When Hell Freezes Over

by Rick Blechta

  The blond bloke, over at one of the windows facing the house, called out, “Some old broad with two dogs is getting in a car and driving off.”

  Great. That meant Rachel and Robbie were in the house alone. Maybe, if we were really lucky, Bradley and his crew wouldn’t check the house before they left. If I could keep anything from these bastards, it would be the existence of Shannon’s two kids.

  The crazy one picked up a glass of water sitting on a pile of weights and dumped it over Shannon’s head. That brought her the rest of the way round in a hurry.

  “What did you do that for?” Bradley asked.

  “All that moaning was annoying me.”

  “Well, do us all a favour and don’t do anything unless I tell you! You got that?”

  I could see from his eyes that he did indeed get it, also that he was as scared of his employer as I was. That might work in my favour.

  Shannon looked around dazedly as she struggled with her bonds for a moment, then sagged back, glaring at her captors while water dripped from her hair. She knew enough not to cause any trouble. I was praying she had a gun up her sleeve or something. If it were down to me to get us out of this, we were certainly going to die. I could barely move, and my shoulders were beginning to hurt from the strain put on them by my wrists being fastened to the crossbeam between the bench’s legs.

  Bradley pulled a chair over and sat down. “Tell me where the girl is.”

  “She’s over there,” I answered, indicating Shannon with my head.

  His reaction was swift. He barely touched the cigarette to my neck, but I wasn’t able to stifle a loud yelp of pain this time.

  “No funny answers, mate. It’s simple: do that again, and I burn you. I get a wrong answer, I burn you. Even if I get a right answer, I might burn you. Thing is, I can make this very slow and very painful. It’s your choice.”

  “Let the woman go,” I sighed. “I’ll tell you everything I know.”

  “No can do, mate. I explained already. I could make you watch while these two lads here have a go at her. Would you like to watch that?”

  Shannon looked genuinely scared now.

  Bradley repeated, “Tell me how I can get hold of the girl.”

  “I don’t know,” I said hopelessly.

  As the cigarette descended once again, Shannon spoke up. “Wait! He’s telling the truth. We’ve traced her back to Montreal, but there’s been no sign of her after that.”

  The cigarette hovered just over my forehead. “Montreal, you say? Where in Montreal?”

  “Just off Rue St. Denis. She has an apartment there.”

  Brum put the cigarette back in his mouth, got up and walked to the opposite end of the room with the dark-haired one. A whispered conversation ensued. Breathing a sigh of relief at my temporary escape, I tilted my head back to look at Shannon as best I could. She smiled grimly.

  The blond one piped up from his lookout post. “Hey, boss! There’s a kid coming across from the house.”

  Now Shannon started to really struggle, as did I. I could face dying, I suppose, but I would not go gently if they were going to take the children too. Sensing there might be more trouble than they had anticipated, Bradley came smartly back over to us and pulled his gun from his overcoat. Sticking the end of the barrel right against Shannon’s forehead, he flicked the safety off with his thumb.

  “Make one move, one sound, and your kid is going to have to see mum’s brains splattered all around the room. Understand?”

  She squeezed her eyes shut and slowly nodded her head once.

  Blondie went to the side door and stood next to it with his back against the wall. Thankfully, he didn’t pull out a gun, although he may have seen no reason to, expecting no trouble from a child. The crazy one had pulled out some serious weaponry, though. The intensity in Shannon’s eyes would have bored holes through the lot of them.

  As the knob turned and the door began to swing open, I heard Rachel’s voice, “Mom, Grams wanted me to tell you that the phone’s not working again. She’s going out, and she’ll call the repair guys, but she won’t be back until—”

  That’s as far as she got before she a) saw the two of us trussed up like chickens, and b) Blondie pounced on her.

  I’ll tell you I was ashamed of the fight that fifteen-year-old girl put up compared to my meek surrender. Mind you, they weren’t about to shoot the kid as they would have me, but I don’t think Rachel would have even noticed a gun. She just went berserk. That’s the only way to describe it.

  She’d obviously been taught a lot about self-defence, because she got several good shots in before Blondie started to take her seriously and keep his distance. Laughing at his predicament, his two compadres momentarily forgot about Shannon and me, so we both started squirming, trying to make the cable ties binding us give way or to break them by sheer force.

  Blondie had wit enough to keep himself between the door and Rachel, but as she danced around him, landing good kicks and punches, she was gradually being forced to the centre of the room.

  Finally Bradley had enough. Turning to the dark one, he said, “End this foolishness right now.”

  Shannon and I both froze as the dark one brought up his gun.

  “Not that way, you idiot! Go help out Smith!”

  It was all over pretty quickly after that.

  They finally wrestled Rachel’s squirming body to the ground, and Blondie simply sat on her. Crazy Stokowski came around by her head and stuck the barrel of his gun against it. Rachel stopped as if her batteries had been removed.

  She got dragged over to the weight training machine and strung up by the arms against a high cross support. After she tried to kick them, they attached her feet to the base.

  Then the real torture began. They asked Shannon and me the same questions over and over, and even though we told them the truth, they just wouldn’t accept it. So, sadly I accumulated three more burns on my arms. Thank God they didn’t do the same to Shannon. Rachel watched silently, not asking what was going on nor why. The expression on her face was unreadable.

  Finally, they left me alone, panting and sweating from the pain inflicted by the burning cigarette.

  Bradley, with a glance at his watch, apparently decided too much time was passing, so he went over to Rachel. The girl’s eyes widened as he reached out to stroke her cheek.

  “Nice looking girl you got here. It would be a shame if we had to get the truth out of you by hurting her, wouldn’t it?” He took hold of Rachel’s chin and forced her head up. “You wouldn’t want to be hurt because your mum and her boyfriend have decided to be stupid, would you, girly?”

  “Fuck you!” Rachel snarled and spat in his face.

  Bradley was completely taken aback for a moment. Then his expression hardened and he backhanded the child across the face quite hard.

  “Animals!” Shannon shouted and began squirming again. “Leave her alone. She’s done nothing!”

  “Then tell me what I want to know!” he shouted right back. “Where’s the goddamned girl?”

  “We’ve been telling you, you fool! We don’t know!”

  Now it was Shannon and me shouting and squirming, calling them every bad name in the book as the bastards gathered around the very scared fifteen-year-old.

  It was at that point that a movement beyond the scene of action caught my eye. The piece of plywood covering the stairs down to the lower level raised a little bit, then dropped slowly down.

  Robbie, and if God had given him any sense at all, he would be racing to the farmer next door for help.

  I stopped struggling and tried to get Shannon’s attention. If we could string this out before the bad guys came to their inevitable decision, there might be hope yet.

  “Hey, arse!” I shouted, and Bradley turned around, knowing exactly whom I meant. His expression was not kindly. “You know you’re not going to get away with this, mate? What do you plan on doing, burn down the barn? You don’t think they’ll pick up enough evidence to pin i
t on all of you? Don’t you fools know the cops are looking for you right now? We had you recorded when you were in my apartment. They know who all of you are.”

  The attention on Rachel wavered. Yes, it would certainly earn me more pain and possibly even a bullet, but I had to do something. I had to buy us some time.

  The blond one seemed a bit concerned, Stokowski couldn’t have cared less, but Bradley looked puzzled as he walked over and stared down at me.

  “Why did you say that, mate?”

  “I’m not your bloody mate! I’m just telling you the lay of the land, so you’ll realize your only course of action is to get the hell out of it and as far away as you can. Or are you too dim to see that?”

  My comment earned me a hard slap to my face.

  “Keep your gob shut, mate,” he sneered.

  My little speech had at least got them a bit, shall we say, conflicted. If he’d run all the way, maybe Robbie would be at the farmhouse by now. Maybe these idiots would realize their jeopardy and scarper before the cops arrived. I didn’t care how they left as long as they were gone.

  Glancing over at Shannon, I saw she was very slowly shaking her head, her expression fixed on the far side of the room. The plywood was again rising slowly up.

  Robbie had his finger to his lips. Why the hell hadn’t he gone for help? Christ! What did he think he could possibly do on his own?

  Silently he emerged and let the plywood down again. The little fool was in the building, and there was nothing we could do about it.

  Shannon, being quicker on the uptake than me, first started coughing then moaning. “I can’t feel my hands. You’ve got these goddamn restraints too tight!”

  “That’s right,” I chimed in when I realized she was making noise to cover any sound Robbie might make and also to distract our captors.

  “Why don’t you let the girls go? I’ll come along quietly, and you can do whatever you want with me. I just don’t care any more.”

  At that point, we all started babbling. The din was enough to cover up any slight sounds a seventy-pound child would make.

  Not wanting to give away anything by looking across the room, I instead looked at Rachel and her mum. That would seem natural at least. By the way their heads were moving, it seemed Robbie must have been climbing into the hayloft.

  Suddenly, there was a loud creak, and all the noise we were making couldn’t cover up the loose board Robbie had trod on.

  “Shut up or I’ll shoot the lot of you!” Bradley shouted, pointing his gun at Shannon.

  “No, you won’t, mister,” came the squeak of Robbie’s very scared voice. “Leave my mom and sister alone!”

  All three of our captors looked wildly around for the source of the voice. When I saw that they’d obviously found it, I dared to look up.

  Robbie’s tiny head and shoulders were right near the front of the hayloft next to a stack of bales. Lying on his stomach, he held a handgun out in front of him. In his small hands, the automatic looked huge, but he seemed to be holding it correctly.

  Blondie had a nasty-looking knife in his hand, while the other two now had their guns trained upwards.

  “All right,” Bradley said. “You’ve got the drop on us, sonny. We’ll leave. You can come down now.”

  “No! Drop your weapons and step back from them.”

  “Or what?” Stokowski sneered. “You’ll shoot us? This ain’t some video game, kid.”

  With that, he raised his gun even higher, and the unthinkable happened: a shot, deafening even in the large space, rang out.

  “No!” Shannon and Rachel screamed in unison.

  But I saw smoke around Robbie. He’d fired.

  Straining my neck, I looked back at Stokowski. He was standing there with a puzzled expression on his face. In the middle of his chest, a red flower was growing, spreading outward through the fabric of his shirt. Then he simply pitched forward onto his face.

  Snapped out of his shock by the shooting of his stooge at the hands of a ten-year-old, Bradley began moving towards Robbie’s mother and sister.

  “Stop, mister, or I’ll shoot you too!” The deadly, grown-up words came out incongruously in Robbie’s squeaky voice.

  Bradley ignored the warning, intent on getting to his bargaining chips. Two more shots rang out in rapid succession and the big man spun around, his gun flying out of his hand towards me. He landed on his side with a groan, but because of the angle, I couldn’t see where he’d been hit.

  That left only Blondie, and he was sidling for the big doors. Robbie noticed also, and I could see him swivelling a bit to follow, but not

  saying anything. All at once, Blondie bolted for the door, opened it in one fluid motion and disappeared into the night.

  Robbie finally stood up, a solitary little form who had just saved three lives, but had taken at least one. His face drained of colour and breathing hard, he looked to be on the verge of collapse.

  Shannon had seen the deepening shock as well. “Robbie! I need you to come down here right now. Go slowly. There’s no rush. Put the safety back on and stick the gun carefully in the back of your pants, then use the ladder. Can you do that?”

  His mum sounded completely calm, the professional cop taking over in a bad situation. Her son nodded once and did as she said.

  It seemed to take him a lifetime to get down, and all the while I kept my eyes mostly on Bradley, to make sure he didn’t make a move for either of the two free guns in the room. The rise and fall of his rib cage showed he was still alive, but there was an ominous gurgling in his breathing.

  Robbie walked slowly across the floor, his face a mask of terror.

  Edging his way around the two thugs, he finally got to his mother. I became aware of Rachel sobbing quietly, her body pressed back against the training machine to which she was bound.

  “Robbie,” Shannon said softly, “I want you to get the clippers on the nail over by the door and bring them here. You’ll be able to cut through these plastic bands easily. Hurry now—but not so fast you’ll trip. You’ve done a great job so far. Can you do that for me?”

  “Yes, Mommy.”

  “Good boy! I’ll give you the biggest hug ever as soon as my hands are free.”

  Robbie had his mother free less than a minute later. Before she did anything else, Robbie did get the biggest hug ever. As Shannon took the clippers from him, I could see tears streaming down her face.

  Shannon kicked Brum’s pistol under my bench then turned to her daughter. Rachel seemed far more at sea than any of us, so her mum helped her sit before coming over to me.

  “You all right?” she asked softly as she knelt to cut my bonds.

  “I’ll survive. Just focus on your kids .”

  “I plan to,” she answered with a grim smile.

  Twenty

  The hounds of the media were baying at the gates within a half hour of the police arriving. As the local reporters began digging into everything they could find about me, the rest of the story began tumbling out. Angus’s murder in Scotland got tied in before morning, and the press on both sides of the Atlantic were in full cry as they closed in.

  That was the least of my concerns at the moment, however. The life of Shannon O’Brien’s family had begun to implode.

  Robbie had been more clever than we’d first assumed. Before sneaking back out to the barn to save us, the little devil had called the coppers from the cell phone Shannon had installed in her SUV .

  Earlier, he and Rachel had fought over who should go out to the barn to tell their mum about the phones being down. When Rachel had finally stomped over, Robbie had followed behind anyway to make sure his sister didn’t get him in trouble. Hanging back and wearing a dark jacket, he had not been visible to Blondie.

  From downstairs in the animal enclosure, Robbie had heard everything. His ten-year-old mind told him that since his father had shown him from an early age how to handle and fire a gun, he would just sneak up on the bad guys and get the drop on them. With the sang
froid the young often seem blessed with, he’d done just that. The end result was one man dead and another severely wounded, but Robbie had without a doubt saved three lives.

  After the ambulance left, the police set up a command post in the O’Brien kitchen. We’d all been herded over to the safety and warmth of the house and had been sitting around the big table. Mrs. Cathcart, recently returned, had taken the whole thing in stride and was busy making coffee and hot chocolate. The expression in her frequent glances at me made it clear her shit would hit my fan later.

  Shannon sat with Robbie on her lap and Rachel cuddled next to her. All three were in a pretty bad emotional state. Every time the backdoor opened and someone came in, they would cling even more fiercely. The kids had seen plenty of death and destruction on TV , but now they’d experienced it up close and personal, without all the blood and noise and horror sanitized away. I could not imagine what sorts of emotional scars the evening would leave on them.

  It could have been much, much worse, though. We were all relatively unscathed. Except for a bandage over a small cut on the back of her head, Shannon appeared to be in pretty good shape, no concussion. The ambulance people had dressed my burns when I’d refused to go to hospital, but clearly felt I was a fool, since none were less than second degree, and a few had spots of charring. I was subjected to the further indignity of having them photographed “for the record”.

  A burly cop, with a head of grey hair and reasonably friendly manner, had arrived early and taken charge. He also knew the family, which made everything easier.

  “You certainly know how to handle a firearm, young man,” he said to Robbie.

  “My dad showed me all about it before he...before he left.”

  “And how did you get the gun tonight, Robbie?”

  “Oh, that was easy,” the boy answered rather proudly. “It’s my mom’s. She keeps it in a special storage box on the top shelf in her closet. I figured out the combo!”

  Shannon stiffened, making it clear she had no idea her son knew any of this. The cop cast her a sidelong glance.

  “And how did you do that?”