by Amy Faye
Something cold, hard, and steel pressed against the top of her head, and she didn't need any help guessing what it was. The sounds that Caroline started to make sounded pathetic, even to her own ears, but there was no stopping them.
"Jesus!" The panic rising in her gut reflected in her voice. "Please put that away!"
The steel continued to press into her hair, in spite of herself, and Caroline suddenly realized exactly how big a mistake she'd made thinking she was going to do anything to fix the mess that she'd found herself in.
41
Caroline's head hurt. The beds were better than the one that Shannen was no doubt laying in right now, if things weren't even worse than that. But that didn't mean they were good, and it didn't mean that she managed to get a good night's sleep with no trouble.
On the other hand, there was the matter of her work, which he apparently wasn't doing. At the same time, with his injuries, that might have been for the best. After all, the alternative was that he practically ended up killing himself in training before Coogan and his men could get around to it. Before she could figure out a way to avoid any of the killing from coming to fruition.
In the middle of all of it, something she didn't like to think about for several dozen different reasons, was the fact that if she wasn't careful, Caroline would find herself on the receiving end of some of that killing, as well, and she was less than prepared to accept being murdered for the cause.
Shannen had been right to walk away, and Harry had been right to tell her to leave it. The big screw ups were the original ones, not the recent ones. Caroline should never have talked about Coogan in the first place, and Shannen should have known better than to get involved with gang violence of any description.
Everything that had come along since then was the inevitable fallout of those two decisions. Caroline forced herself to relax as if that were going to work, slipped into the seat, and let them cover her eyes. It made it easier to relax, in a weird way. After all, the alternative was to stay sitting up, letting the light bleed into her eyes and making her already screaming headache that much worse.
If she wasn't going to accept that, then she was going to have to accept the alternative. In this case, it was having her head covered. It was safer for them, as well, which made it safer for her. The middle seats of the big SUV, leaned back, couldn't have been any less comfortable than the beds, either way.
She needed the sleep more than she needed to feel like she was in control of things. Until she figured out how to get them both out of the situation, she had to play the waiting game. To think the situation through, she had to be sharp enough. To be sharp, she had to be able to think, and that meant getting enough sleep to fix her foul mood.
Caroline didn't think that she fell asleep on the drive, but when they woke her, she couldn't deny that it felt as if only a few moments had passed since she'd closed her eyes, and when they pulled her hood off she found herself looking over at a door, slid open and waiting for her to step out and into the waiting house.
She did what she was expected to do. There wasn't much other choice, anyways, and she wasn't looking to get herself killed. Particularly not on this little thing, when there were so many more pressing issues that she had to deal with coming up.
She let the men lead her into a spare bedroom, past a half-dozen men each big enough to dwarf Shannen. Most of them also had broad bellies that didn't fit him at all, but it meant that their disparity in weight was all that much greater. Then she was in the room that she'd been sleeping in the past three days, and she started to relax.
The bolt in the door closed, the noise echoing through the room and reminding her, not for the first time, that there was no way out of there. She was trapped, and she would remain trapped, until she either chose to let them bully her out or she figured out what the hell she was going to do. Neither option seemed particularly forthcoming.
One of the big guys called from the other side as Caroline started to strip off her work clothes, not the least bit worried about anyone spying on her. "Dinner in ten."
They weren't worth much as cooks, here, but at least they tried, and she had to give them credit for that. Caroline's mother hadn't even gone that far, when she was alive. And of course, Dad never showed any indication that he knew how to do more than boil water.
Caroline laid down on the bed and slipped under the covers. The bed was lumpy, too soft for her body, and she never managed to get a full night's sleep, but she had to admit one thing: the blankets were warm. She let out a breath and tried to slip into a cat nap waiting for dinner to arrive at her door, so she could eat it in silence, before her nightly meeting with Shannen.
She wasn't sure how she was supposed to feel about being used the way that she was. The way that they had co-opted her as a reward for being good. It was dehumanizing, for both of them. For Shannen, it meant being treated like some sort of dog. For her, it reduced her to a squeaky toy.
Worse, though, was the size of the room. The bed was the only thing in it, and it immediately drove home thoughts of what sort of things that they could do in a room that only had a bed in it. She wasn't exactly full of ideas how to get out of the situation that they'd found themselves in, but she could think of a cure for her boredom.
Which did nothing to rebuff the fact that there was no way she was going to do anything like that in what amounted to a prison cell in the basement of a crazy man's house. She was many things, but she wasn't insane, and she certainly wasn't a crazy slut.
Her eyes shot open when the knock, already expected, came at the door. She took her food, thin-sliced pork loin piled beside a heaping helping of mashed potatoes and gravy. They weren't starving her, at least. They were treating her, as far as Caroline was able to tell, as well as they could. If the bed were any nicer, she might not even care when she was able to leave. That was a lie, of course, but it wasn't so far off.
When the plate had been emptied she knocked at the door. A big guy appeared on the other side of the door, another one barely visible a little ways down the hall to act less as a deterrent and more as a response team. The first guy, he was the deterrent. That and the big gun that he wore outside his hips.
"You're finished?"
"I'm done, yeah. Thank you. Dinner was great today."
The guy nodded. "Tell him that for me, if you will."
"I will," the guy said. She didn't know his name, because in three days he'd never offered one. But it was the same guy every time, and she was starting to almost feel comfortable with him, in spite of his namelessness. "I'm sure Johnny will appreciate hearing it."
"What's that?" a voice called over.
"Shut up," the big guy said back, his voice raised. He lowered it back to a comfortable volume when he turned back to her. "We'll let you see him in a few minutes, so just hold up here for a minute."
She didn't need to ask who 'he' was in this case, and she didn't have to ask why she needed to wait. They needed to ask the old man what to do, but the routine was such that nobody had too many doubts about the expected pattern.
When she went down, Shannen had a strange light in his face. One that Caroline herself had to admit worried her, more than usual. He'd tried to escape twice, that she knew of, and he'd made it further the first time than the second. After the first day, though, and the gun being held to her head, he seemed to get the message, and it didn't go over Caroline's head that it was because she was getting in his way.
"What are you planning?"
He looked at her flatly. "Planning? Oh, I never plan."
"Sure you don't," she agreed. "How could I ever have thought that?"
"Exactly. You're giving me too much credit. I never plan anything."
"I noticed," Caroline chimed in. "If you planned, then maybe you wouldn't have gotten yourself into so much trouble."
"Be fair now. If you planned, you wouldn't have gotten yourself into it with me."
"Don't be dumb," Caroline told him. "I planned to get into trouble.
I just didn't think you'd be in so much of it."
"Oh, good. That makes it so different. Well, either way." He heaved himself up and sighed. "I've got a plan, so it doesn't matter either way."
"So you were planning something?" A thousand half-baked plans formed in her head in a minute, plans that relied on Shannen punching his way to the nearest exit, and she knew instinctively that it wasn't going to work.
"I was, and I am. Now give me a minute, maybe cover your ears."
"No, Shannen, don't..."
"Coogan," he bellowed, loud enough to hurt. Caroline slapped her hands over her ears after all. It managed to muffle the noise just enough to take it from 'hurt' to 'discomfort.' "I want to talk!"
42
Caroline's ears hurt bad as Shannen let out a shout loud enough to shake the foundations of the house. At least, loud enough that it felt as if it rattled the bed frame underneath her. "Coogan! I want to talk!"
The nurse rubbed at her head and waited. Shannen stepped back, behind her, until he was far enough from the door and with enough between him and it that there was no way he could hurt anything or anyone from where he stood. The door opened out tentatively, the lock-chain still clasped.
"You want to talk?"
The guy whose eyes peered through the crack in the door weren't the old man's. If anything, they were the eyes of one of his boys, waiting for something from Shannen, hoping that he would take the chance to attack so that they could gun down the big man in cold blood. But he didn't, and they didn't get their chance. Apparently, just killing him where he stood was off limits.
"I have a business proposition for him," Shannen offered. He looked like he'd lost weight, she saw now. The shirt hung off him, and though his wounds were starting to close up he looked nearly as bad as she'd ever seen him. "You go tell him that. Go on. I'll wait."
Caroline looked at the door as it closed and looked back at the fighter. "What the hell are you thinking? You can't just kick the shit out of Coogan. You know they're going to be watching you. It doesn't work that way, you can't just invoke the right of a duel, or something. That doesn't even exist."
"Who says I was planning on attacking him at all?"
Caroline looked at him, incredulous. "You've been doing that from the beginning, why stop now?"
He sat down on the bed and pressed one foot against the poorly-erected wall opposite. The wall looked as if it sagged under even that weak pressure. "'Why stop now?' Because it didn't work up to now. Why should I keep doing something that won't work?"
The question was so obvious and so unexpected that Caroline had not response to it. Her jaw hanging slack felt good, eased her headache just enough, so she kept it open even after she could have shut it again or said something more. Then she knuckled the joint until she felt herself start to relax, and her headache receded just a bit.
"What's your plan, then?"
"My plan? Talk to him. Get him to see how I could be of use to him."
"I think it's a little bit past being useful. He seems pretty pissed that you stood up to him."
"And there's that, as well," he agreed. "I'll have to convince him that I can bend the knee when needed."
"And you think you can talk him into all this? Like, what, some kind of long con?"
"Gee, thanks for the vote of confidence. You think I'd call him out if I didn't have a real idea?"
"Well," Caroline said, shrugging. "I mean, maybe you would. How would I know? You do a lot of stuff that seems crazy."
"And it usually works, right?"
"Not so far, no."
He smiled at her for a second, and then took on a mock scowl. "I'm not sure what you're talking about."
"I'm talking about trying not to get yourself killed, here."
"But Caroline, I love getting myself killed."
The sound of footsteps coming down the basement stairs took them both out of their mood. Caroline tried to guess how many there were. It had to be more than one or two, unless they'd all tumbled down the stairs uncontrollably.
The door opened and the old man stood there. His severe expression fixed on the two of them and he slipped the pistol out of his pants without any apparent effort. As if it were the most normal thing in the world, and he were perfectly satisfied to do it.
"You wanted to talk?" Shannen nodded his head. "Fine, let's talk, then. And make it quick."
"I want out," Shannen told him. She expected there to be some kind of follow-up, but he didn't continue.
"I'm sure you do," Coogan answered. "But I don't think that's reasonable to expect."
"Second, I want you to back off me and mine."
"Are you listening, or is this all just for your benefit?"
"That includes Caroline. Her father, too, unless he's too dumb to avoid getting in with your boys a second time."
"That's quite a big request," Coogan told him. "I'm supposed to do all of this, and all of it because you asked me? It's not as if it's my daughter's wedding day, boy-o. I don't know what gives you the idea that you can get all this just by asking, but I suppose I have to admire your spunk."
"Oh, I'll give you something, but first you need to know my terms. Can you agree to them, or no?"
"Meaning, what? Am I capable? Yes, I can back off your girlfriend if I want to. You haven't exactly given me a good reason, though, I have to warn you."
"That's what I called you down about. I figured you could have guessed what I wanted just by thinking about it for a second, but I wanted to be real clear on that before-hand. You feel me?"
Coogan's eyes fixed on him, but he didn't change his expression. Caroline found the expression unsettling, the way that he could look at them both like they were just walking corpses, and in the end it wouldn't be the tiniest bit of trouble to dispatch them when the time came. If it unsettled Shannen, though, he made no sign of it.
"You're right, I could have figured that all out by myself. You're wasting my time, I guess, is that it? If I let you go, you'll stop wasting my fucking time?"
"I can make you money."
"Oh? What kind of money?"
"Easy money, but the numbers will depend on you."
"Oh yeah?"
Shannen nodded. "Yeah."
"And how can you do that from inside this little room?"
"I can't," Shannen admitted. "You're going to have to let me out for this to work. But I think you'll come to see things from my perspective on this, if you just listen for a minute."
"Okay, I'm listening."
"You're a smart guy. You can google a guy's name, so I figure you've got at least an inkling who I am. Why I'm here."
"In town for a fight, they tell me. Big fight."
"It would be easy for you to make some good money if you knew who was going to win the fight, wouldn't it?"
Coogan looked at him flatly. "Yeah, that would be easy. Why? You looking to take a dive?"
"I have it to understand that you usually would pay a fellow for that sort of thing."
"You'd be right to think that," Coogan agreed.
"So what if I were to do a little pro-bono work? I go down in the second, and you're home free. What about that?"
Coogan looked at him sourly and thought about it a minute. "And what promise do I have that you won't fuck me on that plan, the way you've tried to fuck me on everything else? I put a bunch of money on you to take a dive, and you win the fight, and I'm out thousands of dollars. It doesn't pay to bet on a guy who hates your guts, does it?"
"No, I suppose it doesn't," Shannen agreed. "Except that I know better than that. I get screwy, and it's not just me that has trouble. More than that, it's not just Caroline, either, is it? I hate to drag you into this, babe, but I think everyone here already knows you're already involved."
Caroline stirred from the place she'd taken, her nerves well past shot from lack of sleep as much as anything else.
"So you're putting the girl up as collateral?"
"Not hardly. But you were going to use her as a th
reat, and I'm telling you that I'm wise to it. You want to do it, then do it, but don't pretend I don't know about it in advance, you feel me?"
Coogan's cheeks puffed out and then he blew out his mouthful of air, and scratched at his head of thin gray hair. "So let's say I agreed. You've been missing the better part of a week now. Your manager going to let you fight looking like that?"
Shannen's face split into a grin. "My manager does what I tell him to do. You hire employees very often who don't listen to you?"
Coogan looked over at something out of view, as if he were sharing a knowing glance with someone that she couldn't identify. "No, I suppose I don't," he answered, without looking at them.
"So you understand, then. Do we have a deal, or don't we?"
Coogan looked at him, and Caroline suddenly realized he'd never put the pistol back into his pocket. He caught her looking at regarded the pistol, holding it up to look at the slide like he hadn't realized it was in his hand.
"Deal?"
"Do we have a deal," Shannen repeated. "Or don't we?"
Coogan pocketed the pistol and held out one rough, leathery hand. "We have a deal, assuming you hold up your end of yours."
Caroline looked over and hoped to high heaven that nothing went sideways, because she was in too deep for anything else.
43
In some ways, it could almost have been called a better plan. The fact that Caroline had to qualify it all, well, that went to show exactly how little the difference between a bad plan and a 'better' plan could be.
For one thing, this one had more points of failure than the last one. There were no less than a hundred possibilities she could name in that exact instant. That was more than she was really ready to think about at all, she knew, but she wasn't about to start thinking too hard about their chances if she could avoid it.
Still, the thoughts ran through her head regardless of whether or not she wanted to let them, and it didn't exactly help either way. She swallowed hard, and the thoughts kept going as she tried to stifle and ignore them.