The Pleasure of Panic

by JA Huss

  “Issy,” Finn growls. “I’m not going to ask you—”

  “You will ask me again if I feel like making you, OK? So just be quiet and let me get a handle on things.”

  “You can do that after you untie me. Because I’m telling you right now, if I have to break out of these myself, you’re gonna regret it.”

  “You probably don’t even know how to break out. You told me yourself. You’re not the best FBI agent, right, Murphy?”

  “I meant,” he seethes, “that I’m not on track for promotion, Issy. Not that I was incapable of something as simple as getting myself out of zip ties. I have seen seven-year-olds get out of zip ties using their shoelaces, so let’s not pretend.”

  I think about this for a moment. He’s kinda right about the zip ties thing. I mean, you gotta have time, and be in the right position, but they’re pretty simple to get out of if you have those two things.

  “Let me out or I’ll… I’ll…”

  I almost laugh. Because he doesn’t even have a threat ready.

  “I won’t fulfill your fantasy,” he finishes.

  My guffaw is loud enough to startle him. “As if!” I yell. “I’d never let you that close to me again.”

  “You will, Ms. Grey.” He kinda snarls that part. “Because whatever is happening to you right now has nothing to do with some stupid sex game you’re playing with your lawyer.”

  “I’m not playing with him. He’s just the—” Grrrrrr.

  “He’s just the what? Facilitator?”

  “I can’t talk to you about it, I already explained that.”

  “Untie me and I’ll make sure you can talk about it. You do realize that an NDA is invalid if it involves a crime, right?”

  “That’s not even true. Lots of people sign NDAs for like… settlements. And it usually involves a crime.”

  “Those are usually civil actions. Not criminal. Look, you’re fucked if you don’t get someone on your side real quick, because this shit is happening. Someone called you in tonight. Someone set you up. Someone is out to get you. And if you want to add me to your enemies list, then great. Do that. But when you’re sitting in jail wondering where it all went wrong, I’ll come visit and remind you.”

  I let out another long breath of air—

  “Untie me.”

  —and decide that he’s right. “Fine,” I say, walking into the kitchen to grab a knife from the silverware drawer, and then walk back over to him and bend down. “But if you make any sudden moves—”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah, fuckin’ yeah. You’ll take me out. Got it.”

  Asshole.

  “Jesus Christ. Are you trying to saw my fuckin’ wrists off or what?”

  “It’s a dull knife, OK? Just hold still.”

  “Ow.”

  “I never knew the FBI hired such wussies.”

  But then the plastic snaps and I back away, because I’m pretty sure he’s lying about not trying anything.

  They all lie. That’s the nature of people.

  He’s quick too, up on his feet, reeling around to glare at me in seconds. But I’m all the way across the room.

  He smiles. It’s one of those you-fucking-bitch smiles. I recognize it. Seen it plenty of times in the past.

  But then he takes a deep breath, looks down at his wrists, holds them up as exhibit A, and says, “Just FYI, next time you zip-tie someone, don’t cut off their circulation.”

  I sneer at him.

  “Now,” he says, still glaring, but walking towards the door, “let’s go.”

  “Go where? I’m not leaving until you explain just why the hell you decided to play along with my game when you knew you weren’t part of it!”

  But he’s already punched in the key code and has the door open. “We’re going back to your place so I can regroup with my boss and you can get some sleep. You want to make that seminar tomorrow? Then let’s go.”

  Is he serious? Does he really think I’ll buy that?

  “OK,” he says. “Bye.”

  And then he walks out the door and slams it closed behind him.

  It’s only then that I realize it locks automatically. Because it beeps. Just the way it did when we came in.

  And now I’m trapped.

  “You motherfucker,” I yell.

  CHAPTER TWLEVE - FINN

  I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t enjoying myself. Issy is pounding on the door screaming every obscenity she can think of. Every threat too. But I just lean back on the hood of the car and smile.

  Teach her to zip-tie me. Teach her to kick my ass.

  Not that she kicked my ass. She didn’t. She just caught me off guard, that’s all. I look at my watch and start timing her. “Stop screaming and calm down,” I yell.

  “The hell I will!”

  “Stop screaming for five minutes and I’ll let you out. But I’m not letting you out until you calm down. And it’s a scientific fact that it takes five minutes to calm down.”

  She says something back to that, but I don’t catch it. And then she stops.

  I wait, clocking her.

  We’re at a little over four minutes and I’m feeling pretty proud of myself when the fire alarm goes off inside.

  “I bet that’s coded to the fire department, isn’t it?” she yells on the other side of the door.

  I close my eyes, pinching the bridge of my nose, then walk over to the door, punch in the code and cancel the alarm. But that unlocks the door, and she’s got it open before I realize what just happened.

  We stand there, not eye to eye because she’s tiny and I’m tall, but close enough. Glaring at each other. Daring each other. Planning seven different ways to kill each other.

  After almost a minute of silent, mutual hate, she sucks air in through her teeth and says, “Now you may take me home.”

  “I should leave your ass here on principle.”

  “I should zip-tie you back up.” She waves a fistful of zip ties at me.

  “Go ahead and try. You only get the element of surprise once.”

  “I love to be underestimated.”

  More mutual hatred.

  And then I say, “Fuck it. Get in the car.”

  I turn my back on her and decide I’m done. If she gets in, I’ll drop her ass off at her house and go find Declan. If she wants to stay out here in the goddamned forest, fine by me.

  We get in at the same time. Slam our doors at the same time. I start the car and she pushes herself up against her door, like she doesn’t want to turn her back on me, not even a little bit.

  I back up, spinning the tires in the dirt, and head back out the way we came.

  “Well, that was fucking stupid.”

  “Which part? The part where you turn into a batshit crazy person?”

  “No, the part where I waste my night with a stupid FBI agent.”

  “Well,” I say, reaching the end of the driveway and turning onto the highway. “I did fuck you pretty good.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Admit it, it was the best part of your night.”

  “Shut. Up.”

  “I mean, you came hard, right?”

  “What the fuck is wrong with you? Didn’t your mother teach you manners?”

  I laugh. “Is there a protocol for this I’m missing?”

  “Yes, it’s called shut the fuck up.”

  “Oh, I get it. I’m supposed to pretend it never happened.”

  “You don’t need to pretend,” she says. “It was… what do they call it? Oh, I know, entrapment.”

  I roll my eyes. “Jesus. For a smart person, you sure don’t know very much about the legalities of things. Like your dumb NDA. If he really did set all this up and used the FBI to play this stupid sex game with you—”

  “I’m not playing with him, I told you that.”

  “—then you have every right to report him. He can’t touch you. Really. I’m not lying. This is my job.”

  She turns her head away and stares out into the passing night.


  “And if you weren’t playing with him, then who?”

  “I thought it was you, dumbass.”

  “How do you not know who is supposed to be fucking you, Issy? How does that even make sense?”

  “It just does. You’ll have to trust me.”

  “Well, I don’t trust you. Not after you went insane back there.”

  She breathes out through her nose.

  Silence.

  “Just fuckin’ tell me what’s going on. I can help you. Will help you. And he won’t touch you. I promise.”

  “It’s not him I’m worried about, OK? He’s a stand-up guy. He’s not gonna—”

  But my laugh is so loud, she stops mid sentence. “Stand-up guy? Are you kidding me?”

  “He runs… he runs a sex fantasy fulfillment business, OK? It’s all legal.”

  “Oh, I’m sure it is.”

  “It is. He’s a lawyer, for fuck’s sake. A very fucking successful one. He wouldn’t cross any lines.”

  “Nope,” I say. “He didn’t cross any lines at all tonight.”

  “You don’t know it’s him, OK?”

  “You seem to think it’s him.”

  “That’s because none of it made sense.”

  “You thought you were gonna be taken to a sex club to be fucked in front of—”

  “Just never mind that part, OK? My friend set this up for me as a Valentine’s Day gift. To make me do something outside of work. So I went over to the tea shop to talk about it, Jordan was there, and I told him what I wanted, and then he closed my file and said…” She sighs. Loudly.

  “Said what?”

  Silence.

  “Goddammit, Issy. What did he say?”

  “He said… he said no, OK? He said no, I wasn’t right for his game, and he closed my file and walked out. There, are you happy now?”

  I want to laugh, but it doesn’t seem appropriate. So I hold it in and try to be professional. “So if he said no, then why did you think you were supposed to let me fuck you tonight?”

  “Jesus, could you be any more vulgar?”

  “Answer the question. God, I’m gonna get it out of you eventually, why do you insist on making this so difficult?”

  “I thought it was part of the game, OK? Like… he’s supposed to be this master sex game planner. So I figured none of this FBI stuff made much sense, so it must be the game. That’s all it was. A stupid misunderstanding. I assumed something, I was wrong, now let’s drop it.”

  “Master sex game planner. I really need to meet this guy.”

  “Why?” She laughs. “You gonna buy a game from him?”

  “Me? No. I don’t need a game to get fucked.”

  “I’m sure you don’t, playboy.”

  I think through her comments for a while. She stays silent. Just leaning her head up against the window, looking outside like she’s wishing she could be anywhere but here.

  I want to tell her things. Things like, Well, I had fun. Hope you did too. Or Maybe we can do it again tomorrow? And this time I can zip-tie you up, wink wink, if you know what I mean.

  But I don’t.

  Because she said none of the FBI stuff made much sense.

  “Not any sense,” I say.

  “What?” she says, dragging her gaze from the window.

  “You said none of this FBI stuff made much sense. Not any sense. Which means it made a little sense.”

  “You’re really reaching now.”

  “Am I?”

  “You are.”

  I’m not, but I drop it. Because I knew she was hiding something back at the office. I knew. Felt it in my bones.

  And now I’m gonna make it my mission to figure out what it is.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN - ISSY

  The problem with this night is… some of it was fun. I mean, I’m pretty disappointed that this isn’t a game. Unless he’s lying, but I really don’t think he’s lying. He can’t be that good an actor. And we really were down at the Federal Building and I really was locked in an interrogation room, and he and his partner really did question me.

  So what the fuck is going on?

  And, more importantly, why the fuck is this happening to me? I mean, I was just minding my own business, doing my thing, and then wham. Bullshit everywhere I turn. It’s bad enough that Chella talked Jordan into a game for me. I mean, that’s a little bit humiliating all by itself. But then to be turned down?

  “I didn’t ask for any of this,” I say, looking out the window as the world whips by. We’re on I-70 now, heading back towards Denver, and I can just see the glow of city lights peeking over the top of the mountains. There’s no traffic, so we should be back in downtown in like twenty minutes.

  “OK,” he says. But it’s one of those OK’s that really means, You’re full of shit.

  “I didn’t.”

  “Fine. I’m agreeing with you.”

  “But your agreement is really just placating me.”

  “If you say so, Issy.”

  I huff out a breath of air and decide to drop it.

  “But you don’t make sense. And you know that. Your background is… well, spotty.”

  Yup. It is. But there’s no way he could find out about my past. Like, literally, no way. That girl doesn’t exist anymore. So I don’t agree or disagree with his initial assessment.

  “Which means it’s either completely made up or you’ve somehow erased parts of it. So which is it?”

  I ignore him.

  “I’m gonna figure it out.”

  “Why?” I say, turning my body to face him. I’m angry now. “Why do you need to figure it out? Why can’t you just drop the whole fucking thing?”

  “Because you’re somehow involved in a terror threat.”

  “Says you,” I spit. “That’s probably bullshit. You guys probably made that up to make me vulnerable. To make me cooperate. And it’s not gonna work.”

  “We didn’t make it up.” He laughs. “This is the fucking FBI, Issy. We’ve got better things to do than play sex games with you.”

  “Could you just shut up?”

  “Fine,” he says, pressing a button on the navigation panel. Music starts to play, something beat-y, and hypnotic, and dark, which does nothing for my already dark mood. But he stays silent all the way into downtown. All the way to my house.

  I open the door as soon as the car stops, just trying to get away from him as quickly as possible, but then he shuts the car off.

  “No,” I say, shaking my head, one leg already out the door. “No, you’re not coming in.”

  “Fine,” he says, shrugging. “But I’m not leaving either.”

  I get out, slam the door, walk up to my house, keys already in hand, open the door, slam it closed behind me, and flick on the light.

  And then I do most of that backwards. I open the door back up, slam it behind me, skip down the porch stairs, run down the walkway, and open the car door back up.

  “Forget something?” he asks, while texting on his phone.

  “Someone was in my house.”

  He stops texting. “What?”

  “It’s ransacked, Finn!” I grab my hair with frustration. “Someone went through my house!”

  His door is open, he’s out of the car, he’s got a gun out as he stalks up my front walk, and then he looks at me, nods his head, and I open the door for him.

  He goes in like… well, an FBI guy. Pointing his gun this way and that way as he steps over the mountains of debris, searching for people in the house.

  When he goes upstairs, I look around nervously.

  Someone was in my house. Strangers did this to me.

  I suddenly feel very violated.

  “No one,” Finn says, coming down the stairs, holstering his gun. “Whoever it was did this hours ago. Probably right after we left.”

  “How do you know that?” I ask, still expecting people to jump out at me.

  “It’s my job,” he says simply. Which doesn’t appease me. He’s poking at his phone, p
uts it to his ear. He says, “Declan, call me back. Something is wrong.”

  “What’s that mean? Who’s Declan?”

  “Let’s go,” he says, pointing at the door. “I’m taking you to my house until I can figure this shit out.”

  “Wait,” I say, putting my hands up.

  “Yes, Ms. Grey?” he says, not even looking at me because his eyes are still taking in the scene.

  “You want me to go to your house with you?”

  “Yeah, to keep you safe.”

  “And that’s it?”

  He just stares at me. Dumbly.

  “Not to fuck me again? Not to play one more round before this night is over?”

  Now it’s his turn to laugh. “Issy,” he says, pulling out his professional voice. “This isn’t a game. I’m not your hired help for the night. I fucked you earlier because I think you’re sexy, that’s it. But if pretending to play this stupid game makes you go along with my duty to keep you safe, I’ll keep playing along.”

  We stare at each other.

  “Yes, Issy. This is all part of my secret plan to spread your legs open and lick your pussy. Better?”

  I turn away so he can’t see me smile, then gather up my self-respect, turn back, and say, with a straight face, “Fine. It’s not a game. I’m just a job to you.”

  He tips a pretend hat at me, then waves a hand at the door. “After you.”

  It only takes a few minutes to get to his place over in Lower Downtown, but the seconds drag on like years in the silence. He says nothing, just compulsively checks his phone, like maybe he thinks his ringer isn’t working and that’s why this Declan guy hasn’t called him back yet. Then he sends another text, trying to get an answer.

  “What did you just text?” I ask.

  “Business,” he says back.

  Whatever.

  He lives in a trendy new condo building right next to a bar called Bronco Brews. That’s the place with the fake water tower on the roof, like this is New York or something.

  “OK,” he says, flicking the light on after he opens his apartment door. “Come in and let’s just try to grab a couple hours of sleep before dawn.”