The Shadow Constant

by AJ Scudiere

  Kayla smiled. Reenie finished restraining him and stepped back out of hand and foot range. She startled when she backed into the edge of the open door and scrambled to close it.

  Ignoring his comment, Kayla ran a test. “You should look down. There’s a discoloration in the grooves between the floorboards. Do you know what that is?” She didn’t give him time to answer. “It’s blood. Specifically, Robert Bell’s blood. You can cooperate, or you can join him.”

  Ivy and Reenie exchanged a glance, and Kayla knew enough that they were questioning whether or not she was crazy. She wasn’t. She was just smarter than him. And she wanted him to know it.

  32

  Hazelton House

  “What’s your name?” Kayla asked the man as calmly as she could.

  “Don’t have one.” His lips had stopped pressing together and he was as relaxed as he could be with his hands secured behind his back. Kayla enjoyed the irony of him wearing his own cuffs.

  His eyes had narrowed when she commented about the blood in the floorboards. But this was as close to him flat-out stating who he worked for as was likely to come.

  As the two other women darted their eyes back and forth at the swift change in the dynamic, Kayla watched his leg muscles. He wanted to take advantage of the momentary distraction and lunge at one of them. Even with his hands immobilized, he seemed to think he could accomplish something. She shook her head at him; don’t even try it.

  She heard the back door open, and Evan must have seen her back before much of anything else.

  “Kayla?” but before she could answer him—she wasn’t going to turn around for a conversation—she heard him startle and ask, “Ivy?”

  He’d seen the gun that her girlfriend still had trained on this sucker. She liked the sound of that—girlfriend. Her lips curled in a little smile and the “officer’s” eyes narrowed again.

  Ha. She’d freaked him out a little with her smile. Let him wonder. His eyes focused in the distance, not on any one of them. But she wasn’t fooled. He was ready to act, and he was trained.

  Evan came into view, clear even though he was in her periphery. He whispered to Reenie, but Kayla didn’t catch it. She only caught Reenie’s answering shrug and remark, “I don’t know, but he seems less and less like an officer.”

  “He’s not.” Kayla assured them.

  “How do you know?” Evan asked her.

  But it was Ivy who chimed in first. “He basically just admitted it, though not in so many words.”

  Evan looked at the three women, then back at the man, who for now remained unmoved.

  Ignoring her brother for another minute, Kayla focused on the man in front of her, making sure her voice carried. “I won’t be charged with assaulting an officer, because you aren’t one. What you may not also know is that I shot Robert Bell. I asked him where Ivy was and I only asked him once. Before you make any moves, ask yourself if you’re willing to die and disappear.”

  Then she shifted her voice, but not her focus, to the others. “He’s a little too stupid. This area isn’t zoned for police, we only have the sheriff. Then he parked his car around back. The real police park out front, they want people to see the car, but lucky for us, his is already hidden.” She smiled at him, a cold but satisfied curve of her mouth. “And no one but no one has reported Robert Bell missing.”

      

  Evan knew shooting him certainly would have been easier. It even seemed at times as though Kayla shot Robert Bell just because she was frustrated and recognized him as “foe.” But he knew that wasn’t true.

  Ivy had been missing, they had all been stalked, spied upon, and wire tapped, and Kayla hadn’t even known if her friend was alive. There had even been good evidence that these men were no strangers to killing those in their way. It had been a sound decision—if you could look at it through a purely logical lens. Which apparently, Kayla had.

  Evan wanted that lens now. He wanted to look at this man who wasn’t giving them anything, not verbally or via evidence either. His badge was stolen from a Savannah police officer whose name was Gruber, but this man wearing Gruber’s badge gave them nothing else.

  Being the only male, Evan was given the job of checking him for a wire. That was thankless. Evan found nothing, but hadn’t done the most thorough of checks. When Kayla pushed him, he responded with, “Look, if he’s willing to wear a wire up his ass, then they can just hear what I have to say.”

  The problem with letting this man live was that he needed to be watched like a hawk. He was a professional. There was every possibility that he could get himself out of the handcuffs in a few seconds if left alone. It had been eight hours since they’d captured him. And there had been too many questions. Could they let him pee in his pants? There would be the smell and the cleanup and the damage to their nice wood floors. Could they just not feed him? And if they fed him, how should they do it? Unlocking his hands was not okay by anyone’s estimate. Who knew that holding a captive would be so problematic?

  Then again it clearly wasn’t easy; even Kayla and Ivy had escaped captors who were prepared for them—people with guns, plans, and a network. So Evan wasn’t sure how he now stood a chance at detaining this man for long. The real question was, how much damage would he do when he went?

  Kayla and Ivy had left their captor tied up in a basement . . . and electrocuted. Evan didn’t like his probable outcome by that math.

  He sat in the hallway and watched the man sleeping. It was entirely possible he was faking, waiting for the exact moment to spring. Evan wasn’t sure he’d be ready for it. It was far too easy to rest, to watch, to wait without tension.

  For a moment, he considered what it would take to sneak the man out of the room, save them all the trouble.

  There had to be a better way.

  Kayla’s feet appeared at his side. “Your three hours is up. My turn.”

  “Damn straight.” He looked up at her and grabbed his water bottle, his book and started to stand.

  His knees hurt and his body didn’t want to unfold. Joint by joint, he came upright while Kayla plopped, in lithe Indian style into a pretzel. He reminded himself that he loved her. That this was for her as well as for a greater good. It didn’t make his knees feel any better.

  When he was standing, looking down at the top of her head, he felt a surge of envy. And he debated a moment before speaking it. Not sure what kind of resolution it would bring, if any.

  “Kay, you’re the only one cut out for this.”

  She nodded, automatically knowing what he meant. She could read. She could draw, diagram or build, and still keep a sharp watch as her primary focus. She was also more consciously aware of what the man was doing and what that might mean. If he started to shift, to prep for a strike, Kayla would see.

  She never fit in, and so she studied other people, knew the statistics about how people acted, and recognized what was out of the norm. Her general disadvantage was a huge advantage here.

  “Kay, you can’t watch him twenty-four seven. But we need that.” He looked at her for a minute. “We need a better solution. I’ll be back at the end of your shift.”

  “You need sleep.” She wasn’t mean about it, just factual. “Take four hours. I’ll still be good.”

  Of course she would. She was also giving him two full REM cycles. She’d read up on it once in hopes that if her family had to wake her, they could do it at the best possible time and avoid a smack to the eye or a kick.

  Evan leaned down, ignoring protesting joints. He hugged her tight and thought for a moment that someone needed to tell Ivy about the sleep cycle thing. It would save her some grief.

      

  Kayla made it partway through her book. Pen in hand, she jotted notes inside the back cover, enjoying the irony of reading a how-to guide about creating a how-to guide. She had to deliver information about the machine and she clearly needed help. She needed to make instructions and videos. She considered getting the parts manuf
actured and selling a kit. Her research said there weren’t that many people with spare gears around.

  Kayla looked at her book; it was thick and tall, obviously a text of some kind. Not one of those cute little paperbacks Ivy liked to thumb through. Though Ivy understood why Kayla didn’t read fiction—there were too many idioms and metaphors that she tended to take literally and miss the entire point of the story—Ivy loved her stories. Kayla had once found Ivy tsk-ing over a paperback whose cover sported a carriage and winding floral vines. When asked, Ivy had complained the stated color scheme hadn’t become popular until a good twenty-five years after the story was set. Kayla had responded, “Of course” and assumed it was the same thing as if someone got a numerator and denominator transposed in an equation in one of her texts.

  Still, she longed for something fashionable, like an e-reader. People always looked at her oddly when she just opened a manual on the bus and started to read, or when she would pull one out of her bag while waiting in line. Some days she wanted to wear a shirt that said “I have Aspergers. Go away.”

  She reached down and picked up her second pen—one blue, one green—nestled beside the present Reenie had bought while Evan was on first watch.

  The man rolled over in his sleep, the blanket pallet looking none too comfortable. Though he appeared very much dead to the world to the casual observer, Kayla knew he was anything but. He’d been awake for about twenty minutes now. While he had actually slept for a while, he’d woken and even in his half-woken state had known to fake his change in consciousness. Kayla was waiting for him to try something.

  His shoulders gave him away when he woke. Then his breathing had gone from truly deep and even to the faked kind that pretty much everyone did when they were pretending to sleep. Granted, he was better at it than most, but he still didn’t have the innate kind of rhythm that was the hallmark of true sleep.

  Now the rollover had moved his hands out of the limited frame of sight Kayla had from her position just outside the doorway. He knew that, too—what she could see and what she couldn’t.

  Subtly, while she turned the page, Kayla checked her watch. Evan would be here any minute. He was always prompt, something inherited from neither parent. Kayla assumed her own innate need to be on time was a symptom of the Aspergers, but Evan’s clearly wasn’t. Maybe he’d just become that way to help her with her schedule. Her mother had never quite understood.

  Evan was a good brother. The best.

  And—though she wasn’t quite ready to mark it down as real yet—she seemed to now have Ivy, and also Reenie, who would soon become extended family.

  The man shifted again, still appearing dead asleep to anyone who wasn’t paying close attention. From the new set of his shoulders it looked as though he’d managed to either jimmy the cuffs open or dislocate a wrist and slide out of one. Either way he was free and biding his time.

  “Hey sis.” Evan called to her in low tones from down the hall. He was emerging from the door to the room he was sharing with Reenie and he looked sufficiently rumpled to indicate that he’d managed to sleep rather deeply for at least some of the time. He probably hadn’t faked it either.

  “Hey, Ev.” She motioned him toward her and his bare feet made little noise on the hardwood hallway.

  As he stopped in front of her, he smiled, clearly better off than he’d been four hours ago. “So, what are we going to do with our mystery guest?”

  Though she didn’t speak loudly, she didn’t make much effort to keep her voice low. “We need to tie him up better. And we need to get in touch with his people and let them know we have him. See if they’ll trade for him.”

  Evan nodded. “Should we truss him to something? We don’t have any exposed pipes in the rooms.” He smiled. “I know you’re fond of those.”

  She responded with a quick grin of her own. “They do work quite well for keeping people stationary. But a good iron bed should do the trick. Maybe with cinderblocks on it to help weight it down.”

  Clearly Evan’s brain wasn’t at full speed because he looked concerned.

  “What?” she asked.

  “I was just thinking about whether these old floors can hold up that kind of weight. But that was stupid.”

  “Yeah. This place has great bones.” She knocked on the hardwood floor. “The weight won’t be a problem.”

  But as she spoke, she saw a shadow behind Evan.

  Quick as lightning, the man rushed out of the room, headed right toward Evan’s unsuspecting back.

  Kayla reached down.

  33

  Upper Hallway, Hazelton House

  As quickly as she could—and she was fast, she was ready—Kayla threw herself to the left. This changed the man’s line of attack. Evan was no longer between them and could no longer be thrown into her.

  Just to make things a little better, she’d nudged Evan with her foot as she toppled over. Okay, maybe it had been more like a kick. Evan must have heard the barely two footsteps of warning, and between Kayla lunging one direction and her foot giving him more than a hint, he went the other way.

  Now their captive—whose hands were indeed free, which pissed Kayla off—was aligned only to the wall that had been directly at her back. He started to change directions, but as he did he spotted her hands coming up. And he saw what was in them.

  She knew the moment he figured out this wasn’t going to work.

  The man’s feet left the ground in the attack he’d already committed to, but his eyes started to close as Kayla smiled and pulled the trigger.

  Two prongs shot out, striking through his shirt, and the charge that followed made him jerk like a dry fish. His leap lost its grace. His muscles lost the tension of training and traded it for a contraction associated with pain and voltage. He hit the wall without striking either of his two intended targets and jerked twice before his eyes opened only to roll back.

  Kayla looked at him. He was definitely asleep this time.

  Evan rolled to his feet from where he’d hit the floor. He lacked all the grace of the intruder, but he also hadn’t had to be Tasered, so Evan came out ahead. “Damn Kayla, you must enjoy electrocuting these guys.”

  She frowned. “I am developing a pattern. But it beats the alternative.”

  He held his hand out for the stun gun, “Can I see that?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “Reenie bought it for me. You have one, too. And besides, that’s kinda fun.”

  “Dial down the glee, Kay.” He sighed at her. “Grab his hands?”

  “I’ll take his feet.” While she knew she wasn’t the stronger one, she was the one best prepared for him waking up and lashing out. She’d be more attuned to the changes and hopefully less likely to take a foot to the kneecap.

  They had already removed the man’s shoes, his uniform shirt, and all the fun things on his belt. The sharp objects revealed only the normal police items plus one burner cell phone that didn’t even have a single number programmed into it.

  In her frustration Kayla made no concession to her captive’s head bumping nor to any scratches that his back might get. Sadly, Evan had redone these floors and they were smooth as a baby’s butt.

  Reenie and Ivy rounded the top of the stairs as Kayla and Evan disappeared into the room. Kayla imagined they saw only the one limp foot she had dropped, dragging backward, horror-movie style. When they came pounding into the room, crowding the doorway as they both tried to push in, she concluded that her guess was right.

  “What happened?” “Huh?” the two women talked over each other, looking confused.

  Evan dropped the man’s hands, his head hitting the floor with a distinct thunk that Kayla found satisfying. “Kayla Tasered him. Thank you for that, Reenie.”

  Unsure if her brother was being sarcastic, she smiled at her future sister-in-law and said sincerely, “Yes, thank you, Reenie.” Then she dropped the man’s foot with another satisfying thunk.

  She looked from one of them to another. “Well, we don’t ha
ve time to put an iron bed in here to keep him in place. I’m thinking tie-down straps should loop through cinder blocks nicely and be very hard to get through without a knife or sharp object.”

  The four of them looked at each other. Reenie’s face reflected concern; apparently she was just as upset about kidnapping as people being kidnapped. Kayla had no such problem. “We need to do it before he wakes up, or else someone gets to taze him again.”

  Ivy tilted her head. “Someone will get to Taze him again. He won’t be out much longer unless he’s sustained a brain injury. Or the Taser stopped his heart. What? I read up.”

  Reenie smiled ferally. “We have four. One for each.”

  “Damn,” Was all Ivy said in response to that. “Are you going gunslinger, or do I get one?”

  There was a laugh in answer, followed by, “You get one.” Then, “I suggest you and I get the straps and let Evan carry the cinderblocks.”

  A short while later, Reenie and Ivy came through the door, a faint sheen of sweat on their foreheads. They had looped the straps through one cinder block each and used that to lift. It didn’t make the blocks lighter, but it did make them easier to carry. “That’s a good idea.”

  Evan appeared in the doorway behind them, showing off his manly prowess by carrying two cinderblocks. He had broken a sweat though.

  Kayla stood over the man, her stun gun reloaded and at the ready. Though the others had been quick, he started to show signs of coming around. Still aiming at him, Kayla directed the blocks to towels she had doubled up to protect the hardwood. She pushed the blankets away from the double door to the terrace and into the area visible through the doorway. Then she explained how to tie him up so he had a little room to move, but so his hands couldn’t reach any of his limbs. It wouldn’t do to have him untying his knots.