Tripwire

“My name is Hobie,” he said.

She was up on tiptoes, trying to take the weight off her throat. She was starting to gag. She couldn’t remember taking a breath since she had opened the door.

“Did Chester mention me?”

Her head was tilting upward. She was staring at the ceiling. The gun was digging into her breast. It was no longer cold. The heat of her body had warmed it. She shook her head, a small urgent motion, balanced on the pressure of the hook.

“He didn’t mention me?”

“No,” she gasped. “Why? Should he have?”

“Is he a secretive man?”

She shook her head again. The same small urgent motion, side to side, the skin of her throat snagging left and right against the metal.

“Did he tell you about his business problems?”

She blinked. Shook her head again.

“So he is a secretive man.”

“I guess,” she gasped. “But I knew anyway.”

“Does he have a girlfriend?”

She blinked again. Shook her head.

“How can you be sure?” Hobie asked. “If he’s a secretive man?”

“What do you want?” she gasped.

“But I guess he doesn’t need a girlfriend. You’re a very beautiful woman.”

She blinked again. She was up on her toes. The Gucci heels were off the ground.

“I just paid you a compliment,” Hobie said. “Oughtn’t you say something in response? Politely?”

He increased the pressure. The steel dug into the flesh of her throat. One foot came free of the ground.

“Thank you,” she gasped.

The hook eased down. Her eye line came back to the horizontal and her heels touched the rug. She realized she was breathing. She was panting, in and out, in and out.

“A very beautiful woman.”

He dropped the hook away from her throat. It touched her waist. Traced down over the curve of her hip. Down over her thigh. He was staring at her face. The gun was jammed hard in her flesh. The hook turned, and the flat face of the curve lifted off her thigh, leaving just the point behind. It traced downward. She felt it slide off the silk onto her bare leg. It was sharp. Not like a needle. Like a pencil point. It stopped moving. It started back up. He was pressing with it, gently. It wasn’t cutting her. She knew that. But it was furrowing against the firmness of her skin. It moved up. It slid under the silk. She felt the metal on the skin of her thigh. It moved up. She could feel the silk of her dress bunching and gathering in the radius of the hook. The hook moved up. The back of the hem was sliding up the backs of her legs. Sheryl stirred on the floor. The hook stopped moving and Hobie’s awful right eye swiveled slowly across and down.

“Put your hand in my pocket,” he said.

She stared at him.

“Your left hand,” he said. “My right pocket.”

She had to move closer and reach over and down between his arms. Her face was close to his. He smelled of soap. She felt around to his pocket. Darted her fingers inside and closed them over a small cylinder. Slid it out. It was a used roll of duct tape, an inch in diameter. Silver. Maybe five yards remaining. Hobie stepped away from her.

“Tape Sheryl’s wrists together,” he said.

She wriggled her hips to make the hem of her dress fall down into place. He watched her do it and smiled. She glanced between the roll of silver tape and Sheryl, down on the floor.

“Turn her over,” he said.

The light from the window was catching the gun. She knelt next to Sheryl. Pulled on one shoulder and pushed on the other until she flopped over on her front.

“Put her elbows together,” he said.

She hesitated. He raised the gun a fraction, and then the hook, arms wide, a display of superior weaponry. She grimaced. Sheryl stirred again. Her blood had pooled on the rug. It was brown and sticky. Marilyn used both hands and forced her elbows together, behind her back. Hobie looked down.

“Get them real close,” he said.

She picked at the tape with her nail and got a length free. Wrapped it around and around Sheryl’s forearms, just below her elbows.

“Tight,” he said. “All the way up.”

She wound the tape around and around, up above her elbows and down to her wrists. Sheryl was stirring and struggling.

“OK, sit her up,” Hobie said.

She dragged her into a sitting position with her taped arms behind her. Her face was masked in blood. Her nose was swollen, going blue. Her lips were puffy.

“Put tape on her mouth,” Hobie said.

She used her teeth and bit off a six-inch length. Sheryl was blinking and focusing. Marilyn shrugged unhappily at her, like a helpless apology, and stuck the tape over her mouth. It was thick tape, with tough reinforcing threads baked into the silver plastic coating. It was shiny, but not slippery, because of the raised crisscross threads. She rubbed her fingers side to side across them to make it stick. Sheryl’s nose started bubbling and her eyes opened wide in panic.

“God, she can’t breathe,” Marilyn gasped.

She went to rip the tape off again, but Hobie kicked her hand away.

“You broke her nose,” Marilyn said. “She can’t breathe.”

The gun was pointing down at her head. Held steady. Eighteen inches away.

“She’s going to die,” Marilyn said.

“That’s for damn sure,” Hobie said back.

She stared up at him in horror. Blood was rasping and bubbling in Sheryl’s fractured airways. Her eyes were staring in panic. Her chest was heaving. Hobie’s eyes were on Marilyn’s face.

“You want me to be nice?” he asked.

She nodded wildly.

“Are you going to be nice back?”

She stared at her friend. Her chest was convulsing, heaving for air that wasn’t there. Her head was shaking from side to side. Hobie leaned down and turned the hook so the point was rasping across the tape on Sheryl’s mouth as her head jerked back and forth. Then he jabbed hard and forced the point through the silver. Sheryl froze. Hobie moved his arm, left and right, up and down. Pulled the hook back out. There was a ragged hole left in the tape, with air whistling in and out. The tape sucked and blew against her lips as Sheryl gasped and panted.

“I was nice,” Hobie said. “So now you owe me, OK?”

Sheryl’s breathing was sucking hard through the hole in the tape. She was concentrating on it. Her eyes were squinting down, like she was confirming there was air in front of her to use. Marilyn was watching her, sitting back on her heels, cold with terror.

“Help her to the car,” Hobie said.

10

CHESTER STONE WAS alone in the bathroom on the eighty-eighth floor. Tony had forced him to go in there. Not physically. He had just stood there and pointed silently, and Stone had scuttled across the carpet in his undershirt and shorts, with his dark socks and polished shoes on his feet. Then Tony had lowered his arm and stopped pointing and told him to stay in there and closed the door on him. There had been muffled sounds out in the office, and after a few minutes the two men must have left, because Stone heard doors shutting and the nearby whine of the elevator. Then it had gone dark and silent.

He sat on the bathroom floor with his back against the gray granite tiling, staring into the silence. The bathroom door was not locked. He knew that. There had been no fiddling or clicking when the door closed. He was cold. The floor was hard tile, and the chill was striking up through the thin cotton of his boxers. He started shivering. He was hungry, and thirsty.

He listened carefully. Nothing. He eased himself up off the floor and stepped to the sink. Turned the faucet and listened again over the trickle of water. Nothing. He bent his head and drank. His teeth touched the metal of the faucet and he tasted the chlorine taste of city water. He held a mouthful unswallowed and let it soak into his dry tongue. Then he gulped it down and turned the faucet off.