by K. J. Emrick
Like I was saying before, the suburban areas of Detroit look more like rural America than part of the city. You can park along the side of the street without feeding a meter. Nobody looks at you funny for leaving your car and walking away from it. Nobody’s likely to bother your car, either, which is something you can’t always say in the downtown areas.
“Wait here,” I tell Harry as I shut off the engine. “I’ll be back, one way or the other.”
“One more bit of advice?” he offers, shifting around in his seat to face me.
“Sure. Shoot.”
“Perhaps you would be better served by doing a reconnaissance around the house first. Look in the windows. See what might be in there. Andrea has already boobytrapped one house with the intention of killing. There’s nothing to say she won’t do it again.”
That was a good idea. One I’d already had myself, but I appreciated his concern. My military training had shown me over and over the wisdom of knowing what sort of mess you were getting into before you stepped into it. “How’d you get so smart about things like this, Harry?”
His smile shows off the white of his teeth. “As I told you, my lady. I was a warrior.”
“You are Harris?” I say, imitating the way he’d introduced himself to me.
“Exactly so. And you, my lady, are Sidney Stone.”
“Damn straight.”
He chuckles, but his smile slowly fades away. “I can’t come with you. I can’t help. Not unless you want to drag my carpet around with you. It’s too far…”
“I know. Too far for you to be away from the rug. I understand.”
As much as I would love to have a seven-foot-tall muscular bodyguard with me, even carrying his rug with me across the lawn to drop it at the front door would take away any element of surprise I might have. Plus, I’d already used up my three wishes. He’d done enough just by being here with me and letting me talk out my strategy with him. Sometimes a girl just needs a friend to be there for them, even when they can’t be there every step of the way. I put my hand on his arm, feeling the coolness of his wrist cuffs and the warmth of his skin. Just one more thing to take care of before I did this.
“Harry, I need your sash.”
His brow furrows up in confusion as I point to that nice silk belt around his waist. “You need… my sash, my lady?”
“Yeah, take it off, mister.” At the same time, I unzip my jeans and undo the button.
His eyebrows crawl their way up his forehead.
“Don’t get any ideas. And no peeking. Just give me the sash.”
He does, and after a few minutes I’m ready. Pants done back up, mind on straight, focused on finding Katarina.
When I close my door, he poofs himself into the backseat, back into his rug. I lock the door, but I guess it was kind of unnecessary. Not just because of the rural area, but because I now had my very own genie theft deterrent system.
This place is in an otherwise empty stretch of the street, with no houses on either side. The front yard is small, and bordered by trees all around, just like I remembered. I stop at the edge of the tree line, while I’m still on the sidewalk, to peer around from the shadows at the house.
Two stories tall. White vinyl siding that has green mildew growing around the bottom edges. A lawn overgrown with weeds and crab grass. The For Sale sign by the front walk is leaning over, faded so much that I could barely make out the phone number of the realtor. The house sat so close to the road that a brief sprint would get me there in two seconds, tops. The lot is bigger out back than in front. A nice backyard that would have room enough for a swing set. Room enough to raise children… the children that Andrea would never have with Barlow.
In the upstairs window, pink flowered curtains were drawn tight. The exact same ones I’d seen when I was here last. The ones in the room where Katarina was being held captive.
This was definitely the place.
Deep breath, and then I run through the tall grasses to the corner of the house. There weren’t any windows on the side, and I could stand here without being seen. The two windows at the front were wide and probably gave a great view of the interior when they didn’t have their curtains closed. It made sense when I thought about it. Andrea was keeping a woman hostage here in this house where no one was supposed to be living. She certainly wasn’t going to let just anyone driving by look in and see her here.
Which left the back of the house as the only possibility for me to do the reconnaissance Harry and I were talking about.
Slipping past a gray brick chimney, I move to the back corner, and peer around into the backyard, where the rusty swing set I remembered stood abandoned just like the rest of the house. There were two windows here as well, one on either side of the back door. Leaning out further, as far as I dared, I saw that the window on this side wasn’t covered up. It looked in on a bare room with no furniture, and empty shelves, and a single standing lamp in the corner…
She’s there… duck back…
Too late. My future-sense told me what my eyes have already seen. Andrea Michaelson is standing right there, in the middle of the room, holding a pistol aimed at the window.
Aimed at me.
My military training and my work as a private investigator have both familiarized me with different kinds of firearms. This is a small caliber revolver, eight shots in the cylinder. It’s meant more for defense than for killing but if a bullet pierces into your brain then it really doesn’t matter what caliber it is. There’s no coming back from dead.
So. The time for waiting is done. Time to put my plan into action.
I raise my hands up over my head, stepping out further, letting Andrea see that I wasn’t any kind of threat. “Hi, Andrea. My name is Sidney.” I had to raise my voice to be heard though the closed window. Keeping my eyes on hers, I step right up to the glass. “Barlow sent me. He wants to talk.”
Her expression never changes, and that gun is still pointing at my chest. Definitely a .22 caliber. It would still pierce my flesh. I’m not Supergirl.
I could have tried to run, but there was still the chance that she would get off a shot that would connect with some part of my body I’d prefer to keep free of holes. Besides. This was actually my plan all along. I would have liked to catch her by surprise first, and look around a little bit more first, but confronting her with Barlow’s name was the plan right from the start.
So far I think it’s going great.
Well. Except for that pistol pointing at me. Other than that… yeah.
After a moment, Andrea cocks the hammer back on her revolver. With the gun in the ready fire position, she steps right up to the window, and thumps the barrel against the glass. “Barlow sent you?”
Good. Now she’s talking. See, the plan’s working. “Yes. Barlow sent me. He wants to talk.”
“Why didn’t he come himself?”
“He’s worried you might still be mad at him. I mean, you did blow up your house. You understand, right?”
Her lip curls into a sneer in a face that used to be pretty, before it got stuck in that permanent glower. “He’s still alive, then. Well. Maybe he’ll take me seriously now. What did you say your name was?”
“It’s Sidney. Sidney Stone.”
“Sidney? Isn’t that a boy’s name?”
With a sigh, I let my hands drop to my sides. “Yeah. I get that a lot.”
“Lift up your shirt,” she says to me through the window.
Okay, so we’ve moved on from matters concerning my name, I guess. “My shirt?”
“Yes. Lift up your shirt and turn around. Slowly.”
That gun never wavers as I do what she says, lifting the hem of my shirt all the way up to my bra, turning around in a circle as requested. I was expecting this. It’s the sort of thing you see in movies when they want to make sure someone doesn’t have a gun on them. People tend to believe what they see in movies. Not me. ‘Skeptic’ is my middle name.
No, not really. But it may as well be
.
When I’ve done my little pirouette, Andrea motions with the gun over toward the back door. “You go stand over there. Do not move until I open the door. I’m watching you.”
She was, too. The whole way over to the back stoop, all ten steps of it, she stays right there in that window with the gun against the glass, making sure I went exactly where she told me to. Then she quickly disappears, and I hear the faint sound of her footsteps coming through the house, room to room.
Now, you might be worried that she’s about to shoot me through the door. I think if she was just going to shoot me, she would have done it through the window. There’s a lot less chance that she’ll miss through a window, where she can actually see where I’m standing. No. She wants to hear what Barlow has to say, and she still wants to make him suffer, so she’ll invite me in at least long enough to get me to talk.
Of course, I’m not really here to set up a meeting between her and Barlow. She doesn’t know that, and I’m not going to tell her. As long as she thinks she’s got the upper hand, I’m safe. If I’m safe, I can take control of the situation.
If I can take control of the situation, Then I can save Katarina, and we can all go home alive.
The door opens, and Andrea is standing there with her gun pointed my way. That gun is really putting a monkey wrench into my carefully thought out plan. She bounces the end of it as she thinks, scrutinizing me, wondering if I’m for real.
I figure I need to give her a reason to trust me if this is going to work. “Barlow said you always told him he was a fool for dumping you. Now he knows you were right.”
The way she almost smiled told me she was happy with that. She wanted to know Barlow was miserable without her, without Katarina, without his money. As long as I fed her ego, she would want to hear more.
“Come in, Sidney.” The gun waves me into the house. “Let’s have a discussion. Just between us women.”
Can’t shoot your way in, can’t barge your way in with the police, then you need to get yourself invited inside…
Thanks Harry. Good advice.
Inside the house, Andrea leads me down a hallway, and into the kitchen where there’s a folding card table set up with two white plastic lawn chairs on either side. There’re pizza boxes stacked up on the counter. Dirty glasses in the sink. A portable television is plugged in next to the sink with its cord hanging over the edge, almost to the floor. She would have used that to listen to the news. She would know by now that her house explosion hadn’t killed anyone. I got the feeling she’d been living in here for at least a few days, maybe even a few weeks.
“Sit,” she says to me. “Sit, and I’ll tell you exactly what you’re going to tell Barlow. This is his last chance. He’s been ignoring my emails. He won’t ignore me anymore.”
“Sure, of course.” I don’t sit. Sitting is a bad defensive position. I’m in the house. Now I just need to wait for my opening. “Of course, Barlow isn’t going to go along with anything unless he knows Katarina is all right first. Shouldn’t we start with that? Maybe just let me see her?”
“I decide what we start with!” Andrea screams. It startles me, but I don’t let it show. “That man ruined my life. He will take whatever I give him and he’ll be happy about it. His little girlfriend isn’t going anywhere until he comes here, right here, and tells me to my face that he was wrong to divorce me.”
After which, no doubt, Andrea would put a bullet in him. Or all eight of the bullets in that gun. She wasn’t going to stop until she killed Barlow. Or until someone stopped her.
“Andrea,” I say, keeping my voice calm. “You are absolutely right. I’ll tell Barlow that he has to come here. What day, and what time? You tell me when you want him here and I’ll make sure he knows it’s his only option. You’re the one in control, right?”
“That’s right. Me. Not him. Me. Um.”
She blinks for a moment, obviously a little off balance by my cooperation. She hadn’t thought this far ahead. The house bomb was supposed to end it all, but now she had to make decisions based on my criteria. Tell me when. Tell me what time. I was the one in control in this room. She just didn’t realize it.
“Tomorrow,” she finally decides, but then immediately changed her mind. “No, wait. Today. I don’t want him having time to weasel his way out of this one, too. Today, at six o’clock. You go back and you tell him that. Today at six, or his immigrant whore dies. You tell him that.”
“Okay. Absolutely. Today at four o’clock. Got it.”
“No!” She shakes her head, angry that I got it wrong. “Six. Six o’clock.”
I put a confused look on my face. “It’s already after six, Andrea. It’s after noon already.”
“Not six in the morning, six at night! At night!”
“Oh. Yeah, that makes more sense. Listen,” I say, shuffling on my feet. “Can you maybe write this down for me? I don’t want to get it wrong.”
“What? It’s one time. You can’t remember one time?” The gun points at her opposite wrist now, as if she was motioning to an invisible watch. “Just tell him six o’clock.”
“Right, right. So six o’clock tomorrow morning.”
Her face flushes a deep scarlet. Her foot stamps.
The gun begins waving all over the place.
“Are you stupid!” She screams. The gun goes right. The gun goes left. “I want you to tell him to come here—” The gun goes right. “—today—” The gun goes left. “—at six o’clock!”
The gun swings right.
My eyes follow it.
The gun swings—
Before it moves too far I throw myself at her, tucking her gun arm tight under my armpit so that the gun is behind me and uselessly pointing at the wall. I drive my other forearm hard into her neck, choking off her cry of surprise and driving us both off our feet, crashing to the floor.
Believe it or not they teach you how to fall properly when you’re in the Marines. Spread your body out to absorb the impact. Protect your head. Avoid sharp objects in your landing area.
If possible, land on something soft.
Andrea’s body is nice and soft. It breaks my fall nicely.
Unfortunately she doesn’t have the same kind of training. She grunts as the floor slams into her back. Her head bounces off the ugly blue and white linoleum and I’m pretty sure I heard her teeth clack together. That move was almost flawlessly executed. My defensive tactics instructor would be proud of me for that one.
Now that Andrea’s stunned I just need to get the gun out of her hand and this whole thing will be over just like—
Duck. Duck!
Wait, what…?
My ears ring when a heavy weight comes crashing down on my head.
Oh. Duck.
Sometimes my future-sense is less than helpful.
Reflexively I roll off Andrea, my head throbbing with pain. I’m ready to defend myself from whatever was attacking me. Except, now that I can see what it is with both my eyes and my future-sense I feel stupid. Next to us, on the floor, the cracked screen and broken shell of Andrea’s little television was just clattering to a stop after bouncing off my head. A thin line of red trickled down my vision. I was bleeding from a cut to my scalp, and it was dripping into my eye.
I wiped it away angrily, mad at myself that I had let something like that distract me. From where we’d fallen, close to the countertop, Andrea had caught ahold of the dangling television cord and given it a yank, sending it toppling down on top of me. Of all the stupid, asinine things that could have happened…
Andrea was sitting up. Her eyes were still glazed over, and her mouth hung slackly open, but she was aware enough that she knew there was a gun in her hand and she knew I was her target.
“Mffliff,” she mumbles.
I don’t know what she was trying to say, but I know that gun is swinging my way again.
A dozen different courses of action flash through my head. None of them end well. Me dead, both of us dead, me dead again. Only one
thing makes sense.
Run.
My feet are under me and I bolt. Not outside. If I run away, then I won’t get a second chance at this. I run further into the house, looking for that staircase that I know will bring me upstairs to where Katarina is chained up and—hopefully—still alive.
Run.
Next to where my head had been two seconds ago, two holes blossom in the tacky wallpaper. If I’d been slower, that would have been the end of me.
The hallway ends at the wall, and there’s doors to either side, but no stairs. I stop for a minute and try to remember the layout of the house from what I’d seen from the outside but I’m all turned around. Through this door. I think.
I reach for the doorknob.
Move back.
When I do I feel the air pressure from a bullet passing less than an inch in front of my face. Considering Andrea just had her brain bounced around inside of her skull, she’s a pretty good shot with that revolver. Three bullets so far. Three from eight meant she had five shots left.
This time I go through the door at a dead run, nearly shoving it off its hinges with my shoulder. I didn’t really have a plan for what I was going to do next. Just survive. Find the staircase, get up to Katarina, get us both out…
There was no staircase in here. This was just a room, empty like the others.
It was a dead end.
I close my eyes, for just a moment, forcing my emotions down again. This was no time for panic. No time for second thoughts.
Time for plan B.
I shut the door again and stepped to the side in case maybe this time she really did want to try shooting me through it.
Then I unzipped my pants.
“Sidney! You lied to me!” Her voice is unsteady as she calls after me. “I’m going to kill you. Do you hear me? I’m going to kill you!”
Harry’s sash is tied tight around my right thigh, holding my .38 pressed against my flesh where it wouldn’t be noticed. Andrea checked my waistline for a weapon. If she’d been smart, she would have frisked me when she invited me in. She didn’t.
