The Law of Nines

At first he thought she couldn’t have said what he’d thought she said, but the suggestive smile she was giving him told him that he’d heard her right. Alex couldn’t imagine what crazy scheme she was up to, but he thought he’d better keep his mouth shut.

“Now, Alex, I want you to be a good boy. If you are, this will all be over soon enough.” She kissed the end of a finger and pressed the finger to his lips. “Don’t worry, I’ll make it good for you. Really, really good. You’re going to enjoy it. I promise.”

Alex couldn’t keep from asking. “What are you talking about?” She rested her forearm on her knee as she leaned closer in darkness punctuated occasionally with the harsh illumination of lightning. She arched an eyebrow. “Why, your birthday present, Alex. Don’t you remember what I promised you for your birthday? Pretty little Beth always keeps her promises.”

16.

THERE WAS A DEAD MAN lying next to him, there was another big man glaring murderously down at him, and there were two barbed steel Taser probes stuck in the flesh of his chest and abdomen. Alex couldn’t imagine anything less conducive to romance.

“Bethany, you can’t possibly be serious.”

“Oh, but I am,” she said with a wicked little grin. “Now, as I said, if you’d like I can keep pulling this trigger until you wish you were dead, even if it won’t actually kill you. Sooner or later, though, the agony will be too much and you’ll give in. Your other choice is to forgo the drama, accept what is going to happen one way or another, and just lay back and enjoy yourself.”

She arched an eyebrow again. “What’s it going to be, lover boy?”

Alex didn’t want to agree, but he was sure that he didn’t want her to pull that trigger again. When she lifted the stun gun, making a display of waggling it in front of him as she cocked her head in a questioning manner, he reluctantly nodded.

“Good boy.” She rose up. “Get him in the bedroom,” she told the man.

He reached down with a big hand, seized Alex’s arm, and hauled him to his feet. The man spun Alex around, careful not to get tangled in the wires, and shoved him in the direction of the bedroom. Bethany warned Alex to keep his hands up and well away from the wires. He didn’t try to stall or protest as they made their way down the dark hall. He was sure that any pleas would fall on deaf ears. She’d already proven that she could pull the trigger faster than he could snatch the wires.

Brief but bright lightning flashes made his two captives seem to be nothing more than a procession of garishly lit statues. Whenever the lightning died out they turned into unseen ghosts pursuing him.

As Bethany followed Alex through the bedroom doorway, lightning flickered again. Rain beat against the two windows like a thing alive wanting in.

“Nice,” she said, glancing around in the sporadic fits of illumination. “Not what I’m used to, but nice.”

More distant flashes of lightning lit her again, but less harshly. She reached out and ran a finger along the metal bedpost as she smiled. “I especially like the iron bed.”

She gestured to the man. He shoved Alex to topple him backward onto the bed. The wicked steel barbs, still solidly lodged in the meat of his muscles and connected to the Taser by fine wires, were starting to hurt in earnest.

The man pounced on him, straddling his hips, using his weight to hold Alex down. He pulled out some beefy nylon zip ties, pressed one against Alex’s wrist, and then looped it around a stout piece of the iron headboard. He stuck the loose end through the little ratchet block and pulled it tight enough to cut painfully into the flesh. Alex had used such ties before. He knew they could be cut without a great deal of difficulty, but pulling on them to try to break them would accomplish nothing except to cut his wrists down to the bone.

The man zip-tied Alex’s other hand to the headboard, then bound both ankles together and fastened them to the footboard.

“Double them up,” Bethany said to the man as she watched Alex’s eyes, “just to be sure.”

Alex fought back rising panic as the man added more ties to both wrists and his ankles. One tie would be impossible to break; more than one was meant to reinforce the message that not only did he have no chance to get away, but that Bethany was the one who dictated his fate.

Alex imagined that Bethany intended to torture him in some fashion before killing him. He fought back gnawing dread.

He could hardly believe that he had just killed a man. He wished he could kill the other one as well. He wished he could get his hands around Bethany’s throat.

“That should do it,” the man said. “There’s no way he can break those.”

Bethany again waggled her Taser as Alex watched. “Well, just in case he gives me any trouble, I’ll leave the barbs in him. If he doesn’t cooperate . . .” She shrugged as she flashed him a meaningful smile.

The man stood at ease behind her and folded his arms.