One Fatal Mistake

by Tom Hunt

  He raised the gun and pointed it at the back of Ross’s head.

  * * *

  “Stop! Don’t shoot him!”

  Karen yelled the words at the top of her lungs. Everything was happening so quickly; she’d had no time to make sense of any of this. All she knew was that she couldn’t let Shane kill Ross. Right now, Ross was a distraction, something for Shane to focus on other than them. If he killed Ross, he’d turn his attention to them. She didn’t want that.

  “Put the gun away,” she said. “Let’s talk for a moment.”

  “Nothing to talk about.” Shane took a step closer to Ross, Legos crunching under his heavy work boots. He inched the gun closer to the back of Ross’s head.

  “I can get you money,” she said.

  Shane glanced over.

  “Everything I have in the bank. Just please, don’t kill him.”

  He glanced at the clock on the wall. “After five on a Saturday. Bank isn’t open. Won’t be open tomorrow, either.”

  “We’ll go Monday. First thing. I’ll withdraw all of my money and give it to you.”

  “I’m not gonna sit around and wait the entire damn weekend,” he said. “Hell no.”

  He turned back to Ross’s motionless body.

  “A bullet to the head is letting this bastard off easy for what he did to—”

  “Money,” Teddy said. “I can get you money. Right now. No waiting.”

  Shane glanced over.

  “I’m serious,” Teddy said. “Twenty thousand dollars.”

  “Cash?”

  “Yes.”

  “Start talking.”

  “First, put away the gun. Please.”

  Shane lowered the gun. “This money,” he said. “Where is it?”

  “Just hear me out,” Teddy said. “I work at a car dealership. Sold a car earlier today, and the customer paid cash. We didn’t get around to taking the money to the bank, so I locked it up in a safe at the dealership for the weekend. It’s still there. I know the combination to the safe and everything.”

  “There’s twenty grand in there?” Shane said, keeping his eyes on Teddy.

  “Yeah,” Teddy said. “A little more, actually. The sale price was twenty-two thousand.”

  “Why the hell did the guy pay cash?”

  “I don’t know. Bad credit? I was just happy to make the sale.”

  “Twenty-two grand in cash. This isn’t bullshit?”

  “No. I swear.”

  “This dealership, where’s it at?”

  “Far north end of the city. Twenty, thirty minutes from here. This doesn’t have to be difficult. You drive me there, I grab the cash from the safe and give it to you. You disappear and let us live.”

  “Fine, then. Let’s go.”

  “We close at six on Saturdays. We have to wait until no one’s there. Only forty-five minutes. That’s it.”

  “Okay. Forty-five minutes.”

  “Just, please, don’t kill anyone,” Teddy said. He nodded toward Ross’s body—unmoving, facedown, nose still bleeding onto the carpet. “Him included. That’s the trade-off, okay? You’ll get your money and get away, as long as everyone lives.”

  Shane glared down at Teddy.

  “You got yourself a deal,” he said.

  * * *

  • • •

  Shane lifted up Ross by the collar of his shirt and dragged him over by the radiator in the corner of the room. He grabbed the box of zip ties off the table. He cinched a few zip ties around Ross’s left wrist, then a few around his right wrist, then linked them together with a few more, like a pair of handcuffs. He secured the handcuffs to the radiator with a few more zip ties.

  He flipped Ross around and set him on his rear. Ross’s eyes were closed. His face was a bloody, destroyed mask. His nose was bent at an angle, swelled to twice its normal size.

  Shane stared at Ross for a moment, like an artist admiring his handiwork, then turned to Teddy.

  “Forty-five minutes,” he said. “We’re leaving then.”

  Teddy nodded.

  “I’ll be back. Got some business with Amber.”

  “Our deal,” Teddy said. “You said you wouldn’t kill anyone.”

  “I’m not gonna kill her.”

  “Don’t hurt her, either.”

  Shane smirked.

  “Can’t promise that.”

  He left the room, trudging heavily down the hallway.

  * * *

  • • •

  Karen leaned back in her chair and took in a deep breath; she couldn’t believe everything that had just happened. For a moment, she’d really thought that she was going to see Ross killed, right in front of her. Shane had been ready to blow Ross away; there’d been no hesitation or struggle with what he’d been about to do.

  The room looked like a tornado had gone through. The carpet was littered with a sea of Legos. A few plastic containers were upended, lids knocked off. Random items everywhere.

  “My God,” Karen said. “Is everyone okay?”

  Neither Teddy nor Joshua responded, but they didn’t have to. Their expressions said everything. They weren’t okay. None of them were okay. Not at all.

  She looked at Ross, on the other side of the room. He wasn’t okay, either. His head was slumped to the side, face bloody and battered, his hands zip-tied to the radiator. The rising and falling of his chest were the only indication that he wasn’t dead. He was—

  “There’s no money,” Teddy said, voice flat, barely there.

  Karen turned toward him. His head was hung, staring down at the ground.

  “What did you say?”

  “There’s no money at my dealership,” Teddy said. “Nothing. I made up the story.”

  “You lied?”

  He nodded.

  “My God, why?”

  “I had to say something,” Teddy said. “Had to buy us some time. That look in his eyes when he was holding the gun—I thought he was going to kill Ross. Kill us after that. I just blurted out the first thing that came to my mind.”

  She knew that Teddy might be right—he very well might have saved their lives—but she could barely think straight.

  “There’s nothing?” Joshua said.

  “No.”

  “Nothing at all?”

  “Not a dime. Look, the main thing is he can’t harm you if he’s halfway across the city with me.” He turned to Karen. “Can’t harm you, either. When I’m gone with him, maybe you can escape. Get free somehow.”

  “But what about you?” Joshua said. “What are you going to do when you go there and there’s no money?”

  Teddy shook his head.

  “I have absolutely no idea.”

  TWENTY

  Amber heard footsteps rumbling down the hallway, approaching her room. A moment later, Shane appeared in the doorway. The gun was in his hand.

  “Wh-what did you do?” she asked. “To Ross?”

  “He ain’t dead, if that’s what you’re asking. Not yet, at least.”

  The pain made it difficult to concentrate, but she’d heard enough of the commotion in the other room to know that something bad had happened to Ross. She’d heard some talking, followed by assorted bumps and crashes. Then came a single scream from Ross, brief and bloodcurdling, accompanied by a loud thud.

  Shane walked over to her bed and stared down at her, his eyes hard as pebbles.

  “Bet you didn’t know Ross could scream like that, did ya?” he said. He tucked the gun into the waistband of his pants and sat down on the edge of her bed. “Now, let’s see if you can beat him.”

  Shane reached out so his massive hand was a few inches above her stomach, right over the wound. He slowly balled his fingers into a fist.

  Amber’s entire body tensed up.

  “You
’re the one to blame for this whole mess, aren’t you?” Shane said. “It was you who came up with the plan to screw me over, right?”

  Amber was silent. She stared at that fist, suspended over her stomach like a guillotine blade.

  “Fine, don’t answer,” Shane said. “I know it was you. Ross is too damn stupid to come up with something like that. Three weeks I spent, planning out that bank robbery. Had every last detail covered. And then you backstabbing, cocksucking, shit-for-brains bastards screw me.”

  Amber was barely listening. She couldn’t look away from his hovering fist.

  “Please . . . don’t,” she said.

  “Don’t what?”

  “Don’t . . . don’t hit me.”

  “Don’t hit you? You mean, like this?”

  Shane smashed his fist down onto her stomach, tearing open the cut, ripping away the dried blood clotted over the wound. The pain was instant and agonizing. The fall at the hospital had been bad; this was a hundred times worse, unlike anything she’d ever felt.

  She screamed at the top of her lungs, a primal yell, all of the air leaving her body in a rush.

  Shane smashed his fist down on her stomach again, the impact like that of a sledgehammer. Fresh blood splotched onto his fist.

  Amber screamed again. Her vision started to cloud. She felt light-headed. Through her haze, she saw Shane raise his fist again. Before he lowered it, she passed out.

  Blackness.

  * * *

  There was no money.

  Over and over, the phrase repeated in Karen’s head. Earlier, she’d held on to a faint bit of hope that they could end this without anyone getting injured or worse. Now that hope had been shattered. It felt like they had nothing. No plan. No next steps. No idea what would happen.

  “What are you going to do, Teddy?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, slumped in his chair, lips curled into a frown, eyes empty. “Like I said, I was just trying to buy more time. Trying to stop him from killing us all.”

  “There has to be something.”

  “If he’s not here, he can’t harm Joshua. Can’t harm you, either. That’s the main thing. If I can get him away from here, once we’re on the other side of town, maybe I can escape or—”

  The screaming started.

  Even from a room away, Amber’s screams were so loud that they made Karen cringe. There was pure pain, pure agony, behind the screams. She didn’t even want to imagine what could make someone scream like that.

  The screams didn’t last long—not even a minute—before they abruptly stopped. There was only silence from the other room. Somehow, the sudden silence was worse than the screams.

  Karen looked down at the scalpel. Still in her sock. Still out of reach. She pulled her arms and feet against the zip ties, tried to twist and contort her body in the chair. But with her arms secured to the armrests, it was impossible to reach the scalpel. She wasn’t even close.

  “What are you doing?” Teddy asked.

  “There’s a scalpel in my sock,” she said. “I took it from the hospital earlier. Hid it. It’s still there.”

  “After I leave, keep trying to grab it,” Teddy said. “You have to get it and cut yourself free. Do the same for Joshua. And get out of here. Go straight to the police.”

  “But what about you?” Joshua said.

  “I’ll try to stall on the way to the dealership. Take up as much time as I can. Maybe one of you can get free before we arrive. Call the police and send them to the dealership.”

  “But what if we can’t get free?” Joshua asked. “What if the police don’t make it in time?”

  “I don’t know,” Teddy said. “I wish I had an answer. Let’s just hope things work out. Hope and pray.”

  Shane’s heavy footsteps rumbled down the hallway. He entered the room a moment later and looked at them. One of his hands was covered in blood. He slowly ran the hand along the front of his hooded sweatshirt, wiping the blood onto it.

  “Did y’all hear those screams?” he asked.

  Karen nodded.

  “Pretty loud, right?”

  She nodded again.

  “You remember those screams,” Shane said. He looked at Teddy. “If I don’t get my money, if this doesn’t work out like you say it will, the person screaming is gonna be you.”

  Shane looked at Karen.

  “And you.”

  He looked at Joshua.

  “And you. Think I can make you scream like that, slugger? Trust me, I can.”

  He looked at Ross, still slumped in the corner, unconscious. Amber’s screams hadn’t woken him.

  “See, that’s the difference between me and Ross,” Shane said. “He’ll run his mouth, act like he’s bad and all, but when it comes to it, he’s all talk. Not me. I’ll get nasty if I got to. Believe me when I say this: if I don’t get my money, I will kill everyone in this room. And I will make it hurt.”

  He wiped his hand on his sweatshirt a final time.

  “We leave in an hour,” he said to Teddy. “We go into the dealership. You get me the money. And I leave. I don’t want no surprises or—”

  Shane stopped. Outside, there was a low, crunching noise. Distant, barely audible.

  “The hell was that?” he asked.

  Karen shook her head. Shane walked over to the only window in the room and glanced outside.

  “Shit,” he said, spitting out the word. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  He ran out of the room and thundered down the hallway.

  “What’s going on?” Joshua said.

  “I don’t know,” Karen said.

  But she had an idea. That low sound she’d heard from outside was a familiar one. It sounded like a set of tires driving over the gravel driveway.

  A moment later, Shane stormed back into the room. He had a different look on his face, wide-eyed and frantic.

  “What is it?” Karen said.

  “The cops are here,” Shane said.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Shane’s eyes darted back and forth, from Karen to Teddy to Joshua. He grabbed the gun from the waistband of his pants.

  “The hell is going on?” he said. He stared at Karen. “Did you call the cops?”

  “No,” Karen said.

  “Did you call them?”

  “No, we’ve been tied up the entire time.”

  “Why they here?”

  “I don’t know. I talked to them earlier. Maybe they have more questions.”

  The doorbell rang. Shane frantically looked around the room.

  “Keep quiet,” he said to them. “Maybe they’ll leave.”

  “The cars are out front,” Karen said. “The house lights are on. They’ll know someone is here.”

  Shane cursed. Looked down at the gun, over at the window, down the hallway, his head on a swivel. He walked over to Karen and leaned in close.

  “I’m gonna cut you loose,” he said. “See what the cops want, and get rid of them.”

  She nodded.

  “I’m staying back here. My gun’s gonna be pointed at the kid the entire time. The cops start looking around the house, they start to suspect something’s up, I will kill the kid and take out as many people as I can. If I’m going down, I’m taking everyone with me. Understand?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “I am not messing around here. This ain’t no empty threat. You don’t get rid of them, and this will turn into a bloodbath. I got nothing to lose here. Believe me when I say that.”

  The doorbell rang again. Shane grabbed a Swiss Army knife from his pocket and cut through the zip ties cinched around Karen’s wrists and ankles. He pulled her out of the chair and lightly shoved her over to the door.

  “Go,” Shane said. “Get them to leave.”

  Karen walked down the hallway. Her mind was
racing, her hands trembling as if she had some sort of palsy. Everything felt so chaotic. The police—she couldn’t believe the police were here. There were a million possible explanations. Maybe there’d been a security camera she was unaware of at the hospital. Maybe someone had seen her breaking Amber out. Maybe Carmella had decided to confess everything. Maybe Brian had caught a glimpse of her before she locked him in the room.

  She reached the door just as the doorbell rang a third time. She looked out the peephole. The same detective she’d talked with at the hospital was outside. Franny.

  She took a deep breath and opened the door.

  “You’re home,” Franny said. He wore a button-up tucked into a pair of jeans. Maybe it was in her mind, but his eyes seemed harder than before. More suspicious. Like he knew something was up.

  “You’re a tough woman to get ahold of,” Franny said. “I’ve been calling you constantly.”

  “My phone broke, actually,” Karen said.

  “Glad I caught you.”

  “Is something the matter?”

  “You could say that, yeah,” Franny said. “I’d like to discuss a few things with you. Can I come in?”

  She couldn’t think straight enough to come up with a reason to say no. She led the detective inside and he sat down on the couch. Karen sat on the recliner across from him. She kept her ears tuned for any sort of noise from the other room, just down the hallway. All it would take was any sort of noise for the situation to turn into a disaster.

  “I’m sure you’ve heard about everything that happened,” Franny said. “The lady being broken out of the hospital, all that.”

  “I heard. A few coworkers told me about it.”

  “Heck of a thing, isn’t it?” he said. “We think it was her husband who pulled it off. The nurse who was moving her described the man who attacked her. Lanky, rough. Vague description, but it sounds like her husband.”

  Karen nodded. So Carmella had stuck to the story.

  “Now that she’s disappeared, this has turned into a big deal,” Franny continued. “Much more than some random shooting. And that brings me to why I’m here. I have a few more questions about the story you told me earlier.”