The Hostage Bargain

by Annika Martin

  Apparently there weren’t. They’d planned to switch vehicles before everything went south.

  “Unless they get suspicious, they’ll probably only pull me out,” Zeus said. “And you. They’ll want to talk to you.”

  “Shit, this business skirt is so not right.”

  “I don’t have a T-shirt,” Odin said.

  “No shirt is better than that one,” I said. “Take it off.”

  Everybody began to pull off their jackets and shirts. Muscles rippled. Sweaty skin gleamed. I tried to keep my expression at least a little bit neutral, as if it was horrible, yes, so horrible to have to change our appearances like this, but deep down I was like a letchy little fish swimming joyously in a cocktail of testosterone-laced hunkiness.

  Thor stuffed our discarded suit jackets under the seat.

  “Here.” Zeus handed back a hunting knife.

  “No scissors?”

  “We’re bank robbers, not seamstresses.”

  Thor took it from Zeus. “I’ll help you,” Thor said. “This blade is sharp.”

  I pulled my long red hair out of my bun and shook my head. “I can’t believe I’m doing this. I want you guys to remember how long and awesome my hair is, and how far I’m going to stick it to First City. You better be good for your word.” I took a deep breath, gathered my red hair into a ponytail at the back of my head, and showed Thor where to cut, then cringed. I could feel the hair weight disappear as the knife sliced through. He stuffed the hair into the pocket on the door. I said a silent goodbye.

  “Avert your gazes,” I said as I started wriggling out of my business-like black pencil skirt, down to my lacy underwear. When I looked up, Thor and Odin were watching me hungrily. Heat spread through me. Commanding the total the attention of these insanely hunky bad boys was an off-the-charts turn-on.

  I snorted. “Maybe the god Zeus is the only one who knows what avert means.”

  Thor smiled wickedly. “We know what it means.” He settled back in his seat all cool. “We’re bank robbers, baby. We’ve got no use for other people’s rules.”

  Ooh.

  I put a flattened piece of box across my lap and laid my skirt over it, running the knife along the grain of the fabric, creating a quick mini-skirt, trying not to smile like a crazy woman. Zeus was right; I did feel like this was a game.

  The best damn game ever.

  “Thor, see if you can find any cooks’ pants or anything,” Zeus said.

  Thor twisted around to root in the back. No use for other people’s rules—it was so deliciously roguish. In spite of this—maybe it was their professionalism and sense of fairness, what with the voting—but I instinctively trusted them to follow their own rules, to be good for their word.

  I held the skirt up. The hem was ragged in spots, but it would do as a mini skirt. I slid it back on. “Now I’m the only one who looks proper for a tractor pull.”

  Zeus turned in his seat to face me. He held a little metal box in his hands. “Bare your teeth at me,” he said.

  I bared my teeth and he opened the box and took out a small brown thing the size of a fingernail and held it up. Then he picked out a different small thing. “Hold still.” He pressed it to one of my front side teeth.

  “Smile.”

  I smiled. Odin laughed. Then I looked in the mirror. The little thing made it look like one of my teeth was dead.

  “You have got to be kidding.” But it was smart. My bank ID photo showed me smiling; this changed my entire look. Zeus shoved some mirrored sunglasses at me. “Put these on your head. The best thing is for you to hide in plain sight. Step out of the van, stretch your legs. Look down the line and see what kind of time we have.”

  I shoved the sunglasses on top of my head and pushed my now short hair behind my ears, then I climbed out into the bright sun. The door slid closed behind me. I stood outside the van, heat rising from the pavement, hitting my bare legs. We were in the very right lane behind a small gray car, and in front of that, more cars—four lanes of cars lined the bridge—two lanes heading north, two heading south, and none were moving. I looked over the railing into the water, then walked around the front of the van to the other side. In the lane to the left of us was another group going to the tractor pull—a bunch of teens in the back of a truck. They were drinking sodas and throwing fluorescent orange cheese curls at each other.

  Up ahead, people had gotten out of their cars and a few looked my way, but I was pretty sure it was the outfit. It was quite the racy outfit, what with the paper-thin spaghetti strap top that you could totally see my nipples through, and the ragged Wilma Flintstone mini skirt, and my high heels.

  It was like a different me stepped out of that van. Like a slutty butterfly emerging from a bandit cocoon.

  I felt good. Free. The best I’d felt in years.

  I took a five dollar bill from my still-intact skirt pocket and walked over and offered it to the cheese curl kids in the back of the truck in exchange for two of their sodas. “Any flavor, I don’t care,” I said.

  I came away with two Mountain Dews and some pitying looks from the girls for my dead tooth.

  My blood raced when I caught sight of the cops, five cars ahead, talking to people and looking in cars. I rested my forearm on the open window and smiled in at Zeus, who was pulling on a pair of cutoffs.

  “They coming?”

  “Sure are,” I said. The jeans shorts were just a little tight for Zeus. Un-Midwestern, but they were cops, not fashion police. “Four on foot, two with motorcycles.”

  “Move,” he said.

  I moved out of the way and he got out of the van, shut the door. I handed him a soda. He opened it and flopped an arm around me. “Don’t fuck this up.”

  “Not planning to,” I said.

  He felt warm and hard against me, and smelled strongly of sweat. Of course he’d just robbed a bank. It thrilled me to think about that, and now here we were pretending to be a couple.

  Zeus seemed even larger and more solid out of the van. He had wide shoulders, a wide neck, and lush, handsome features, with a faintly tough-guy edge. A scar on his cheekbone, small and jagged, did nothing to detract from the tough effect.

  I wondered if his thuggish air made people underestimate his intelligence. I sure wouldn’t. Not now, anyway. He squinted when he drank his soda. “Hate this stuff,” he said, looking casually around with those intense green eyes. His eyes were what stood out about him. He was like a handsome tough with the eyes of a feral animal.

  His short brown hair twinkled merrily in the sunlight and curled wrong on the ends—it curled outward on one side and inward on the other, like the curl didn’t get the memo that it was supposed to be symmetrical, and he’d never learned to properly manage it in the maybe thirty years he’d walked the earth. This, too, made him seem somehow untamed in a way that very much turned me on. And of course I kept thinking about Thor’s skills comment. And the rules. The well-oiled organization.

  “Does my hair look not too fucked up?” I asked.

  He gazed at me with those green eyes, and it was like a tremor through me. “It looks convincing enough.”

  I swallowed. “If you think you can sway me with flattery, you’re wrong.”

  He looked away. I’d thought we had a certain connection, but he seemed wary of me now. He sipped his soda again and wiped his mouth with his arm. “Look, you’re doing great.”

  “Are you trying to build my confidence?” I asked.

  “Yup.”

  “It reverses the effect if I know that’s what you’re trying to do.”

  He said nothing. Really, just having him close was bolstering. There was a calm and power to Zeus that reminded me of the calm and power of a large animal. And I liked having his possessive arm over me. I hadn’t had a lot of boyfriends in my life, and those I’d had would’ve never thrown their arms around me in such a presumptuous and possessive way, and they certainly wouldn’t have named themselves for gods.

  He said, “Let me do the
talking until you think I don’t know the answer, then butt in. Let me see your tooth. Smile.”

  I smiled.

  “Good. Don’t lick it.”

  I looked over my shoulder, into the van window. Thor and Odin were both lounging in the van texting or tweeting or something on their mobiles. Or at least pretending to.

  One of the cops came to talk to the kids in the back of the truck next to us. Another pair of cops strolled up to us, both middle-aged men. One wore wire-rimmed glasses.

  “There an accident up there?” Zeus asked. I watched him, amazed. He’d hunched his body slightly and got this bewildered, frowny look that gave him and oafish, even victimy air. You would never in a million years imagine this Zeus robbing a bank.

  “Bottleneck,” the one with glasses said simply while his partner peered into the window. “Where’re you off to?”

  “Tractor pull,” Zeus said.

  “Who you rooting for?”

  “Big Bessie,” Zeus said. “If we even make it.”

  “You, too?” the officer asked me.

  “Bessie for the win.” I raised my soda, heart pounding. “What happened? We’re going to miss everything.” I frowned. “Do you think they know to hold the main event?”

  One of the officers shrugged, and I frowned harder. Engines were sounding ahead.

  “It’ll loosen. Drive safe,” the one said. The two of them proceeded to the car behind us.

  Zeus and I stood there together for a second. We’d done it, though I felt weird about the act. “I can see what you think about the kind of people who attend tractor pulls,” I said. “With that act you put on. You know, I go to tractor pulls. They’re fun. They’re not just for country bumpkins.”

  “Let’s go,” he said simply, straightening back up to his cool badass self. Maybe that’s what they thought of me—a country bumpkin.

  I walked around to the passenger side. Odin was there. “I think the girlfriend should sit up front,” I said to him through the window.

  Odin smiled a smile that positively glittered with dark designs. “The girlfriend sits where we tell her to sit. That happens to be one of our rules.”

  I got this quivery feeling in the pit of my stomach. I knew that he was telling the truth, that they had some sort of rules, and the rules had nothing to do with bank robberies.

  “The rules don’t apply to Melinda,” Zeus said.

  The back door slid open and I got in next to Thor and shut the door. I wanted to hear more about these rules, and frankly, I wanted them to be really dirty.

  “Please,” I said. “Call me Isis.”

  Thor looked surprised at this, and both he and Odin swung their gazes to Zeus, as if to see what he’d do. Zeus just stared ahead grimly. His silence brought a hush down over the van. The man’s silence had power.

  Finally I spoke up. “You all have god names. You said I could be in the gang until the next job. I think I deserve a god name.”

  Thor seemed to pull himself together. “Thank you, Isis. You are awesome. That was awesome.”

  I pulled my dead tooth thing off. Odin handed back the box and I dropped it in. There were other dead tooth disguises in there, plus tattoos, fake scars, and moles. “I can’t believe you go around with a kit like this. Did you send away for it from the back of a comic book?”

  Odin snapped the box lid shut. “Worked, didn’t it?”

  “We’re not out of the woods yet,” Zeus said. “But—” He caught my eyes in the mirror and nodded. “Thank you.”

  The cars in front of us started to move. Soon we cleared the bridge and were clipping along at a highway speed, leaving the police and copters behind.

  Zeus and Odin discussed how the cops had handled the search, all cool about the whole episode. Maybe it was a bandit thing. I put my hand over my chest. “Wow. Phew!” I felt like my insides were vibrating.

  “I know,” Thor said. We exchanged glances, and his blue eyes seemed quite bright. He was still in the white T-shirt and slacks, and when you really looked, he, too, seemed very keyed up. Aroused, even. It was exactly how I felt, like all my sex and danger circuits had crossed.

  “What now?” I said, holding his gaze.

  From the front, Zeus said, “We lay down miles, change license plates and van decal, and then stop for the night.”

  Stop for the night. For some reason my mind went right to Zeus, to that moment in the bank when I touched his glove, handing off the bag, the frisson of shivers.

  “And hit another First City? As a gang?”

  “You’re staying with us through the next job, we didn’t say you could take part in the next job,” Zeus said.

  I sat back, disappointed. It seemed like there should be more, somehow. I wanted there to be more.

  There’s this abandoned ski jump ten minutes from our farm, a creaky wooden thing built in the 1960s. It’s so tall, you can see its dark bones cragging up into the horizon for miles around, beckoning you, daring you with its insane height and rickety thrills.

  When you drive over there and sneak up to it, you find a chain link fence around it and No Trespassing signs all over, but it’s easy enough to break in, easy enough to climb up it with your skis strapped to your back; you just have to take care to avoid the rotten rungs. Adrenaline and excitement build with every step, and then you’re standing on top and there’s nothing like it. You can see for miles round, and then you look down at the impossible downward angle, which tips up at the very end, designed to send you up into the air. Standing up there before you push off is like the edge of ecstasy, like the still point at the tip-top of a rollercoaster, and you know that you’ll go.

  Or more, you know that it will take you. That there will be a point of no return.

  It’s the most indescribable rush.

  That’s how I felt with the bank robbers—like I was standing on the edge of something wonderful. I didn't want to take off my skis and strap them to my back and climb back down.

  “I have a question.” I swallowed. “Why don’t the mysterious rules apply to me? You said I was in. Shouldn’t the rules apply to me as well as you guys?”

  More silence.

  Thor said, “Look, they’re stupid rules we had once when our gang was different.”

  “It’s important to me to play by the rules,” I said, mouth going dry.

  “You don’t understand,” Thor said.

  Odin made a derisive sound and turned around in his seat so that he faced back, staring right into my eyes. I couldn’t begin to guess his background—Middle Eastern, North African. But lord, he was hot. He could slap on all the scars and moles and dead teeth from that box and still be hot.

  “What?” I said, fighting the hypnotic effect of his gaze.

  “Forget the rules,” Zeus said from the driver’s seat. “That’s what. She’s not playing.”

  Odin said, “She took a god name. She wants in. She already guessed what the rules are, or at least their nature.” He paused, letting that sink in. It was unnerving that he was talking about me while looking at me. Telling my secrets.

  But I liked it—the out of control-ness of it. Like I was giving over to something, the way I do on the ski jump.

  Odin said, “I’d say she has a pretty good fucking-g idea what the rules are.”

  “Is that so?” I tried not to smile.

  “Very much so,” Odin said. “And you wouldn’t want it any other way.”

  I swallowed. It was as if he were engaging my body in an erotic conversation. I wouldn’t want it any other way. I crossed my legs, suddenly aware of the tickly energy there.

  Odin raised his dark brows, as though my crossing my legs provided further proof of his rightness. I loved the way he talked, the way he knew things, and I wanted him to say more.

  Coyly, I said, “Well, I’d certainly like to know what the rules are, and to evaluate them for myself.” Even then I was beginning our strange dance, like somewhere deep inside I knew the steps.

  Zeus eyed me in the rearv
iew mirror with his usual stern, bullish power. I felt Thor’s eyes on me, too—I could practically feel him vibrating beside me.

  I became keenly aware of my nipples at this moment, crazily hard and punching out under my flimsy top. I wanted to touch them. I wanted them to touch them.

  “Well?” A twinge deep in my belly. I felt like I might start panting at any second. “It seems customary,” I said in my bank teller voice, “that those who create rules would inform others of them instead of asking them to guess.”

  “Yes that would be customary,” Odin said darkly. “Fine then. The game is that we’re dissolute, depraved, sex-crazed bandits and the rules are, firstly, that you have sex with all of us at different times and in different combinations.” Odin paused.

  My pulse fluttered. “That’s firstly?”

  “Yes, Isis,” Odin said.

  I imagined being pressed between them. I imagined their hands and mouths on me. Oh, he was a little evil to pause like that. This too, I richly enjoyed. “And what might be secondly?” I asked.

  “That we tie you up, etcetera,” he said casually, almost bored, like it was a totally normal thing. “And we give you various commands that you must obey, within reason of course, and utterly pleasure-focused. Or you’ll be punished in various ways. And if you were to refuse your punishment...” He paused here, seeming to consider the punishment. “I’m sorry, but if you were to agree to our rules, and then you refused one of your punishments or you refused any activity that we named”—he exchanged glances with Thor, who looked as rapt as I felt— “you would lose your right to a god name,” he said. “You would lose your right to the name of Isis. Forever.” He said it like it was the most horrible thing in the world. “You would remain Melinda for the duration of our association. A simple guest until we pull the First City job and dump you. As opposed to Isis. You would no longer be one of us.”

  I could barely breathe. It was weird, but the way they made such a big deal out of my god name, that made it a big deal. I didn’t want to be Melinda anymore. I wanted to be one of them. I wanted to be Isis!