Chapter 11
Demon
I’minthehighestspirits imaginable. I’m almost delirious and I’m at least sixty percent sure it’s not from being cum drunk. We didn’t get much sleep and I admit I feel a little sluggish, but I don’t care because I’m going home today. I’ve just had a long shower, sans supervision, and when I come out of the bathroom, I see that my clothes have been laid out on the bed for me. My own clothes. No more baggy-ass sweatpants and cheap tanks.
This is not a drill: I am going home!
Saint is sitting at the dining table with his laptop open and is wearing a headset. He looks like he’s deep into Final Stage Kidnapper Mode, so I make toast and pour myself a cup of coffee. As I take the first bitter sip, I glance over at him and think how lovely it is that the next time I see him, he’s going to be wearing an orange jumpsuit. I just know he’s going to look disgruntled as fuck. His eyes will be black from rage, and he’ll be scowling. The jumpsuit will be stretched tightly across his broad chest and will nip in around his hips. It will probably be a marked improvement from the abomination that is his current sense of style. He probably won’t look too bad. He'll probably look hot as hell.
Shit.
No! That’s enough. That’s more than enough of that. No more thinking of him like that. Not now. Not ever. Enough.
“…then check again,” he says, speaking into his headset. There’s a pause, and a quick look of irritation on his face. “Isaid, check again. Check the family, check the location, check the radio chatter and check the buyer. You know the drill. I don’t care how many times you’ve done it. Check it again.Allof it.”
He looks insanely stern. He really does. I can tell he takes his kidnapping seriously. Way seriously. I’d kind of like to mock him for it, but a quick burst of nerves flares in my belly when it occurs to me that aside from when they took me, today is probably the most dangerous part of this whole kidnapping business. There are so many things that could go wrong. Police. Money. Bystanders being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Everything is fine,I tell myself.This is a standard kidnapping for ransom. Nothing more. It’s just bad luck that I was the victim. It’s not about me, it’s about money.
“Don’t forget all that,” he says, motioning to my jewelry on the nightstand.
“It’s called jewelry, Asshole. It’s calledaccessorizing. Look it up.”
He ignores me and keeps tapping away furiously on his laptop. I sit on the sofa for a long time. I flick through channels, but I can’t concentrate. I’ve been waiting for ages.
Fuck, being kidnapped is boring!
How long is all this supposed to take?
He taps his headset and says, “What?” He’s quiet for a while. Dead quiet. The mood in the room plummets. My belly contracts again. Harder and tighter than it did before. “That can’t be right. Send me what you’ve got.”
“Is everything oka…” he raises his hand and silences my question.
He yanks his headset off and starts tapping his keyboard harder and faster than before. His posture, which is usually perfect, is bowed. His eyes dart back and forth across the screen. He closes them and murmurs, “Fuck.”
I don’t need a qualification as a behavioral analyst to know that wasn’t a goodfuck. Something is wrong. Seriously wrong.
His phone lights up and vibrates. He snatches it to his ear and is quiet for a moment. Even sitting where I’m sitting, I can hear that the person making the call isn’t happy. Their voice comes through the speaker in quick, strident bursts.
“Mm,” says Saint, once and then twice. The voice on the line says more things. Many more things. They speak or yell, at length. Saint cuts them off at last, “I’ll handle it.” It seems like they have more to say about that. “Isaid, I’ll handle it.” Saint gets to his feet, I’m on mine, too. As he rises, this awful, intense look of calm washes his features. He looks at me for a long time. Fear grips my insides and digs its claws into me. He doesn’t break eye contact. He simply says “I’ll see you when you get here,” and hangs up the phone.
“What’s going on? What’s wrong? What’s…”
He doesn’t even raise his hand to silence me this time. He gives me a look that slices straight through my larynx and renders me mute. “The job’s fucked. The buyer’s in the wind. I don’t have time to explain. I’m going to need you to keep quiet, and I’m going to need you to do as I say.”
I nod my head, eyes and mouth wide open.
He opens the cupboard under the sink in the kitchen and moves the cleaning supplies roughly to the side. He pulls out a red toolbox. It’s metal and locked with a combination lock. He unlocks it. His hands are steady. For a mad second that gives me hope.
That must mean something, right?
He opens the toolbox, takes out a handgun, checks it and loads it quickly, then shoves it into the waistband of his pants.
Oh, fuck. That’s bad, right?
Next, he takes out a key and hands it to me.
“Bathroom, now. Lock the door. Lie down in the tub and don’t open the door until I tell you to.”
