1
6:44 p.m., Wednesday, October 30
Riley was dumped unceremoniously onto the floor and immediately began fighting her way free. They’d taken her upstairs. The music and giggling were much fainter.
Someone whipped the material off her head, and she fought to get a full breath into her lungs.
It was dark. So it was the smell that hit her first, and she knew exactly where they’d taken her. The Creepy, Smelly Closet.
She had to keep her wits about her, Riley reminded herself. Any second now, the cops would arrive and the drugs would wear off. Nick would break out of his office and find her in no time. And if she kept the bad guys occupied up here with her, everyone would be safe.
The overhead light snapped on.
“Youidiot.”
Riley blinked, trying to bring the woman into focus. She had a faint Southern accent. Not thebless your heartgenteel kind but thewrastle gators in the swampkind.
“Here we go again,” said the man who’d carried her upstairs. “You told me to bring you Dolly. I brought you Dolly. Nothing I ever do is good enough for you.”
The woman gestured angrily at Riley with the gun she held. “Does she look like the right Dolly Parton to you? I swear, I should have divorced your dumb ass years ago.”
The man sneered. “Well, good news for you because my cousin Otis never got ordained, so we ain’t never been married.” It was Zorro. The guest who had been handing out cups of punch.
And the woman peeled off her Guy Fawkes mask and glared at Zorro.
“Lurlene and Royce, I presume?” Riley scooched up against the back wall of the closet. She could have sworn she heard a hissing noise come from the grate.
“Great.” Lurlene threw up her hands. “Second Dolly knows our names. That means that tramp already opened her big mouth.”
“What’s the big deal?” Royce asked, dragging off his Zorro hat.
“Thebig dealis now we have to kill them all.”
“Uh, can I interject here?” Riley raised a hand. “I’m sure we can work something out so no one needs to die.”
Lurlene beaned her with a roll of painter’s tape. “Shut her up, and then tape her hands and feet together,” she ordered Royce.
“She ain’t goin’ nowhere,” he argued.
“Well, I don’t want her screaming or trying to run away when we kill her.”
“Have you always been this bloodthirsty?” he wondered.
“Yes! You just haven’t paid any attention to me for thirty years!”
“It sounds like you two are under a lot of stress,” Riley said, frantically searching for a way to connect with her captors. That’s what her favorite show,Made It Out Alive, always said. Well, that and don’t ever let yourself be taken to a second location, which she’d already screwed up. “Running your own business isn’t easy.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake. Shut your damn trap, whoever the hell you are,” Lurlene snarled, pointing the gun in Riley’s face. “Tape her up good, Royce.”
“Don’t get your panties in a twist.”
“If you think forone secondI’m going back to scrubbing country club toilets or worse, you got a rock in your head where God shoulda put a brain. We have a billion dollars on the line here. I’m not walkin’ away from yacht money.”
“All right. All right. No need to lose your dang mind again. If you want Dolly dead, she’s dead,” Royce muttered. He grabbed Riley’s hands roughly and wrapped the tape around her wrists several times.
“Wait,” she said. But the next piece of tape covered her mouth. Which was a stupid, amateur mistake to make seeing as how she could just reach up with her bound hands and remove the tape. But she decided to keep that information to herself until she could use it to her advantage.
There was a very distinct hiss behind the grate.
