Bring Her Back

by Jeff Strand

  "Let's talk to each other like adults," I said. "You knew the money wasn't going to be there, right? You have no intention of letting me live."

  The mustached man grinned and clapped me on the shoulder. "I can see why you might think that, but no, you're not on death row quite yet. You might still be useful. Here's what I can promise you: if you stop being useful, I'll give you a moment to gather your thoughts, and your death will be very quick. No torture. Nobody's going to shoot you in the stomach and let you slowly bleed out. Bullet to the head and you keep your dignity. Sound all right?"

  "What do you want me to say?" I asked.

  The mustached man shrugged. "I don't care what you say. Just keep doing what you're doing. Don't cause any problems. Don't stop being useful."

  "Also," said the blond, pointing a gun at me that I hadn't seen him take out, "get rid of any weapons you've got on you. And your cell phone. You're not calling anybody for help."

  I tried to figure out how well I'd do as an action movie star at this moment, and decided that I'd do poorly. Now that I'd had multiple guns pointed at me, I can report that it didn't get less scary. I took each of the guns out of my jacket pockets and dropped them onto the floor, along with my phone.

  "Wow, two guns," said the mustached man. "I'm surprised you even had one."

  "You could've had the element of surprise on your side," said the blond.

  "Yep," said the mustached man. "Put your arms up so he can frisk you."

  I put my arms in the air so the blond could give me a thorough patting-down. The idea of slamming my elbow down on his cranium was appealing but too risky.

  The blond stepped away, satisfied that the two guns had comprised my entire arsenal. "You're coming with us."

  "Okay."

  "Gonna be a pain in the ass?"

  "No."

  "Good."

  We left my apartment and walked out of the building to their car. The mustached man got in the driver's seat, the blond got in the passenger seat, and I got in the back. I wished I'd thought to bring a bucket or a bowl or a plastic bag or something, since I still felt like I might vomit at any moment, and I didn't think they'd respond well to that.

  After we drove in silence for a few minutes, the blond turned around to look at me. "I don't think you look that much like Lurch."

  "Thank you."

  "It wasn't a compliment. Just an observation."

  I tried to reassure myself that Abigail would be fine, that they weren't mistreating her beyond having kidnapped her. She hadn't cut off Neal's testicles after he hit her, but these guys would be wise not to press their luck. It honestly wouldn't surprise me to get to wherever we were going and find drug dealer body parts strewn around the floor.

  For the rest of the trip, I listened to the blond talk about the things he was going to do to his bitch of an ex-wife if she didn't shut up about the child support. None of them involved buying her flowers. At one point he called her Tasha, and my stomach clenched up, because somebody who intended to let me live would probably offer as few details about his private life as possible.

  About twenty minutes later, we pulled into a trailer park. Some trailer parks are perfectly nice places where lower-income retirees live. Some trailer parks look like every unit is a meth den. This was the latter. I could almost feel the "what happens here, stays here" vibe as we drove past several trailers. Most of them had people sitting or standing out front, looking beaten down by life.

  At the far rear corner, the blond parked in front of a yellowish-brown trailer. It was slightly nicer than some of the others we'd passed, but not by much. Three other cars were parked out front.

  The blond pointed his gun at me. This was the kind of place where you could point a gun at somebody in a car parked outside and not worry that a neighbor might be concerned.

  "You gonna behave?" he asked me.

  "Of course."

  He lowered the gun and we got out of the car. Everything was going to be okay. I'd convince them that Marc had the money and that they had a greater chance of getting it back if they let me help them. I wasn't good at talking eloquently but I felt like I could successfully plead my case.

  We went into the trailer.

  It smelled like pizza. I'd expected a horrific reek, but there were three guys sitting inside, eating pizza, so our timing was probably good, smell-wise. I recognized one of the guys from the seafood place. Another was a middle-aged guy, older than everybody else on Wulfe's crew. The last one, stuffing pizza into his mouth with one hand while tapping away at his phone with the other, was a kid, maybe fourteen or fifteen.

  I didn't see Abigail.

  They all looked very surprised to see us.

  The blond shut the door behind us. "Where'd you order from?"

  "D.T.'s," said the guy I recognized from the seafood restaurant.

  The blond sighed. "Why?"

  "Because it's good."

  "It's not good. It's shitty pizza. I'm not kicking in for that."

  "Then you're not eating any."

  "I don't want any."

  "Why did you bring him?" asked the older man.

  The blond glanced at me. "We were supposed to bring him. That's why we went out."

  "Didn't you read my text?"

  "I didn't get a text." The blond took his cell phone out of his pocket and tapped at the screen. "Nothing. Hold on, wait, it just came through." He frowned. "Oh."

  fourteen

  I stared at the blond, trying to read into his reaction.

  He looked at the floor. "Well, shit."

  "Where's Abigail?" I asked. I kept my voice calm and polite. No reason to lose it quite yet. They might have let her go.

  The blond didn't answer. I glanced around the room. The others didn't look away from me the way the blond had, but it was definitely awkward, and not in an "I was kidding about being mad that you bought the movie tickets" way.

  "Where is she?" I was less calm and polite this time.

  Then I noticed a blue duffel bag resting on the couch.

  There were no stains or marks to prove that it was Marc's bag, but it sure looked like it. And if they'd already gotten the money back, it would explain why the whole crew was hanging out in this crappy trailer, instead of out trying to capture Marc.

  They'd caught Marc. This meant they'd had no reason to keep Abigail. They'd let her go, texted the blond to forget about me, and then he'd screwed everything up by bringing me here. Now I knew where they worked when they weren't at the seafood restaurant. I could bring the police here. I was a liability.

  "I won't say a word to anyone," I assured them. "I don't care about any of this. As long as Abigail is safe, I will happily walk away and you'll never hear from me again."

  The older man let out an incredulous laugh. "Are you stoned? She's not safe. She's dead. We didn't need her anymore."

  I heard him, but I didn't quite hear him. They didn't need her anymore. Of course they didn't. Not if they got the money back from Marc. They didn't need either of us. That was good. They could let us go. Abigail and I could hit the road. Maybe move up north. Maybe she could start selling candy again.

  The "she's dead" part felt wrong. He'd misspoken. Or I wasn't listening correctly. It simply didn't make any logical sense that she was dead. It was a ridiculous idea. My brain had just messed up what he'd actually said. I was under a lot of stress. It was reasonable that I'd hear things wrong.

  "I'm sorry," I said. "Could you repeat that?"

  This is when I noticed that a couple of the guys were staring at a drawn curtain in the back of the trailer. It was something you'd pull over the bedroom area, to give people privacy while they were changing or sleeping. I'm not sure why I didn't immediately think that she might be behind there.

  That whole thing in moments like these where you feel like you're not controlling your own body is absolutely true. I just started walking across the trailer toward the curtain.

  I knew exactly what I'd see. Abigail, lying on the bed
, hands tied behind her back. A gag in her mouth. I'd have to think fast to rescue her. Steal somebody's gun. Break a window. It was going to be difficult, but if I could save Marc's life, I could surely save Abigail's.

  The men in the trailer looked like they wanted to stop me, but nobody stood up.

  "Heads up, Jamie," the older man said.

  I pulled the curtain.

  The first person I saw was, I assume, Jamie. Maybe a bit older than me, late-twenties. Short black hair. Glasses. Apron. Rubber gloves. Covered in blood.

  Abigail was also there. The older man had not lied about her being dead.

  To preserve her dignity, I'm not going to describe much of what I saw. I will say that all of her clothes were still on; Jamie wasn't violating her in that way. Beyond that, there were two possible scenarios for what I saw: he wanted to make it easier to dispose of the body, or he was having fun. This was quite clearly the latter.

  I remained calm.

  Some part of my brain took over: You do not have time to deal with the grief and horror right now. These men are going to kill you. You do not want to die. When you are out of danger, you can shriek at the top of your lungs or sob in the fetal position or go catatonic, but for now, do not think about Abigail. She will matter later. She does not matter now.

  I grabbed Jamie and pulled him in front of me, like a human shield. I shoved him forward, getting blood on my hand, but kept him close.

  Suddenly at least three guns were pointed at me.

  We were in a crowded trailer park. These men were clearly not concerned about other people getting into their business, but did that extend to actual gunshots? Surely somebody would call the police if they opened fire on me, and they couldn't possibly clean up the mess in time.

  "I'll kill him," I announced. "I'll break his neck if any of you try anything."

  Nobody tried anything, but I doubted they cared much about the life of this psychopath. The risk of harm coming to Jamie was not enough to keep me alive. I needed a better hostage.

  After we moved forward a few steps, I shoved Jamie out of the way and grabbed the kid. He was less effective as a shield, since I was a full head taller than him, but I suspected that they wouldn't be quite as inclined to write him off as collateral damage.

  "Let him go!" the older man shouted.

  "It's okay," I insisted. "I'm not taking him with me. All I want to do is get out of this trailer. As soon as I step out the door I'll let him go."

  I put my hand over the kid's neck, not actually squeezing his throat but making it clear that I could.

  "Somebody just shoot him!" said Jamie.

  "You shut the hell up!" the older man told him. To me, he said: "If you hurt my son, we'll make it look like a bomb went off inside your body."

  "One of you open the door," I said.

  The kid tried to tug away from me, but I pulled him in closer. He let out a choking sound.

  "Don't you fucking hurt him!" the older man shouted.

  "I won't unless you make me," I informed him, proud of how steady I was keeping my voice. "I don't want a hostage. If you open the door this can be over in a few seconds."

  The mustached man kept his gun pointed at me with one hand, while opening the trailer door with the other.

  "Thank you," I said. I moved forward, bringing the kid with me. He was frightened and weeping. But he was a teenager, not a six-year-old, and he hadn't seemed particularly upset that a dead woman was being mutilated behind a curtain a few feet away, so I wasn't going to worry too much about traumatizing him.

  It was a small trailer and there were five people inside of it who wanted to kill me, not counting the kid. It wasn't going to be easy to make it to the other side without one of them trying something. I didn't want to hurt the kid, but I would squeeze his throat harder if I didn't think these guys were taking my threat seriously.

  We moved slowly through the trailer. The blond adjusted the aim of his gun, making me think he might be preparing to take a shot. I couldn't have that.

  "Put your guns down," I said. "Everybody. Drop your weapons on the floor or I'll tear his throat out." I curled my fingers and dug my fingernails into his flesh, not breaking the skin.

  "Screw that," said the blond.

  "You saw what I did to Wulfe. And then I kept him in my bathtub for a couple of days. Do you think I'm too squeamish to open this kid's neck?"

  "Put your guns down," said the kid's father.

  The blond shook his head. "Nope."

  "I said, put your goddamn guns down!"

  "Not gonna happen. If he does something stupid, he's going to have shredded kneecaps. Remember what we did to Vincent? Remember how long that took? If he hurts your son, we'll give him the Vincent treatment times ten."

  The kid's father set his gun on the floor. "I'm not going to do anything," he assured me. "Nobody's going to do anything."

  Nobody else dropped their guns or even lowered them.

  "Everybody away from the door," I said.

  The mustached man and the blond stepped away from the open door, though they still didn't lower their weapons. I twisted myself around, keeping the kid in front of me and my back to the wall. I reached the doorway. I was almost out of this mess. The big problem was that there were three or four steps behind me, so I had to either take my eyes off of the men who wanted to shoot me, or risk losing my balance.

  If I lost my balance I was dead. I glanced back at the stairs.

  The blond fired a shot.

  I knew it hit me because I saw the torn shirt and the red streak on my shoulder. I didn't actually feel it. Based on a split-second self-diagnosis, I didn't think it was that bad; no gunshot wound is good, of course, but it wasn't spurting blood and no meat had torn off.

  I wanted to crush the kid's windpipe in response. I didn't. I shoved him forward as hard as I could, just as the kid's father punched the blond in the face. Though the trailer didn't explode into pure chaos, things were crazy enough that I was able to turn and run through the doorway and down the steps without anybody shooting me in the back.

  I took a sharp left turn so that they couldn't see me from inside the trailer and kept running. I ran around the back of a different trailer, one that still had Christmas decorations up in the summer. Would they try to hunt me down, or would they get the hell away from the scene of the crime? Was the gunshot and commotion enough for somebody to call the police?

  Now my shoulder was starting to hurt. Blood was trickling down my arm and chest, but the bullet had definitely just grazed me. Some gauze and antiseptic and I'd be fine. I didn't care if I had an ugly scar.

  This wasn't a good enough hiding spot. They could find me here even if they just did a cursory search of the nearby trailers. I ran off, putting five or six trailers between me and them. I stopped next to a trailer that looked like it had been painted pink a few decades ago but now was mostly rust colored. It had no outside lighting—the only illumination was from the trailer next to it. A long-dead garden along the side was decorated by a tacky smiling gnome. The trailer might've been abandoned, though I didn't want to risk going inside to make sure.

  I thought about Abigail, the way her body was splayed out on the plastic tarp that had been placed on the bed, and then forced her out of my mind. She wasn't important now.

  It was dark and there were lots of places for me to hide. They wouldn't bother coming after me. They'd get the hell out of here. I was safe.

  I crouched there and waited. It felt like my heart was beating so loud that it might give away my position, but obviously that wasn't true. My breathing, meanwhile, was definitely too loud. I couldn't get it under control. I put my hand over my mouth and tried to breathe slowly and deeply through my nose.

  Footsteps. Somebody moving quickly.

  It wasn't necessarily one of the murderers. Could be anybody at the trailer park.

  If they took pity on me and let me inside, I'd be safe. Wulfe's crew wouldn't go door-to-door searching for me, and I wasn't bleedin
g enough to leave a trail. All I needed was one resident to realize that I was the good guy.

  Two trailers away, I saw Jamie hurry past.

  He looked over and saw me.

  I should've been terrified.

  I wasn't.

  As we locked eyes, I realized that while I wanted to get away from these men and live through the night, it was even more important to me that all of them die.

  PART TWO

  a revenge story

  fifteen

  I didn't know anything about Jamie. So I made it up.

  The other kids at school always made fun of his name. Said it was a girl's name. Called him Jamie Lee Curtis. He would insist that the name was for boys as much as girls, if not more. There was nothing feminine about Jamie Foxx. Jamie Bell, Jamie Farr, Jamie Kennedy...there were plenty of examples of male Jamie's in popular culture. It wasn't as if his parents had named him Melissa.

  He tried going by his full name, Jamison, but the kids weren't having it. Nope, they called him Jamie Lee Curtis every chance they got and demanded to see his boobs. If he'd had any friends to commiserate with, he might not have been in such a foul mood one afternoon after walking home from fifth grade.

  He went into the kitchen and got a root beer out of the refrigerator. He wasn't allowed to have one without permission (and that permission was rarely granted) but maybe his mom and dad wouldn't notice. They usually did.

  Jamie opened the can of soda, and then his dog Farley, a German Shepherd, raced into the kitchen and jumped up against him, as the excitable dog often did. The can fell to the tile floor and rolled away, root beer spraying everywhere. Root beer that Jamie was probably going to be punished for taking.

  He kicked his beloved pet as hard as he could. Then he chased the whimpering animal down into the basement and swung his book bag at it. He hit it again and again. When he finally wanted to stop, he decided that he couldn't stop, because Farley needed to be put out of his misery. When that was done, Jamie felt something that he didn't know at the time was self-loathing...but he was also no longer angry with the kids who'd made fun of his name.