by L. T. Vargus
She stayed angled away, her body language not so inviting as her words had been. Her back was mostly to him, and her posture and arm positioning seemed defensive, hands and forearms crossing her body in front of her chest and closing herself off from him. Guarded. A little stiff.
He hesitated short of the door for another beat. His instincts read bad news in everything he saw in her, but she had called him here for help, so maybe that made sense. Needing help made you vulnerable — pretty much by definition — and that could be what he was seeing.
He sought her eyes as he stepped up and into the house. He thought he would know what to think if he could look into her eyes, read her that way. When she wouldn’t return his gaze, blinking and looking at the floor instead, Loshak knew in his heart that everything was about to go terribly wrong.
A man’s voice spoke up from behind her and to the left, some grit to it. Perhaps a slight slur.
“Make a move for your weapon, and I’ll blow your fuckin’ head off.”
Loshak stopped there, two steps into the kitchen, and the man revealed himself from just around the corner. Actually, the gun revealed itself first.
A pistol extended from the man’s arm. Some part of Loshak knew this was a small handgun — about as small as they come — but it looked rather big just now. Funny how that worked.
He had to concentrate to pry his eyes away from the weapon and direct them at the face of the one wielding it.
Haggard stubble and bloodshot eyes stared back at him. A drunk? For a split second, he thought it was a vagrant, that he’d walked in on some kind of home invasion, but squinting a little, he began to recognize the face.
It was Claire’s man — what was his name? Matt? Mitch? It was definitely an M name. Maybe. Loshak couldn’t remember, but it would come to him.
Whatever his name was, he looked like shit, and this situation was much more complicated than a home invasion.
The man gestured with the gun as he spoke, ticking the barrel up twice.
“Hands up, big shot.”
He staggered forward a step. Wobbly on his feet.
OK. Not just drunk, Loshak thought. Utterly shit-faced.
He stepped close to the agent and weaved his off hand inside Loshak’s jacket, unbuttoned the shoulder holster, fumbled at the Glock for a moment before he pulled it out of the leather sheath and tucked it in his own belt. He never broke eye contact with Loshak as he worked, glaring at him with those bloodshot eyes all the while.
Claire’s man laughed a little, a hissing cackle, spit squirting between his teeth, and the smell of beer rolled out of his mouth.
Loshak knew what the expression on his face said: He had caught his mouse, and now he wanted to play with it a while.
The drunk took a sidestep, lost his balance and almost tripped. Lurching forward, he caught himself on the edge of the counter with both hands, the gun clattering against the laminate surface. For a second he remained in that position, hand and gun propping him up, and he laughed a sheepish laugh, face going red.
Now he backpedaled a few paces, and the gun wavered a little at the end of his arm. A tremor. Adrenaline. Probably spiked due to the moment of fear when he almost fell on his face.
Good Christ.
Loshak’s internal monologue stated the facts of the case, frank and deadpan: This guy is so wasted he can barely stand. He has a gun. He is pointing the gun at your face. And he is as frightened as a house cat. Not good.
Mark. His name was Mark. Loshak knew it would come to him. He thought he should use that knowledge to his advantage, lean on the familiarity and see if it got him anywhere.
“Mark, I don’t know what’s going on here, but I know there must be some kind of misunderstanding.”
The glee drained from Mark’s face, the smile shifting to pursed lips.
“That right?” the drunk said.
“You’re not yourself. Had a few drinks. I get that. Happens to the best of us. But we can get this all cleared up, if you want.”
Mark stared at Loshak, his expression seeming to go blanker by the second. The gun arm seemed to slacken just a touch, too.
What did this guy want? Loshak wasn’t sure. To get anywhere in the conversation, he either needed to ask or take a guess at it.
“Why don’t you tell me what you want? You can put down the gun, and we can talk.”
All those angry folds and wrinkles resurfaced on Mark’s face. The arm holding the gun grew taut again. In one motion, he pointed the piece at the ceiling and squeezed the trigger.
The crack of the gunfire filled the kitchen, impossibly loud, bouncing off every hard surface to create a ringing resonance that almost seemed to gain volume before it receded. Loshak felt like he’d been hit with the noise, a great whoosh of sound rushing at his face and chest.
The slug punched a neat hole in the popcorn ceiling, and after a second, a fine dusting of white powder spilled out of the plaster wound. It rained down, pattering the floor audibly like grains of sprinkled sand.
Loshak hopped back out of instinct, and Mark eyed him. Laughing.
“Jesus Christ! Look at him dance. Ol’ big shot’s a bit of a scaredy cat, ain’t he? If only he had one of his books here with him, eh? He could look up the right answers to this little problem.”
Loshak shrugged, tried to play up the idea that he was embarrassed.
“Oh, and I’ll pass. Your offer to talk? That’s a hard no from me,” Mark said. “I appreciate it, but I think we’ve had quite enough talk with law enforcement in this house. Quite e-fucking-nough.”
Loshak detected movement out of the corner of his eye. Glanced that way.
It was Claire, her eyes gone huge and wet, one hand cupped over her mouth. She cowered, leaned up against the place where the countertop met the wall.
Holy shit. Claire.
He’d been so occupied with Mark and his gun, he’d almost forgotten she was there in the room with them, tucked away in a corner.
That was one of the troubles with dangerous situations like this, Loshak thought. It was so easy to get tunnel vision, easy to lose track of your surroundings — things as simple as who else was in the room.
That’s how the brain functioned in moments of great stress. It filtered harder, all of reality whittling down to just those few immediate things creating the tension. All of one’s attention got sucked into that tunnel of staring at the gun, the seconds stretching out until time lost all meaning. He couldn’t let that happen here.
Loshak forced himself to take a deep breath, in and out, slow and deliberate. He could feel his nerves steadying before he was even done exhaling.
He blinked. Looked around. Really looked. Took in the room for the first time.
Cabinets the color of an avocado stared back at him, the paint chipped and peeling in a few places, little black lines etched into the corners like spider webs. The appliances likewise looked like they were probably original to when the place was built. Maybe 40 years old.
And he scanned for possible weapons. Alternative solutions to their problem here. His eyes darted everywhere, sought blunt objects and the like, cataloging them all the while. Fire extinguisher. Plates. Any knives were tucked away in shelves or drawers somewhere, out of sight and out of reach. Nothing viable stood out. It was never the best idea to bring a fire extinguisher to a gunfight. Even a knife wouldn’t help much there.
Still, noting these details helped him get his mind right, helped root him back in the present moment.
And it made his immediate quandary clearer: He didn’t know what lay at the heart of this scene. What was motivating Mark? Why was he doing this? What did he want?
That was the first stage of any hostage negotiation, right? Figuring out what the guy with the gun wants. When he’d asked, however, it only seemed to result in fresh rage.
He didn’t want the usual — money. That wouldn’t make any sense.
He was angry, but to what purpose? Loshak didn’t have any guesses for the moment.
Mark paced the room, now staring at nothing. That look of exaggerated glee had returned to his face, stuck there like an expression baked into a Halloween mask. Though he didn’t speak, he gestured with the gun often, wagging and tipping the barrel, turning the gun sideways and shaking it. Loshak thought he must be accenting his thoughts with flicks of the wrist and various firearm flourishes.
Pleasure. He was enjoying this. In the short term, that must be what he wanted — to lord his power over his hostages. Loshak still didn’t know what the long-term goal was, but that might be something to work with. A starting point.
With the gunman distracted, Loshak snuck a longer glance at Claire.
Her hand still covered her mouth, and the sleeve had rolled away to expose her wrist. She slid her palm slowly up from her lips to cover her eyes, and that was when he noticed it.
The bruise. No. Two of them. Deep purple splotches on her wrist, loosely connected with a thin line of a lighter, almost translucent violet shade. It looked like she’d been grabbed. Pulled.
Loshak’s eyes traced the outline of the bruise, snapped to Mark’s hand and traced a similar shape there — the curve of his thumb and forefinger.
Yep. That’d do it.
Now he looked at Mark’s face and saw it anew. Saw the red lines crisscrossing the whites of his eyes like stitches, the purple pouches of flesh puckering beneath each of them.
A drunk — that he knew already. A drunk and a batterer.
Yes.
That was the piece that had been missing before. Mark was an abuser. A wife beater.
This scene Loshak had walked into was starting to make sense. Finally.
Chapter 48
The panic constricts Emily’s breath. Grabs her by the shoulders and shakes her.
No. No. No.
This can’t be happening, but it is. Can’t be real, but it is.
Her whole life led to this. Winding her along a circuitous path — all the ups and downs, all the rises and falls, all the forks in the road — to place her in this moment.
To put her here. To leave her here.
A box. Trapped in a box. Wooden walls encasing her. Closing the darkness around her.
Leonard Stump. The universe put her in the hands of Leonard Stump. This is her fate. Her life story. It all led to this.
And perhaps for the first time it occurs to her that all of those victims on TV and in the newspaper are real people. All the way real. Fully formed personalities. Unique. Individual. Lost souls who had dreams and flaws and families and friends. They had loved and lost, broken their hearts and mended them.
All of that suffering. All of that agony. It’s all real. As real as this.
These thoughts flit through her head. Racing. Fleeting.
A rush of shifting feelings. The panic surges to swallow them. To take them away. To shove her forward to the next awful moment.
Her hands fumble at the underside of the lid. Slide over the grain of the wood. Fingers wriggling at the slitted hole like insect legs. Nails catching on the hard edge over and over.
The wood remains impervious. Unmovable. Uncaring.
There is no way out. None. She knows this. Understands it. But all she can do is look for one anyway. Search with her hands. Pat and scratch and dig at the walls to prod for any weakness, any means of escape. She feels for some tiny chink in the wall that she knows isn’t there.
And the panic only grows. The darkness spirals its black noise into her head. A tangle of sounds pounding in her skull. A deep rumble that won’t let up.
Her head goes hot and swimmy. Thoughts fevered. Frenzied. Bordering on nonsensical.
And the tears gush from her eyes. Spill down the tops of her cheekbones. Trail into the seashell folds of her ears.
She can feel her lips pull back into a grimace. Teeth exposed.
Hot breath heaves in and out of her. Lungs sucking in oxygen in great gasps. Greedy. Manic.
The air in the box is already moist from her breathing. Heavy with the wet.
Her insides feel gooey and hot.
And she chokes a little now. Throat cinching and clicking and sputtering. Spit flying out of her mouth.
All the way confused. All the way lost.
She isn’t doing it right. She knows that. But she can’t remember what it is. Can’t think straight. Can’t think.
Breathing.
She isn’t breathing properly. She is hyperventilating.
And Gabby is there. She can feel that she is right there with her in the dark, and she is talking, but Emily can’t make out the words. Can’t understand.
Her hands slow. No longer thrashing about on the underside of the lid so much as brushing it with fingertips. Caressing it. Smearing at it. Losing speed all the while.
Slower. Slower. Slower.
And now her hands descend. Sinking. Retracting to her torso. Folding against her like the stalks of a wilting plant.
She knows that Gabby’s lips are moving. That something important is being transmitted to her, but she cannot comprehend it. Not even a little.
Instead feelings slosh in her head. Hysteria. Horror. Disorientation. They roll in and out like waves. Lurching and swaying and spitting.
The blackness comes over her in splotches. Smudges. Pressing its darkness over her vision bit by bit. Taking her consciousness in little pieces.
Her hearing flutters out. That ambient sense of the space around her closing up into nothingness. Beyond silence. The negation of sound.
She still feels herself breathing. Chest rising and falling over and over. Air rushing to fill her and empty her, fill her and empty her. But she no longer hears it.
And now the black smudge closes in. Finally ready to finish its job.
She twitches a little as the lack of oxygen blinds her. The final movements she can muster — meaningless flexes and thrusts, spittle bubbling between her lips.
And when the panic wins, and she finally passes out, it almost comes as a relief.
* * *
Emily wakes. Wiggles her legs. The sand grits in every joint now. In every orifice.
It feels like she rides lower in the sand now, whether or not that makes any sense. Sinking. Slowly digging herself in. Like some sea turtle threshing its flippers on the beach to craft a hole.
She finds herself calm. That roiling, flooded feeling has drained from her skull. The worst of the panic has mostly left her. The memory of it all jumbled in her head.
She breathes. A deep inhale. Holds it. Lets it go.
Good.
Lifting her head to the hole, she stares at her one slice of ceiling.
A strip of white paint the texture of an egg. It looks gray in the half-light. The lifeless color ground beef goes after it sits in the fridge for a month, when something essential has been sucked out of it.
She blinks, and it all disappears. The universe shut out completely. All of reality stained black. But when she opens her eyes, it’s back. The gray stripe that represents the outside world.
Something moves next to her, the sand shifting there in the dark.
It’s Gabriela. Yes. She remembers now. Gabby has been there all the while.
Her friend speaks from the shadows.
“Remember when we used to eat at the Carnival World buffet?”
Emily blinks in the dark.
“I remember,” she says.
“We ate there every day for a month when they had that lunch special going. Sat in the corner and watched all of the tourists shoveling prime rib and crab legs into their faces. Hawaiian shirts. Fanny packs. Baseball hats with the brims all straight and stiff.”
The girls are quiet for a beat before Gabby starts up again.
“Remember the shrimp guy?”
“I remember.”
They both know the shrimp guy story well enough that it doesn’t need to be spoken aloud. Not anymore.
She sees the little old man sporting dark denim overalls. She and Gabby watched from across the room as
he ate shrimp cocktail — shells, tails and all. He just kept piling the things into his mouth, using the little curved shrimp like spoons to scoop in as much cocktail sauce as possible.
“I couldn’t stop laughing,” Emily says.
She doesn’t realize she is smiling until she hears it in her voice.
“Christ. I thought you were going to die, you were laughing so hard,” Gabby says. “Face all red and puffy. Tears streaming down your cheeks. I wanted to get some ice cream, but I had to get you out of there.”
A puff of air exits Emily’s nostrils, and it takes her a second to recognize the sound. Laughter. She almost can’t believe it. Silent or not, this didn’t seem possible just minutes ago. Not here. Not now.
“You should try to sleep if you can,” Gabby says. “Conserve your energy, you know. It’s not over yet.”
Emily’s breath is shaky from laughing. It catches in her chest like a hiccup.
“I know.”
“You can handle this. Being here, I mean. Being in this box. You can handle it. You know that? It’s going to get worse, but it’s OK. You’ve been through a lot, and you’ve survived. Don’t ever forget that.”
Emily nods, sand gritting at the back of her head. She watches the unmoving gray stripe of ceiling out there while Gabby continues.
“I’m not going to lie to you. Not going to sugarcoat it. This man might kill you. It’s possible, you know. But whatever he might think, he won’t break you. Not your mind. And so long as that’s true, you have a chance. A chance to get out of here. A chance to fight. A chance to save yourself.”
They’re quiet for a while. As Emily begins to drift, Gabby starts up again.
“Remember when that guy tried to mug you in that alley off Fremont street?”
“I remember.”
“What did you do?”
“I fought.”
“You kneed him in the balls, and his face turned as red as a Skittles bag. He wound up being the one running away from the scene, running away from you. Well, he kind of waddled away, but still…. That’s what you have to do now. You have to fight. Whatever it takes.”