24 Hours

She quickly slid her right hand up around her hip. Her forefinger touched the scalpel blade. Very carefully, she felt her way down the plastic handle, which was slick with perspiration. Closing her first and second fingers around the handle, she drew the scalpel from its place of concealment and set it firmly in her fist, the flat of the blade wedged between the pad of her thumb and her forefinger.

“Come on,” Hickey urged, his voice brimming with impatience.

She brought the blade smoothly along her right side and underneath her right breast. When it was beneath her chin, she slid her knees up under her chest, as though to position herself for oral sex.

“Finally,” he grunted.

She had to get between his legs. Straddling him this way, he could easily buck her off in the initial moment of panic. Without breaking her rhythm, she lifted one knee and wedged it between his thighs, then followed with the other.

“Go for it,” he said.

Karen gripped him as hard as she could with her left hand and pressed the blade against his urethra with her right, anchoring the point in a few millimeters of skin. It would take several seconds for him to register the pain of the puncture.

“Look down, Joe,” she said in a cold voice. “And don’t make any sudden moves.”

“What?”

“If you move, you’re going to lose this organ you’re so proud of.”

She felt his abdomen tighten as he raised his head to look. “What? Hey, whatever you’re doing, it hurts.”

“I’m holding a scalpel against your penis, Joe.” She prepared herself for a reflex jerk of panic. “You really don’t want to move, okay?”

His eyes went from blank confusion to shock in less than a second. At last he had seen and understood the scalpel. His whole body went rigid, but his pelvis didn’t move an inch.

“What the-” he blurted in a stage whisper.

He raised his hand to strike her, but didn’t have the courage to do it. Karen looked straight into his eyes. Fear crackled there like electricity. The power was intoxicating. She had gone from helpless supplicant to total dominance in seconds. If she had held the gun to Hickey’s head, he would have laughed in her face. But the threat to his manhood paralyzed him. She could almost feel his heart squirming in his chest.

“This is a Bard-Parker Number Ten scalpel,” she said. “We keep them around to take out splinters, stuff like that. But it’ll take off your equipment just as easily. I bet you’d hardly even feel it. Just a quick sting.”

“I’m gonna kill you,” he said in a matter-of-fact voice. “You and your kid.”

She pushed the scalpel point deeper, drawing blood.

“Stop!” he shouted, his face contorted in terror. His skin had gone as white as that of a man on his deathbed.

“You’re bleeding, Joe. So listen very closely. You’re going to pick up that telephone, call your cousin, and tell him to bring my daughter back here.”

Hickey’s eyes flicked from the blade to her face. “You won’t do it. If you do, your kid dies.”

“Oh, I’ll do it.” Karen’s heart felt like it was beating at random, firing off drum rolls between dangerous silences. She had to hold her nerve. “I’ll do it, and if you live through it, you’ll be peeing through an indwelling catheter for the rest of your life. No more making women walk bowlegged for a week. No more banging tonsils.”

She thought she saw a flicker of fear, but Hickey covered it quickly.

“Your hand’s shaking,” he said. “Feel it?”

“Pick up the phone!”

“Goddamn women. You ain’t got the guts.”

Something in his voice ignited an anger so deep that Karen had never even attempted to express it. She squeezed him with all the power in her left arm, and his skin went purple.

“I was a surgical nurse for six years, Joe. I’ll castrate you with no more regret than slicing a chicken neck. And it won’t be like that Bobbitt guy. No sewing it back on. Because while you’re spurting blood all over my percale sheets, I’ll throw it in the garbage disposal and flip the switch. Now pick up that fucking phone!”

“Take it easy!” Hickey grabbed the phone off the bedside table. “I’m dialing!” He punched wildly at the keypad. “What do you want me to say?”

Karen struggled to rein in her anger. The fierce pleasure she felt at seeing him broken had her muscles twitching like they did after four sets of tennis. Some primal part of her wanted to cut him.

“Tell him you already have the ransom money. Tell him to put Abby in the truck and drive her back here.”

“He won’t do it. We’ve never done it that way. He’ll know something’s wrong.”

“You told me he always does everything you say!”

Puzzlement came into Hickey’s face. “He’s not answering.”

“You didn’t dial it right!”

“I swear to God I did!”

“Then why hasn’t he answered?”

“How do I know?”

“Dial it again!” She pressed the blade deeper. There was a steady stream of blood now.

“Shit! Wait!” He hung up and redialed the number, then waited for an answer.

Karen’s nerves were fraying fast. Despite her immediate control over Hickey, she had put herself in an untenable position if Huey didn’t answer the phone.