by Chuck Wendig
Hours pass. By now, the banquet must be underway or done.
Atlanta leans against the shelf. She can’t sit because the placement of the cuff doesn’t give her enough leeway.
So, she stands.
Feet aching. Body hurting.
Then: footsteps.
She screams out for help.
The closet door unlocks, opens.
Help isn’t here. It’s Moose Barnes. He looks even worse than before, like all this is taking a toll on him. His hair is tousled. His face, slack, nose fat from where she elbowed him. Whatever he’s on is wearing off. Which means he has to decide if he’s going to take more, or go all the way down to the bottom.
She doesn’t much care what he decides.
“C’mon, we gotta see Ty,” he says, and he walks over, keys in hand.
Atlanta darts her own hand out. Grabs the Windex bottle off the shelf. It’s no longer blue, because it no longer contains Windex.
There’s bleach in there.
She starts spraying it at him—fsst, fsst, fsst—and he’s swatting at it like it’s a cloud of biting flies. He curses at her—“You fucking bitch!”—and then his words dissolve into a scream. “That burns! Shit! Shit that burns!”
Atlanta drives a boot into his crotch, hard.
The keys drop out of his hand with a clatter. He doubles over, and she pushes the keys toward herself with her boot—she strains to reach them, the tops of her fingertips tickling the key ring but not getting a hold. Just a little farther . . .
But then he’s up again, and he pops her in the mouth with a clumsy fist. Her head rattles like dice in a cup. Bloodtaste fills her mouth, her lip is split. He comes in again, hands reaching for her throat—but she pitches an elbow.
Catches him for the second time in the nose.
He howls, staggering backward. Blister-red eyes. Snot and blood coming out of his nose. Lips slick with white spit.
Atlanta dives for the keys. This time she ignores all the pain, strains until she feels a tearing there—
Got ’em.
With her thumb she isolates the handcuff key, starts undoing it. The metal cuff springs open, her hand free, blood flowing back to the fingers.
Moose roars, comes at her like a storming bull.
She moves fast. Takes the Windex bottle again, slams its neck down against one of the metal shelves—hard enough the spray top pops off, bleach splashing out. Then she jerks the whole bottle forward—
Sending a gout of the stuff right into his eyes, nose, mouth.
He gargles, screams, heels skidding out from under him. On the ground he writhes like he’s covered in ants, clawing at his face.
She pats him down. No phone. Not his. Not hers.
One of the phones on this floor has to be working.
Atlanta hurries to the door, throws it open. Out into the hall—
A hand catches her, slams her against the wall. “Hey, I know you,” says a voice. Flared collar. Hairy chest. Samantha’s party. The man who she whipped up on. The one who paid money for her. She tries the same trick as before—winging an elbow—but he kicks her behind her leg, and she drops.
He pins her, knee in the small of her back. Hand wrapped around her hair, pressing her face to the hard Berber carpet.
“Should’ve known once I saw the one, I’d see the other,” Ty Carrizo says. Atlanta looks up from her vantage point on the floor, and here he comes down the hall. He’s got Bee with him. She’s still taped up, her hands still behind her back.
Carrizo has a gun to her head.
“I’m going to need you to let my associate, Mr. Shaw, put some duct tape over your mouth now. And around your hands. We’re going to take a short trip, and then you’re going to take a long trip.”
Atlanta tries to lurch out of the man’s grip, but he slams her back down.
“Added incentive—because I am all about incentivizing situations—is that I also have your mother. She is blissfully unaware of what’s happening, but if you insist on making this more problematic for me than it already is, I will put a bullet in her, too.” He smiles as the resistance goes out of her. “Good, good.”
“Hold still, pretty girl,” the man—Shaw—says, chuckling. He starts winding up her hands. Then tapes over her mouth. Tears, angry tears, run down her cheeks. “Maybe I’ll get to play with you yet, get what I paid for.”
Carrizo snaps: “You’re being extrarude, Tom.”
“Sorry,” Shaw says.
“Barnes?”
Shaw stands up. Looks in the closet. “He’s in here.”
“Get him cleaned up. Get these two outside—take them out the back way, because soon enough we’re going to have guests coming up here and this mess has got to be cleaned up by then. We’ll use the blue pickup to drive them down to the garage. We can conclude our business there. I’ll call Sigmund.”
“You got it.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
They sit her down on an oil drum, Bee next to her.
They’re back in the garage after a quick trip in a rust-bucket blue pickup—a little one, like an old Dodge. The truck must be used to carry trash somewhere, because it stinks in there like garbage. Motor oil, too.
Right now it’s just Moose and Shaw. Moose is in bad shape, whimpering like a whipped pup. His face looks bad. A red, blistered mess. He keeps saying to Shaw, “I can’t see right. Something’s wrong. I need to wash, I need to wash,” and finally Shaw relents, tells him to go over to the office, to the sink upstairs, wash up.
It’s enough of a distraction.
Atlanta hops up, and even with her hands behind her, starts to run.
Get to the door.
Shoulder it open.
Run to—
Shaw catches her in the gut with a knee.
She goes down, trying like hell not to throw up in her mouth.
He laughs at her, grabs the heel of her boot, drags her back to the oil drum, and just lets her lie there on the floor against it. “You dumb-ass,” he says.
Through the front bay, here comes Carrizo. “Everybody gone home?”
“Empty, far as I can see.”
“Good.” Carrizo roams into view, shoves someone forward—
Mama.
Arlene. Not bound up, not taped. Like she came down here willingly, not sure what she was getting into. Carrizo pushes her forward and she says: “Atlanta? Baby?” The surprise on her face—the horror, too—is like a beacon of fear.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” Ty starts to say, but then interrupts himself. “Where the hell’s my son?” He looks behind him.
Footsteps fast approaching.
Damon enters.
Venomous anger rises in Atlanta’s belly. He’s in on it.
“Dad?” Damon asks. “What’s the rush, I was just—” Then he sees. The look on his face is pure confusion. He looks toward Atlanta. “Atlanta? I—” But then his gaze flicks elsewhere. Away from her. And toward Bee. “You.”
You?
“Time to watch as I clean up your mess,” Ty says.
“It’s not . . . my . . . I didn’t . . .”
“You dumb little fuckhead. I told you to use protection, didn’t I?”
Damon, horrified, looks from his father, to Atlanta, to Bee, and back. “Please, Dad, this isn’t right. Whatever this is . . .” To Bee he says: “I thought you were okay with it. I thought you were in on it.”
Bee gives him a demon’s stare as tears crawl down her cheeks.
The elder Carrizo growls through teeth clenched so hard it’s like he’s trying to eat his words: “I gave that girl to you as a present. I thought you could finally become a man, maybe join this family. And all you had to do was wrap it up. Not like I didn’t give you a rubber.”
“It broke. I was drunk. I thought—”
“Shut up. Stand there. Be a man.”
Damon looks hollowed out—like he’s just gonna break apart. Go to dust and blow away.
His father ignores it. To ev
eryone else he says: “Like I was saying, here’s what’s going to happen.” He gestures to Arlene with the gun. “Atlanta, you and your friend are going to go away for awhile. I’ve got a man who will fetch a very nice price for the both of you. Especially the pregnant one.” Now, to Damon: “And here I guess I owe you that one—”
Damon cries out and bolts like a spooked horse. Running fast and, probably, far.
Ty Carrizo curses. “Shit.” To Arlene: “Kids, huh?”
Arlene says, “You sonofa—”
He backhands her with the gun. She goes down. Crying. Bleeding.
“Like I was saying. You two? For sale. I’m going to sit here on your mother like a bird on a nest, and long as you two don’t act up before morning, I will let her go. But you cause me any pain at all, I’ll kill her.”
Atlanta knows he’s lying. He’ll kill Arlene anyway. He’s not an idiot. Not dumb enough to expect Arlene to just roll over, keep quiet. She’s as good as dead, too.
Which means something has to be done soon. Sooner than soon. Now.
Her gaze flits around. She needs something. Some kind of advantage. Nearby: a forklift, with two forks sticking out. Not sharp. But might be enough.
“So,” Ty says. “My friend should be here—”
Arlene must’ve come to the same conclusion Atlanta did.
Because she shrieks like a jungle cat and leaps, claws out. Ty yelps, staggering backward—her nails digging into his browline, leaving streaks of peeled skin. The gun in his hand goes off, the sound muffled.
Arlene shudders. Blood starts soaking through her white server blouse.
Mama, no, no, no—
Atlanta starts inchworming her way toward that forklift.
But apparently getting shot isn’t enough to stop Arlene Burns. She grabs Ty’s head and starts whaling on him something fierce, hard enough that he drops the gun.
Shaw’s the one who stops her. Grabs her by the hair, throws her backward.
Atlanta scooches up against the forklift’s tines. Starts getting the flat metal fork underneath the tape.
Outside, somewhere—an engine rumble. Accelerating.
Ty, moaning, staggering backward, yells: “Someone still here? Shit! Check that. Go. Go!” And as Shaw scoops up the gun and heads toward the mouth of the garage bay, Ty pulls his hand away from his scalp, finds it wet with red.
Mama lies on the floor, crying, bleeding, gut shot.
Shaw stops, stares outside. Calls out, “Someone in a pickup truck?”
Ty barks: “Flag him down. Find out who it is.”
Atlanta starts pulling hard. Her wrists ache as her hands start to slip through the wound-up duct tape.
“He’s not slowing down,” Ty says. “He’s speeding up—oh, shit!”
He dives out of the way just as a pickup truck leaps over the front ramp, slams askew toward the garage door, and rams into it. The whole building shakes. Cans and tools fall off shelves with a clamor.
Shaw scrambles to stand.
The pickup door pops open just as Atlanta’s hands pull through the tape. She quick works to rip the tape off her mouth.
I know that truck.
Paul steps out of it and tackles Shaw to the ground. Again his gun clatters away. Then Atlanta thinks, Gun. Shotgun. The .410.
It’s less than ten feet away.
She hurries on her hands and knees fast enough to get standing, then throws her body against the wooden pallets. Her hands dive down, find the cold steel and smooth wood of the Winchester.
It’s up.
Paul knocks Shaw to the ground with a straight punch.
Ty Carrizo is bolting for the gun.
Boom.
Her shotgun bucks. Carrizo cries out, pulling back his arm like something just bit it—because something did. A scattering of birdshot. He howls, bleeding. Then he skids to a halt and goes the other way—toward the back door.
Paul calls out: “Arlene, oh, god, Arlene—”
Atlanta snaps at him: “Get her, get Bee, and get out.”
“Come on, you come on, too.”
She breaches the barrel, thumbs another shell in. “Go on!”
Then she turns to follow after Carrizo.
Time to hunt.
His trail is not hard to discern. Other animals might make it hard. From her class she knows, you might have to find a bit of fur here, some scat there, a footprint underneath a carpet of mulched leaves.
But Ty Carrizo leaves behind a spattering of blood.
And all she has to do is follow it.
She stalks through the open space. Night is settling in. Stars shine above. The air is crisp like a dead leaf in a closing fist.
Toward the tanks. Her feet crunching on gravel. No need to be silent now. He must know she or someone is coming.
And sure enough, there he is.
He bolts out from between two of the four tanks in a cluster—tanks as tall as barn silos, maybe bigger. Carrizo pounds limestone and she thumbs back the hammer, takes aim: choom.
His shoulder shakes as a flower of blood opens there.
But he keeps running.
And she keeps on following after, jogging now. Barrel break. Shotshell in the chamber. Snap—shut. Click of the hammer back.
Barrel up. Bead lined.
Bang.
His leg kicks out from under him, the birdshot taking him right below his ass-cheek. Carrizo drops to a knee. Then down to his hands.
Still not done. He scampers up. Starts hobbling away from her.
Open. Shell. Shut. Hammer.
He turns hard to the left, heading back toward the garage area, away from the tanks—he’s probably realizing now that it’s open out here, too open, and that if he wants his own gun, he’ll have to double back.
Bang.
His head jerks to the side. His ear goes to a bloody mess.
Her gun, it’s not a killer’s weapon. She knows that now. Killing him with this won’t be easy. Killing a squirrel, sure. A man? Not so much. But she can whittle him down like a stick. This is surgery. Taking off pieces until he drops, broken and bloody, a cut of red, juicy steak for the police dogs.
He puts a little more pep in his step, screaming now, wailing.
One more shot should do it, she thinks.
Still pushing forward, she takes her time with this one. His back is dead ahead of her. Her boots carry her forth as she cracks the gun in half like a bone, putting one last shell in, closing it up, thumbing the hammer—
Now, she stops.
Gets a good bead on him. Figures: hit him square in the back.
Take the wind right out of his sails.
Then:
Bang.
His head pops open like a kicked watermelon. A jet of red.
Ty Carrizo pitches face forward, legs kicking out against the stone.
I killed him.
But the hammer of her shotgun is still drawn back.
And there, in front of him, stands his own son. With the handgun in his shaking hand. Damon cries out. He throws the gun to the ground.
He runs.
PART FIVE:
FUTURE PROOF
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
“Am I in trouble?”
Holger looks Atlanta over. “No.”
“Good.”
The hospital hallway stinks of antiseptic. And the white noise here is about to drive Atlanta buggy. Humming of machines. Air through the vents. The beeping and booping. Intercom calls from this floor and others. Someone coughing. Someone mumbling. The sound of a dozen televisions tuned to different channels.
“But we both know it doesn’t all add up.”
“What’s not to add up?” Atlanta asks, knowing full well the answer. The lie she told was simple enough: She and Paul drove her mother to VLS that day to act as a banquet server. But Bee showed up, angry that Ty’s son had done what he did to her. They kidnapped her and tried to make her shut up. Atlanta saw them taking her friend away, so she tried to stop them and got caught up
in it, too. Then, for the most part, she told them the rest as it really happened. Paul said he was the one who took the shots at Carrizo with the .410, and Atlanta agreed.
“I don’t need to tell you what doesn’t add up.” Holger shrugs. “It doesn’t really matter anyway. Because that was one helluva bust.”
Even now, a week later, the news is still talking about it.
A rape and prostitution ring run out of a national fracking company.
Bonus: guns, gambling, drugs.
And not just that—the slate of people attending when it all went down. They didn’t catch any big fish like some presidential hopeful or whatnot, but they got a whole lineup of lobbyists, state senators, congressmen, and other moneymen.
All eager to take favors from Ty Carrizo.
Favors in the form of drugs or sex with drugged, underage girls.
They found girls there, too. Three girls from out of state. (Maybe once Samantha got dead, their local opportunity dried up.) Turns out, the girls were being kept on the fourth floor in a conference room, doped to the gills with pharmaceuticals most often found in a veterinary office.
Moose Barnes, they found upstairs. Blubbering. Half-blind from the chlorine. They got him squared away, taken to jail. Holger said he might not do much time—they had him drugged pretty good, and he’d agreed to roll over and throw some of the other folks under the bus.
Damon, well. He copped to shooting his father. He’s not in jail, though. So far they’re calling it self-defense. Bee said he’d agreed to a paternity test, despite his lawyer’s recommendation to fight it.
“Fun times,” Atlanta says with a sigh.
“I owe the bust to you.”
“I just happened to be there.”
Holger lowers her voice. “Same way you just happened to be there when Owen Mahoney was tied to a tree.”
Oh, snap.
“I . . . I don’t know—”
“I ran his gun for prints. Yours were on it. I didn’t let that become a part of the file. Mahoney is scum, every inch of him. No reason to drag you down with him. But I know you’re at the heart of all this.”
“Can’t prove it.”
“Don’t have to. I know it here,” Holger says, and taps her temple. “And you know things there, too. You have good instincts. And also, terrible instincts.”
