by Clare Kauter
“OK, daddy.”
“I’ll buy you a big present to make it up to you, princess. Whatever you like.”
“A pony?”
Reagan laughed. “That’s my girl – get your money’s worth!” he said. “Alright, now I have to go and talk to my men. You wait in here for me. I’ll be back soon.”
I heard a door shut in the next room as Reagan left, heading off to address his thugs. Once he was out of earshot, Adam and I rushed across the room to the door behind which Gracie was hidden. The door was secured from the outside by a latch, but otherwise wasn’t locked.
When Gracie saw it was us, she did not look happy. In fact, she looked terrified.
“What are you two doing here? You need to go!”
“We’re here to get you,” I said.
“Terrible idea,” she said. “I’ve got him under control for now, but I don’t think it’ll last if he catches you guys.”
“Come with us now,” said Adam. “We don’t have far to go, but we’ll have to run.”
“No! They’ll chase us. You two need to go before they see you,” Grace hissed. “They’ll hurt you. There was an old man before who saw me and I think they did something to him.”
Ralph, I was guessing.
“We need to get you out of here, Gracie.”
“You can’t! There are too many people here and they all have guns.”
“How many?” Adam asked.
“Five all up.”
“Only five? We can take –” He stopped and looked at me. “Maybe we can’t.”
“I’m not that bad!”
The sound of footsteps echoed down the corridor outside.
“He’s coming!” Gracie said. “You need to run!”
Where? There was no way out of here. I looked at Adam. He was supposed to be good under pressure.
“Gracie,” said Adam quietly and calmly, “you need to call out and tell your dad we’re here.”
“What? No!” Gracie said.
“What?” I hissed. “Are you serious?”
Adam shot me a look. Right. He had a plan. I turned to Gracie and nodded. “Do it,” I said. I turned to Adam. “You better know what you’re doing.”
“But –”
“Now, Gracie,” Adam insisted.
Her bottom lip began to wobble, but she took a deep breath to steady herself and called out, “Daddy! In here! Quick! They’re trying to take me away!”
Chapter Twenty-One
Reagan did not look pleased to see us, and the feeling was mutual. He was still wearing his giant cowboy hat, but now he had on a fresh pair of jeans, red cowboy boots and a fringed button-up top.
“But where did you park your horse?” I said without thinking.
He shot me a look that told me insulting him hadn’t been a smart move, and judging by the gun on his hip, it really hadn’t.
“Who the fuck are you?” he asked.
“We’ve met,” I said. “I’m the Young Republican from brunch yesterday. Also you, um, dumped a corpse on my doorstep earlier.”
He sneered. “Thought you looked familiar. You been hangin’ out with my Ellen and her piece of shit brother What’s-his-name.”
“Tim,” I said.
“Whatever. It don’t matter. Don’t much care ’bout that. Point is, I ain’t gonna let you take my precious little princess back to that whore and her pathetic little brother. She don’t wanna go with you neither, as you might have noticed.” He smiled down at Gracie and she smiled back. She was good at acting. “She’s my little girl, and she came right with me the second we met. Knew straight away that she wanted to be with her Daddy.”
I wondered if that gun had been pointed at her at the time. Part of me wanted to point out that she couldn’t have been too happy to be here if he was keeping her in a room with a latch on the outside of the door, but I didn’t – a rare stroke of good judgment.
“Right, OK,” I said. “We didn’t realise. I guess we’ll just be off, then. Hope you guys have a good night.”
I stepped towards the door, but he had his gun out and pointed at me before I’d covered any ground.
“I don’t think so.” Reagan turned to Gracie. “What should we do with them, princess?”
“Lock them up!” said Gracie. “In the room down the end.”
Reagan started to laugh, low and cruel. “Good idea, princess,” he said. He pointed the gun at us and directed us out into the main room. We walked down to the end of the room where we found a refrigerated chamber. Reagan called out to his cronies and one of them came to take Gracie away.
Once she was gone, Reagan spoke again. “I don’t think that girl realises how much of a genius she is,” he said. “Strip.”
“What? I’m not stripping for you, pervert! That’s –”
“I have no interest in seeing you naked. Down to your underwear should do.”
“But –”
“Do it, Charlie,” said Adam, speaking for the first time since we’d been captured. He was already taking off his shirt.
“You should listen to your friend.”
I pulled my clothes off angrily and in the least seductive way I could manage (which was very unseductive, I assure you – one of my few talents) and dumped them on the floor. We had been carrying our phones in our pockets (lacking the foresight to hide them in an orifice), so Reagan had taken away our last hope of calling for help.
“Get in there,” said Reagan, gesturing to the cool room.
We got in there.
“Bye,” he said, shutting the door and plunging us into darkness. A few moments later the room began whirring and lit up – and with that came the cold. Great. We were trapped in a giant fridge wearing only our underwear. I swear, every time I saw Adam shirtless something had to ruin it.
After allowing time for Reagan to leave, Adam tried pushing and kicking the door from the inside, but it didn’t budge. We searched the room but there were no other exits.
“So, what’s the plan now?” I asked.
Adam shrugged. “I don’t have a plan.”
I could feel the anger rising. “Are you serious?”
“Yes.”
“Then why did you tell Gracie to dob us in?” I demanded, furious.
“To keep her safe,” he said. “He was about to find us anyway. Better he thinks she wants to be with him rather than him catch her talking to us. By telling him we were there, she showed him that she wanted to stay with him. He won’t hurt her.”
“Oh,” I said. “I didn’t think of that.”
“That’s because you’re incurably self-centred.”
“Hey!”
“What?”
“That was rude.”
“It’s true.”
“Sometimes I’m not self-centred.”
“Like when?”
I paused. For a little too long. “Well, there must be an example.”
Adam did not look impressed.
“Shit,” I said eventually. “Really? I’m that bad?”
Adam shrugged. “You’re OK sometimes.”
My jaw dropped. “Seriously? What kind of compliment is that?”
“An accurate one.”
“I must have some good traits. People still hang out with me.”
“You’re amusing,” he said. I briefly felt slightly elated, but then he continued. “Mostly because you do dumb things and hurt yourself.”
“Well, you’re a meanie!”
“Ouch,” he said. “That cuts close to the bone.”
I crossed my arms and turned my back on him. Why had I even come in here with this guy? He was arrogant and infuriating and – worst of all – always right. We hadn’t even rescued Gracie. What a fucking waste.
“We didn’t even save Grace,” I said. “What was the point?”
“People know we’re here. Someone will show up eventually,” he said. “At least we know Gracie is safe. Well, as safe as she can be in the hands of a homicidal maniac.”
“I guess tha
t’s something.”
We were quiet for a while as we both paced the room trying to warm ourselves.
“Charlie, are you still angry with me?”
“No, Adam. What possible reason would I have to be angry with you?”
I wasn’t looking at him but I swear I heard him roll his eyes.
“Because I got you into this situation or because I called you self-centred?”
“I would have gotten myself into the same situation without you,” I said. “I was the one who figured it out, remember? I would have come here to look for her anyway.”
“Of course, because this is all about you, right?”
I harrumphed. “No! I just… Fine. I’m self-centred. Happy?”
“I’ll be happier when you actually do something about it.”
I rounded on him, ready to start yelling, but found him silently laughing. Great. He was winding me up. Really appropriate timing, Adam. It wasn’t like we were freezing in a death chamber or anything.
“Sometimes I really don’t like you,” I said.
“But you were so desperate to be friends with me this morning,” he said.
“I’ve changed my mind,” I said. “I don’t want to be friends with you anymore. You’re the worst friend in the history of the universe.”
“You can’t get out of it that easily,” he said. “You signed up for this.”
“I signed up for you making jokes at other people’s expense, not mine.”
He smiled and walked towards me. “Sorry, Charlie. I take it back. You’re not at all immature.”
“Thank you.”
“This is a very mature adult tantrum you’re having right now.”
Impossible. This guy was impossible.
“Adam, stop it! It’s not f–funny,” I said, stammering a little from the cold. “We’re freezing to death in here and I don’t want my last memories to be of you teasing me for your own amusement.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. I looked at him, waiting for the punch line, but it didn’t come. “I was just trying to take our minds off the situation.”
I sniffled, nodding.
“Are you crying?” he asked.
“It’s the cold!” I said, not at all defensively.
He pulled me into a hug. “You’re ridiculous,” he said, but I was too busy absorbing all the body heat I possibly could to bother arguing. “We should keep moving to warm ourselves up.”
“Or we could keep doing this.”
Adam broke away. “Don’t think I don’t know you’re just using me for my body heat,” he said. “Come on. Star jumps.”
Great. I’d missed out on my exercise this morning, but I was going to make up for it now. I followed Adam’s lead for as long as I could, but eventually I got too cold and exhausted to keep going. I sat down. (Well, actually I kind of collapsed.) Adam joined me, putting his arm around my shoulder.
“Not too much longer,” he said.
“Until we die?”
“Until the police get here,” he corrected.
“Oh.” We stopped talking for a while, but I didn’t like the silence. “Adam?”
“Mmm?”
“Why do they call you ‘Spider’?”
He smiled. “Asking the big questions.”
“I was just wondering what you have to do to earn a street name.”
I swear, I’d never seen Adam look so amused.
“Street name? Are you for real?”
“What? Why are you laughing?”
“Most people just call them nicknames.”
“But Tim and Panther and a bunch of others have them too! I thought it was, like, a Baxter & Co. initiation thing.”
Now that I said it aloud, I could kind of understand why Adam found it so funny. It sounded ridiculous.
“It’s not. Tim gave me my nickname and it kind of caught on. Panther’s real name is hard to say and sounds a little like ‘Panther’, so people just went with that. Nothing particularly street, I’m afraid.”
“And Tim? Why is he called Sharps?”
Adam raised an eyebrow. “You haven’t already guessed that one? I thought he might have told you.”
I shrugged. “I thought maybe he was good at shooting things. Or a former drug addict.”
“Only if you count insulin as a drug,” said Adam. “He’s diabetic. He has a pump now, but he used to have to give himself injections.”
“Oh,” I said. I was quiet for a moment. “Isn’t that kind of dangerous when you send him undercover? Like if people knew about that they could use it against him, right?”
Adam nodded. “That’s why it’s not public knowledge. It hasn’t been a problem yet, but we don’t really want people knowing. He’s too good at his job for me to relegate him to the office.”
I nodded. OK, so I’d made a total idiot of myself asking Adam about street names, but at least we were both going to die in the next couple of hours so no one would ever know. Silver lining, right?
“You didn’t really explain where your nickname came from,” I said.
“You mean my street name.”
“Shut up.”
“Fine, if you don’t wanna know –”
I groaned. “Just tell me!”
He smiled. “Nah.”
“What? Why?”
He gave me a shrug.
“I’ll take the secret to my grave.”
“Alright,” he said with a smile. “As long as you don’t tell all my street buddies.”
“OK, I’m stupid, I get it.”
Still grinning, he said, “It’s because of Spiderman.”
“What, because you’re a superhero? Sure you didn’t give yourself that name?”
“As super and heroic as I am, that is not the reason.”
“You’re good at climbing?”
“I’m good at everything.”
“Including modesty.”
“That was me being modest. I’m actually fantastic at everything.”
I rolled my eyes. I would have come up with some witty response, but Adam would have just come back with something wittier. He really was fantastic at everything. “Right, whatever. Back to your origin story, superhero.”
“I just like Spiderman, that’s all.”
“What do you mean you like Spiderman?”
“I wouldn’t have thought that would be so hard to comprehend.”
“Like the movies? The comic books?”
“All of it.”
“The figurines?”
Adam didn’t answer. In fact, he seemed to be avoiding eye contact.
“Oh my goodness, Adam Baxter, did I just find your flaw?”
“Liking superheroes hardly counts as a flaw. It’s not like it’s a niche thing. They’re the most popular movies being made today. It’s not like I told you I’m a LARPer or something.”
“I used to date a LARPer,” I said. “He was nice. Bit weird about me touching his sword though.”
Adam raised his eyebrows. “Was that a euphemism?”
“No,” I said with a snort. Then I thought about it for a second. “Although…”
“On second thoughts, I don’t really want to know. Point is, I like superheroes, just like 90% of the population. Are you trying to tell me you don’t like any superhero things?”
“Of course not,” I said. “I like Jessica Jones. Jaded, snarky PI with complicated past fights crime and tries to bring down a super powerful bad guy... Yeah, I like superheroes.”
“So why are you making such a big deal about it?”
“It’s not the movies or the shows I have a problem with. It’s not even the comics. It’s just… I wouldn’t have picked you for a figurines guy. I’ve been in your house and I didn’t see any. Not even a poster.”
“It’s not like I have them on display in a glass case.”
“Do you keep them in their boxes or do you take them out so you can play with them?”
“I don’t play with them,” he said, a tad snappily.
/> “Right, sure. I totally believe you.”
Crossing his arms, he turned away from me. Not wanting to let go of the conversation, I decided to question him further.
“Who do you go and watch the movies with?”
“Sometimes Tim. Otherwise I go alone.”
I let out an involuntary noise of pity at that moment.
“You don’t have to go alone. I’d go with you,” I said.
“Thanks for the offer, but I don’t know if we’re going to live to see another release.”
A cheery thought. We were silent for a while, but I was too freaked out to stop talking. The more I spoke the less I thought about what was coming.
“I wish I had a nickname,” I said. “Something that made me seem cool.”
“It’s going to take more than a nickname for that.”
“Ha ha,” I said flatly.
He sighed in mock exasperation. At least, I think it was mock exasperation. It could have been genuine.
“Fine. How about we call you Hulk?”
“Because of my imposing stature?”
“Naturally.”
I shrugged. “I dunno. I’m not really superhero material.”
“True.”
Narrowing my eyes at him, I continued. “I’m more into Disney.”
“Fine. Dumbo it is. I already think of you as that anyway.”
“No!”
“Pinocchio?”
“I don’t lie that often,” I lied.
“OK, fine. What do you want to be called?”
“I can’t choose my own nickname.”
“Well, you won’t listen to any of mine.”
“That’s because you keep picking mean ones! If you give me a real suggestion –”
“OK, fine. How about Stitch?” he suggested. “He’s violent and destructive, but ultimately very loyal and concerned about his family and friends.”
“Wow. I don’t know if I’m cool enough to be Stitch.”
“You’re definitely not, but you won’t agree to any of the more accurate characters.”
I ignored him. “I like Pokémon too,” I said. “That’s more nerd chic than Disney, right? I bet you’ve finished all the games and watched all the cartoons.”
