Never Say Never

by Taylor Holloway

  Paul: Dude it’s too late to be thinking like that. We made a deal. You can’t just go back on it. I don’t want the money back.

  Isaac: This briefcase isn’t full of money is it? You’re fucking framing me.

  Paul: That’s right. Now get yourself up to Canada and quit your griping. This benefits you as much as it benefits me.

  Isaac: Oh really? What, because I won’t get arrested for murder? You’re a prick.

  Paul: Ok, so we’re all good now, right? You aren’t going to call me again, is that understood?

  Isaac: You’re such an asshole. I never should have trusted you. I’d turn myself in right now except that it would make me look fucking guilty.

  The recording cut off.

  “Fuck,” I said eloquently.

  “Yep. We’re barking up the wrong tree,” Murray replied. “Flint and I are on our way to the mansion now. We’ve got what we need to arrest Paul now.”

  “I’ll meet you there.”

  I hung up and called Eva. She didn’t answer.

  40

  Eva

  I awoke in total darkness. At first, I thought I was dead, but of course I wasn’t. It was just dark. My hands were bound behind my back, and my ankles were tied up as well. I was in a car trunk. At least, I was pretty sure that’s where I was. I could smell gasoline, and the sound of a motor running although it didn’t feel like the vehicle was moving.

  My heart was beating so hard and so fast that it took a long time before I was able to think or move—at least move within the confines of the trunk with my hands bound. It was fairly easy to get the rope around my ankles undone. It was a weird foamy type rope, more like cord than rope. Getting the ties around my hands took much longer, but I eventually got my hands unbound as well. Unfortunately, I was still trapped in the trunk.

  Whatever car I was in, it wasn’t the new variety where there was an internal handle to the trunk to help free people who accidentally (or intentionally) got stuck in the trunk. I managed to kick out the tail light on the car to stick my hand out, but that didn’t help me escape. Awkwardly, I rotated my body so I could look out the little hole.

  The car was still sitting in the garage. And all the cars in the garage were sitting with their engines running.

  In my hallucinations earlier, I’d been reminded of my organic chemistry professor, Dr. Xiao. He was one of my favorite professors, despite the fact that his subject was the world’s biggest weed out class for premed and nursing students. I was reminded of him again as I took in the rows of running cars.

  “With every breath you take your red blood cells bind with oxygen,” Dr. Xiao had taught us. “The danger of carbon monoxide is that it also binds with your red blood cells, but it takes the place of oxygen since it’s ‘stickier’ than regular oxygen. If there’s too much carbon monoxide in the environment, your body cannot access the oxygen it needs. This is especially terrifying because carbon monoxide is odorless and invisible, just like oxygen. The first symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning are nausea and headache. Then unconsciousness. Once unconscious, tissue damage continues until death.”

  My blood ran cold. I needed to get out of this car. Immediately. Otherwise I was going to suffocate and die.

  I tried screaming and kicking against the trunk first. Although I knew the chances of someone hearing me were slim, it seemed like a reasonable first step. Maybe Thomas had gone in search of me? I screamed for a few minutes, but it felt so pointless that I stopped.

  My head was starting to feel fuzzy and dizzy, and I prayed it was because of the screaming in an enclosed space and not the carbon monoxide. The problem was that I had no idea how long I’d been locked in the trunk, and no idea how long the cars had been running.

  As I lay helplessly in the trunk, it occurred to me that the back seat was right behind me. I angled around again and started kicking. If I could push through to the inside of the car, I could get free.

  At first, I was able to kick constantly, but I quickly tired and had to take breaks. My regular workouts did not include this particular exercise. My quads and calves were burning. I felt the seats beginning to loosen and make noise, but I was getting tired. My head was starting to hurt.

  The only noise was the thrum of the engines and the slamming of my pulse in my ears. I was getting really tired, but I kept kicking furiously. Paul was not going to win. I had no idea where he’d gotten to, but he wasn’t going to get away with locking me in a car trunk to die.

  I managed to break through to the backseat just as I was thinking I couldn’t go on. The seat in front of me creaked loudly and then folded over. A rush of air that was at least fresher than what was in the trunk hit my face and I sucked down the oxygen as best I could. Reinvigorated, I crawled into the back seat and tried the door. It was unlocked.

  I fell out of the backseat and onto the ground of the garage in a moment of triumph. But my head felt heavy and the world was beginning to look like something shot by the cinematographers of the Blair Witch Project. Things were refusing to stay in focus.

  My eyes darted to the door of the garage. It was so far away. At least a hundred feet. I wasn’t sure I could crawl all the way there. But I had to try. No one knew I was here. No one was coming to help me. This was all on me.

  With every foot I dragged myself forward, I felt dizzier. My wrists hurt, my ankles hurt, my head hurt. Everything hurt. But I kept going.

  I kept thinking of Charlie. His face when he smiled. His hands on my body. The way he smelled when I lay on his chest at night, and the feeling of my hands in his hair. I refused to let our story end like this. Even when I thought I couldn’t continue, I kept crawling.

  Even when my lungs burned, and my eyesight failed until I was almost blind, I kept crawling to get back to him. It was almost enough. I was only a few feet from the door when I tried to shove my knees forward again and they just wouldn’t move. I was on my hands and knees and I fell down on my elbows on the concrete, staring at where I knew the door lay in front of me and seeing nothing but a pinpoint as my vision narrowed down to a little tunnel.

  Knowing that once I was unconscious my chances of survival dropped precipitously, there was nothing I could do to fight it. There wasn’t enough oxygen left in the room. I couldn’t think. I could barely move.

  I knew that closing my eyes this time would probably mean they wouldn’t open again. So, I fought to keep awake. I was almost asleep when I heard the squealing, metallic noise of alarms start to blare.

  41

  Charlie

  Murray and Flint beat me to the Durant mansion. They wanted Paul. All I wanted was to make sure that Eva was safe. She wasn’t picking up her phone.

  Rationally, I knew she was probably just in the shower, so I tried to remain calm as I walked at a fairly normal pace through the darkened hallways of the mansion to her room. I knocked. Nothing. Knocked. Nothing.

  Unwilling to wait another moment to make sure she was safe and not really caring if I had to pay for three new locks, I kicked the door open and entered. People think there’s was no advantage to growing up in poverty, but they’re wrong. I’d seen plenty of people breaking into locked apartments to steal stuff and hurt people. The trick is to kick in the center of the door, just to left of the lock. If you tried to slam a door with your shoulder, you’ll just dislocate it. It was all about kicking in the right spot.

  Once inside, I found that Eva’s apartment was empty. Fearing the worst, I ran back toward the garage where Murray and Flint should be. If I didn’t find Eva soon, I was going to have a fucking heart attack. Every creak and groan of the creepy old mansion was making me jumpy.

  It was this elevated level of anxiety that prompted me to nearly deck Flint in the hallway when he greeted me with the offer of a fist bump. Instead, I wheezed,

  “Eva’s missing!”

  “Your girlfriend?” Murray asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Well I’ve got more bad news.”

  “There’s no such thing
as worse news than that. Where’s Paul?”

  “That’s the news. The carbon monoxide detectors in the hallways outside the garage are going off. The place is filled with carbon monoxide. We already called the fire department and backup. Paul’s not in his room next door, we already checked there. Assuming he didn’t commit suicide in the garage, he must be hiding out somewhere in the mansion.”

  The sound of a car alarm going off in the garage surprised all three of us. Not really understanding either the danger or what I was doing, I rushed forward. She might not be in there, but if she was, I had to know before it was too late.

  “Wait! Charlie it’s too dangerous to go in there!” Murray yelled.

  Dangerous was fucking right. Carbon monoxide was deadly. One time when I was a kid, a neighbor killed himself by carbon monoxide poisoning. His wife died when she found him in the garage. Their whole house filled up with it. Even their dog died. I should’ve know better.

  But my body was way ahead of my mind. I was already opening the door and pulling Eva out of the car by the time Murray caught up to me. She was weirdly pink, but she was half-conscious and definitely breathing. The car alarm had been a cry for help. Murray helped me get her into the hallway. As soon as she was out of the carbon monoxide, she started coughing.

  “Eva?” I asked, shaking her gently when she tried to close her eyes. “Eva, can you hear me?”

  “Paul, it’s Paul,” she whispered when her dilated pupils focused and then constricted in my direction. “Charlie, it’s Paul.” Her voice was hoarse, like she had laryngitis.

  “I know, Eva. We’re here to arrest him.”

  I looked at the marks on her wrists and had a horrifying flashback to the pictures of Edith from the silver autopsy table. She’d been tied up just like Edith had. I glanced at her ankles and saw the same marks. Until that moment, I’d never felt bloodlust before. Murray took off into the mansion to scout for Paul, leaving Flint to babysit me and Eva.

  “What did he do to you?” I asked Eva.

  “He chloroformed me, tied me up, and locked me in the trunk of a car to die of fucking poisoning.” Her personality, and her obvious anger, was rapidly returning. Nothing in that moment could have pleased me more. Her color was starting to return to normal as well.

  “You got out?” I rocked her in my arms, glorying in her foul mood as she glared a look that said ‘obviously’. Eva was alive. She could be as grumpy as she wanted to be.

  “I got the ties off and kicked my way out of the trunk. But I couldn’t get out of the garage. So instead I triggered a car alarm.”

  Eva was so brave and so smart. I was the one trembling, not her. I hugged her to me and she surrendered, whimpering against my neck and held on just as tightly. A strange bulge on her torso surprised me, and I pulled up her shirt enough to see her concealed revolver. She had remembered.

  “Too bad you didn’t just shoot him.” I said to her, and she rolled her eyes and laughed a little humorless bark of laughter.

  “I know. I missed my opportunity.”

  The sirens from the fire truck interrupted our conversation and Flint went out to greet them and get help for Eva. The cavalry was here. Flint mumbled before he left that Eva needed to be evaluated and probably given some oxygen.

  I continued to hold Eva and rock her, just reveling in being near her. She was absolutely filthy from crawling around in the garage, but I didn’t care. Moments later, several firefighters came running, one with an oxygen tank and mask. Flint was following at a more sedate pace, but he had booked it out to fetch them, so I was willing to overlook it. I took a deep breath, thankful beyond all measure that Eva was alright. She lay in my arms while the firefighters put the mask on her and seemed to be totally content not to move for a while.

  A huge bang like an explosion rang out through the mansion as the firefighters were making some awkward conversation to lighten the mood. Flint’s radio crackled moments afterward.

  “Flint, where the fuck are you? Get your ass over here. He’s got the other nurse held hostage in his room.” Murray’s voice sounded furious.

  Eva sat up straight, ripping the oxygen mask off despite the protestations of the firefighters. “Thomas?” Her voice was terrified. “Oh my god, Thomas!”

  I pulled Eva’s revolver out and gestured to Flint. “Come on. I know the way.”

  “Wait! Charlie!” Eva called, before the firefighters fitted the mask back onto her face while she fought. Her next words were muffled, and I was already around the corner with Flint and heading toward the impressionistic landscape hallway where Thomas lived. The gun felt heavy in my hand. I’d never fired one before, but if I got the opportunity, Paul was a dead man.

  42

  Eva

  “No, get that thing off me. You have to listen. This is an emergency. He needs to know that gun isn’t loaded,” I screeched, pulling the mask from my face with both hands. The firefighter trying to shove the mask back on my face sat back on her heels in shock. Her white blond eyebrows slid up her delicate forehead and she stared at her partner, a man with a heavy mustache and a tattoo of dragon on his forearm.

  “Shit,” they said in unison. They were the ultimate in odd couples. They looked like a fairy and Hells angel.

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you!” I was nearly apoplectic. Without the two of them holding me down, I would have been halfway to Charlie by now. Assuming I could walk, that is. There was no telling what the neurological damage of the chloroform and the carbon monoxide could be. But I was trying really hard not to think about that; I had much more pressing concerns.

  “Ok, ok. Hold on. We can radio them. Put your mask back on.” The woman fumbled with the little unit on her belt loop to get to the right frequency. “Put it on and keep it on,” she threatened, pointing at the oxygen mask. She was even smaller than me, but I obeyed.

  “Dispatch, I need you to pass information to the PD on call out at the Durant Mansion.”

  A crackly voice echoed back to her a moment later.

  “You can dial them in directly. They’re on frequency Yellow 3,” said the disembodied voice.

  “Thanks,” the firefighter said to the Dispatch voice, tuning her radio unit into the right frequency. “Come in PD. This is the Fire. Come in please.”

  “Hello Fire. This is Murray with PD. This isn’t really the greatest time to chat.”

  “Murray, the civilian with you has an unloaded revolver.”

  “Well fuck. That’s very not good.”

  “What’s that?” The firefighter blinked at the strange turn of phrase. I could surmise that Murray had breached radio protocol. Somehow, I was not surprised that Murray wasn’t a model police detective.

  “Is Eva down there with you?”

  “Is Eva the carbon monoxide victim?”

  I grabbed the receiver out of the woman’s hand, ripping the oxygen mask off again and making the male firefighter sigh and give up. He stomped off grumbling about seeing where the backup was.

  “I’m right here,” I told Murray.

  “You need to get down here right now.”

  I exchanged a look with the female firefighter. “You aren’t going anywhere without me, this tank, and that mask.” Her voice was as firm as any nurse’s. I liked her and hated her simultaneously.

  “Well let’s go then.”

  The short journey to the living quarters took longer than it ever had with the addition of a rolling oxygen tank and a tagalong firefighter. No wonder Alexander hated his. These things were awful. I tried to convince myself the stiffness in my muscles was not indicative of any cognitive damage and due entirely to be locked in a trunk.

  “This place is fucking creepy,” the firefighter said as we walked. I didn’t have it in me to disagree.

  When we arrived at Thomas’ door to find Flint and Murray poised on either side of it. The door was hanging awkwardly off its hinges. There were splinters coming out of where the handle ought to be.

  “What happened?�
�� I whispered in horror, lifting the mask up off my face enough to ask a question.

  Murray grimaced. He looked vaguely guilty already.

  “Charlie went in there to negotiate for Thomas. He insisted. He’s talking to him now, but he thinks he has a gun as a backup and obviously…” His voice trailed off awkwardly.

  I slapped Murray across the face. I’d never slapped a soul before, but Murray just looked so obscenely slap-able at that second. “How dare you let him go in there! You’re the goddamned police officer.” The words came out in a furious whisper.

  “I didn’t see anything,” the female firefighter said.

  “Me either,” Flint grunted.

  Murray scowled but also looked genuinely ashamed. “Fine, blame me. Whatever. I probably should have sat on him or something, but he was determined to go. Look what he did to the damn door. We need to get him out of there. Paul has a big ass kitchen knife. No gun that I could see. He seems liked he means business with that knife though.”

  “Murray!” Charlie’s voice called from the depths of Thomas’ apartment. We all swiveled our heads to stare at the doorframe. “Murray! Paul is going to release Thomas in just a second. Don’t shoot him. Ok?” Charlie’s voice sounded curiously calm and free of tension.

  “Ok. I won’t shoot Thomas. Are all three of you coming out now? I need to know what to expect.”

  “No. Paul and I aren’t coming out yet. Just Thomas. I’m still negotiating with Paul.”

  “Listen, Eva,” Murray said in an urgent whisper. “There was a reason I called you over here and it wasn’t, so you could slap me and scold me. You and Thomas both speak French, right?”

  “Yeah.” I could see where he was going, and I didn’t like it.

  “Does Paul speak French?”

  “No.”

  “Good, because I’ve got a plan.”

  43