt, a sharp, electronic red dot like one of her old professors used to use during lectures. She narrowed her eyes, trying to get a clearer view of it. Yeah, it was a laser pointer. Definitely.
Why would someone be . . .?
Oh no! “Zed!” she wordlessly screamed through the duct tape, kicking as best she could to get his attention.
He glanced down at the dancing red dot and, faster than a cheetah after a pot of coffee, he snatched Kara in front of him, covering his body. He scooted back inside, using her as a human shield, and slammed the door shut, throwing the deadbolt back into place.
“Oh my fucking God!” Kara gasped, as she leaned back against the wall, hand daintily pressed against her chest as she tried to catch her breath.
This was Abby's first good look at Kara. She was a little older than Abby had expected—maybe in her mid-thirties. Her skin was olive, her hair ebony, and Abby could tell from across the room that she had large, expressive green eyes.
“Well,” she groaned, taking it all in stride. “That was exciting, wasn't it?”
“Are you hurt?” Zed asked brusquely as he looked her up and down, pistol hanging at his hip.
She shook her head. “No, I'll live.”
As the two of them walked down the entry hall and back into the spacious living room, with Abby as it taped-up centerpiece, Abby had a moment of clarity. Those were laser sights on guns that were searching all over Zed's body for the proper place to shoot. This was going to end badly. Like, Bonnie and Clyde badly.
The man she loved wasn't going to make it out of this alive.
# # #
Zed
“Off the record,” Zed said as, gun still in hand, he led Abby into the living room, “I have no intention of hurting anyone, and definitely not Abby. In fact, I care about her a great deal. I'm just trying to get my brother's story heard. When the Times turned down the story, despite the evidence I'd gotten, I didn't know what else to do, Kara.”
“Right,” Kara said, clearly skeptical as she glanced down at the big automatic pistol in his hand, “I hope you understand that I'm a little doubtful of your claim.”
Abby ma
de a wordless noise, getting their attention. Her eyes went to Zed's, and she gestured to her mouth with her fingers, the only parts of her hands she could still move.
She was right. Let it come from her lips, not his. “Right,” he said. “Well, here, take it from the horse's mouth.”
The woman he loved glared at him a little bit for his poor choice of words as he removed the piece of tape from her mouth, gently peeling it from her upper and lower lips.