LOST HOMICIDAL MANIAC

(ANSWERS TO "SHIRLEY")

an Andrew Mayhem thriller

by Jeff Strand

Lost Homicidal Maniac (Answers to "Shirley") copyright 2011 by Jeff Strand

Cover design by Lynne Hansen http://www.LynneHansen.com

Pink fingernailed handcuffed fist by Sally Bosco http://www.SallyBosco.com

All rights reserved.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without written permission from the author.

For more information about the author, visit http://www.JeffStrand.com

Subscribe to Jeff Strand's free monthly newsletter (which includes a brand-new original short story in every issue) at

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INTRODUCTION

by JA Konrath

When you read this book, you'll smile a lot. You'll also laugh. Some very warped yet hysterical things happen in this story.

But keep in mind it's a horror novel. Jeff Strand knows comedy, but he also knows how to make the reader squirm.

And trust me. You will squirm.

There is some very scary stuff here. Stuff that will prompt you to turn on the lights and check on the children and make sure all the doors are locked tight.

Don't let the comedy throw you.

You have been warned.

JA Konrath (aka Jack Kilborn)

Schaumburg, IL 2011

http://www.jakonrath.com

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

It's been seven years since the last Andrew Mayhem novel, Casket For Sale (Only Used Once), was published. That feels like a long time, even though I'm old enough to say things like "Wow, is it December already?" and complain that movies from the 80's are too recent to be remade. Hopefully the fans who have been saying "When the hell are you going to write another Andrew Mayhem novel?" won't be disappointed, and hopefully the non-fans who've been saying "Why would he write another Andrew Mayhem novel? Everybody knows it's going to suck!" won't have reason to gloat.

As always, I must thank my team of test readers for pointing out my shameful mistakes before you got a chance to pay to read them. Thanks to Tod Clark, Ashley Davis, Cathy Jones, JA Konrath, Michael McBride, Jim Morey, Rick Moschgat, and Rhonda Wilson. Any errors you find are still my fault, because I was messing with the book after they made their comments and I probably screwed something up.

So many people have been supportive of this series over the years that to name them all would be impossible. Well, not impossible...I mean, it could be done if I were more ambitious, but, as always, I'm going to take the wuss way out and avoid a scenario in which I leave out somebody, who then vows revenge and comes up with an elaborate scheme to destroy me. Those of you who've helped me out know who you are.

Does anybody ever really get a feeling of satisfaction from the whole "You know who you are" thing? I mean, when I'm in an anthology and my cover credit is "And Many More" I don't sit back and think "That's okay—at least I know who I am!" My reaction is "Whaaaaaat?!?" and then I pout for weeks. Everybody who was affected by my failure to thank them by name has my permission to pout for weeks.

Anyway, here's Lost Homicidal Maniac (Answers to "Shirley"). If you tell all of your friends to buy it, there won't be a seven-year gap between Mayhem IV and V.

Jeff Strand

Tampa, Florida

PROLOGUE

A Parent's Cruel Wish Fulfilled

I was born late and painfully. Though I didn't grow up to be an abnormally huge guy, I was a very large infant, and my mom insisted that my birth hurt worse than any other baby who'd ever popped out of its mother in the history of the known universe. I'm sure this isn't true, since it's not like I had claws or spikes or anything, and she didn't have any other personal childbirth experiences with which to make a direct comparison, but that was her story.

From birth until age two, I was the most well behaved kid in the world, I'm told. Lots of smiling, no colic, and a good eater. Then, when I hit the terrible twos, I made up for my brief lifetime of positive behavior by turning into the loudest, most hyperactive kid who had ever existed. (Again, I believe this was exaggerated to make whatever point my parents were trying to make each time they brought it up.)

By age five, apparently my mom and dad were allowed to eat in restaurants again, though the plan to produce a sibling had long since been abandoned.

I can't remember for sure, but I think I was seven when my parents first suggested that it was going to be really, really funny someday when I had kids who acted just like me. My response was that these would be most charming children indeed, though I was being a smartass when I said it.

As I raced toward my teenage years, the threat of having offspring of my own intensified to something that my parents insisted would drive me to an early grave, similar to the one I was driving them toward.

"You're going to have a son just like you, and he's going to leave the freezer door open all night just like you, and he's going to ruin a hundred and thirty dollars' worth of meat just like you, and the stress is going to kill you," said my mom, after I'd missed an important step in the process of properly obtaining a bowl of ice cream in the middle of the night.

My thought on the matter was, no, I wouldn't, because unlike my own mom and dad, I'd been sufficiently warned. I wasn't going to have any kids. For that to happen I'd have to get married, and that was only for total losers. I was a free spirit! Ain't nobody gonna tie Andrew Mayhem down!

I got in trouble for using the word "ain't."

I honestly don't think I was a problematic teenager. Okay, I wasn't great in school, and this was during a time when parents would actually discipline their kids for bad grades instead of yelling at the teacher for making the tests too hard. And there were the occasional calls home because of an "attitude problem," and, yeah, detention was not unknown to me, and I tended to treat my curfew as a recommended guideline, and...all right, I was not a flawless model. But I never had parties that involved the house being trashed, I never did anything illegal except for some moderate trespassing, and any random drug test my parents might have sprung on me would have come back negative.

And despite the "You'll have kids of your own someday!" promises, I did not impregnate any of my (very few) high school girlfriends. It helps when most of your romantic experience comes from dating a girl named Charlene who vowed to wait a) until marriage, or b) until a football player named Joey casually hit on her at a party, whichever came first.

I did a lot of drinking in college, but I was living in a dorm, so my mom and dad didn't have to witness it. I called them every Monday night without fail, except when I was drunk. Most of the conversations were about how much they loved me, and, oh, yeah, since they were making a substantial financial contribution to my college education, could I try not to flunk any more classes?

When I was twenty-one, my dad got a new job and they moved up to the Florida panhandle. It was only about three and a half hours away, but I'll admit it: I cried a little bit.

I drove up there for Thanksgiving, a visit that was delayed because my laughable excuse for a car broke down and I didn't have any money and I'd maxed out my one credit card. They were more than happy to bail me out. Then, through a series of events that involved not one, not two, not three, but four poor judgment calls on my part, I burned up most of their backyard. Oh, I wasn't drunk; I just thought I'd found a way to cook the turkey that was superior to my mom's original plan of "put it in the oven."

"So what do you want to do with your life?" Dad asked, as we sat in the den, watching a football game that interested neither of us.

The question had come out of nowhere. Mom was usually the "What are your hopes and dreams?" person.

I shrugged. "Lots of things."

"Are any of them practical?"

"I want to start a band."

"Not practical."

"I might want to go into marketing."

"Did you take any marketing classes?"

"No, but I think I will."

"I'm not trying to be a pain, son, but don't you think that taking marketing classes in your last semester of college is a bit late?"

"Last semester?"

"You're graduating after next semester, right?"

"Ah. Yes. I think I am. I'm sure I am. Yes. Sorry, I misheard the question. Yes, I'm pretty sure I'm graduating next semester."

Dad closed his eyes and sighed. "Does your mother know you aren't graduating?"

"I am graduating. I was distracted by the game—I mean, the commercial that's on, so I didn't hear what you said. I have to pay attention to commercials if I want to be successful at marketing."

"All right. Just remember, son, that guilt doesn't make a very fluffy pillow."

I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. "I know that."

"I love you, Andrew."

I gaped at him, horrified. Dad was not one to just randomly hurl out an "I love you" without it being said to him first. "Are you dying? Do you have leukemia?"

"No. Your mother and I are just worried about you. We understand that you're still young, and some flowers take longer to blossom, but you should have some sort of life plan by now, don't you think?"

"None of my friends have life plans. Roger doesn't."

"I'm not saying that you should have a detailed map. Just maybe a general direction. A very general direction. Something. Your mother and I support you in everything you do—I mean, assuming you don't start selling pot or anything like that—but am I telling you anything you don't know when I suggest that disaster follows you around?"

"No, I'm aware of that."

"I do not have leukemia. I do have an ulcer. Your mother and I need to know that you're going to be okay, so if you could just give us a tiny bit of a hint that you have some sort of plan, we'd sleep better at night."

"I guess...I, uh, guess I'm going to take those marketing classes and see how they go. And then graduate next semester for sure."

"Okay. I hope they go well."

"They will."

"You'll have kids someday, son, and you'll realize how hard it is to be a parent. We just worry. Do you understand?"

"It can't be that hard. It's not like I live at home."

"Trust me, son. It's hard."

When I was twenty-three, I graduated college with a major in Theatre and married Helen. Since Helen was approximately eight hundred and fifty-six million times more responsible than me, my parents were elated. Helen was a couple of years older than me, a registered nurse, and we planned to enjoy five years of domestic bliss and career establishment and then start a family.

She got pregnant on our honeymoon.

Mom thought this was funnier than I did.

Despite the drive, Mom and Dad were a huge help with our daughter Theresa, showing up at least once a month to see their granddaughter. They did the same thing after Kyle was born.

Mom told me all the time how proud she was of me. And then she laughed her ass off whenever I told her dirty diaper and baby barf stories.

A couple of weeks before Kyle's third birthday, Dad had a stroke. It wasn't fatal or massively debilitating, and after he got out of the hospital I spent several weeks with them (fortunately, I was between jobs at the moment; unfortunately, that wasn't an unusual state for me) helping them get back to their normal lives. But after that, Mom and Dad didn't travel much.

I called them on a regular basis, sharing more tales of mischievous children. Sometimes I used the word "bratty." I'm not proud of that.

As my kids got older, I called less often than I should have. Most of the time Mom would call me, and lightly scold me for going so long without calling, and I'd gently remind her that she also owned a telephone device that was not only capable of receiving calls but making them as well, and she'd say that she knew I was under a lot of stress and didn't want to call at an inconvenient time, and I'd concede her point and promise to call more often in the future.

When I told Mom that I'd had a vasectomy, she laughed and told me that Dad had had one, too, about twenty-five years ago. That kind of hurt my feelings. Mom suggested that Dad and I should compare notes, which we did not do because my father and I did not have the kind of relationship where we could openly discuss things like vasectomy experiences.

It turned out to be a botched vasectomy, which is to say that I went through all of the anguish and leg crossing and discomfort and embarrassment so that I would not be able to impregnate my wife, yet I still impregnated my wife. You can guess how happy I was about that, though I'll admit to a brief moment of masculine pride.

When I called Mom and Dad to tell them that Helen was pregnant with our third child, Mom did not let out the tornado of hysterical laughter that I would have anticipated. The first thing she said was "Are you going to be okay?"

I assured her that I was.

Then lots of horrible things happened, and I wasn't so sure.

* * *

Helen and I gazed up at the sonogram monitor, which featured bizarre shapes that looked like nothing identifiable as a human or even alien child. The sight brought tears to our eyes anyway.

She'd taken a beating, but she hadn't lost the baby. She was one strong mother and she was going to have one strong kid.

"Is it a boy or girl?" Helen asked.

The doctor smiled. "Both."

My eyes widened. "Oh my God! The kid's a hermaphrodite?"

Helen laughed and playfully swatted my arm. "No, you goof. He means we're having twins." The realization of that fact quickly sunk in and her voice became somewhat less chipper. "Twins."

"Actually, no," said the doctor. "Triplets."

Helen swatted my arm again. This time it wasn't quite as playful.

God, I wanted my mother.

CHAPTER ONE

As I drove us home from the doctor's office, our already fragile minds strained to process the bombshell.

"Triplets?"

Helen nodded in a most zombie-like manner.

"Three of them?"

"Yeah."

"But that's...that's..." I applied the brakes a bit too firmly at the red light. "That's a two hundred and fifty percent increase in our children!"

"One hundred and fifty."

"From two to five..." I did some mental calculations. "Okay, you're right, but it's still a shitload of kids!"

"I know."

"We're dead."

"We're not dead."

"I think we can both agree that we're dead."

"We'll get through it," Helen said. "We always do."

"Yeah, we always get through it, but we're all messed up when it's over!" I held up my left hand, which was missing the pinky because of the last event we'd gotten through. "See?"

"I wish you'd quit showing me that."

"You're supposed to love me, despite my grotesque mutilation."

"I do love you, but it doesn't mean I always want to look at your missing finger."

"It's not the finger, it's the stump."

"Do you think we could return to the serious conversation?" Helen asked. "The light's green."

"I know." I drove through the intersection, wondering if there were legal restrictions that prohibited somebody from driving after learning that his wife was going to have triplets. There should've been, because quite honestly the idea of participating in an eighteen-car pileup didn't sound all that bad right now.

Okay, no, that wasn't true, but still...three more kids?

If this is your first time reading about my madcap escapades, you may be thinking "Yes, five children is perhaps a bit more than absolutely necessary, but it's not all that out of hand. What's the big deal?"

The big deal is that I'm a freakin' neodymium magnet for trouble—often in the form of depraved murderers—and I've been unable to keep the two kids I already have out of it.

It was bad enough when they were both kidnapped. Theresa was eight and Kyle was six. I came out of that situation a lot worse than they did (ask to see my extensive scar collection), but still, there was some damage.

The really bad stuff happened during the grand adventure that cost me my pinky. I've already written about it in almost too much detail elsewhere and I don't feel like dwelling on it here, but under the influence of a hallucinatory drug, taken involuntarily, I almost murdered my daughter. She was still having nightmares four months later. I didn't live at home because of it.

I'm not saying that Theresa saw me as a knife-wielding monster or anything like that. I visited my kids almost every day, and Theresa would talk to me and give me hugs and ask me to help with her homework and treat me like a normal dad. But until she stopped waking up in the middle of the night screaming that Daddy was trying to kill her—and whether it was my fault or not, I had tried—Helen didn't think I should sleep in the same house.

I didn't agree with this approach. I thought it would be much healthier for Theresa if I were there to comfort her after those dreams. But Helen wanted me out of the house after bedtime, and though I'm one dense guy, I do understand that the pregnant woman gets her way.

And though Helen never said it, and even though the root cause of my actions had been clearly defined, and even though there was no hint that I would ever do such a horrible thing again...I kind of think Helen was worried that there could be a reprisal. Maybe like an acid flashback. When your wife is concerned that you might slip out of bed and sneak into your daughter's bedroom with a butcher knife, you kind of have to respect her request to sleep elsewhere.

Anyway, since I was apparently unable to successfully care for the ten-year-old and the eight-year-old I had now, how was I supposed to take care of a trio of zero-year-olds?

I was thirty-four years old. When I was in my fifties, I'd have three teenagers in the house. Oh my freaking God.

Another problem: typically, the aforementioned depraved murderers that always seem to pop up in my life end up in pieces, or at least with lots of puncture wounds in their dead bodies. Mr. Burke, the head honcho of my last unpleasant experience, got away. He wasn't happy when we parted ways. There'd been no sign of him since, even with an ongoing FBI investigation, but in the back of my mind there was always the concern that he'd be seeking revenge.

So, things weren't great in my life. However, they were about to improve.

I'm kidding, of course.

* * *

Four months later...

Let's pretend you acquired a cat. A black cat that you named "Reverse Snowflake." With all due respect to the feline lovers reading this, Reverse Snowflake was not an awesome cat. Though you hesitated to call him the worst cat in the world, this cat, quite simply, sucked.

Now let's pretend that you dumped Reverse Snowflake on your best friend. We'll call him Roger Tanglen. You used the excuse that your wife was allergic to cats, which is the truth, but if she wasn't you would have come up with some other excuse, like "I'm worried that he'll steal my children's breath in the middle of the night." Roger didn't want the damn cat. He was quite vocal about this. Every time you went over to his apartment, Roger would share some ghastly tale of deviant cat behavior and politely request that you take the beast back.

Instead of being sympathetic to your best friend's plight, you were amused by it.

Now let's pretend that you were now living in Roger's apartment and sleeping on his couch. Every night, Reverse Snowflake tried to chew on your ears, mate with your scalp, and claw your eyes out if you made any sudden moves, forcing you to sleep with a blanket pulled over your head like a little kid frightened of the Boogeyman. This often happened while you could hear Roger engaged in enthusiastic lovemaking with his gorgeous girlfriend in his cat-free bedroom.

Welcome to my life.

"Rise and shine, Sunshine Buttercup," said Roger, poking me in the side.

I pulled the blanket away from my head. "What time is it?"

"Six-fifteen."

"Please burn in hell."

"C'mon, today's our big day! Where's the excitement?"

"You need to get rid of that cat."

"No. I like him now. Get up."

"Five more minutes."

"Uh-uh. It's time to get up."

This conversation went on for two minutes longer than the five minutes of extra sleep I'd requested, but trust me, you don't want to read a complete transcript. Roger eventually won, and shortly after that I stood in the shower, trying to make the scalding hot water and invigorating scent of soap wake me up.

I stood there for quite a while. I was not invigorated.

Roger was right, though. It was a big day for us. All I needed was eleven or twelve cups of coffee, and perhaps a buzz of electroshock therapy, and I'd be fine.

I got out of the shower, dried off, combed my hair more nicely than usual, and put on my snazzy new dress clothes. I looked in the mirror and decided that, yes, if I were seeking the services I was offering, I would hire myself.

When I walked out of the bathroom, Samantha was seated on the couch. I hadn't liked her when she and Roger first started dating, but that's mostly because I was being a jealous whiny little baby, and I'd gotten over it. I suspected that she was more than ready for me to stop living in Roger's apartment, though because I had rescued her from an unspeakably horrific death she wasn't inclined to be rude about it.

"Where's Roger?" I asked.

"He went to get bagels." Samantha smoothed out her light blue bathrobe. "Can I talk to you for a minute?"

Aw, crap. "Sure," I said. There was plenty of room on the couch, but I'm not ashamed to admit that her incredible blonde beauty still made me kind of nervous, and I sat on the recliner. "What's up?"

"I know that Roger and I have only been together for a few months, but I've been thinking about it a lot, and I don't feel like this is...temporary."

"He's a good catch," I said, because when women start talking about relationships and stuff I get uncomfortable and make lame comments like "He's a good catch."

"He's not great at expressing his feelings, but I know he loves me, and I love him so much, and I want us to share the rest of our lives together."

I nodded. "I'm really happy for you two. And don't worry, if you're going to move in I'll clear out. Not that you would want to live here. This place kinda sucks. You two would obviously get a better place. I'll leave, either way."

"Well, I was thinking about more than just us living together."

It took me a moment to figure out what she was talking about, and then I couldn't help but smile.

"Really?"

"Yeah, really. What do you think?"

"Samantha, are you getting my permission to ask Roger for his hand in marriage?"

She laughed nervously, which was surprising and kind of cute because Samantha never got nervous. "Actually, I am, sort of. Yes, I was going to propose to him."

"Seriously?"

"Yeah. Girl asking the guy. Would that completely freak him out?"

"I have no clue," I admitted. Though we'd been friends for almost twenty years, since high school, I didn't know his attitude about non-traditional marriage proposals. He certainly hadn't discussed the idea of them getting married with me. Still, there was no question that the two of them had fantastic energy together, and they'd been through some unbelievable trauma without their relationship crumbling, so as far as I was concerned they should join together in holy matrimony.

"What do you think about the idea?" she asked. "I don't want to scare him away."

"I don't think you'll scare him too badly," I said. "Have you two talked about getting married?"

"No. Not at all."

"You're not going to do one of those things where you ask him on a Jumbotron at a baseball game or something like that, are you? He's not good under pressure."

Samantha shook her head. "I was going to make him dinner at my place tonight, and ask him there."

"Wow."

"Yeah."

"What are you making?"

"Spaghetti."

"That's good. He loves spaghetti."

"With green olive sauce."

"Oh, he hates—" An alarm bell went off in my brain, screaming Shut up, dumbass! Shut up, dumbass! Shut up, dumbass! and I stopped in mid-sentence.

"He hates green olives?"

"I honestly don't know his opinion of them."

"He said it was the best spaghetti he'd ever...oh, God, are you telling me that he was sparing my feelings?"

I vigorously shook my head. "No, if he thought your spaghetti was garbage he'd tell you, I promise."

"I can't believe this."

"There's nothing to worry about."

"I've made it for him on every special occasion."

"He loves it."

"He's a much better liar than you are."

"He's not a liar," I said, knowing that my voice and body language were giving off every possible signal by which interrogators could determine that a suspect wasn't telling the truth. I decided to stop lying and start pleading. "Please don't not propose to him over this. It's a good kind of lie. It's a 'Does this dress make my butt look big?' lie."

"Did he say my—?"

"No. Absolutely not."

She sighed. "Maybe I'll do meatballs."

"Meatballs are awesome."

The door opened, and Roger walked into the living room, holding a brown bag. He gestured to it with the dramatic flourish of a circus ringmaster. "Who wants...bagels?"

Samantha gave him a dark look that I'd received from Helen many times. "Are they green olive bagels?"

* * *

"Why do I get in trouble for being polite?" Roger asked, as we drove through town. "If I had said 'Hey, I don't like green olives' on our first date, there wouldn't have been a second date, right?"

"Right," I agreed.

"She should be saying 'Wow, you've eaten that nasty slop six or seven times out of love.' I should be praised for this, not condemned."

"I totally agree."

"It's almost as if there are differences between men and women. Vast differences. But there's no scientific research to back that up."

As far as I knew, the proposal was still on. I can be dumb, but I wasn't so dumb as to say "So, Samantha, does this whole green olive thing mean that you're not going to ask Roger to marry you tonight?"

We pulled into the parking lot of the strip mall, which contained a movie rental store with an "Everything Must Go!" sign in the front window, a nail salon, a sandwich shop, three empty spaces available for lease, and then, at the very end, in a space smaller than our college dorm room, the office of A/R Tasks & Investigations.

I thought the name pretty much sucked, but I'd been outvoted 3-1. Though I'd pushed for the word "Mayhem" to be included in the name of our new business, Roger, Helen, and Samantha had suggested that we should use a name that implied that we solved problems rather than creating them. They had a good point. After coming up with approximately 583,219,037 possible names, we'd settled on A/R Tasks & Investigations.

Yes, Roger and I were starting our own business.

And, yes, I completely understood why some people might think this was a terrifying idea.

CHAPTER TWO

So here's the reasoning behind our business venture: Roger and I were always getting into trouble. Much of it was because of our own poor judgment, as in the instance where we agreed to dig up a coffin. We shouldn't have done that. But we also had just plain bad luck, as with our recent family camping trip. It's not like we ignored the warnings of a crazy old man who said "Don't go to Bloody Death Splatter Mountain. Bad things happen on Bloody Death Splatter Mountain." We simply ended up in a really bad mess.

When this kind of madness keeps happening to you, at some point you think "How can I legally profit from this?" I'd acquired a little bit of fame from my adventures, yet it had never really translated into sustainable fortune. There'd been some recent interest in doing a reality show, but Helen had violently nixed the idea on the grounds that she was not going to parade our children around like some sort of freak show. It was hard to argue with that.

I still had my office job, which wasn't so bad except for the whole "sucking away my life like a parasite that feasts on souls" element. I'm no egomaniac, but being Andrew Mayhem, The Guy Who Went Through All That Stuff And Lived had to be worth something more than this, right? I didn't need a mansion, or pillows stuffed with the feathers of endangered species, or a diamond-studded dachshund; I just wanted to be able to provide for my family without battling the constant urge to knock myself unconscious against my cubicle wall.

Then Samantha suggested that Roger and I go into business for ourselves.

Not quite a detective agency. More of a problem solving service. The basic concept was "If we can survive numerous encounters with psycho killers, we can handle your task." (Though that was not our official slogan. Our official slogan was "We solve weird problems.")

Obviously, our expectation was not that clients would come into our office and say "Aaah! There's a guy with an axe chasing me! What's your hourly rate to stop him?" We just figured that with our notoriety, we'd get...I don't know, somebody with a crop circle issue, maybe. We weren't sure what to expect, but the rent at this dying strip mall was ridiculously cheap, our furnishings came from Goodwill, and instead of a multimillion dollar advertising campaign we had a few fliers around town that I'd printed out at work before I gave my notice. So if this business was a spectacular failure, at least it would be an inexpensive spectacular failure.

We put up the "Now Open!" sign, took pictures of each other standing in front of the door, went inside at the stroke of eight o'clock, turned on the lights, and sat down.

"A couple of my Twitter followers said they'd be in today," said Roger.

"Awesome."

"Most people probably don't have problems until ten or eleven, so it's okay if nobody comes in for a while."

"Roger, we've been open for thirty seconds. We don't have to start making excuses yet."

"I know, I know. Just throwing that out there in case you were worried."

"I'm not," I said, lying my butt off.

This is probably a good time to point out that Helen was not entirely cool with this whole idea. When you look at it from her perspective, which involves her husband quitting his day job to start a hastily conceived business with his irresponsible best friend, using money borrowed from her parents, at a time when she is three months away from delivering triplets, her lack of enthusiasm is perhaps understandable. My defense was that it would allow me flexible hours and thus more opportunities to care for our new spawn, and potentially more money than I was bringing in, and it would keep me from going absolutely stark raving nutzo berserk insane.

I probably should have left out the "stark raving etc." part, considering that I was not living at home, making it hard for Helen to be sympathetic with my level of stress compared to hers. However, being a total sweetheart, she did not say "If you do this, I will divorce you, and you will wake up under several dozen tons of cement."

We worked this out by me swearing that by the time the babies arrived, I would be bringing in as much income as my day job had provided, or else I'd crawl right back there. I hadn't told anybody off or ignited anything before I left, so crawling back and begging for my old job would be feasible. Still, I hoped to avoid that.

So this was one last shot at being my own boss before I gave it all up, handed my barely beating heart over to The Man, and became a corporate drone until my body and spirit had completely shriveled up into my own Prune of Destiny.

"Are you sure we shouldn't do cold calls?" Roger asked.

"We're not going to become telemarketers. People hate those jerks. We're here to help the community and provide a service that people want and need."

"I know, but clearly telemarketing works, or else they wouldn't do it. If everybody hated apricots, they'd stop selling them in stores. Somebody has to like apricots, right?"

"Quit using the apricot metaphor. If we're going to become douchebag telemarketers, why don't we take it one step further and go around town causing problems, and then offer to solve them? We could steal a bunch of dogs and then magically find them."

"That's actually not such a bad—"

"Let it go."

The first hour of our first day involved a great deal of unproductive sitting. In the second hour, we upgraded to pacing. But in the third hour, a car parked in one of our designated spaces. Roger hurried out the back exit, as per our plan.

A heavyset, middle-aged woman came inside. I set down the encyclopedia I was pretending to read and gave her a friendly smile.

"Hello," I said, standing up and extending my hand. "Welcome to A/R Tasks and Investigations."

She shook my hand. "Not a very catchy name."

"It bites, doesn't it? I was outvoted. I'm Andrew Mayhem."

"Gerta Williams."

"Thank you for stopping by, Ms. Williams."

Roger walked in through the front door. "Oh, hello, sorry to interrupt."

"No problem at all," I said. "This is my partner, Roger Tanglen. Roger, this is Gerta Williams."

"Nice to meet you," said Roger, shaking her hand. "So, Andrew, how was the chicken taco last night?"

I frowned. "How did you know what I had for dinner?"

"Your left shoe has a new scuff mark. It's hard to see, but the evidence on display makes it abundantly clear that it was produced by the gravel driveway at Melena's Mexican restaurant. There are three other restaurants within an eight mile radius—the most you would be likely to travel for a casual meal—that could produce a mark with that particular shade of gray, but the depth and length could only come from Melena's."

"That's amazing!" I proclaimed. "But how did you know what I ordered?"

"You are a thrifty man, not accustomed to needlessly wasting money, and the lack of a bag of potato chips on the desk indicates to me that you had a full meal last night. From there, it was easy to deduce that you'd taken advantage of the two-for-one chicken taco special."

"Incredible," I said. "As always, you got every detail right."

"It's my job."

Gerta did not seem as impressed as we'd hoped. "So you're the problem solving guys, right?"

"We certainly are," I told her.

"Well, I've got a problem. My neighbors have this miserable dog, and it's always taking a dump in my yard. They don't clean up after it. They don't even care. They just let the damn thing run loose."

"We're not really in the dog killing business," I said.

"No, I just need you guys to put up a fence. Can you do that for me?"

Roger and I looked at each other. "Uh..." I said. "That's not...uh, well, I guess...uh...sure."

* * *

"I think there's a flaw in our business model," said Roger, holding the fence post as I pounded it into the ground.

"Well, we are A/R Tasks and Investigations. Some of them are going to be tasks, and some are going to be investigations."

"Yeah, but they're supposed to be cool tasks."

"I know, I know. We should have said no. It's hard to turn down our first customer."

"Hey!" shouted Gerta from her front porch. "I'm paying you to put up a fence, not stand there jabbering!"

"We're working while we talk!" I said.

"Pick up your pace or you ain't getting any lemonade!"

The lemonade had a not-so-refreshing battery acid-esque flavor, and our mood was not particularly joyous as we drove away from the newly fenced yard. But we had made some money, minus a deduction for the glass Roger dropped, and in some cultures there would have even been the satisfaction of a job well done. We went back to Roger's apartment and took showers so as not to scare off potential clients with our foul odor, changed into new sets of professional clothes, then returned to the office and collapsed into our chairs.

"That sucked," said Roger.

"It could've been worse."

"Well, yeah, anything can be worse. That doesn't mean it doesn't suck."

"But it's better than sitting around all day with no clients."

"True."

We sat around for a couple more hours with no clients. Our posted office hours were eight to five, and at four fifty-eight I checked my watch to make sure it matched the time on the clock.

"This is kind of a bummer," I said.

"Yeah."

"Maybe we should hang out for a while longer. A lot of people get off work at five, and they may need some evening tasks or investigations."

"Sounds good."

We waited for another half hour.

And then she walked into our office.

It was like a moment out of a private eye movie, except that there were no saxophones playing in the background, nobody was smoking, and the lighting was adequate. The woman looked like she was in her early-to-mid forties; not devastatingly beautiful, but she definitely took care of herself. She had short black hair with visible gray roots, and the pinkest nail polish I'd ever seen. (My daughter loved, loved, loved pink nail polish, so I was well acquainted with intense levels of pinkness.)

She wore tan slacks and a white blouse and looked like she came from a hard day of work at an office job. I could easily picture her wearing a headset and telling somebody that the boss was in a meeting with an important client.

"Hello," I said, as the glass door swung closed behind her. "Welcome to A/R Tasks and Investigations, where we laugh at your problems."

Roger glared at me. I gave him a "Why are you glaring at me?" look, and then realized that I'd screwed up and used the wrong greeting. The message conveyed was supposed to be "We laugh at the ease with which we will solve your problems," but during the brainstorming session we'd realized that most people would not interpret it that way.

"I'm sorry," I told her. "What I meant was, we laugh at the ease with which we will solve your problem. Which is not to downplay your problem. We're not saying that your problems are laughable, just that we're good at solving them. We solve weird problems. That's our official slogan."

Roger did not punch me in the face to stop me from talking, though it would have been justified. "Please, sit down," he told the woman, gesturing to one of the chairs in front of our shared desk.

"Thank you," she said. We all sat down.

"My name is Roger Tanglen, and this is my intern Andrew Mayhem. How can we help you today?"

"Is it okay that it's after your closing time?"

"Absolutely. We're always happy to stay open for important clients," said Roger. He gave me a warning look, as if he thought I might try to say something witty.

"I appreciate that," said the woman. Her purse rested on her lap and she stared at it instead of looking us in the eyes. "You two have been part of...strange things, right?"

I nodded. "One time I had to find a quarter in the mouth of a severed head."

"My name is Shirley," she said. "I think I may be a serial killer."

CHAPTER THREE

"I see," I said, nodding thoughtfully. "Please continue."

"Do you have a privacy clause?"

"We're not attorneys or priests, but I promise that everything you say will be held in the strictest confidence," I assured her, which of course I knew would be a total lie if she confessed to multiple murders.

"I just don't know where else to go," said Shirley. She sounded less like a potential homicidal maniac and more like somebody who was having difficulty finding a decent place to get deep-dish pizza.

"You came to the right place," I assured her, though despite our marketing angle, Roger and I had hoped to avoid things like having serial killers walk into our office. There had to be a pleasant middle ground between putting up a fence and dealing with a psychopath.

Shirley continued to stare at her purse. "I don't know if I did. But I'm here. I mean, I need to talk to somebody. Maybe I didn't do anything. Maybe I'm the victim. I just can't go to the police, you know?" Now her voice was starting to show some emotion.

"I don't want to be disrespectful," said Roger, "but would it be okay if we checked you for weapons? It's nothing personal; I just think that if somebody comes in here and says they're a serial killer, we should at least make sure they don't have a meat cleaver."

She looked up at him, shrugged, and opened her purse. She held it up for his inspection for a few seconds. After Roger nodded, she held it open toward me. It seemed to be mostly filled with the usual stuff that women keep in their purse. No meat cleaver, butcher knife, hand grenade, or hangman's noose was visible, though there was a pair of handcuffs. I didn't inquire about them.

"Satisfied?" she asked.

"Yes, that was great, thanks," said Roger.

Shirley stood up. There were no supernatural forces at work, but I swore her shirt suddenly became two sizes smaller. "Do you need to pat me down?" she asked. She wasn't flirty or sarcastic about it. Instead, she seemed genuinely interested in giving us the peace of mind that she wasn't going to stab us to death.

Roger shook his head. "No, no, that's okay. You can't fit a meat cleaver in those pockets."

"I could fit a pocketknife in them, though. That's why it's called a pocketknife."

"Nah, we're good. It's just that if you did start slashing at us, I would have felt kind of silly for not having checked you for weapons, since you did say you might be a serial killer."

Shirley glanced at me. "Are you fine with this, too?"

"Totally. So why don't you start at the beginning?"

"When I woke up this morning, I was in a bathtub of blood with intestines wrapped around my legs like writhing snakes."

"How interesting," I said, remaining professional.

She sort of smiled. "I'm kidding."

"Ah, good."

"That was a dream I had. The snakes were translucent. I could see sperm inside of them."

This is when I realized that A/R Tasks and Investigations had been a terrible idea. We should just drag the furniture out to the curb, leave a sign on the door thanking our loyal customers for their many hours of support, and get out. If Roger and I had even a single functional brain cell ping-ponging between us, we would not let ourselves get involved in what would certainly become a nightmarish web of murder, betrayal, and deceit.

Then again, Shirley might be an innocent, scared woman who we could help. What kind of people were we if we cast out the first potential lunatic who walked through our door? We should at least hear her out.

"Translucent snakes," I said. "Got it. How long have you been dreaming about them?"

"It was just that one dream. I dream of all kinds of things...dark, squirmy shapes that I can't even recognize, but that's been happening since I was a little girl." She broke eye contact and looked back down at her purse. "Sorry. I promised myself I wouldn't be creepy."

"It's fine," said Roger. "Be as creepy as you need to be."

"For as long as I can remember, I've had impulses. Nothing intense, nothing serious; just things that I wanted to do that I knew I shouldn't. I never acted on them. My father would take me out fishing, and I might spend extra time cleaning the fish, and I might cut it in more places than I needed to, but I never strangled the neighbor's cat or anything like that."

"Did you talk to anybody about this?" I asked.

"Yes. I mean, no offense to either of you, but you're not the first place I'd go for help. I spent some time as a kid talking to a therapist. He thought I was just a regular mixed-up girl who was confused over getting breasts or something like that. It was only a few sessions. Therapy was expensive."

"But did you think you had the potential to kill somebody?" Were these the right questions to ask? I really had no idea how to go about this whole thing.

"No. I was a regular little girl with no friends. I never thought I could hurt anybody."

"So when did you start to think that you were...?"

"More homicidal than other girls?"

"Yeah."

"About a year ago, I was out of town on business."

"Where were you?"

"It's not important. If it turns out that I haven't done anything wrong I'll tell you."

"Okay."

"Anyway, I had room service, got one of those pay-per-view movies—not porn—and I watched about the first fifteen minutes. Then suddenly the credits were on and I didn't remember anything about the rest of the movie."

"Which movie?" asked Roger.

"I can't tell you that. You'll pull up records of hotel pay-per-view renting and try to find out where I was."

Actually, I was pretty sure that Roger was just curious about which movie she'd been watching, but I didn't say anything to diminish Shirley's opinion of our awesome investigation skills. "So you fell asleep?" I asked.

"It wasn't like falling asleep. It was like an instant blackout. I was still sitting up in bed, wearing the same nightgown, but my hair was damp and I could smell my coconut shampoo. How can you take a shower and not wake yourself up?"

"I think people can do all kinds of weird things when they sleepwalk," I said, though taking a shower seemed like a bit of a stretch. "Were you on any medication?"

"No."

"Was there any blood around?"

"Not that time."

"Please continue."

"It started happening about once a month. I'd be reading a book or watching TV or something, and suddenly it would be two hours later and I'd be freshly showered. The doctor told me not to worry about it. He said it was stress."

"Seriously? Your doctor dismissed it like that?"

Shirley shrugged. "He ran a couple of tests. But, yeah, basically he said that there was nothing wrong, and that I should get more exercise. Can you believe it?"

Actually, I wasn't sure that I did, but I didn't say anything.

"Then, maybe the fourth or fifth time this happened, my hands were sore. Like I'd washed them in scalding hot water and rubbed them raw. I didn't understand it. What could I possibly have done that I needed to scrub my hands like that?"

Her hands looked fine now, so at least Shirley wasn't sitting in our office fresh from a post-murder shower.

"I didn't get too worried about it, because ultimately all I knew is that I was washing my hands really well. Sleepwalking could've just unlocked some OCD."

"It's possible," I said, not having any clue if that was possible or not. The thought I am dangerously unqualified to be doing this kind of work popped into my brain.

"It happened again a couple of weeks ago. I was on another business trip. The next morning, when I went to put on deodorant, I noticed dried blood on my armpit." She held up her arm to provide a visual aid for the body part she was referencing.

"Odd spot for blood," I said.

"I know."

"Are you sure it wasn't yours?"

"There were no cuts. But, yeah, I assumed that I'd scratched myself somewhere and the blood got on my armpit. It wasn't covered with blood. Just a little streak. Enough to concern me but not enough for me to think that I'd killed somebody."

She paused. The word "until..." was unspoken but implied.

"And then?" I prompted.

"I had another blackout last night. In my own home."

"Was there more blood on your armpit?" Roger asked.

"No. My armpit was blood-free. But this time, unlike any of the other blackouts, I had memories. Not full memories, just flashes of memory. Flashes of doing something awful. Flashes of bones drenched in red, and eyes out of their sockets, and wet clumps of hair attached to skin but not a body."

I wasn't sure what to say. "I can see how that would be unnerving."

"But the clearest image, the only one I could keep in my mind for more than a split second, was a house. An old brown two-story house. I got in my car and I drove all night but I couldn't find it. I went to work, had a normal day except for being completely exhausted, clocked out at my usual time, and then drove right to it. It's the house I remember. I'm positive. And then I drove here to talk to you two."

"Why us?" Roger asked.

"Saw your flier."

"Sweet."

"So you didn't go inside?" I asked.

Shirley shook her head. "I couldn't. Not alone."

"What do you think is in there?"

"Proof."

"You mean proof as in...?" I trailed off, purposely not finishing my sentence because I didn't want to create an awkward moment if she didn't really mean "mutilated corpses."

"Dead bodies. I think that the people I killed during my blackouts, if I did in fact commit murder during them, may be in that house."

"Gotcha."

"Even the ones you may or may not have killed on out of state business trips?" Roger asked.

"No, not them. I would have noticed a head in my luggage. We don't need to put all of the pieces together right now; the reason I'm here, if I haven't made it clear already, is that I want you two to accompany me to the house and see what we can find."

I glanced over at Roger. He nodded. I couldn't decide if I should nod back or not. Yes, the whole basis for our business was to deal with weird crap like this, but why did there always have to be dead bodies? Why couldn't we be like Encyclopedia Brown and investigate somebody cheating in a 100-meter dash or something?

We shouldn't take this job.

Then I remembered getting chewed out in front of all of my co-workers for using plain Arial instead of Arial Bold in a spreadsheet ("Does that font look thick enough to be Arial Bold? Does it?"), and decided that, yes, I was going to take The Case Of The Crazy Lady And Her Possible Corpses.

"One more question," I said. "Let's say that we go inside the house and, yep, there's a torso on the floor. What's step two?"

"You call the police."

"Really?"

"I don't want to get away with any murders. If we find anything, I'll accept whatever punishment I deserve, whether it's prison or an asylum. But you can understand why I don't want to tell the authorities that I killed somebody until I'm absolutely sure, right?"

"Of course," I said. "Everybody can relate to that."

"And I want to be handcuffed to one of you."

"I beg your pardon?"

"I don't know how I'll react if we do find bodies. I might try to get away. So I need one of you to be handcuffed to me to make sure that doesn't happen."

"I'm going to let Andrew take on that duty," Roger said. "I don't think my girlfriend would appreciate me being handcuffed to another woman."

"You do remember that my wife is pregnant with triplets, right?"

"I remember no such thing."

"What if we refuse?" I asked Shirley.

She blinked in surprise. "What if you refuse? I'm not blackmailing you guys. I'm trying to pay you for a service. Accept it or decline it. Jeez, do you have any social skills at all?"

"They're very limited," I admitted. "Okay, we'll investigate the house with you, and I'll wear the cuffs to make sure you don't escape. We're using the pair you've got in your purse, right?"

"Unless you have a comfier pair."

"Nope. All right, let's go hopefully not find a house full of dead bodies."

CHAPTER FOUR

Shirley offered to drive us in her car, but Roger and I thought it was best if we took his car, since we knew that his vehicle was not equipped with a hidden button that you could press to make spikes burst out of the seats. Not that we thought Shirley's car had the spiked-seat feature, but it could have something ghastly, like a cobra compartment, and it just seemed like a wise idea not to let the possible serial killer drive.

I could tell that Shirley didn't want us to ask any more questions, and I knew that even though she'd given us a cash deposit, she could still cancel our agreement if we continued to prove that we were idiots. So we talked about hamburgers. I'm not going to pretend that it was an endlessly fascinating discussion about hamburgers or that any book-worthy observations were made, but it passed the time in a pleasant enough manner.

Twenty minutes later, we took a left into one of Chamber's less-than-great neighborhoods, and after a couple more turns we pulled into the driveway of the last house on a dead-end street. Though it was still daylight, the house was remarkably spooky. If Shirley had said that we were actually there to investigate a haunting, I would have believed her.

"Okay," said Shirley. "We're here."

Roger shut off the engine. We all sat in the car for a moment, nobody quite willing to be the one who said "All right, everybody, let's go find some carnage!" I stared at the house, trying to figure out why it was spooky in the daytime. There were no twisted trees with branches that looked like claws. The architecture wasn't "off" in any manner that I could identify. Yeah, the lawn needed mowing and the bushes needed trimming and the house could desperately use a new coat of brown paint, but the same could be said of my own home.

"Does anybody live here?" I asked Shirley. This seemed like a much more intelligent question than the many unintelligent questions we'd asked back at the office.

"I don't think so."

"But you're not sure?"

"If you'll recall, I don't even know for certain that I've ever been here."

"I do recall that. Fair enough. Let's go check."

We all got out of the car. Nobody had any immediate forward momentum toward the front porch.

"Does this house creep you out?" I asked Roger.

"If there was a pumpkin patch, it could be a complete Halloween House," he said. "There's probably a young deformed child locked in every closet."

"But why does the house look spooky from the outside? It's not as if the windows look like eyes."

Roger shrugged. "Actually, I was humoring you. I don't think it looks all that spooky. I'm way more concerned about finding Shirley's souvenirs."

Shirley opened her purse, giving me a momentary jolt of horror where I thought she might pull out a souvenir ("This lower lip belonged to a waitress. I preserved its original piercing.") but instead she took out the handcuffs. She snapped one of the bracelets around her wrist then looked at me. "Put out your hand."

"I'd like to keep the key," I told her.

"Not a problem." She handed me the key and I tucked it into my front pocket.

I wasn't a big fan of handcuffs, even when used in private in a locked bedroom as part of a committed marriage when the kids were staying with their grandparents for the evening.

"You're okay with me not having a pinky on that hand, right?"

"Uh, yeah."

"Just checking. Some people might not be."

I held out my arm and Shirley snapped the other bracelet around my left wrist. We gave them a gentle tug. Very solid. This was a top-notch product.

"We should get inside before somebody sees us standing out here in handcuffs," Shirley said.

"Agreed."

The three of us walked up onto the front porch, and I tested the doorknob. Unlocked. Since I've written at length about our bumbling incompetence at this line of work, I would like to point out in my own defense that we had brought along a set of lock picks, even though we didn't need them. We weren't just going to kick through a window and alert the neighbors.

I opened the door, which let out a nice horror movie-style creak, and we stepped inside. The first thing I noticed was that I didn't smell any rotting flesh. That was awesome. When your first reaction upon entering a home is not to gag and rush off to puke in some bushes, your exploration is off to a grand start.

I turned on the light, illuminating the living room. Either nobody had lived here in quite a while, or the residents were able to move around without disturbing dust particles. Pretty much everything was coated in a thick layer of gray. There was, however, a nice straight path leading through the living room into the dining room. Not footprints. A path.

"Somebody could have dragged a body through there," I noted.

"Crap," said Roger.

"None of this looks familiar," said Shirley. She reached up to scratch her forehead with her cuffed hand, taking my own hand along for the ride. "But I might have done it in the dark."

"Well, let's see where the path takes us," I said. We walked across the living room, being alert for any severed arms or legs that might be strewn about, and into the dining room. It also had a musty but not stomach-churning aroma. Everything was tidy, as if the owners were just on an extended vacation.

"We should check the freezer," said Roger, pointing to the kitchen.

"Be my guest."

"I meant that Shirley should check the freezer."

Though I didn't want to open it myself, I knew we'd have trouble generating positive word of mouth for A/R Tasks & Investigations if we displayed cowardice in front of our clients. "I'll do it," I said.

I decided to take the "do it quickly, like ripping off a bandage" approach, an approach that was admittedly responsible for a pretty big scar on my right knee. Shirley and I walked over to the refrigerator and I immediately opened the freezer door.

Empty.

I opened the refrigerator as well.

Also empty, except for a box of baking soda.

"Okay, we're off to a pretty good start," I said. "If the rest of the house is as empty as the refrigerator, we're in excellent shape."

"I apologize for trying to pass the freezer opening on to you," said Roger.

"It wasn't just a try. You did pass it on to me."

"And I'm sorry. I'll open the next thing."

"You know, I feel kind of relieved," said Shirley. "Like maybe this was all in my head. Don't get me wrong, the fact that it's in my head is still upsetting, but I feel okay right now. I don't think we'll find anything."

I hoped she was correct. That would be fantastic. If our business involved just going to houses and not finding evidence of slaughter, it would be the greatest job ever. I could do that all day long, whistling the entire time.

Of course, everybody knows the old adage: "An empty refrigerator does not a corpse-free house make." I closed the fridge and looked around the kitchen. "I guess Roger should check the cabinets."

Roger quickly checked all of the cabinets. They would have been a ridiculous place to hide anything felony-related, but we couldn't not check them. There was nothing inside but neatly stacked dishes.

"So far so good," I said. "Let's see what's upstairs."

We went upstairs. These stupid handcuffs were already starting to chafe my wrist, and I was looking forward to getting rid of them in the next couple of minutes. Admittedly, there was an element of counting chickens before they hatched involved in my "next couple of minutes" prediction, since there were still plenty of places that bodies could be hidden. Or, for that matter, sitting out in the open with "Surprise!" written on the floor in their blood. But like I've always said, it's easier to count eggs that are just lying there in the nest than baby chickens that are running all over the place.

Actually, I've never said that, and I sort of wish I hadn't even typed it just now. Oh well.

Anyway, I was cautiously optimistic as we slowly walked upstairs as a trio. The stairs creaked with each step, reminding us that we were in a spooky house.

The dust was even worse up here. It was inconceivable that anybody had walked around the upstairs for at least a couple of weeks...or, I don't know, a while, anyway. I'm not an expert on dust accumulation rates.

We wandered around upstairs for a minute or so, just to say we did, and then headed back down the stairs, satisfied.

"So what do you think?" I asked Shirley. "I mean, we haven't torn the place apart, but it sure doesn't seem like much has happened in here."

"I'm not sure." Shirley closed her eyes. "I really don't think we're in the wrong house. The outside looks exactly like my mental image. It's possible that two houses look the same, but why would I have driven right here after work?"

"You wouldn't have," said Roger. "It's definitely the same house, and I think it's clean. We went upstairs and everything."

"Do you mind if we just stand here for a few minutes?" asked Shirley, keeping her eyes closed. "I want to see if I can remember anything. I want to be certain."

"Oh, absolutely," I assured her. "No problem at all."

We stood there for a moment. Had I not been handcuffed to her, I would have meandered a few steps away, just to keep things from getting awkward, but I had no choice but to stand there, awkwardly.

All things considered, it wasn't such a bad first day for our new business. Two paying jobs. One sucked and the other didn't involve us accomplishing much of anything, but still, it was an okay start.

Roger wandered off into the kitchen, because as a non-handcuffed individual he was permitted to do such a thing.

Shirley opened her eyes.

"Oh, no," she whispered.

"What?"

She sighed.

"What?" I repeated. "What were the sigh and the 'oh no' for?"

"Floorboards."

"What about them?"

"I just got an image of floorboards."

"What's wrong?" asked Roger, walking back into the living room.

"She had an image of floorboards."

"Oh, no."

"Let's not overreact," I said. "This could mean a lot of things. Floorboards have plenty of other uses besides covering dead bodies. Maybe you have an appreciation for quality wood."

"He didn't mean that in a penis way," Roger assured her.

"Quiet for just a second," said Shirley. "Let me focus." She closed her eyes again. We all stood there for a while.

Finally she re-opened them. "Lost the vision. But I definitely saw floorboards."

"Okay, that's fine, no big deal," I said. "Let's just check out the floorboards in this place and ease everybody's concern."

Now I was feeling quite a bit less comfortable about the fact that the majority of the living room floor was covered by a light green oval-shaped rug.

We slid the rug aside, and it didn't take a private investigator, even a lame one like myself, to clearly see the slight gap where the floorboards didn't perfectly fit together.

"You know," I said, "we keep dwelling on the negative. But how do we know that we aren't actually searching for buried treasure? There could be sacks of money down there. There could be gold bricks."

"Sure, instead of a thrill-killer she could be a highly paid assassin," said Roger.

"Shut up, Roger. I'm just saying, we should stay optimistic until we know for sure that our lives are going to start sucking."

"Let's get this over with," said Shirley.

The floorboards came up easily, leaving a gap in the floor big enough for two people to squeeze through. It went down about three feet, to a cement bottom. The three of us peered down into the hole, but it was too dark to see anything that wasn't illuminated by the living room ceiling light.

"I'll go get the flashlight," said Roger. He hurried out of the house and returned a moment later, holding a flashlight he'd taken from our utilities kit. Yeah, we had a utilities kit. Admit your jealousy.

He turned on the flashlight, smacked it a couple of times to make the light come on, and then shone it down into the gap.

"There's a cooler down there," he said. "No, wait...four of them."

CHAPTER FIVE

Roger didn't have to actually squeeze down into the gap to get the coolers. The first two he was able to reach by just putting his arm down there, and for the other two we merely had to promise that we would pull him to safety the instant he started shrieking.

Four white plastic coolers. Each large enough to hold a twelve-pack of soda.

"Do these look familiar?" I asked Shirley.

"No."

"Maybe they aren't yours, then. Maybe the hidden treasure I was being so optimistic about is beer."

(Note: I did not actually believe this to be the case.)

"So which one should we open first?" I asked.

"Who cares?" asked Roger. "They're all going to be unpleasant!"

"We don't know that."

"Yes, we do."

"Okay, we probably do," I admitted. "That said, even if we agree that there's a way above-average chance that there are bad things in these coolers, we've been in much worse situations than this. This is nothing. We should be yawning right now."

"You yawn. I'll wait in the car."

"C'mon, this is no big deal. Worst-case scenario, there might be...I dunno, a head in there. Somebody's severed head. You know what? I've held a severed head before! The one that I mentioned back in the office. I'm not saying that I enjoyed the experience, but in the grand scheme of things, there's nothing in that cooler that can be worse than anything we've encountered in our lives thus far."

"Except a bomb."

"We've dealt with worse things than bombs."

"If it blows off half of our skulls, it would be worse than anything we've encountered in our lives thus far."

"You're a dick."

"Please be professional around our client."

"I'm just going to open it," I said, grabbing the handle of one of the cooler lids. "We're getting all worked up over nothing."

I lifted the lid.

Inside were a couple of small bags of ice that had melted, and a dead armadillo. It had been stabbed several times along the back and the tail.

"Well," I said. "Okay, then."

Roger looked over at Shirley. "Do you have any memory of murdering an armadillo?"

"I'm...I'm not sure."

Knowing there was probably not a severed human head inside made it easier to open the second cooler. This one also had melted bags of ice, and a stabbed-to-death squirrel.

"Jesus," said Shirley.

I forced a smile. "This is a little demented, but it could be a lot worse, am I right? Shirley, when you came into our office saying that you might be a serial killer, wouldn't it have made you feel better if we'd said 'Oh, no, all you did was kill an armadillo and a squirrel'?"

"Open the others," she said.

Roger made no move to open another cooler. It wasn't fair of him to let me do all of them, but we'd already bickered far too much in front of our client.

I opened the third cooler. Inside: a rat.

"I feel like I'm going to throw up," said Shirley.

"That's okay," said Roger. "Just lean down into the hole if you need to."

"Why...why would I stab a rat?"

"Why wouldn't you stab a rat?" I asked. "Rats are pieces of crap. If you'd stabbed a monkey, I'd judge you, but it's not like you're killing house pets."

I was fibbing, because somebody who would stab a rat and keep it in a cooler was not somebody I wanted to invite over for cookies and milk. Still, though PETA's collective head would explode over this, I didn't think there were any actual crimes being committed. Well, except for trespassing, but I was doing that, too.

"Do we even need to open the last one?" I asked.

Shirley nodded. "Yes. I have to know."

Damn. I'd hoped we'd get to quit while we were ahead, but of course that would be irresponsible. We'd had a seventy-five percent success rate so far in not finding human heads or kittens, so we should trust that fate was smiling upon us and open the last one to eliminate any doubt.

Roger didn't offer to open the last one, either. We were going to have to discuss this inequitable distribution of labor sometime in the near future.

I lifted the lid of the last cooler.

"Aw, man," said Roger. "I like birds."

The robin had been stabbed three or four times in its red breast. Having had poultry for dinner last night, I knew my moral outrage was misplaced, but still...it was a darn cute robin.

"So," I said, "it appears that you stab animals and hide them in coolers under floorboards in the living room of a stranger's home. Would you like some of our fliers to give to your friends?"

"Are you sure that's everything?" asked Shirley. "Let me see the flashlight."

Roger handed it to her. She leaned into the hole, shining the flashlight in a circle.

"There's another one," she said.

"Really?"

"Yeah. It's pushed up against the wall."

I took the flashlight from her and looked for myself. Yes, there was indeed another cooler down there. A much larger one.

This still didn't mean there was something sinister afoot. Perhaps it had been pushed out of the way because Shirley was more concerned with people stealing her booze than her dead animals.

Roger took the flashlight, looked where we had looked, and sighed. "Of course there's another one," he said, his voice glum.

"I think it's directly under that bookshelf," said Shirley. "You'll have to crawl down there and get it."

"Why?" asked Roger. "We can just move all the books...then move the shelf...then get a crowbar...then pry up the floorboards...oh, all right, one of us will have to crawl down there and get it. Dammit."

"Not one of us," I told him. "You."

"Why me?"

"Because I'm handcuffed to Shirley."

"So?"

"It's a little more difficult for two people handcuffed together to crawl underneath the floor. It's, what, twenty feet? You can do it."

"I vote that you unlock the handcuffs."

"Actually, yeah," I said, giving them a gentle tug. "That's a better idea."

"No," said Shirley. "I might still run. I need you to keep me here. What if I rush right out and kill somebody else? Do you want that on your conscience? People with their eyelids hacked off? Do you want that?"

I patted my pocket, felt nothing, then reached in and dug deep. "Where's the key?"

"Don't be mad," said Shirley.

"Where's the key?" I repeated.

"You promised you wouldn't be mad."

"I didn't promise anything! Where's the key?"

Shirley held up the key between her thumb and index finger. "I took it. But it's only because I didn't want you to unlock us before we finished searching the place."

"Are you saying that you handcuffed us to make sure you didn't try to flee, but you stole the key for yourself?"

"Yes."

"You understand that this logic is not airtight, right?"

"If I were trying to run away in a panic, you'd be able to stop me from putting the key in the lock. At least I assume you would. I'm sorry. Sometimes I just swipe things."

"Give it back."

"You'll unlock us."

"Correct."

Shirley popped the key into her mouth.

"Don't swallow that."

She swished the key around in her mouth.

"I'm serious," I warned her. "Don't swallow it."

"Promise you won't get mad if I do."

"No! I promise the opposite!"

Great. She was even crazier than we'd thought. What was I supposed to do, jam my hand into her mouth? That was a good way to lose another finger.

She let the tip of the key poke out of her mouth for a split second, then slurped it back in.

"Are you just messing with us?"

"No."

"Give me the key."

"No."

"If you swallow that thing, I swear I will Heimlich Maneuver the shit out of you."

"No, you will not. Because I am a client, and I expect you to provide the services for which you were hired."

"Handcuffs weren't part of the deal."

"They most certainly were."

"Yeah, but I was supposed to keep the key."

Shirley shrugged. "The customer is always right," she said. "Think of this as exceeding my expectations."

She swallowed the key.

"Aw, come on! Really? Really? You truly believe that was the way to go? For real?"

"Listen to me, Andrew Mayhem," said Shirley. "You said you could help. It's right there on your goddamn flier: We solve weird problems. Well, I'm your weird problem for today. Solve me."

"Is that...are you being...was that a sexual comment?"

"No. I want your partner to get the other cooler. That's all I want."

"Should I get the lock picks out of the car?" Roger asked me.

If she struggled, dealing with the handcuffs would be far more trouble than it was worth. Easier to just do what she wanted. "Nah," I said.

"What about a laxative?"

"No. Crawl down there and get the cooler."

Roger looked as if he wanted to argue, then looked as if he decided that it was in his best interest not to argue. "All right, all right. I'll do it. But next time I get to be handcuffed to the armadillo killer."

He took the flashlight and crawled down into the hole.

"I'm sorry," said Shirley.

"I'm sure you're not."

"You can say 'Surely you can't be serious.' I'm the one person who won't ask you to stop calling me Shirley."

I tried to understand her comment and failed. "What?"

"That was a joke. From Airplane. The movie."

"Oh. Yeah. Any other time I would've gotten it. You know, you really shouldn't swallow keys. It was a small one, but it wasn't that small. If it spins around in your digestive tract you're going to have problems."

"I'll be okay."

I wanted to say "Also, it could unlock your stomach and all of your food will fall out," but I remembered that I was not talking to my eight-year-old son, who had at various times swallowed a magnet, a marble, a fun-sized Snickers bar whole in the wrapper, and an eraser that he swore he thought was a gummi eraser.

"Crap," said Roger.

I leaned my head down into the hole. "What's wrong?"

"I'm stuck."

"Shine the flashlight on yourself."

Roger did. He was only a couple of feet away from the cooler, but he was indeed wedged in tight, with his leg stuck underneath a copper pipe.

"How the hell did that happen?"

"I don't know!" he said. "Maybe it's because my beloved business partner made me crawl down here!"

"That's an amazing achievement to get that stuck that quickly," I informed him. "That's something a cartoon character would do. I commend you."

"I think the ceiling curves down on this side."

"You mean the floor."

"If I'm stuck underneath it, it's the ceiling. So you're seriously going to just look at me and make jokes, huh? I hope there are rats down here dripping with plague and you have to be the one to go home and tell Samantha that the flesh bubbled off my body while you laughed. That's what I hope."

"Are you two always like this?" Shirley asked.

"I think we're being a little more childish than usual."

"It wouldn't upset me if you toned it down."

"I totally understand." I looked back down at Roger. "Can you get out?"

"Oh, sure, I only called out because I wanted you to see me at my moment of grand dignity."

"Let's all try to be a bit less sarcastic."

"I'm stuck under the floorboards in a creepy house next to a cooler of dead bodies. This is not the time to ask me to get rid of my defense mechanism."

"Do you need us to come down and get you? I'm asking this in a completely sincere manner."

"Nah, I guess I'm okay. I just need to move my—son of a bitch. Made it worse. Let me try to—son of a bitch. Yeah, I'm really wedged in here. I could use some help."

"Well," I said, rattling the handcuffs chain, "I'm glad there's nothing that would make that task inconvenient."

"You're already being sarcastic again," said Shirley. "It hasn't even been fifteen seconds."

"I apologize."

"Even that was sarcastic!"

"No, that was legit. Look, I'm not a finger pointer, but the handcuffs problem is on you. So do we crawl down there with them on, try to pick the lock first, or gnaw?"

The front door opened.

A man entered with a gun.

CHAPTER SIX

Both of them—the man and the gun—were very large.

I'm no scrawny stick-man, and during those times when I'm not in the hospital recovering from psychopath-related injuries, I'm in pretty good physical shape. But this guy...I'm sure he wasn't really seven feet tall, but he sure looked like it. He was totally ripped, and he wore a tight short-sleeved dress shirt that was clearly selected for its muscle-highlighting properties.

He had short black hair, wore sunglasses, and as I've previously mentioned, he was holding an extremely large handgun that I assumed shot extremely large bullets at an extremely rapid velocity.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

There were thousands of incorrect ways I could answer this, so I took a moment to gather my thoughts. "Are you a concerned neighbor?"

"No."

"Okay," I said, holding up my handcuffed hand. "I'm a married father of two, and my wife is pregnant with triplets, and this woman is not my wife, and we snuck into this abandoned house for some bondage sex."

"Is that so?" the guy asked.

Shirley nodded. "We're total kink-wads."

"Generally, when you're in the BDSM lifestyle, you don't handcuff yourselves together. It's one of you handcuffing the other, the whole point being that one of you takes a dominant role and the other takes a submissive role."

"Thank you," I said. "I did wonder why this felt so wrong. We're amateurs. In fact, right before you came in, my mistress said 'Oh, crap, we should have taken off our clothes before we put on the cuffs, because the cuffs are going to make it a lot more difficult to get undressed.'" I laughed at our merry foolishness.

I kept waiting for the moment where Roger called out "Guys? What's going on up there? Guys? Guys?" but it didn't happen. Apparently the deep valley of our ineptitude did have a bottom.

"We really don't know what we're doing," said Shirley. "If you wanted to give us some pointers, we'd be all ears."

"I suppose my first recommendation would be not to do it around a bunch of reeking dead animals," said the man.

"Yes," I said. "Excellent point. It's not a good fetish. We both know it."

Shirley nodded. "Whatever you think of us can't compare to the shame in our hearts."

"We puke ourselves to sleep every night," I added, because it's the little details that make a lie sound convincing.

The man switched his gun to the other hand. "Look, I appreciate your efforts. I really do. It amuses me that you think I'd believe that you were rotting animal and bondage fetishists. But, ultimately, my job is to keep an eye on you, and I'm not so cool with you wandering around places like this."

"You're keeping an eye on me?" asked Shirley, looking horrified.

"No. Not you. Him."

"Me?" I asked, because apparently I thought he might be referring to the deceased squirrel.

"You."

"Do you work for Mr. Burke?"

The man looked mildly surprised. "Not bad, not bad. It speaks well of you that you could narrow your enemies down so quickly."

I felt as if I'd been punched in the stomach with a steel girder. Even when you're pretty sure that an insane millionaire is going to eventually try to hunt you down seeking vengeance, it's not a warm happy feeling to get proof.

"What do you want?" I asked.

"Don't worry, I'm not here to kill you. Unless you give me a reason to do so. I am empowered to kill you if necessary, make no mistake about that, but at the moment I'm only here to watch you."

"Where is he?"

"I'm not going to tell you where my boss is. It was a dumb thing to ask. Please don't ask other things like it. What I need you to do is stay out of trouble. I'm not saying that you can't go out and earn a living—we've all got mortgages—but when my job is to keep an eye on you, it causes stress for me to have you in a situation where you could be incarcerated or injured before Mr. Burke is ready for that to happen."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"I just explained it. I want you to stop messing around this place."

"No, why did you say anything about Burke? You could have lied. You could have said 'Hey, you two, get out of my house!' and we would've run like scared kids. There was no reason to tell us anything."

The man grinned. "It's possible that there may have been an attempt to instill fear."

"You know that your boss is a sadistic killer, right?"

"Yes, in fact, I did know that."

"He murdered a child."

"Now, let's play fair. 'Child' is pushing it. 'Kid' I'll accept. It was a teenaged boy, so don't act like he shot a toddler in the head. But the things you've seen him do? Trust me, I've seen him do worse. I've seen him do things that would make you renounce God if you're a religious person and find God if you're not. Trying to convince me that I'm working for a bad man is not going to be an effective approach."

"All right."

"My name's Markus, by the way."

"Uh, hi, Markus," I said, not sure if I should offer to shake hands.

"I like you, Mayhem. I have for a while. You have your defects, but overall I think you're a pretty cool guy."

"Thank you."

"No problem."

We all just stood there for a moment. I'd assumed that him saying that he liked me was the prelude to "but..." and a vicious threat, yet no vicious threat seemed to be forthcoming.

"Anyway," said Markus, "I need you to clear out of here. Take these coolers of animal sludge with you if you want, but get out."

"And if he refuses?" asked Shirley.

"Then I will kill you both. Not in an excruciatingly painful manner. I'm not about putting bullets in people's kneecaps and watching them slowly bleed to death. Two shots, two foreheads punctured, no pain, the end. But you don't want that, do you?"

I shook my head. He was correct. I did not want that.

Markus continued. "I know that even apart from Mr. Burke you've dealt with several people who enjoy inflicting suffering. That's not my style. I'm not that guy. Again, Mayhem, I could see us going out for drinks, playing darts...oh, wait, you had a bad experience playing darts, didn't you?"

"Yes. Ghastly."

"So not darts. Have you had a ghastly billiards experience?"

"No. Billiards has been fine so far."

"Then I could see us getting together, having a few beers, and playing billiards. Not that we're going to ever do it. Essentially, all I'm saying is that I have no personal animosity toward you whatsoever, but I won't hesitate to kill you—painlessly—if necessary. So help me do my job and get the hell out of here."

Did he know that Roger was down below? Should I tell him? Should we leave Roger behind for now? He couldn't be permanently stuck, and we did still want to get the last cooler...

"Okay," I said. "I guess we'll be on our way."

Shirley and I began to walk across the living room, away from the gap.

"Are you kidding me?" Markus asked.

"What?"

"You're not taking Roger with you?"

"Uh..."

"There are two possibilities here. One, you're leaving your friend behind to save your own skin, which is reprehensible. Two, you think that I'm so bad at my job that I didn't know Roger was under the floor, and you were trying to pull a fast one on me. I complimented you under circumstances where compliments are not usually given, and you insulted me. You slapped me in the face. I came to you with good cheer and a reasonable attitude, and you stood right there and thought that I was so monstrously stupid that I would leave the Roger element unresolved. So which is it?"

"We were going to leave him to die," I said.

Markus frowned. "Are you trying to be funny?"

"I guess. I mean, not laugh out loud funny, but sort of." I really wished he'd put that gun away. It was severely disrupting my ability to carry on a conversation.

"I don't like having my intelligence insulted," said Markus.

"I wasn't trying to insult you."

"I tried to be a nice guy. I don't expect you to kiss up to me or anything, but come on, really? Give me one good reason why I shouldn't put a few bullets through the floor and take your friend out right now."

"Please don't shoot!" said Roger from below. "I'm stuck! I can't defend myself!"

"Look at this from my point of view," I said. "If you were in my position, wouldn't you want any possible edge you can get, no matter how much of a long shot it was? Would you actually have respected me if I'd told you about Roger and you hadn't realized he was down there? If I were you and I did that, I would have said 'What a complete and utter moron!' and killed me. You seem like the kind of guy who cares about the gene pool, and I didn't want to come off like somebody who should be put down for the sake of our future."

Markus considered that, then shrugged. "All right, I'll buy that. However, let me be very clear: You try to fuck with me again, and I won't shoot you, I will sandpaper your teeth down to the gums. Got it?"

"Yes, sir."

"There is no hyperbole in that threat. I mean that I will literally purchase some sandpaper, put your head in a vice, and rub the sandpaper against your teeth until they've been worn down to the gums. Think about that carefully. Summon up a nice clear mental picture of a piece of sandpaper being vigorously rubbed against a whole row of exposed nerves in your teeth. Is that a sensation you would like to experience?"

"It is not," I said.

"Then I think we've accomplished something. I feel very good about our talk." He raised his voice. "Roger, you can come out now."

"I can't," Roger said.

"Yes, you can. Everybody understands each other now."

"I'm stuck."

"Excuse me?"

"I'm stuck down here."

"How the hell did you get stuck?"

"I was bigger than the space I squeezed myself into."

"If I dropped a rattlesnake down there, do you think you could become un-stuck?"

"No. I've been trying the whole time you've been talking, after the part where you got mad because they didn't tell you I was down here."

"Is this a trick?"

"No."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

Markus cursed and pointed the gun at my face. "Go get him."

"I'm handcuffed."

"So unlock it."

"She swallowed the key."

Markus was silent for a very long moment. "I'm sorry," he finally said. "I come from a world of competence. The idea that you could be handcuffed to somebody who accidentally swallowed the key while your friend was stuck—"

"She swallowed it on purpose," I clarified.

Markus looked as if he wanted to just sit down and weep. "Brains come very soft in these parts," he said.

"We never claimed to be smart."

"Yes, you did," said Shirley. "You said you could solve my problem! That's implying that you're smart!"

"Shut up! Both of you! You're depressing me! Jesus Christ, Mr. Burke having a vendetta against you is like devoting his life to destroying a rodeo clown."

"I'm sure we can pick the lock on the cuffs," I said. "We've got a kit out in the car."

"No. Just get down there and tug your friend free."

"But we're handcuffed."

"I know you're handcuffed. This is not new information. I knew from the moment I opened that door and saw you two with the goddamn handcuffs around your wrists that you were handcuffed. Now get your friend out."

It was not my personal policy to continue to argue with gun-wielding individuals doing a slow burn, but...

"We'll get stuck."

"I will kill you if you get stuck. Is that enough motivation to make sure it doesn't happen?"

I nodded.

"But before you leave my sight," said Markus, "I'm collecting cell phones. Hand them over."

I suddenly noticed that my pocket felt lighter than it had when we came into the house. Shirley looked apologetic as she opened her purse. "I didn't mean to take them," she said. "I can't help myself."

"How did you even do that? What are you, a pickpocketing sorceress?"

"I'll take that," said Markus, grabbing the purse from Shirley. He fished through the contents and took out my cell phone. He dropped it onto the floor, then stomped on it, breaking it apart on the first try. He took out a pink cell phone and stomped it, then did the same thing to Roger's. At least now that we had our own business, they were tax deductible.

Without further ado, Shirley and I squeezed down into the hole.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Shirley pressed her mouth against my ear and whispered: "Do you think he's going to kill us anyway?"

"No," I whispered back. "But I do think he'll sandpaper our teeth."

We crawled across the cement floor over to Roger, who was facing away from us, his arm stuck between two pieces of copper pipe.

"Wasn't it your leg?" I asked.

"Yeah. I got my leg free but then my arm got stuck."

"You'd think this place was a matrix of pipes. There are, like, four of them."

"I'm not good at agile crawling, all right? There's no shame in that. Anyway, my arm isn't stuck that bad; I just can't get any leverage."

I shoved his elbow forward, and his arm popped free.

"Thanks."

"No problem."

Now what? It seemed kind of weak to just crawl out from under the floorboards. Shouldn't we devise some sort of incredible plan to gain the upper hand?

I reached up and tested the boards. They seemed pretty sturdy, but if we crawled directly underneath Markus, and then all three of us bashed up at once, the wood might break, giving us a chance to grab Markus's foot and pull him off balance. The gun would fall out of his hand and slide across the floor, just out of his reach, and Roger would quickly scramble to the surface, grab the weapon, and then hold Markus at gunpoint until Shirley and I made it to safety.

That plan had a possible success rate of about .07%. More likely, the end result would be a loud but completely unproductive thump, and then we would have to sheepishly explain to Markus that, yes, we'd thought we could break through the floor underneath his feet. Then he would kill us all.

Based on that analysis, I thought it was best not to propose the plan to Roger and Shirley.

"Do you think he's bluffing?" Roger whispered. "I don't think he's allowed to kill us. Do you really believe that Mr. Burke would let him just shoot us?"

"Sure. Why not?"

"If all he cared about was us being dead, he could've done that a long time ago. He has an investment in us. Mostly you. I think Markus likes to give the impression that there isn't another layer of management in the decision to kill us. I say we let him come down here and get us."

"That's the worst plan ever."

"It's not the worst plan ever."

"I'm not going to piss this guy off. What if he goes after Helen instead? Or Samantha?"

"Okay, you're right. Worst plan ever. Let's go back up."

Dragging the cooler behind us, we crawled to the gap in the floorboards, and then out into the semi-fresh air of the living room. Shirley and I hoisted the cooler, which was surprisingly heavy, out of the hole.

"More dead animals?" asked Markus.

"We're not sure," I said. "We'll just take it out to the car and get out of your way."

"No, no, I want to see what's in there."

Markus kept the gun pointed at me as I lifted the lid. Usually in these situations I hoped that things I was about to open weren't booby trapped, but this time I was rooting for a booby trap that was slightly misaligned, missing me and hitting Markus. For example, some sort of contraption that lobbed a grenade past my head and into Markus' open mouth would be appreciated.

That did not happen.

The cooler was filled to the top with dead possums.

A couple of them had been stabbed to death, but one on the top was missing its arms and legs. Another had been skinned. One had a tiny noose around its neck, one had an arrow through its head, and one looked like it had taken a bullet to the chest, point-blank.

Roger and I recoiled. Shirley stared at it without emotion. Markus leaned in for a closer look.

"That is truly demented," he said. "I think I like the one with the noose best."

There had to be nine or ten of them in there, each killed in a different manner. As queasy as I already felt, I got even queasier as I noticed the scrape marks on the bottom of the lid. One of them had been put in there while it was still alive.

"Do you remember doing this?" Roger asked Shirley.

She bit down on her lower lip and a tear trickled down her cheek. "Yeah. Yeah, I do."

"Do you really dislike possums?"

"No, I just...I don't know why I did it."

"Look how flat that one's head is," said Markus. He laughed. "Did you press it in a book or something?"

"Go to hell."

Markus's smile vanished. "Please don't forget that I have the gun. It may be better for my career not to kill Andrew, but that most assuredly does not transfer over to you."

"Maybe I want to die."

"Makes sense. I'm at peace with what I do, but I can see why a sweet girl like you would want to die after she found out she was a possum strangler."

"Then shoot me."

Markus shrugged and aimed his gun at her head. Everything inside of me screamed He's really gonna do it!

"No!" I said. "Don't! She doesn't know what she wants! She's indecisive!"

"She can make the call," said Markus. "What do you want? Bullet through the head? It'll make the madness go away."

She stared at him, their eyes locked for several seconds. Then she blinked and looked down. "No, I don't want you to shoot me."

"The lady gets what she wants," said Markus, lowering his gun.

"I need time to process this. Can I have a minute alone?"

"You could if you weren't handcuffed to Andrew. But you are, so no."

Shirley dropped to her knees, and then she gave me a look that I couldn't quite translate. My wife Helen is incredibly skilled at conveying elaborate messages with one piercing gaze (such as "I truly hope that you did not just walk into this house without an anniversary present, because I suspect that you forgot, and if my suspicions are confirmed and you missed the seventy-three hints I've dropped in the past week, this will be a dark, dark night in your life"), but Shirley's look, sort of a quick glance with a raised eyebrow, didn't make sense to me.

She tipped over the cooler. Red water and dead possums spilled out.

There was going to be a human part underneath the possum mess. I just knew it. Probably a forearm wrapped in aluminum foil.

Shirley began to sift through the possums, picking one up by the scruff of its neck. She held it up for inspection then tossed it aside.

Roger gave me a look that was quite easy to translate: What the hell is wrong with her, and when can we go home?

She picked up one that had been bludgeoned to death, then discarded it as well.

A bomb? Did she have a bomb hidden in one of the dead possums? Was that her secret plan?

Probably not, but that would be awesome.

"Okay, enough playing with the roadkill," said Markus.

"It's not roadkill."

"Close enough."

She picked up a particularly bloated possum and gave it a squeeze. "You disrespect me when you call it roadkill."

"Oh, well, shit, I'm sorry, your highness, I wasn't speaking literally. But, seriously, enough playing in possum gunk."

"It's beautiful..." said Shirley. "So...beautiful..."

She gave me that look again.

Then she shoved the possum's head into her mouth and bit off its entire snout.

Roger gagged, Markus gaped, and I realized that I was supposed to take advantage of the distraction.

I dove at him, nearly popping my arm out of its socket when I yanked Shirley along with me. I knocked Markus to the floor before he could shoot me in the face, then punched him in the jaw.

Roger kicked the gun out of his hand. It slid across the floor, striking the bookshelf, and Roger hurried over to retrieve it.

Markus punched me in the face so hard that for a second my vision went completely black.

Shirley grabbed a possum by the tail and slapped it into Markus's face. It burst like a guts-filled water balloon. Regardless of the amount of depravity Markus had participated in during the course of his life, there's no way that his expectations for this evening included the act of having a possum splatter against him.

"Get out of the way," Roger said. I didn't look back at him, but I assumed he was pointing the gun at us and trying to get a clear shot at Markus.

Without wiping the sludge off his face, Markus punched me again. It hurt. Then I caught a flash of silver and saw that he had a switchblade knife.

As he swung it at me, I grabbed him by the wrist. But he was a hell of a lot stronger than me, and the blade of the knife didn't slow enough to make me think It's okay, I'm sure that thing won't plunge deep into my eye socket.

Shirley squeezed another possum into his face, turning it back and forth like juicing an orange.

The knife fell out of his hand.

Shirley picked it up, then gave me a violent shove that I wasn't expecting and that knocked me off of Markus. Shirley mounted him, snatched up the knife, and then slammed it into his chest.

She wrenched it out, then stabbed him again.

Then again.

Over and over, she plunged the switchblade into his chest. Even when he stopped moving, she kept stabbing.

I reached out and touched her shoulder. "Hey, I think you can—"

"Don't touch me!"

I didn't know what to do. Try to overpower her? Once you got into the double digits, did it really matter how many more times she stabbed him?

I turned away as she kept going.

Roger looked horrified and sick to his stomach. "I had the gun," he told her. "We could have used it to, you know, keep him at bay."

Shirley glanced back at him but didn't stop stabbing. "I don't want to hear anything from you, either."

Now she'd moved away from Markus's chest. His face had already looked bad, but now it looked significantly worse.

Anybody who worked for Mr. Burke deserved a good stabbing, but when a crazed woman is jamming a knife into a corpse over and over and over and over, at some point you've got to stop her, right? What was the appropriate behavior model in this circumstance?

"Shirley...?"

"Shut up."

"Shirley...?"

"Stop talking."

"Shirley...?"

"You're distracting me."

"Look, Shirley..."

"Do you want a knife in the face?" she asked me. "Do you? Have I not made it clear that I'm good at stabbing people?"

"Oh, very clear, crystal clear." Actually, I thought her skills were an example of quantity over quality, but I didn't say this.

She kept stabbing.

"This needs to stop," I said.

She shook her head. "No, it doesn't."

"Yes, it does. It really does."

She slammed the knife against his forehead, but it didn't go through the bone. Instead, the slippery knife bounced out of her hand. "See what you made me do?"

"Please stop," I said.

"He hit you."

"That doesn't mean you have to stab him eight hundred times."

"He was going to kill us all!"

"Maybe! I get that it was self-defense. I'm glad he's dead. That's totally okay with me. But unless you think he's going to be possessed by the spirits of the undead, I don't think total bodily dismemberment is necessary!"

Shirley wiped some blood out of her hair. "I suppose you're right."

"So what next?" asked Roger, his voice so quiet I could barely hear him.

"We need to search him," I said. I was going to mention that this task would have been much more pleasant sixty seconds ago, but at some point you just have to accept that mistakes were made and quit harassing people about their stabbing sprees.

"For what?" asked Shirley. "Exposed intestines?"

"Clues. A phone, a business card, anything that can lead the FBI to Mr. Burke."

"Oh. I guess I should have let you ask him some questions. If you'd said something..."

"Let's just move on," I said, looking at Markus's body. He was totally covered in blood, so much that I couldn't even see the slits of his pants pockets. Three years ago, I wouldn't have been able to reach into somebody's bloody pockets without lots of whimpering and psyching myself up for the task, but I was mostly over that now, and I slid my hand into his right pocket and took out his cell phone.

I tried to turn it on. Nothing happened.

"I think the blood ruined it," I said.

"If you leave it in uncooked rice for a couple of days, the rice will absorb the liquid," Roger said. "That's how I fixed my iPhone after I dropped it in the toilet."

"Are you kidding me?"

"Yes. People like us joke around when we're trying to avoid insanity."

Suddenly I perked up. "Did you hear that?"

"What?"

"Sounded like a car door."

Outside, a car engine started. I dragged Shirley over to the front door and looked through the peephole in just enough time to see a small truck speeding down the street away from the house.

CHAPTER EIGHT

"Do you think that was a good guy or bad guy?" Roger asked.

"It was probably our guardian angels, getting out of here before the shitstorm begins." I took a couple of deep breaths to calm myself. "We'll be fine," I said. "We'll find a neighbor and borrow a phone. Helen will be home with the kids right now, so I'll call her, then I'll call the police, and they'll get everyone out of harm's way, and we'll all go hide in an underground bunker somewhere."

"I told you we should have changed our identities," said Roger.

"Maybe we'll do that now. Witness protection program. Andrew Chaos."

Shirley pulled me back into the house. I was stronger and could have resisted, but I also realized that it might complicate our efforts to get help if somebody saw us standing on the front porch, drenched in blood.

"What do we do?" Shirley asked.

"We call the police."

"No, we're not doing that."

"Of course we are! My wife and children could be in danger."

"I can't have the police investigating me! You saw what I just did!" She pointed at Markus's corpse. "I'm not going to prison for him!"

"Then let's just get these handcuffs off and go our separate ways."

I wasn't expecting her to yank me up against her, though I'll admit that I really should have been better prepared for the switchblade against my throat.

Roger pointed the gun at her. "Let him go."

"Drop the gun!"

"I'm serious! I'll shoot!"

I really, truly, wholeheartedly did not want to see what would happen if Roger tried to shoot Shirley while she used me as a human shield.

"I said, drop the gun! I'll slit his throat! I'll do it!"

"If you do, so help me God I will put a bullet in your head!" Roger threatened. "You won't live one single second longer than him!"

Now that the discussion centered around plans for after my demise, I thought it was time to let my own feelings be known: "Roger, drop the frickin' gun!"

Roger dropped the gun. I think he was relieved.

"Kick it into the hole," Shirley said.

Roger did as he was told. Once we talked Shirley into a more reasonable state of mind, we'd go get it. A large gun would probably come in handy.

"Now drop the knife," Roger said.

"Not yet."

"Drop the knife or I will go back down under the floorboards, get the gun, and shoot you with it."

"I would like you to stop threatening me. I can't focus when you keep talking about shooting me. We'll get through this. I just need some time to think."

"There isn't any time!" said Roger.

Shirley flicked the tip of the knife against my neck, making a quick cut. I yelped.

"Listen, Shirley," I said, trying not to sound panicked, "We're not going to turn you in. Let's just go deal with our own crises. There's no reason our destinies need to be intertwined."

"My car is at your office."

"That's fine. We can drop you off, or you can take a cab back, or however you want to handle it."

I couldn't see Shirley's face, so I wasn't sure if she was considering that idea or not. "No," she said after a few seconds. "I might need hostages."

"Hostages?" I asked. "Seriously? You're going to make us into hostages?"

"Possibly. It hasn't come to that yet."

"Okay, I'm sure you're very confused right now, and it's only natural. But this isn't the way to deal with it. And, no offense, but a middle-aged woman with a switchblade isn't exactly the greatest peril I've ever faced."

"I don't care what you've survived in the past. Nobody wants a knife in the belly. If you really feel like you need to make a move, be my guest, but I will stick this thing in you."

I was definitely going to make a move. Soon. With Helen, Theresa, and Kyle in danger I wasn't going to sit around, waiting for the most opportune and safest moment to strike. That said, attacking while she was on high alert would probably get me disemboweled, so I'd at least wait for a slightly better moment.

"Fine," I said. "If you're the kind of person who would let a pregnant woman and two children get murdered, I guess there's nothing I can do to stop you." I hadn't really used it in the past, but "guilt over the deaths of pregnant women and children" seemed like a good tactical approach.

"We need to hurry," said Shirley, ignoring me. "Let's rinse some of this blood off and then get out of here."

"I wouldn't use the water in the coolers," said Roger.

Shirley dragged me into the kitchen. She turned on the faucet, then gestured at me with the knife. "Get the blood off your face."

What she should have said, to be more sinister, was "Get the blood off your face or I'll add new blood to your face." Or, you know, something with that basic concept. But she didn't, so I grabbed a dishtowel, held it under the water stream, then rubbed the blood off my face with it. I rinsed the rag, then held it out toward Shirley.

She stared at it for a moment and frowned.

"What's the matter?" I asked. "Difficult to pick up a rag while you're holding a knife?"

"None of your business."

"I can wash your face for you if you want."

"No. Just let me think."

"If we weren't handcuffed you could handle your own personal hygiene."

"Stop talking."

"I could fill a glass with water and splash it on your face. Or, we could call a time out and I'll let you hold your head under the faucet until the count of ten without trying anything. How does that sound?"

"I'll just have to stay bloody," she said, heading back toward the living room and tugging me along.

"Are you sure? It's really kind of a gross look on you."

"Shut up or I'll cut you," she said, in such a way that I felt I should shut up or she would cut me.

We hurried out of the house, leaving the dead animals out to create a welcoming neighborhood aroma. "You're driving," Shirley told Roger. "We're sitting in the back."

Roger got into the driver's seat while Shirley and I got into the back seat. She kept the knife pointed at me as she got in, then realized that she couldn't use her left hand to close the door while it was pointing the knife at me.

"Roger," she said. "Close my door."

Roger got out of the car, did his chauffeur duties without a comment, then got back in and started the engine.

"Where to?"

"I don't know. Just drive. No, wait...get out of this neighborhood and then take a right on Greenveil Avenue. We're getting out of town."

Roger backed out of the driveway. There was a mild jolt as he drove over the curb, but it wasn't enough to make me think it was a good moment to leap at Shirley.

"I'm going to make another plea for you to be reasonable," I said. "Keeping us around is making things worse for you, not better."

"I'm not looking to be reasonable right now."

"You should be. You know the guy you repeatedly stabbed? If his boss finds out you did it, I can't even describe the kind of revenge he'll take."

"Try."

"Okay, feet chopped off and replaced with wheels. That's the kind of freaky shit he does."

"I deserve whatever happens to me."

"No, no, you don't. You could beat an orphan to death with a dead nun and not deserve what will happen to you if Mr. Burke catches us. I don't want to overhype him, but the man is mentally unhinged!"

"You've made your point. As soon as we're out of town, I'll decide what we should do."

"Any chance I could take out my wallet and show you pictures of my kids?"

"No."

Reasoning with somebody who is completely whack-nut bonkers is never an easy thing. For all I knew, Mr. Burke's associates had already gone after my family. Hanging out with Shirley while she sorted out her personal issues didn't fit with my plan for the rest of the evening.

I grabbed for the switchblade.

Missed.

And then Shirley had the tip of the knife pressed against my chest, so that one little thrust could push the blade into my heart.

I apologized.

"Do you think I'm joking?" Shirley asked. "Let me be very clear about this: I will kill you. I will cause a geyser of blood to spew forth from your body. Do you understand? Do I need to jam this goddamn knife into your heart so that you posthumously get my meaning?"

I explained that, no, that was unnecessary.

"Do I have to sit here with the knife like this, or can you be trusted?"

"You can trust me," I said, even though I was going to try again to take the knife away from her the first chance I got.

She pulled the knife away. "Good."

I couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief. How come I was able to overpower the large man with a gun but not the tiny woman with a knife?

"You guys are okay now, right?" asked Roger. "I wasn't sure if I should keep driving or not."

"We're fine," I said.

"Yeah, we're fine," Shirley agreed. "I just need time to figure some things out, and then we'll go our separate ways."

"There's something else to consider," I said, watching Shirley closely for my next moment to strike. "You're talking about using me for a hostage, but if Mr. Burke's people find us before the police do, they'll be after me, and that makes you the hostage. Why would you purposely put yourself in a situation where you're the hostage?"

"You look like you're thinking about lunging at me again," said Shirley.

"No, I wasn't."

"You're tensed up. I'm serious, if you try to get this knife, I'll kill you and then use your partner as my hostage."

"I wasn't tensed up."

"I can see that you're tensed up."

"Well, I'm stressed! It was tension over my family being in danger, not my body tensed up to strike! You can't expect me to act like I've just had a massage!"

"Don't go for the knife."

"I'm not going for your stupid knife!"

Would she expect me to go for the knife at the exact moment that I said that I wasn't going for it? I considered that for a split second and then decided that, yeah, I'd get stabbed.

"I'm watching you," said Shirley.

"Yeah? Well, I'm watching you, too," I said, immediately realizing how lame of a comment that was. For an encore, I'd have to tattle to Roger that she put her index finger on my side of the seat.

We sat in silence for a few moments, watching each other carefully.

"I'm sorry about all of this," said Shirley.

"Jesus, can't you just stick to one personality?" I asked. "Be a cold-hearted sociopath if that's what makes you happy."

"That was almost a little pouty," she said, with a hint of a smile.

"Are you seriously trying to make lighthearted comments? I don't need you to be an enigma right now. It's pissing me off."

"Guys...?"

I looked up at Roger. "What's up?"

"I think a couple of cars are following us. Don't look back. They may just be going the same way, but that YouTube video said that a good private investigator relies on his gut, and my gut says that we're being followed."

"So take a quick right turn," I said. "Don't signal."

Roger turned right, tires screeching.

"I didn't mean into a Burger King parking lot," I said.

"Sorry."

He went through the drive-thru lane, which was mercifully empty, and then around the building and onto a side street.

I looked back. Two silver cars turned onto the street.

"Are those the ones?"

Roger glanced at the rear-view mirror. "Yeah."

"Okay, yes, we're being followed. Wonderful."

"What do we do?"

"Drive like an absolute maniac and try to lose them."

CHAPTER NINE

"Does he know how to do a high speed chase?" Shirley asked me.

"Nope. Our car will probably explode."

Shirley ignored me. "Roger, do you know how to do a high speed chase?"

He glanced back at her for a second. "Do you see how much I'm sweating! I can barely drive at normal speeds!"

"Then let's not get ourselves killed! Isn't there a way to outsmart them?"

"Well, sure," I said, "if we were smart."

"I'm not good with speeding," said Shirley, sounding more than a little anxious. "The speed limits are there for a reason. Cars aren't meant to go fast."

"I suppose we could paint the side of the car to look like that grocery store up there, and then we could park in the exact spot so that we blend in."

"Don't make fun of me."

I looked back. One of the silver cars was tailgating us. The windshield was tinted so I couldn't see the driver, but I assumed he was some sinister-looking scumbag.

"Do they look like they might pull out guns and start shooting?" Roger asked.

"I can't tell. There's no evidence that they won't. If they're Burke's people, they probably have a slingshot that shoots chainsaws, so we need to get out of here. Floor it."

"Don't floor it," said Shirley.

"Floor it," I repeated.

Roger floored the accelerator. We shot forward. There were no pedestrians to leap out of the way and no garbage cans to knock over, but Roger did fly through a yellow light that turned red midway through the intersection.

The two silver cars ran the red light and sped after us, removing any possible doubt that the whole "we're being followed" thing was a wacky misunderstanding.

Fortunately, there wasn't much traffic for Roger to weave around. He switched lanes to avoid a minivan, then took a sharp left onto a side street.

Shirley looked terrified.

Which meant that, even though I didn't want to distract Roger during his driving duties, now was the time to get that rotten freaking knife away from her.

She'd be watching my free hand more carefully than my handcuffed one, so...

I threw a punch. This jerked her right hand before I could land the punch, and she countered with the switchblade more quickly than I'd anticipated, despite my previous observations about her strength and agility.

I've had a knife go through my hand before. Stings like hell. In that particular case, having the knife protruding all the way through my palm gave me an advantage, because it meant that now I had the knife. It was not a strategy I ever wanted to employ again, because...well, it involved getting stabbed through the hand, which is not awesome.

This time it wasn't quite so drastic. The knife hit the middle knuckle of my middle finger and bounced off the bone. I don't wish to be crude, but it hurt like a damn shit fucking son of a bitch. Not as bad as the one that went all the way through my palm, but still, ow.

I threw another punch. Missed.

She jabbed the knife at me, going for my eyeball. I grabbed her wrist and tried to dig my fingernails into her skin, wishing I had nails like hers (though not pink).

Roger took another sharp turn. Had it been a left turn, the momentum might have smacked Shirley against her door, but it was a right turn, so the blade sliced across my cheek and ear.

I punched again, and this time I connected with her jaw. There's no satisfaction in hurting a woman, even one who is currently trying to murder you, and her cry of pain made me feel like a complete cretin, though it wasn't enough to stop me from punching her again.

She spat out half of a front tooth.

Another sharp turn, which smacked me into the door. The door handle, to be specific. It didn't break any vertebrae, but it did not feel soothing against my spine. The back of my head whacked against the window.

She stabbed at me again, and I deflected it with my arm, though by "deflected" I mean "got cut."

"Knock it off, you two!" Roger shouted.

I grabbed the knife by the blade. It didn't break the skin, at least not until Shirley pulled it free. Then it broke the skin quite efficiently.

I threw another punch. She blocked it with her handcuffed fist, which then smacked into her face. I did not ask "Why are you hitting yourself? Why are you hitting yourself?" though if I hadn't been bleeding so much I might have considered it.

She screamed with rage.

Taking advantage of her open mouth, I reached up and flicked her broken tooth with my index finger, hard.

The volume of her scream increased by a few decibels and the pitch rose to an ear-mangling frequency. I yanked my finger out of the way in time to avoid having it bitten off.

"I can't drive while you're fighting back there!" Roger shouted.

"Stop the car!" I shouted back. "Help get this psycho off of me!"

Shirley held the knife above her head, smacking the roof of the vehicle, then slammed it down.

We crashed.

Shirley and I were both thrown against the back of the front seats upon impact. The knife went into the seat cushion, buried to the hilt. Glass sprayed everywhere. A car alarm blared.

We were in the parking lot of a small arts and crafts shop. Roger had crashed into a black sedan. He turned around, a thin trickle of blood running down his forehead.

"You okay?" he asked.

My shoulder was definitely bruised but there didn't seem to be any new lacerations or broken bones. Shirley was dazed but not unconscious. I grabbed the knife and snapped the blade back into the handle.

"I'm fine," I said, because in my world "fine" often meant "at least my jugular vein wasn't severed."

The two silver cars pulled into the parking lot behind us.

I threw open the door and scrambled out, dragging Shirley behind me. Fortunately, she was alert enough to mostly move on her own, so I wasn't pulling dead weight.

A man got out of each car. They were dressed entirely in black, except for their orange facemasks, which were decorated like jack-o-lanterns with evil grins.

They both had sub-machine guns. Yes, actual sub-machine guns. I couldn't believe it.

We really should have stayed in the car.

The door to the arts and crafts shop opened and an old woman, probably in her seventies, eighties, or nineties, stormed out. She gaped at her damaged car. "What did you do to my...?" She trailed off as she noticed the blood-covered handcuffed couple, the guy with the head injury, and the men in jack-o-lantern masks.

For a moment she just stood there, mouth open, staring at us. Nobody moved.

Then one of the jack-o-lantern men turned to the other, who gave him a thumbs-up sign.

They spun their sub-machine guns around, pointing them at the old woman, then opened fire.

Two diagonal red paths tore across her body. The woman, mouth still open, stumbled backwards as dozens more bullets pounded into her, shredding her chest.

Her dead body dropped to the ground.

The men returned their attention to us.

I have never wanted to utter the words "Oh, shit!" more in my life, but I was unable to speak.

It's not like we were in the middle of Disney World, but this wasn't exactly a discrete place for a sub-machine gun slaying. Were these guys suicide gunners? Were they even trying to get away with it?

Faced with twin sub-machine guns pointed at us, I wasn't sure what to do, so I raised my hands into the air, forcing Shirley to raise her cuffed hand as well.

I was terrified, but getting mowed down like that old woman seemed like too quick of a death for this to be Mr. Burke's revenge. There was no way he'd let me get off that easy.

Unless, thanks to Markus's untimely death, this was Plan B.

God, I hoped it wasn't Plan B.

One of the men in the jack-o-lantern masks silently beckoned to Roger.

Roger did not look like he wanted to walk over to him.

The man fired a few bullets into the air, then pointed the gun at Roger and beckoned again.

I watched in horror as Roger approached the man.

The man pressed the barrel of the gun between Roger's eyes, held it there for a couple of seconds, then removed it and used the barrel to bash Roger in the side of the head. He dropped to his knees, but before he could collapse completely, the man grabbed him by the collar and pulled him to his feet.

I desperately wished I had some sort of weapon, but all I had was the...no, damn, I didn't even have the switchblade anymore. What the hell? Had Shirley really been able to swipe it from me?

The man dragged Roger over to the closer of the two silver cars and smashed him against the side. He pressed the barrel of the gun against Roger's back while he took out a set of keys. The trunk popped open as he pushed a button on the remote control.

Shirley and I stood there helplessly as the man quickly got Roger into the trunk and slammed the lid shut.

At least I was right: they weren't planning to just shoot us. Though I could easily envision a near future scenario in which I was wailing "Oh, why didn't they just shoot us?"

Or, perhaps, they simply weren't planning to shoot Roger. Mr. Burke probably liked him better.

The jack-o-lantern-masked man whose gun was pointed at me silently beckoned.

Shirley lowered her arms, stepped behind me, and held the knife to my throat.

"Do you want to keep him alive for your boss?" she asked. "Do you?"

The man didn't respond. He kept the gun pointed at us.

"You let us go, or I swear I'll cut his neck wide open! I'll do it! Don't think I won't do it!"

"You won't be able to escape if you're handcuffed to a corpse," I told her.

"Don't talk!" she told me. To the men, she said "Lower your guns! Lower your guns now!"

The men did not lower their guns.

"You have until the count of three! I know you want him alive! I don't care if you shoot me afterward; I will kill this man just to ruin your day!"

The men exchanged a glance. Though I couldn't see their expressions through the masks, they were clearly a bit unsure about whether or not Shirley would actually slit my throat. This was good. This was our one advantage. As long as they didn't decide that it was okay to turn both of us into taco meat, we could use this.

"She's insane!" I told the jack-o-lantern men. "You've got to help me!"

Shirley pressed the knife more tightly against my neck. "Shut up."

"This crazy bitch is going to kill me!" I shouted.

I was trying to sell the idea that they needed to back off and let Shirley kidnap me, or else risk having to deliver my dead body to their boss. Unfortunately, as the jack-o-lantern men adjusted their aim, I got the very unnerving impression that they were going to try to shoot Shirley out from behind me.

Maybe they were so skilled with those sub-machine guns that they could knock a mosquito off somebody's arm. Or maybe Mr. Burke's requirements for my physical condition upon delivery were not very strict. Either way, whether they were confident or uncaring, I didn't see any way they could take out Shirley without at least putting a few bullets into my shoulder.

Shirley took a step back toward Roger's car, bringing me with her. "I'm serious! You need to get right back in your cars!"

No way in hell were they going to do that. And no way could they let this drag out much longer, not with so many shots fired and a dead woman in front of the store. The police would be here any minute.

The jack-o-lantern men began to walk toward us. The closer they got, the better their chances of only pumping bullets into Shirley became, and maybe they felt that she could only cut my neck a little before they had the chance to blow her away.

"Stay back!" she warned them. "Stay back or...okay, you've ruined it for yourselves!"

When they were about seven or eight feet away, she pulled the knife away from my neck and immediately slammed it into my back, several times, rapidly. I quickly realized that though it hurt, it did not feel like an actual knife blade puncturing my flesh, but rather somebody pounding me in the back with a knife handle.

She shoved me to the ground.

I struck the pavement, yanking Shirley down with me. Hopefully I was covered with enough of Markus's blood that they wouldn't notice the lack of a hole in the back of my shirt. I gritted my teeth and waited for the spray of sub-machine gunfire.

But apparently the jack-o-lantern men were surprised enough that Shirley had gone through with it that they didn't instantly react, and the closest one was also not expecting something along the lines of, say, a man who'd been stabbed several times in the back to suddenly grab his legs.

I pulled him off-balance and he hit the ground.

Shirley and her long fingernails went for his crotch.

The jack-o-lantern man who was still standing aimed his sub-machine gun at the pile of struggling bodies on the ground, hesitated...then ran back to the car with Roger in the trunk.

The man whose crotch was being treated poorly howled in agony. I punched him in his crooked painted-on one-toothed smile. Shirley punched him in the stomach.

Shirley grabbed for the sub-machine gun. They fought over it for a few seconds, until I punched him in the stomach as well. The gun popped out of his grasp.

Without hesitating, Shirley spun the weapon around and pulled the trigger, obliterating the front of his mask.

"Holy crap!" I said, because even when you're relieved that the bad guy is dead, it's never pleasant to see somebody's face get wiped out by a sub-machine gun.

The silver car sped out of the parking lot. Shirley and I stood up and she opened fire, shattering the rear windshield.

"Don't!" I shouted. "You'll hit Roger!"

She kept firing. As a line of bullets struck the trunk, I smacked her on the shoulder.

"Stop it!"

"What's the matter with you?"

"Roger's in the trunk!"

"I can't aim this thing very well yet."

"You might have killed him!"

"He's fine. Sorry. I couldn't hear you over the machine gun." She was breathing deeply, almost panting, and had a huge grin on her face. "Oh my God, this is so much better than a knife!"

CHAPTER TEN

Say it with me: cuckoo, cuckoo.

I chose to believe that Roger was still alive. I hadn't been able to see whether the bullets actually went through the trunk, and if they had, that didn't mean they'd hit him, and if they had, that didn't mean he'd been fatally wounded. My best friend might be in the trunk right now, cursing up a storm as he clutched his bleeding thigh, but he had to still be alive.

I hadn't let Roger die the three or four other times he'd been kidnapped, and I wasn't going to let him die this time, either.

The silver car nearly crashed into an ugly green Jeep, then sped off. A couple more cars passed the shop, the drivers apparently making the wise decision not to mess with the blood-covered handcuffed sub-machine gun-toting madwoman.

She gestured toward the dead man with the barrel of the gun. "Should we take off his mask?"

"Why the hell would we do that?"

"To see who he really is."

"He's not Spider-Man! The only thing under that mask is bloody pulp!"

"I still want to see it."

"His partner is getting away with Roger! We have to stop him!"

Shirley pointed the sub-machine gun at my face. "You're right, you're right. The other pumpkin needs killing. Let's give the old woman a proper burial and then we'll head off."

"Are you kidding me?"

"Of course I'm kidding. There's not even anyplace around here to bury her, unless you've got a jackhammer. Why can't you stop being so mopey and enjoy the adrenaline burst?"

I started to make another comment about how she was insane, then decided not to waste my breath. I noticed another old woman looking through the window from inside the shop, staring in pure horror at the carnage in the parking lot, and I waved for her to get away.

Shirley glanced over as the woman disappeared from sight. "Why'd you shoo her away?"

"Why do you think?"

"Andrew, I'm not going to go on a killing spree. Villains only, all right? Villains and maybe people who get in our way. But I'm not going to murder an old lady. I'm not like that."

"Good to know. Let's go."

We hurried over to the remaining silver car. "You're driving," she told me.

I opened the door and started to get in, then realized that with my left hand cuffed to Shirley's right, the seating arrangement was going to be tricky.

A siren began to blare in the distance.

"Just shoot the chain," I said.

"Yeah, I'm sure you wouldn't try to escape while I was distracted doing that." Shirley climbed into the driver's seat and then over into the passenger seat, keeping the gun pointed at me as I scooted in with her.

The keys were still in the ignition. I couldn't really do anything with my left hand, which was stretched across my chest and onto Shirley's side, but I started the engine with my right hand and put the car into reverse.

"How far away do you think the cops are?" asked Shirley.

"I don't know."

"Guess."

"I'm not good at calculating siren distance."

"Guess!"

"A few blocks, maybe?"

"Damn. Does this car have automatic windows?"

"How would I know?"

"Look to see if there's a window control switch, you jackass!"

"Yes, there is," I said, as I waited for a taxi to pass so our path onto the street would be clear.

"Roll mine down."

"Why?"

"Why do you think?"

"I'm not going to let you shoot at the cops!"

Shirley smashed the gun against the window. The glass spiderwebbed but didn't break. She pulled the trigger and squeezed off a few shots, and the window shattered.

"Wow, that was loud," said Shirley. "My ears are ringing."

Mine were, too. After the taxi drove past I pulled out onto the street and floored the accelerator. "Why are you wasting ammo? When we catch up to Roger we're gonna need to shoot the guy in the mask!"

"There's still plenty."

"Based on what? You didn't even look at the clip!"

"Machine guns hold way more bullets than what we've shot so far, don't they?"

"I don't know! I don't go around shooting them! If you want to confuse them with the everlasting machine guns you see in movies, then yes, our ammo level is perfectly fine!"

"If you'd rolled down the window, I wouldn't have had to shoot it."

"I can't let you shoot at cops!" I swerved past the taxi. Driving one-handed was okay for now, but if we got into heavier traffic or had to make any sharp turns, which I suspected we would, we were going to be screwed.

"Being stubborn about the window was not going to save any cops, Andrew."

"Can't you just postpone unleashing your inner gun nut for another hour or so?"

"Screw that."

"Then at least let me go."

"You're not any less valuable of a hostage than you were the first time we discussed this. I'm not going to let you go, so quit asking."

"Do you really want to go through all of this and then die in a car wreck? Because that's what's going to happen if you won't even let me drive with both hands."

"Lots of cool people have died in car wrecks."

I realized that this conversation wasn't getting me anywhere, and that my time could be better spent focusing more closely on trying to drive this stupid car.

There was an intersection ahead.

The light was, of course, not the beautiful shade of green that I would have appreciated. Nor was it a less beautiful but still acceptable amber color.

"Don't brake!" Shirley shouted.

I wasn't going to brake. I did a quick check for any semi trucks that might plow into us and send us hurtling into Georgia, braced myself, and then prepared to race through the intersection.

Shirley looked as if she wanted to grab something for support, but to do so she would have to put down the sub-machine gun, so she settled for tensing up and looking extremely nervous.

Aside from an ice cream trunk honking at us, we sped past the red light with no near misses. I couldn't get too relaxed, though. There would be plenty of other red lights.

And, joining them, there were now some red and blue flashing lights in my rear-view mirror.

"Don't even think about slowing down," said Shirley, jabbing me in the ribs with the barrel of the gun. "If I see that speedometer drop below...whoa, you don't need to be doing seventy in a thirty-five!"

Another police car pulled onto the street behind us, about a block away, lights flashing and siren blaring.

"We're going to be fine," Shirley assured me. "It's only two cop cars. Anybody can outrun two of them. Chamber's not a big town—these won't be well-trained New York City cops. We'll be fine."

"I hope you don't think you're soothing me."

"I'm trying to soothe myself."

"Well, do what you can." Another red light intersection was coming up. "Any chance you could buckle my seat belt for me?"

Shirley didn't answer, which was fine because I didn't actually expect her to helpfully reach over and do anything to prevent me from flying through the windshield upon impact.

Of course, if I slammed on the brakes without warning, Shirley might smack against the dashboard, giving me a chance to disarm her. I was confident that I could explain the situation to the police officers before they decided to reboot the Bonnie and Clyde franchise.

(That was my actual thought. In retrospect, I am completely aware that Bonnie and Clyde was never an actual franchise, just one movie, but at the time I was mostly focusing on the fact that Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway were shot by many, many bullets.)

On the flip side, slamming on the brakes also seemed to carry pretty high odds in favor of Shirley squeezing the trigger. In which case, the car would go out of control and Shirley would probably be killed, but I honestly didn't think she cared all that much right now.

If I focused my attention on trying to escape from Shirley, we'd lose Roger for sure. So my best bet was to keep up the chase.

Not that I could even see the silver car. It could be eighteen blocks away in a different direction by now.

The police cars were going quite a bit faster than me, and now they were only a few car-lengths behind. Shirley glanced back at them, then pointed the sub-machine gun out of the window.

As she pulled the trigger, I swerved the car a bit to the side to throw off her aim.

"Drive straight, dammit!"

She fired again and I swerved again. I wasn't going to let her murder some cops if there was any possible way I could help it.

"Do you want to die?" she asked me.

"Nope."

She fired off another set of bullets, squeezing the trigger for several seconds. I swerved again. In the rear-view mirror, I saw both police cars come to a screeching halt, though neither of them seemed to have been hit.

Shirley pulled the gun back inside the vehicle and cursed. "What was that all about?"

"What the hell do you think? Do you really want to be a cop killer?"

"We don't know those guys. They're probably corrupt." She pointed the gun at my head. "I wasn't bluffing."

"If you kill me, you'll die."

"We've got airbags."

"Uh-huh. If I go through the windshield, you're coming with me. Or else you're losing an arm. If you really want to shoot me, go ahead, but shooting your driver is one of the stupidest possible ways anybody could ever die."

"I guess you're right," she said, though she didn't lower the gun.

There it was! The silver car—okay, a silver car, but it looked just like it—a few blocks ahead. Maybe the man in the jack-o-lantern mask was respecting the rules of traffic better than we were!

I sped through an intersection with a lovely green light and continued the pursuit.

"Do you think they'll send a 'copter after us?" Shirley asked.

"I don't think Chamber has a helicopter."

"That would be a way to go. It would be worth giving up just to be taken out by a guy shooting from a helicopter."

"I totally disagree."

I swerved around a slow-moving Volkswagen. There were fewer businesses along the street now, and I couldn't see another traffic light. These weren't ideal circumstances for the chase, but they were slightly better than what we'd had so far. Since we hadn't been struck while speeding through a red light yet, we might very well avoid it altogether.

Now we were close enough to the silver car that I could see the line of bullet marks on the trunk and the shattered rear windshield.

"That's the car!" said Shirley.

"I know."

"I can't believe how lucky you are!"

"That's not a word I'd use to describe myself."

"I would. That car should have been long gone by now. Clearly you've lived a wholesome life."

"You're right. Today has been one lucky break after another."

"I'm just saying."

"Whatever."

"How are you going to pull it over?"

"I'm not sure."

"You don't have a plan?" Shirley asked. "Are you going to ram them?"

"Not my first choice."

"Then what's the plan? You can't drive after somebody like this without knowing what you're going to do once you catch them."

She had a good point, but I didn't much want to listen to constructive criticism from somebody whose decision making process so far seemed to be "What can I do that's more insane than the last thing I did?"

I had no idea what I was going to do when we caught up to the silver car. How did the authorities pull over a car? They pretty much just flashed their lights and the driver obligingly pulled over to the side of the road. Or they set up a roadblock (not practical in our current situation) or used one of those tire-popping things (equally impractical).

"I'm going to need you to shoot out their tires," I told Shirley. That was the answer. Duh.

"Oh," said Shirley, sounding very uncertain. "Okay."

"What, do you suddenly have a moral issue with murdering rubber?"

"No, it's fine. It's a good plan. We'll do it."

What was wrong with her? Was she worried about wasting bullets on things that didn't spurt blood?

Then I figured it out: she was out of bullets and didn't want to say anything.

Crap.

Or, not crap, from the perspective of her no longer being able to hold me at gunpoint, but right now I'd rather she had the ammo.

Should I reveal that I knew her gun was empty?

I didn't know it for sure. I wouldn't want her to disprove that theory into my skull.

Okay, I'd worry about actually catching up to the car first, then I'd worry about the bullets issue.

A couple of blocks ahead, the car made a left turn on a green arrow. The arrow switched to yellow. So, if I didn't want to risk losing Roger, I was going to have to make a left turn on red across traffic at seventy miles per hour with only one hand. This was going to freaking suck.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

A second after deciding that this was going to freaking suck, I realized that it was flat-out impossible. I was no Hollywood stunt driver. I would have to complete this daring task at the more reasonable speed of fifty miles per hour.

"We're going to have to cooperate," I told Shirley. "I can't make this turn with one hand."

"Do you need me to help you turn?"

"No, I just need you to stretch your arm out so I can use both hands." This would leave her vulnerable to any arm-breaking maneuver I might attempt, but it wouldn't prevent her from keeping the gun pointed at me.

She nodded and twisted around in her seat. I put both hands on the steering wheel, in the proper ten-and-two position, and prayed that she really was out of bullets, because centrifugal force was not a great thing when somebody was awkwardly situated and still had their finger on the trigger.

A bus was in the opposite lane.

No, wait...two busses.

Screw that.

I slammed on the brakes and we stopped right before the intersection. Being deceased would not help Roger's cause.

"Why'd you do that?" Shirley asked.

"Didn't want to die."

"Makes sense."

We waited for a few moments. I could hear sirens coming from at least two different directions. The light turned green and I floored the accelerator again.

Now we were in a residential area. There was no sign of the silver car, but I did see an angry looking man in his front yard angrily gesticulating while speaking to a woman, so there was an excellent chance that somebody had sped through here way too fast for his liking.

The man shook his fist at me as we sped past. I believe the phrase "irresponsible jerkface" was used.

"Keep an eye out for little kids," I told Shirley. "Watch for anything that might cause us a lifetime of guilt."

She nodded and remained sideways in her seat so that I could continue to use both hands to steer. It was very generous of her. If she'd stop threatening to kill me, perhaps we could even be friends someday.

There was an overturned garbage can ahead, still rolling on the side of the street. Another good sign. We sped past a stop sign without making the requested stop.

"Can you tell if the sirens are getting closer?" Shirley asked.

"They don't seem to be. I don't know if they're directly following us or not."

"Maybe we're safe."

"Surely you can't be serious."

"Ha."

Up ahead, in the middle of the road, was a flattened poodle. More evidence that we were going the right way.

No...not a poodle. A wig. I hoped never to meet the person who wore a wig that could be mistaken for a poodle. What on earth was it doing lying in the middle of the street?

Forget it. I had much more important concerns.

"That's one ugly wig," said Shirley as we drove over it.

The street ended up ahead. Left or right? There were tire marks to the right. No guarantee that they were recent, but they did seem to indicate a dangerously fast rubber-burning turn. I don't completely suck as a detective.

I turned right. I sped down the block and saw that it ended in a cul-de-sac. Wrong turn. Dammit.

I turned us around and we sped back the way we came.

"Is that him?" Shirley asked, pointing forward with the sub-machine gun.

"Not unless the car turned purple."

"Don't be a smartass. I mean in front of that one."

"Yes! That's him! Fantastic!"

I sped up, then slowed back down as I saw a little kid riding a tricycle on the sidewalk. Where were his parents? Didn't they know there could be serial killers with sub-machine guns racing down their street?

After I passed the kid and got over my moment of moral outrage, I sped back up.

"I'm going to pass them on the left, and you shoot out the tires," I told Shirley.

"How do I know you won't attack me?"

"Because I really want their tires shot out!"

"Okay," said Shirley, sounding very uncertain.

"Are you out of bullets?"

"No."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"Then shoot out their tires when you get a chance." We were now close enough to see the shattered rear windshield again. "Please don't hit the trunk."

I assumed that the jack-o-lantern masked man didn't know we were following him, because he could've been going a lot faster. It seemed to be more important to him not to smash into cars parked along the street than to not get caught by us.

"Get ready to shoot!" I said.

"I'll do it when we get closer."

"We're almost there!"

This was not a good time to take advantage of the fact that she was holding me hostage with an empty gun, though if the opportunity presented itself after the silver car was successfully stopped...

I was now directly behind the silver car. I could see the driver's orange head glance up at the rear-view mirror, and then the car sped up.

I swerved to the left, missing a parked car by less than a foot. I was going to have to ram it. Crashing a car that had Roger locked in the trunk was not a low-risk venture, but it was certainly better than letting him be delivered to whatever hell Mr. Burke had planned.

As I pulled up alongside the car, it swerved to the right, bouncing up over the sidewalk and onto somebody's front yard. I swerved to the right as well, and we both sped across a neatly mowed, well-kept lawn.

I didn't think the jack-o-lantern man would shoot at me while he was driving, so I at least had that going for me. And if he did decide to open fire, well, Shirley was closer to him.

He swerved around a tree, and then we crossed into the next yard. He looked over at me, and though I couldn't see his expression through the mask, I was pretty sure he wasn't suggesting that we should work out a non-violent resolution to our dispute.

I spun the steering wheel to the right, just barely missing the other silver car, and then bashed into a tire swing. Wow. Kids still had tire swings in this neighborhood. That was refreshing. The tire swing thumped against the roof of the car, but fortunately there had not been a young child enjoying it at the time.

I sped up alongside the car once more. We were going to run out of yards after a couple more homes. I swerved to the right. He swerved to the right to avoid me, lost control of the vehicle as the rear tires lost their purchase on the grass, and smashed into the side of a one-story light blue house.

I slammed on the brakes, leaving deep twin marks running across the length of the poor owner's lawn. I hoped like hell that he didn't have a machine gun.

"Is that what you meant to happen?" asked Shirley.

"More or less."

"It worked."

I put the car into reverse and sped back, ruining the lawn even more. The other car had plowed right through the wall and stopped halfway into the house. The trunk didn't seem to have any new damage.

Hopefully nobody had been sitting on the other side of that wall.

I hurriedly threw open the door. I saw that Shirley was distracted by the sight of the car imbedded in the house, as most people would be, so I tugged on the handcuffs to get her to come with me.

I'm not quite sure why she would have interpreted this as an aggressive move. Most likely, she panicked upon realizing that she'd been paying closer attention to the destruction than to me, and then thought that I was yanking her toward me in order to punch her again and try to steal the gun. To be totally fair, I might have tried that if I hadn't known the gun was out of bullets, because I think that I could have put a sub-machine gun to better use during the Roger-rescue process than her.

Regardless of what was going on in her head at the time, her response was to spin around toward me with the gun. She truly looked like she was going to pull the trigger, and I wasn't one hundred percent completely absolutely without question no possible doubt certain that she'd used up the entire clip, so my own response was to attempt to bat the barrel of it away.

She did indeed pull the trigger.

My prediction that the weapon was out of bullets, which was based on solid evidence and observation, turned out to be incorrect.

It was low on ammunition for sure. By my count, the final spray of bullets consisted of only three. It might have been four.

They shattered the driver's side window.

Before that, though, they ripped through the pinky of my right hand.

It didn't come off completely. Instead, it flopped over, hanging by a small strip of flesh and pointing at the floor, accompanied by a generous spurt of blood.

"Son of a bitch son of a bitch son of a bitch!" I screamed. The blood didn't stop at that first spurt. I'd lost my other pinky! Holy frickin' crap, I'd lost my other pinky!

Shirley dropped the gun.

I clutched my injured hand with my other hand, trying to stop the flow of blood. I'd never even gotten used to only having four fingers on my left hand, and I was right-handed!

It hurt. Oh, God, it hurt.

She shot off my finger!

She shot off my finger!

She shot off my finger!

It wasn't completely off, but still...she shot off my finger!

To her credit, Shirley was not wringing her hands together in maniacal glee and cackling with laughter. She looked rather shocked.

Even though I had experience with such matters as losing fingers, it's not something you get used to. You don't just say "Oh, dear, there goes another one." A truly heroic individual might have let out a manly snarl and beat Shirley to death with the flapping digit. I was not a truly heroic individual, and so I spent the majority of the next few seconds going berserk.

"Why the hell did you do that?" I wailed.

"You were attacking me!"

"No! You're so wrong! Ow! Shit!"

Shirley began to unbutton her blouse. "Here," she said. "Use this to stop the flow of blood." She untucked her blouse, removed it most of the way, and then realized that she couldn't completely take it off while we were still handcuffed.

Despite my intense pain, I had the presence of mind to look over at the house to make sure there wasn't a jack-o-lantern man coming toward us. There wasn't. But I was certain that more than a few neighbors were peeking through their windows or had come outside to see what was going on.

Good. Hopefully this place would be swarming with cops soon. I was no vigilante; I was perfectly content with the idea of letting the authorities go after Mr. Burke and having my injuries cared for by a trained medical professional.

Shirley had removed her shirt as much as possible without being able to slip it off her right hand. She was wearing a pink lacy bra that exposed much of her large, full breasts. There were times in my life when it would have been an awe-inspiring sight. However, even if you take the whole "two kids and a pregnant wife" element out of the situation (and I am not for one second suggesting that you should; this is purely hypothetical), I'm not all that attracted to the sight of breasts that are stained with blood that has soaked through the blouse of a woman who stabbed somebody to death. Also, it was hard to get horny so soon after my finger had been shot most of the way off.

She took the blouse, which was still on her arm, and started to wrap it around my hand. I would have appreciated her kind gesture more if she hadn't been the one to mangle me in the first place.

I made a couple more comments about my finger being shot off that I don't quite remember, though the basic gist was that I was quite unhappy about it.

"Dammit!" I said.

"What?"

"You have to line up the finger with the stump before you wrap it!" I pressed my finger into its original position and held it tight. It didn't look like it was going to stay.

Shirley tore her blouse off her arm, yet another gesture that under less gory circumstances would have been enjoyable to witness. She started to wind it around my finger, but it came loose again.

"Do you have any tape?" she asked.

"Why would I be carrying tape around?"

"I don't know! To lift prints! To bind suspects! You've lost a finger before; why would you assume it was a one-time deal?"

I pressed my finger back in place. "Just wrap it carefully."

She wound the blouse tightly around my hand. "Is it still on?"

"Not so tight!"

"It has to be tight!"

"I think you broke another thread of skin!"

"Stop being such a baby!"

The blouse, which hadn't exactly been blood-free to start with, was now completely soaked. I don't want to downplay my own mental and physical trauma, but after a while you do start to get used to this kind of grisly bloodshed.

She finished wrapping my hand and tied it off. It was not a high quality job, but it offered the possibility that I might not bleed to death.

Still no cops. What was taking them so long? I was definitely in the market for their services.

Shirley opened the passenger-side door. "Come on," she said. "We have to get going."

I shook my head. "We should wait here," I said, feeling a bit dizzy. "We'll be okay. Nothing's going to explode."

She gave a hard tug on the handcuffs. It pinched the skin on my wrist and made me yelp, even with the other pain to distract me. "Don't argue with me!"

I tugged back on the handcuffs, even harder. She couldn't keep me as her hostage anymore. The sub-machine gun was empty, and she didn't have the...did she have the knife? I couldn't remember what happened to it. We must have lost it. Crap. Either way, I was done being her prisoner. All I needed to do was keep her from murdering me until the cops arrived, and all would be well.

No! Roger was still in the trunk! If the machine gun fire had hit him, he could be badly injured in there, and every second could count. And I didn't know what was going on with the jack-o-lantern man. He could be walking toward the trunk with an oversized pickaxe at this very moment!

I had to focus. I was nowhere near out of danger yet. I had to put the pain and panic out of my mind and make sure that my best friend didn't die just because I was hanging out in the car for a couple of extra minutes.

I climbed out of the car after Shirley. She tried to run in the opposite direction from the damaged house, but I jerked on the handcuffs, nearly pulling her off her feet. She jerked back, making a large welt on the back of my wrist. I jerked once more and heard a crack, but I don't think it was any bones breaking.

"Do that again," said Shirley. "Do it. See how many fingers I bite off."

"I'm not leaving without Roger."

"Roger's fine."

"And I'm not leaving without getting revenge on the guy who did this to him," I said, trying a tactic that might be more in line with Shirley's passions. "The guy in the mask could still be alive."

"Okay. I'll go for that."

We hurried over to the wrecked silver car. There was no sign of the jack-o-lantern man in the front seat and the door was open, so that wasn't promising.

I knocked on the lid of the trunk.

CHAPTER TWELVE

No response.

I knocked harder. "Roger?" I asked, letting him know it was me in hopes that he might be playing dead with the intent of springing to life and surprising whatever dastardly foe might open the trunk.

Still nothing.

An anvil of emotions crashed upon my head, but I couldn't let that impact me now. Roger might just be unconscious. I had to keep it together until I knew for certain that he was dead, and then I could let out a bellow that echoed with the tragic sounds of misery and loss. Until then: optimistic thoughts only.

"We need a crowbar," I said.

"Why not just pull the lever on the inside of the car?" Shirley asked.

I nodded. "That's a much better idea." I wish I could have blamed that moment of poor judgment on my finger injury.

I glanced inside the house. The car had crashed into an entertainment center, toppling over a huge wide-screen television, a stereo, and dozens of DVDs. Nobody was in the living room shouting "You bastards, you've damaged my home and possessions!" so apparently the owner either wasn't home, or was wisely hiding under a bed.

No sign of the jack-o-lantern man. He must have slipped out the back door.

There was an opening in the destroyed wall that was sufficiently large for Shirley and I to squeeze through. Though the driver's side door was blocked with rubble that would take too long to move out of the way, all of the windows were shattered, so I could just lean in and pull the trunk release.

The sirens were close enough that I was pretty sure the cops were in this neighborhood.

As I started to lean in, the jack-o-lantern man stepped back into the room. I was disappointed to see that he was still holding his sub-machine gun, and that it was now pointed at us. There was a big splotch of red on the left side of his mask.

"Did you get lost?" I asked.

"Looking for hostages."

"Oh. Bummer that you didn't find any."

"Shut the hell up. I'm not even supposed to talk. Get over here, Mayhem."

I wasn't confident that I could squeeze back out of the house before he started shooting and my head met the same fate as my pinky, so I'd have to do as he said. So, really, I was right the first time: trying to find a crowbar would've been the way to go. I'm honestly not sure why I tried to blame that suggestion on the pain.

We cautiously stepped forward.

"Just you," said the man.

I held up our hands. "We come as a pair."

"Unlock it."

"She swallowed the key."

"Why the fuck did she swallow the key?"

"I asked her the same thing. I'm totally with you on that one. Not today's best decision."

The jack-o-lantern man sighed. "Goddamn it," he muttered. "All right, both of you. Hurry."

I didn't really want to hurry, considering how close the police were, but then he fired a few shots over my shoulder and that provided the encouragement I needed.

He obviously was supposed to bring me in alive...but what would he do if the cops burst in right now? Surrender and let me live so that one of Mr. Burke's other associates could nab me?  If I wasn't close enough to provide hostage services, would he just shoot me?

It actually seemed like it might be in our best interest to get closer to him.

Or, I could try to get Shirley in front of me. Why was the jack-o-lantern man the only one allowed to use a human shield? How was that fair?

No. Even though Shirley was far from my favorite person in the world (she was bottom ten, easily) I had to maintain a minimum level of humanity. Also, and much more importantly, any bullet that passed through her body first might have less momentum when it struck me...but I'd still probably get shot up and die. He could get the job done even if I regressed into savage self-preservation.

Then again—not to be indecisive or anything—perhaps this truly was a situation where "run like hell and hope for the best" was appropriate. If Shirley took the majority of the bullets, well, hey, I think my conscience could deal with it.

What would somebody smart do?

I should give myself up to the jack-o-lantern man, and trust that the police would be able to take him out with a sniper or something.

We walked over to him. I tried to look like somebody who would make a good hostage.

"You're a prick," he told me.

"Oh," I said. I wasn't sure how to respond. I would've expected a much harsher statement than that.

"You're a piece of human waste. You're not worthy to breathe the same air as Mr. Burke."

He really should have put more thought into this. Telling me I wasn't worthy to breathe the same air as Mr. Burke was, frankly, kind of weak.

Then he reached under his chin and pulled off his mask.

There was no surprise revelation. He wasn't my dad or anybody else I might recognize, and he didn't have a horribly disfigured face that would haunt me until my dying day. He was older than I expected, maybe in his forties, and actually quite handsome.

Why had he taken off his mask? That was bad. That was really bad. People like that only took off their masks when they wanted their victims to see their true visage before they died. I didn't want to see his true visage! I wanted him to put the mask back on before the cops got here! I wanted to scream "Hide your true identity! Hide your true identity!"

Shirley also seemed to realize that this was bad. There was a flash of "Oh, crap!" on her face, which quickly transformed into serenity and acceptance.

Screw serenity and acceptance! I didn't want to die!

"We all get cyanide capsules," said the former jack-o-lantern man. "I was never in favor of them, but I've got one, just like everybody else, and I'm ready to use it if necessary."

Was he really going to pop a pill? That would be fantastic.

"There's also a much worse exit, one that Mr. Burke's associates aren't supposed to know about, and I'm ready for that, too."

"Okay."

I could hear a couple of police cars (or ambulances; hopefully at least one of them was an ambulance) pull up in front of the house. The car buried in the side of the home was probably a pretty good clue for them that they'd found the right place.

"Not much longer," the man said.

"I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be doing," I admitted. "Do you just bite down, or do you need me to get you a glass of water, or...?"

"All you need to do is think about Hell."

"Okay. Thinking."

The man smiled. "Enjoy being able to be obnoxious like that. It's not going to last long. People who are shrieking in eternal misery aren't usually very clever."

I didn't think my comment had been obnoxious or particularly clever, but I wasn't going to argue with the guy with the machine gun.

"My part's over," said the man. "But you've got lots of suffering to do. Have fun."

He turned the sub-machine gun sideways, and then pressed the barrel against his chin.

Oh my God, was he really going to...?

He pulled the trigger. Several rounds pumped into his head before he dropped the gun. His face barely existed anymore, though one eye continued to stare at me in the few seconds before he collapsed to the ground in a gory mess.

Shirley and I gaped at his body for a moment. Then Shirley began to scream, so loud that it hurt my ears even though I was still half-deaf from all of the gunfire today.

Really? All of this bloodshed, much of it contributed by her, and now she's horrified enough to start shrieking? She was one strange lady.

A voice spoke through a megaphone: "Put down your weapons and come out of the house immediately with your hands in the air."

I recognized the voice. It was either Lieutenant Bruce Frenkle or Sergeant Tony Frenkle. They were identical twins who worked on the police force. Our paths crossed every once in a while when I got myself into trouble, and they were nice guys but generally unimpressed with me.

I elbowed Shirley in the ribs. "Stop screaming."

"Did you see what he did?"

"Yes! I was right here! How could I miss it?"

She resumed her shrieking.

"Be quiet!"

Shirley stopped in mid-shriek. "I'm sorry. It's just the way his eye stared at me while the rest of his face turned to mush."

"I repeat, surrender yourself immediately. You have ten seconds to comply, or we will be forced to come in after you."

"Tony?" I called out.

"No," said the megaphone-enhanced voice. "It's Lieutenant Bruce Frenkle. Is that Andrew?"

"Yes!"

"Are you in danger?"

"Not anymore!"

"Then get your dumb ass out of there before we come in with the tear gas!"

I started to walk. Shirley didn't follow, and resisted when I tugged on the handcuffs.

"What?" I asked.

"I'm not going out like this."

"Like how?"

"This."

"They're not going to shoot us! I can vouch for Bruce. He's a good guy. These are the real police, not Mr. Burke's psycho henchmen. You'll be fine." I was fibbing a bit, since she'd no doubt end up in prison or a sanitarium for the rest of her life, but she'd be fine from the perspective of not getting killed in the next couple of minutes.

She looked way too longingly at the gun the man had dropped.

I tugged again. "Don't even think about it."

She thought about it. Shirley lunged at the gun, but though she was more insane than me, I was still stronger, and I tugged hard enough to pull her off her feet, which hurt both of us. My wrist didn't look as bad as, for example, my missing finger or my cut palm, but it was still rubbed raw and there were a few tiny beads of blood.

Shirley sat up in a crouch, looking almost feral, then leapt at me. I did not punch her in the face. I merely held up my injured fist to defend myself and her own velocity did the rest.

I could probably save a lot of time by abbreviating "It really hurt" to IRH. In this case it would be IRRRRRRH.

I wasn't positive, because nothing had dropped out of the blouse, but I was pretty sure my pinky had come off the rest of the way.

If I'd had the opportunity, I would have sat down on the floor and just wept for a while. Though I'm not one to wallow in self pity, I was really getting tired of this day.

I picked up a bowling trophy that had fallen off the television when the car crashed through the wall and smacked her in the side of the head. It was a cheap plastic trophy that popped off its base, but Shirley stopped attacking me for a moment.

"Knock it off," I told her. "I swear I will smother you with a couch cushion if you don't settle down."

She attacked me again.

I twisted myself around and got my arm around her neck. I squeezed as hard as I...well, not as hard as I could. I didn't really want to strangle her with the police about to burst in on us at any second. But hard enough to encourage her to stop being such a pain in the butt.

"Help!" she was able to scream, proving that I wasn't squeezing hard enough. "Rape!"

"Aw, c'mon, seriously?"

"Rape!"

I didn't really believe that anybody would see us like this and assume there was an attempted sexual assault in progress. Still, you never want to hear that particular word shouted when all you're trying to do is choke her.

"Freeze!"

We both glanced over and saw a police officer pointing a revolver at us.

Shirley stopped struggling.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

"What the hell, man?" asked Bruce, walking into the house. Shirley had behaved herself for approximately the past thirty seconds, so it was safe. "How come I never see you doing anything normal?"

"Watch out," I said, pointing to Shirley. "She's batshit bugfuck crazy. You have my total permission to take the shot if you need to."

"I think we'll avoid that."

"I need you to call my wife and make sure she's okay."

"We did that already and she's fine. A car's on its way to pick her up."

"What about Samantha Tracer? She's Roger's fiancée—I mean, girlfriend. I don't remember her number, but Helen would have it."

"We'll track her down. I like you, Andrew, so I hope to God you didn't murder that gentleman on the floor in cold blood."

"It was suicide."

Bruce chuckled. "Funny guy as always."

"I'm serious."

"Wow. That is somebody who really wanted to get the job done. So you're driving people to machine gun suicide these days, huh? Figures. You're not going to bleed to death on my shift, are you?"

"I might."

"There's an ambulance on the way. Could you do me a favor and get down on your knees and put your hands on your heads? Just so I know we won't have any problems."

Shirley and I did so as best we could. A couple of other cops were in the house now, though one of them saw the corpse, turned around, and quickly exited. I could hear him heaving.

"I need you to check the trunk," I said. "My friend Roger is in there."

"His luck's as bad as yours, isn't it?" Bruce nodded to one of the other cops. "Cover them."

The officer pointed his dinky little only-one-measly-bullet-at-a-time police force-issued revolver at us.

I felt sick to my stomach as Bruce opened the driver's side door, leaned inside, and pulled the lever to pop the trunk. The trunk opening sounded like a gunshot.

He walked back through the rubble, out of sight.

Roger was alive. I knew he was. We'd survived too many adventures together for him to get shot in the trunk of a car. When we finally died, it was going to be something spectacular, like exploding in the vacuum of space.

"I'm sure Roger is okay," Shirley whispered.

"Why are you being reassuring? Is this one big practical joke? Are you like a psychology major making the world your own little test lab? Just stop talking, get off my wrist, and get out of my life."

"I will as soon as I can."

Bruce walked back in the house. "All right, I'm not going to keep you in suspense because I can see that you're very disturbed at the moment. Roger's okay. He's unconscious but he's breathing fine."

"Oh, thank God." I thought I might start crying.

"You don't need to cry or anything. I think he whacked his head on something. He seems like he's in much better shape than you are."

"Can I talk to Helen?"

"No, Andrew, you may not. I trust you and all that, but I hear we've got a sweet little old lady, a great-grandmother, who got shot up while somebody who I'm pretty damn sure was you was at the crime scene. I figure I should probably do some cop work before I let you off the hook."

"She could be in danger."

"I know, I know. We're having a lovely conversation here, but I promise you we're taking this seriously and we won't let anything happen to your wife and kids. She's pregnant, right?"

"Yes."

"Does this mean I'm going to be bailing out Mayhem kids before I retire? Lord have mercy."

I wanted to point out that, as always, he hadn't bailed me out of anything. Bruce and Tony Frenkle were the masters of showing up just as I'd finally dealt with the situation. They were complete aftermath guys. Granted, in this particular case I was still handcuffed to a psychopath and was extremely grateful that the cops were here, but still, he hadn't exactly saved my life. It would have been a lot more helpful if he'd shown up while we were looking at the dead possums.

I didn't say that, though. Instead, I passed out.

* * *

I woke up in the back of an ambulance, lying on the gurney. A paramedic stood over me, bandaging up my hand. I didn't feel any better, so they hadn't given me any drugs, which was good. Once I was in the hospital and I knew Helen, Theresa, Kyle, and Samantha were safe, I'd soak up as much morphine as they could squeeze into the IV tube.

As my vision cleared, I saw that Bruce was in the ambulance with me. Shirley was on the bench next to him, sitting upright but with her eyes closed. The handcuff bracelet was still around my left wrist, but the chain had been cut. Ahhh. I'd never thought it could feel so good to not be handcuffed to a psycho killer.

My initial thought was that Shirley really should be handcuffed, although it should be her hands cuffed together and not one hand cuffed to the hand of another unfortunate human being. But from a potential lawsuit point of view, I was probably as much of a suspect as she was, and if he handcuffed her he'd have to handcuff me. Both of our wrists were in terrible shape, so it was best for me if I didn't make any suggestions.

"You recovered quick," Bruce said.

"Why are you here?"

"Don't be rude."

"I didn't mean it in a rude way."

"I thought I might ask you and your mistress some questions. You know, do some investigating. The taxpayers like it when I do that."

"She's not my mistress."

"I didn't mean you were cheating on your wife. I meant the sado-masochism kind of mistress. Either way, I was joking." He leaned over and patted me on the shoulder. "Trying to keep your spirits up, buddy. If you want me to go all serious, let me know. You're the one with another missing finger."

"It came all the way off?"

"Yeah. Sorry. Thought you knew."

"Wonderful."

"Maybe this one can be sewn back on."

"Maybe." My finger had not exactly been what medical practitioners would call "cleanly severed," so I figured there wasn't much chance of that. Oh well. At least now both sides of my body were equally balanced.

"Your wife was home with the kids, so they'll meet us at the station."

"Not the hospital?"

Bruce shook his head. "Not yet. The hospital isn't safe enough until we know exactly what we're up against. If it really is that nutcase Clarence Burke coming after you, and he's sending men after you who don't have a problem shooting up random people, I don't want to have a lot of innocent patients around."

"Makes sense."

"They haven't been able to get in touch with Roger's fiancée—"

"Girlfriend."

"—girlfriend, but don't worry about it, I'm sure she's fine. We'll get everything sorted out, and we'll get you and your family someplace safe, I promise."

"Thanks. How's Tony?" There were unquestionably more important topics we could be discussing right now, but my brain was not functioning at full capacity.

"Tony is Tony. He and Monica are having troubles, and by troubles I mean that they're getting a divorce. Best thing for him in the long run."

"I don't think I've ever met her."

"Lucky you. That woman is shrill."

I looked over at Shirley. "Is she drugged?"

"Naw, I think she's just keeping her eyes closed so we don't know she's awake. Trust me, I'm watching her. Now that we've got the small talk out of the way, do you mind telling me what you were doing handcuffed to her, or are you going to make me wait until you have a lawyer present?"

"Roger and I started a private investigation business. Not licensed or anything—we just solve weird problems. She came in, and said that she thought she might have..." Though my blood loss was making me loopy, it occurred to me that it might not be the best idea in the world to blab to Bruce that a woman came into our office and said she thought she murdered somebody, and that we chose not to alert the proper authorities.

"Might have...?" Bruce prompted.

"Killed some animals."

"As in, slaughtered a cow, or a Chihuahua?"

"Do you want to tell him?" I asked Shirley.

She kept her eyes closed. "No."

"We found a variety pack of dead animals."

"I see. Is it safe to assume that the story of how you came to be handcuffed to her and chased by killers is too long for this ambulance ride?"

"Probably."

"There's a lot of blood on her. A lot. I guess some came from your hand, and some came from the fool who shot himself in the face, and some might have come from the poor old woman who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and a dab might have come from the other man who got shot up next to her, but still, it's a lot of blood."

"Squirrel blood," said Shirley, still not opening her eyes.

"There was a third guy," I told Bruce. Why would I lie to protect Shirley? That would be silly. "Well, technically a first guy, since we met him before the other two. She stabbed him to death."

Bruce shrugged. "Sounds like he deserved a good stabbing. So the lovely lady here was protecting you?"

Had she been protecting me? I couldn't even really remember. "Yeah, pretty much. I mean, she's not noble or anything, but she did murder a bad guy."

"I'm sure it's just that I'm missing some pieces, but it seems to me that it's a pretty big coincidence that you're out with somebody you described as—pardon my use of the words 'fuck' and 'shit'—bugfuck batshit crazy when all of this other stuff went down."

"I think it was the other way around."

"Bat then bug. Either way, you don't quite seem like the best of friends. Weird coincidence. An odd one, you know? Suspicious."

He was right. What were the chances that I'd end up with somebody like Shirley at the same time that Mr. Burke's master plan for revenge went into effect? How convenient that Shirley took Roger and I out to that abandoned house, where Markus could find us without any witnesses around. No way could this be a coincidence. Perhaps she didn't work for Mr. Burke directly, but there had to be some connection between the two of them.

But what?

There was a slight resemblance...

No.

It couldn't be.

His daughter?

I tried to look at Shirley more closely, but the paramedic was bandaging up another one of my wounds and he was in the way. How could I not have seen this from the beginning? It all made sense now.

No, wait. I was totally wrong. I couldn't remember Markus's exact comment, but I think he'd tried to shoo us out of the house because he thought we were going to get into trouble before Mr. Burke's vengeance plot had a chance to go into effect. He'd probably been following me for weeks, or even months. So he'd watched us go into the house, realized that this could screw up my life before Mr. Burke got a chance to do it, and showed up to deliver his friendly little warning. After Markus got killed, Mr. Burke either went to Plan B, or accelerated the timeline for Plan A.

Yeah. That made a lot more sense than Shirley being his daughter.

"No," I told Bruce. "There's no connection. I think Mr. Burke just rescheduled things when he saw that I was about to step in more crap."

The ambulance swerved.

"What was that?" I asked, sitting up.

"Relax," said Bruce. "It's an ambulance. They swerve all the—"

I couldn't tell exactly what happened, but the ambulance swerved again, there were two loud bursts that I was relatively certain were left side front and back tires being destroyed, and then we went off the road. I braced myself for the vehicle to crash or even flip over.

Instead, the ambulance came to a screeching halt.

"They can't be attacking us," said Bruce, standing up and taking out his revolver. "We're right in the middle of Main Street!"

Some blood spattered on my new hand bandage as a bullet came through the window, hitting the paramedic in the chest.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

"Get down!" Bruce shouted. I slid off the gurney and onto the floor, while the paramedic, clutching his chest but making no noise, fell next to me.

There were two shots at the front of the vehicle. These didn't sound like machine gun fire, but rather shotgun blasts. Though I couldn't see exactly what happened to the driver, at least one of those shots hit him. It was enough. He slumped over in his seat, dead.

The window with the bullet hole shattered as something struck it (was that an axe?). A second later somebody threw a metal canister through. It hit the floor and spewed yellow smoke.

My eyes immediately burned and we all began to violently cough. I had no previous experience with gasses that made your eyeballs feel as if they'd been tossed on a griddle with some butter, but this was potent stuff.

I could barely see anything through the smoke and the tears blurring my vision. Why weren't the shattered windows providing better ventilation?

Shirley fell off the bench and landed next to me.

Bruce shouted something about needing backup at 4th and Main, right away. I don't think he was speaking to me, but it was hard to tell because I was coughing so much.

Something else happened that I sort of realized should be very upsetting to me. I disregarded it as something that I'd imagined in the confusion, and focused my attention on crawling toward the back doors of the ambulance.

There'd be very mean people waiting for us outside of the ambulance for sure, but we obviously couldn't stay in here. My only optimism came from the fact that none of my flesh had started to sizzle off.

Shirley and I crawled over to the rear doors. They flew open as soon as I touched it. Not because of any telekinetic powers I'd suddenly discovered, dammit, but because somebody else had opened it.

Three men in flak jackets and gas masks stood outside. One had a shotgun, and two had the sub-machine guns. I wondered how they decided who was a shotgun-wielding employee and who was a sub-machine gun-wielding employee. Was there a social pecking order, like people who worked at Space Mountain versus those who worked the Dumbo ride?

I wanted to struggle as they dragged us out of the ambulance, but it was difficult to fight while in the midst of a hardcore coughing fit.

There was an armored car parked beside the ambulance, though I suspected that it was not there to accept a delivery of cash from a banking institution. Bruce was correct; we were right there on Main Street, plenty of traffic, lots of gaping onlookers.

Two of the men led Shirley and I into the armored car. Shirley lost her balance and fell, tugging on my wrist as she hit the ground.

My handcuffed wrist.

What the hell?

I sort of remembered that happening in the ambulance. Now I was too disoriented to do anything except wish none of this were happening as they threw us into the back of the armored car.

Through my blurred vision, I could vaguely see one of the men raise his shotgun and point it into the ambulance.

Bruce was still in there!

The man pulled the trigger.

Oh, God, no!

Then bullets were fired from inside the ambulance. Unfortunately, none of them appeared to have struck and killed any of Burke's men.

The doors to the armored car slammed closed, casting us into complete darkness.

Still coughing, I crawled over to the doors. "Why are we handcuffed again?" I demanded.

"You're the one they want alive!" said Shirley. "I need to stick with you! If your cop friend had cuffs right there on his belt, why wouldn't I use them? That would be stupid of me!"

I wiped my eyes with my bandaged hand, which didn't help a bit, and tried to get the doors open. They wouldn't budge.

"What are you doing?" Shirley asked.

"I'm trying to stop them from murdering Bruce!"

Another gunshot outside.

"How?"

"I don't know! He's a friend! I'm not going to just sit here with you and let them—"

The door opened, and two of the men in gas masks tossed Bruce into the back with us. The doors slammed shut again, and within a few seconds the armored car was in motion.

For a moment, Shirley, Bruce, and I just sat in the darkness. Bruce was trying to talk, but he was coughing a lot more than we were at this point and he couldn't get any words out.

"Andrew," he finally said. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, man."

"It wasn't your fault. If anything, this is my fault."

Bruce coughed and spat out some phlegm. "Yeah, I'll go with that."

I shifted my position, rattling the chain.

"Are those my handcuffs?" asked Bruce.

"Yeah," I said. "Shirley swiped them."

"Are you kidding me?"

"Nope."

"Christ. I don't even have the keys for those anymore. We use PlastiCuffs now. I just like to carry them around for nostalgia."

"Nostalgia for what?"

"Handcuffing people. What do you think?"

I sighed. "Why do you think they brought you?"

"I don't know," said Bruce. "Maybe they draw the line at cop killing. Though they're willing to blow away two paramedics right in the middle of town, when it's not even dark out, so that's probably not a good theory."

"Do you think anybody will be able to follow us?"

"I hope so. There sure wasn't any lack of eyewitnesses. I just have to wonder what else this guy has up his sleeve if he's willing to take risks like that."

I didn't like that thought. I needed to think of a much better thought. Something with beautiful flowers or charming pandas.

"So what's the plan?" I asked.

"Aren't you supposed to be the professional problem solver these days?"

"Yeah, but I'm terrible at it. You're the cop. I'm the fraud."

Bruce didn't answer.

"That said," I continued, "if all three of us were right next to the door, ready to pounce the instant it opens, we might be able to take them by surprise. They can't stop all three of us at once, can they?"

"With the kind of firepower they're packing? They most certainly can stop all three of us at once."

"Crap."

"Any other thoughts?"

"Check around for anything that might be useful? I couldn't see very well when we got thrown in here."

"It can't hurt," said Bruce.

We all stood up and did a quick search of the back of the vehicle. It was completely dark, so in theory we could be overlooking a giant-sized rocket launcher in the middle of the floor, but as far as I could tell there was nothing inside but steel walls.

"I guess we can't hide somewhere and jump out unexpectedly," I noted.

"I guess not."

"What about you, Shirley?" I asked. "Got anything to contribute?"

"Fake a seizure?"

"What?"

"They still want to take you in alive, right? If they open the doors and you're lying there having a seizure, maybe they'll be distracted enough to let us kick them in the face or something."

My first thought of "What a stupid idea!" was quickly replaced by the thought of "Maybe that's not such a stupid idea." "What do you think, Bruce?" I asked. "Is that plan so crazy that it might just work?"

"It's a brilliant plan," he said, "unless they've ever watched a movie in their entire lives, since prisoners are always faking medical conditions to fool the guards. In my opinion, if they open up those doors and see you twitching around on the floor, they're going to start executing the expendable folks until you knock that shit off."

"Then let's not do that," I said.

"I hate to take a passive approach," said Bruce, "but we're not going to get the jump on these guys with some half-assed surprise. We need to accept that for the moment, and only for the moment, we're completely boned. We should wait for a better opportunity."

"What if there isn't one?"

"You need a real answer for that?"

"No." I sighed. "Do you think Helen and the kids are all right?"

Bruce didn't answer for a moment. "I don't know what to tell you, Andrew. I'm good at providing phony reassurance, but is that what you want?"

"Yes. Actually, I do."

"Okay. Then I promise you that they're fine."

"Thanks."

We all sat quietly for the next few minutes. I hated not coming up with some kind of plan, but Bruce was right, what could we possibly do to take heavily armed men by surprise? It wasn't as if they'd open the doors and then bend down to tie their shoelaces. They'd be prepared for us to make some kind of aggressive move, so what could distract them?

Nothing.

Except...

"What if we were all naked?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Hear me out. What if, when they open the doors, we're all right there, stripped completely naked? Wouldn't that take them by surprise? Don't you think that would buy us a few extra seconds?"

"Are you telling me that your master plan to save our lives is to make them think they interrupted an orgy?"

"It's not a foolproof scheme."

"Is that really how you want the Andrew Mayhem legacy to be remembered?"

"You don't think it could work?"

"You are a ridiculous man."

"I am most definitely not getting naked with you guys," said Shirley.

"You're telling me that if you opened the doors to this truck, and you saw a black naked cop there with two white bloody naked handcuffed people, you wouldn't be taken aback?"

"What does me being black have to do with it?"

"It's interracial! It's an extra visual image! What kind of porn are you people watching that this would have no effect on you?"

"I'm not saying it wouldn't turn my stomach," Bruce explained. "But I wouldn't just drop my weapon and stare."

"Three seconds. This wouldn't capture your attention for three seconds?"

"I'm not doing it," said Shirley. "I mean it."

"Maybe it's just because I've been humiliated more than anybody else," I said, "but I really believe this could work. It's not like they have to drop their guns and start taking pictures. If one guy for one second thinks 'Whoa, I wasn't expecting that!' we could use it to our advantage. If it doesn't work, how are we worse off?"

"We're worse off because we're naked," said Bruce. "Instead of getting shot in the ass, we get shot in the bare ass. Also, the lady ain't going for it."

"It could just be us, then."

"Not going to happen. And before you ask again, I repeat: not going to happen."

"What do you have to hide?"

"I knew this would eventually get to dick size. As soon as you started talking about this idea, the second your gums started flapping, I knew it was headed there. Only a matter of time. You can try all you want to shame me, but though I am glad not to have seen your junk, I assure you that I will win in a side-by-side comparison. Assure you."

"But maybe compared to other black males you're nervous."

"Are you bringing race into this again? For real? I promise you, when I could be minutes from death, I'm not sitting here stressing out over what they might think of my equipment. You need to just chill."

I decided to chill. I still thought it was a pretty good plan. I mean, not an ingenious plan, but even if it increased our chances of survival by half a percentage point, it was worth doing, right? When unauthorized video of our nude corpses made it onto YouTube, Helen and the rest of the world would assume it had been a post-murder undressing anyway—I mean, nobody would strip nekkid in the back of an armored car after they got kidnapped, right?—so what was the big deal about protecting my legacy?

Maybe I wouldn't chill. "I'll do it by myself, then," I said.

"Doesn't matter to me," said Bruce. "It's completely dark in here. Won't harm my eyes."

The armored car slowed and then stopped.

Shit.

"What are we gonna do?" I asked.

"Just stay calm," said Bruce, not sounding very calm. "If they turn rock-stupid and it looks like we might have the chance to make a move, we'll take it. Otherwise, we stick with the idea that they don't want to kill us yet."

I nodded, though he couldn't see me.

The doors opened. It was starting to get dark outside, so the sudden burst of light didn't force me to squint. We were on a single-lane dirt road in what seemed to be a pretty secluded area. Trees on both sides.

Three men stood there. All of them were wearing the jack-o-lantern masks. The one on the left and the right each held a sub-machine gun, while the one in the middle held a wood-chopping axe.

It was clearly not in our best interest to make any sudden moves.

"Sorry about the detour," said the one with the axe. "Word from the home office is that they want more intimidation, so we've stopped here to murder the cop."

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

"I'm not going to let you do this," I said, getting in front of Bruce.

"Yes, you are. We're supposed to make this quick. Cop, get out here."

"Don't do it," I said.

The man with the axe took a cell phone out of his pocket. He tapped the screen a couple of times with his thumb and then held it up. "Recognize this special little eight-year-old?"

It was a picture of Kyle. There was duct tape over his mouth.

I forced myself not to scream.

"You want a picture of him with today's newspaper, we can do it. You want me to switch to a live video, we can do it. But if you force that hand, he won't look as good when you see him."

"You son of a bitch," I said. "If you hurt him, if anybody hurts him, I will kill you."

The man shrugged. "Noted."

"Take me instead," said Shirley. "Don't kill the cop. Kill me."

The man stared at her for a second, then chuckled. "Very nice try, but no. I don't think anybody will be too upset when you're dead, which sort of defeats the whole purpose."

"I murdered one of your partners."

"We know. I was the one who drove away after you killed him. There's very little you can blurt out that we don't know. He'll be avenged, don't worry. It's all under control. You'll be dead soon. Right now, we're here for the cop."

"Fuck you," said Bruce.

"Gonna make us torture an eight-year-old kid, huh? Eh, no skin off my nose. They can skeletonize the little brat for all I care. Give me a second to call it in and we'll get the show started."

What was I supposed to do? Beg Bruce to sacrifice himself on behalf of my son? Push him out of the truck?

"You don't have to kill anybody to send a message," I said. "The cop is innocent."

"No cop is innocent. But we're not trying to send a political or social message. Our message is: Do not fuck with us, even if you're Lieutenant Bruce Frenkle."

"Take my arm instead," I said.

"What?"

"This is all about me, and I know Mr. Burke wants me alive, so instead of killing the cop just cut off my arm. That'll send your message."

The man ran his finger along the edge of the axe blade. "Well, that's interesting. Lop it off, use a lighter to cauterize the wound, and leave it on a slide at an elementary school playground."

"Exactly."

"I like the way you think, but that is most definitely not going to happen. My job is to kill the cop. And if he's not out of there in five seconds, your son's eyeballs will be gouged out and stepped on."

Bruce pushed me out of the way and climbed out. The other two men kept their guns pointed at him.

"You're taller than I thought," said the man with the axe. "Get down on your knees."

I couldn't see Bruce's face, but I got the clear impression that he was staring the man down. Then he very slowly and deliberately got down on his knees.

"Nothing good can come from hanging out with Andrew Mayhem," the man said. "But I think you already knew that."

"You just gonna talk all day?" asked Bruce.

"No. I am not. What I am going to do is show you mercy and try to do this with one hit."

I slammed my bandaged hand over my mouth as the man raised the axe over his head, then brought it down hard upon Bruce's skull.

The blade sunk in deep.

The man wrenched the axe free, and Bruce's lifeless body collapsed.

I wanted to scream in rage, but instead I just wept. Though Shirley looked sad, she had a strange kind of sad expression; I couldn't tell if she was upset that Bruce had been killed, or was disappointed that she hadn't been the one to swing the axe.

"We're going to do some awful things to his body," the man with the axe told me. "But I'm going to show you more mercy, and you don't have to watch them."

He slammed the doors closed.

* * *

The engine started and we began to drive again less than a minute later. Either the desecration of Bruce's body was a quick process, or the jack-o-lantern men weren't all in the same vehicle. They probably didn't have his corpse up front with them, so there must have been a second truck.

They had Kyle. And if they had him, they probably had Helen and Theresa, too. Once again, my family was in the hands of a madman. Jesus. They were better off without me. Everybody was.

"Were you friends?" Shirley asked.

"Don't talk to me."

"I would have gone through with it. I would have made the trade. His life for mine."

"You think I'm going to be impressed by that? Touched? You make absolutely no sense to me, and I don't mean that in a good way. I really need you to stop talking."

"Okay. I can do that."

We sat in silence for a couple of minutes, as I tried not to think of all the horrible things Mr. Burke could be doing to my wife and children at this very moment. He wasn't going to let them go. Not a chance. Even if he got his revenge against me, even if he chained me to a wall and tortured me for thirty years, he wouldn't let them go. The best I could hope for is that we'd get to die together.

Nothing good can come from hanging out with Andrew Mayhem.

Yes.

Absolutely.

Dead on.

I should've just left the state months ago. When my daughter started having nightmares about me, I should've realized that they'd all be much better off if I moved away completely. Be the kind of father who just sent checks. Maybe I shouldn't have even stayed in the United States. I could have picked a charming little village in Ireland, improved my beer drinking skills, and lived out the rest of my life in happy obscurity.

"Andrew Mayhem? That guy who brought misery to everybody? Oh, last we heard he was making his own jewelry. He's not very good at it, but it keeps him out of everybody else's lives, so we buy a piece every once in a while just to keep him occupied."

Why hadn't I left? Why had I spent all of those weeks sleeping on Roger's couch being tormented by his rotten cat when I could've just hopped on a bus and let it deposit me someplace away from the people I loved?

Well, for one thing, Helen would have been heartbroken and furious, and I feared her wrath more than Mr. Burke's...

Not a good answer. That was a joke answer. If I was going to make peace with myself before my death, I needed to not make jokes, even if they were just in my head.

It was because I loved her. She was the mother of two of my children and would be the mother of three more. I loved her with all of my heart, loved her in a stupid, selfish way where I couldn't leave her even if it was the best thing for her.

If I weren't such a bumbling doofus, I could say that I'd stuck around to protect her. But that would imply that I had any abilities of any sort to even protect a dog.

To be fair, our dog was still alive.

As far as I knew.

I scratched my scalp, tugging on the handcuffs harder than necessary because I was in a bad mood. This sent a bolt of pain through my wrists, putting me in a worse mood.

"Ow," said Shirley.

"I'm sorry, but only because it hurt me, not because it hurt you," I said.

"What are you, six?"

"They're going to murder my son."

"That doesn't mean you have to be pissy. If you want to kill me, kill me. Do it right now. Break my neck."

"Don't tempt me."

"This is a legitimate offer. I will tilt my head back, and you can punch me so hard that it breaks my neck. Then I won't be your problem anymore."

"Actually, Shirley, since we're handcuffed, you would still be my problem. So thank you for the offer, I'll keep it under consideration, but for now, please shut up."

"Okay. Just let me know if there's anything I can do."

"You know what you can do? You can gnaw your hand off. That's what I'd like, if you really are serious about trying to make me feel better. Just get down in there and gnaw your hand right off. Make it a birthday present. You can even do one of those cheapskate things where you combine a birthday present and a Christmas present. Any gift giving occasion for the next ten years, you can combine into the single present of gnawing your hand off for me. Is that okay? Will you do that for me, Shirley? Surely you'll do it. In fact, I will start the process off with the first two bites. I will take two great big bites out of your wrist to get things started, and I even volunteer to bite through the bones, even if it wrecks my teeth. How does that sound? Do we have a deal? Ready to gnaw?"

"You're a jerk."

"I sure am. Stop talking." I didn't care if I was being a jerk. I wasn't interested in improving my social graces right now.

What was Tony going to do when he heard his twin brother had been murdered? I hoped that I'd be able to talk to him, to let him know that Bruce went out with courage.

I had to admit that I never thought Bruce was a very good cop, but he was a good man, and it made me physically ill to know that he'd died because of me.

Not you. Because of Mr. Burke. Sitting here wallowing in guilt isn't doing you or anybody else any good. Get over the whole "Waahh, waahh, the world is better off without me!" attitude and figure out something you can do to get out of this mess!

But what could I do?

"I promise I'll shut up soon," said Shirley, "but let's say that Mr. Burke does carry out his whole plan for revenge? What exactly are we talking?"

"I don't know."

"Ballpark estimate."

"I do not know what Mr. Burke has planned for us. I watched him cut apart one of his own men and replace the parts with...you know what, I don't even want to talk about it. It's going to be bad, okay?"

"Okay. Worse than being set on fire?"

"If you can imagine somebody taking an acetylene torch and burning your body to a crisp, starting at the toes and slowly working their way up, then, yes, that's within the parameters of what I'd expect from him."

"I can't handle being burned."

"Then you'd better hope they aren't listening in, because if they are, you'll be burned to death for sure."

I wanted to punch myself. What kind of rotten thing was that to say, even to a homicidal maniac? I was better than this. I was a bumbling incompetent, but I was no sadist.

"I'm sorry," I told her. "That wasn't cool. Maybe they don't even want you. Maybe they'll let you go." Okay, now I was taking it too far in the opposite direction.

"Yeah, right," she said.

"It's unlikely, I know. Bruce got an axe to the head. That's not such a bad way to go, all things considered. It was over in a second. Probably didn't even hurt."

"Right. He would have died instantly."

"He didn't even have that long to be scared before it happened. It's not like they stood there and made him wait. It could have been a lot worse."

"Infinitely worse. Everybody wants to die in their sleep, because it's the best way to go, but if you compare an axe in the skull to drowning, cancer, or even a heart attack, it's really not such a bad thing."

"Is it better than a heart attack?"

"I've never had one, but there are chest pains. I guess an axe in your brain would be worse than one of those heart attacks where you suddenly drop dead, but it would be better than one where you have chest pains and can't catch your breath and die on the way to the hospital."

I nodded. "So maybe you'll get the equivalent of an axe to the head. Does that make you feel better?"

"I know you're kidding, but in some deranged way it actually does. Thanks."

"No problem."

Once again, the armored car stopped.

I felt a mild chest pain, although I'm pretty sure it was psychosomatic.

"Maybe they just stopped at a red light," said Shirley.

"Maybe."

"We can try the nudity thing if you want."

"Nah."

The doors opened. It was only two men this time, including the one who'd murdered Bruce, although he didn't have his axe. He was holding a rifle.

"We need to change trucks," he said. He pointed the rifle at Shirley and pulled the trigger. A dart struck her in the chest. She plucked it out, but her eyes already rolled to the top of her head.

"If it were up to me, I'd treat you like adults and not have to do this," the man said, casually reloading the rifle. "But the boss is a big believer in tranquilizers, so we use tranquilizers."

Shirley fell onto her side.

"Anyway, it's nice for you because you'll get to sleep for the rest of the drive. I have to listen to an audio book. When you wake up, we'll be there."

He finished loading the new dart, pointed the rifle at me, and fired, hitting me in the chest almost exactly where he'd hit Shirley.

My vision immediately went fuzzy and I didn't bother to try to fight it. I fell over on top of Shirley and disappeared into a dreamless sleep.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I woke up in a pit.

In one of my previous nightmarish misadventures, I'd been thrown into something called The Pit, which was not, in fact, an actual pit but rather a regular-shaped room. "Pits are concave," I'd argued. They didn't care.

This was an actual pit. Maybe eight feet deep, with dirt walls, and just enough room that I could lie flat on the ground without bending my knees.

Shirley lay next to me, snoring. We were still handcuffed together, because for it to be otherwise would imply that acts of mercy still existed in the world. I sat up, then prodded her with my foot.

"Wake up," I said. She let out a groggy groan but didn't open her eyes.

The light actually wasn't that bad down here. I could see that my bandages had been changed, and new ones had been applied to my various wounds. Shirley was bandaged up as well. How considerate of our captors. Now we didn't have to worry about bleeding to death while we waited to die.

I poked her in the ribs. "Seriously, wake up."

Shirley rubbed her forehead then opened her eyes. "Where are we?"

"I don't know. A pit somewhere."

She sat up. "Have you seen anybody else?"

"No. I just woke up."

"Think we can dig our way out?"

I ran my hand along the dirt wall. It was tightly packed. The odds of us being able to tunnel our way to safety were about as good as the odds that a magical butterfly would flutter down here and carry us to safety, but I didn't want to rule out any options yet.

"Climb up on my back," I said, facing the wall. "See where we are."

I couldn't do much to help hoist her up, since I had a severely injured hand and the other was cuffed to her, but Shirley was able to climb up on my back and get herself high enough to peek over the edge of the pit.

"Shit," she said.

There was a loud whack that sounded exactly like Shirley being kicked in the face, and then we both fell backwards onto the ground. I tried not to land on her but did a terrible job.

We lay there for a moment, stunned, and then Mr. Burke looked over the side.

The son of a bitch was nicely dressed in a dark blue suit. The son of a bitch still had the black goatee, though it seemed to have acquired a lot of gray since I saw him last. In fact, the past few months had aged the son of a bitch significantly; he now looked at least fifty. The son of a bitch smiled at me.

"Well, well, well. Andrew Mayhem. You don't know how long I've been waiting for this."

"Actually, I know exactly how long you've been waiting for this," I said, getting back up. "The wait started from that one time I made you look like a complete dipshit."

"Don't confuse wasting my work with humiliating me. My dignity is completely intact. Yours won't be."

"Where's my family?"

"Let me think. Who's been accounted for? Kyle? We do have Kyle. That's all you need to know for now."

"I want to see him."

"I don't think so."

"I'm dead serious. Let me see my son."

"You can see pieces of him now, or all of him later. Your choice."

I gave him what I hoped was a stare that would scare him to the very core of his being, though it probably wouldn't.

"That wasn't rhetorical," said Mr. Burke. "Make the choice, or I'll interpret your silence as wanting to see pieces of him now."

"All of him later," I said.

"Wise decision. That's what I would have picked if I had a son. Since you're my prisoner, I think it's only fair to let you have one phone call." He took a cell phone out of his pocket and held it up for me to see. "I can't let you pick who you call, unfortunately, and if you try to call somebody else, Kyle will be dead before the first ring, but best of luck to you."

Mr. Burke tossed the phone down to me. I caught it with my bandaged hand, dropped it because it's hard to catch things with a four-fingered heavily bandaged hand, then picked it up. I looked at the display. "Are you kidding me?"

"You have one minute. Make the best of it."

I pressed the call button and held the phone to my ear. I knew Mr. Burke was sadistic, but this was just plain cruel.

"Yo," said Harry McGlade.

Harry McGlade, a private investigator from Chicago, was with me when I got thrown into The Pit that wasn't a pit. Generally when I've become entangled in situations that suck, it's been my own fault. In that particular instance, I was minding my own business running an emergency errand for Helen, and I had happened upon McGlade breaking into somebody's home, and within, oh, thirty seconds or so everything turned to crap.

Most of what we have written about that evening was a total lie designed to sell books, but we were definitely telling the truth about how we didn't get along. I'm not going to pretend that I don't annoy some people. I know I do. I've never tried to deny it. Yet I had never encountered anything remotely resembling the nails-screeching-against-a-blackboard-while-cats'-tails-are-pulled-and-dentist-drills-whirr nature of McGlade's personality.

To be fair, if I had to choose between collaborating on another book with Harry McGlade and being in this pit waiting to die, I'd pick the collaboration, but making McGlade my lifeline out of here was just flat-out evil.

"Harry? It's me."

"Penelope?"

"Andrew Mayhem."

"Oh, now you call. You couldn't be bothered to stay in touch when I kept asking to borrow some money, but now that I'm not asking for money all the time you call. Real nice."

"Harry, I need you to—"

"I didn't even want the money. It's just fun to ask for it."

"Listen, Harry, I'm in a lot of trouble right now! Life or death! My whole family is in danger!"

"That sounds pretty serious."

"It is! I need you to—"

"I heard you started up your own private eye business. Why didn't you call me for a few pointers? For example, if a lady with big boobs comes into your office, you can't just wet them down with a squirt gun, because certain lawmakers have—"

"Harry! Listen to me!"

"Just because I called you to ask for money doesn't mean you have to yell."

"Harry!"

"My pants are moving."

"Are...are you stoned?"

"I was stoned, but now I think I'm more drunk."

"I need you to send help."

"Send help, or actually help? Sending it would be a lot easier than doing it."

"I've been kidnapped by Clarence Burke. He's got Kyle for sure, and—"

"Who's Kyle?"

"My son."

"When did you have a kid? Who allowed that to happen?"

"He's got Kyle for sure, and probably Helen and Theresa. I don't know where I am—"

"Oh, that's going to be a problem."

"—I don't know where I am, but I'm in a pit—"

"That's the pits! Heh. No, wait, say that again and I'll come up with something better. Actually, don't say it again, just remember that you said it. You're in a pit, well, I'm on the pot!"

"Harry!"

"It's funny because not only did I smoke some pot earlier, but you called while I was taking a dump."

"Please, Harry, I need your help!"

"Yeah, right. If you needed help I'd be about the three hundredth person on your list, and there's no way the other two hundred and ninety-nine people weren't home."

I tried not to let Mr. Burke see my exasperation, since of course that was the whole point of this exercise in hellish futility. "Sorry I bothered you," I said.

"Wanna write another book together?"

"No."

"Whoops, my pants are getting tighter by the second. Gotta go." McGlade hung up, robbing me of the satisfaction of hanging up on him.

I resisted the urge to throw the phone to the ground and stomp on it. That could be bad for Kyle.

"That doesn't sound like it went well," said Mr. Burke.

"Are you surprised?"

"Not at all. I've always felt that the small torments can be as entertaining as the large ones. The phone signal isn't traceable, so you don't have to worry about him finding you here and joining you in the pit."

"He wouldn't come after me. He's not very ambitious."

"Please toss the phone back to me."

I tossed the phone back up to him, resisting another urge: to fling it at his smirking face. For now I had to be polite and play along.

"Thank you," Mr. Burke said. "I apologize for having a laugh at your expense. You've been a good sport, so I'll let you see your kid. Be right back."

I tried to keep myself calm. Kyle was fine. He had to be. There was no possible way Mr. Burke was going off to fetch pieces of him. It just wouldn't happen. I was going to see my son alive and well. Scared, but alive and well.

Mr. Burke returned less than a minute later. Standing next to him, with duct tape over her mouth and more tape binding her wrists together, was Theresa. Her face was red and her eyes were puffy and she'd clearly been sobbing for a long time.

"Do you recognize him?" Mr. Burke asked her, ruffling her blonde hair. "That's the mean man who hurt you. That's the man who gives you nightmares. It sure would be scary to be trapped down in a dark pit with him, wouldn't it? And the woman he's with? She kills people. But don't worry, Theresa, we'll only leave you down there for a day or two."

Mr. Burke placed his hand tenderly on her back, then shoved her into the pit.

Thank God Shirley and I both reached for her at the same time, or she might have hit the ground head-first, and I have no doubt that Mr. Burke would have left me down there with a dead little girl.

It wasn't a good catch, but we caught her.

Mr. Burke disappeared from sight. Then the lights went out, leaving us in complete darkness.

For a moment I just hugged her with my free arm. Theresa didn't hug me back. Her entire body shook with the force of her sobs, but at least she wasn't trying to get away from me.

I ran my fingers along the tape that was over her mouth and found the edge. The last thing in the world I wanted right now was to hurt my daughter, so I peeled it off very slowly, a fraction of an inch at a time.

I could tell that it still hurt.

She didn't say anything as the tape gradually uncovered her lips. It wasn't until I tore off the last bit that she said "Daddy, I'm scared!"

"I know you are, sweetheart," I told her. "It's okay. I promise you that nothing bad is going to happen to you."

Was I already lying to her this early in our reunion?

"I want Mommy," she said.

"I want Mommy too," I told her. "I'm sure Mommy is fine. We'll get back together with her soon."

"I want her now!"

"Honey, I swear to you, I will do everything I can to get us back with Mommy. And I won't let that man up there hurt you."

"What about the lady down here?"

"She won't hurt you, either. She's nice." Another whopper of a lie. I hoped Shirley wouldn't expose the lie in any way, or I'd strangle her with the handcuffs before she so much as scraped Theresa with her pink fingernail.

"I'm very nice," said Shirley.

Theresa sniffled into my shirt.

"Did the man hurt you before he threw you down here?" I asked.

"No."

"Did he hurt Mommy?"

"Not him."

"Did somebody else?" I asked, trying to keep the anger out of my voice.

"The police came to our house," said Theresa, crying so hard that I could barely understand her. "We all got in a car, me, Kyle, and Mommy, and then these other cars came, and there were men in masks that looked like pumpkins, and then..." She pressed her face tightly against my chest, unable to continue.

"It's okay, it's okay," I told her. I didn't want to keep pushing an emotionally distraught ten-year-old for information, but I really needed more details about the "Not him" comment. "Did any of the men hurt Mommy?"

"They pulled her out of the police car by her hair," she said. "And they hit Kyle."

I clenched my fists. "Are they okay?"

"I don't know. I haven't seen them since the men in masks took me away."

"Okay. We'll find them, I promise."

"Who's going to feed Joe?" Joe was our pug. Lovable, snorty, and not too bright.

"Don't worry about Joe. A neighbor will feed him."

"He's going to starve."

"He's not. Everybody knows we're gone, I'm sure it's all over the news, so somebody will know to come in the house and feed him. I promise you that nothing will happen to Joe. If there's one thing in the entire world that I know, it's that nothing will stop Joe from getting food."

Theresa hugged me.

"And you know that I won't hurt you ever again, right?"

Theresa let go of me.

"You know that, right? That man up there, Mr. Burke, he's the one who made Daddy do that. It's just like we talked about. It's just like you talked about with Ms. Hurlen. It wasn't the real me. No matter what Mr. Burke says, you know that, right?"

"Uh-huh."

I patted her arm and she flinched.

Because there was no light of any sort, our eyes couldn't adjust to the darkness. So I couldn't tell for sure, but I thought Theresa was touching the scar on her chest.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

"How long do you think it's been?" asked Shirley.

"I don't know. An hour, maybe?"

"Feels longer."

"Could be longer."

"I have to go to the bathroom," said Theresa.

I considered calling out for Mr. Burke to let him know that we needed a restroom break, but I couldn't bear the idea of being separated from Theresa.

"If we ask him to take you out of here, he might not bring you back," I said. "I'll dig you a hole and you can go there, okay?"

"I have to go, too," said Shirley.

"You can dig your own hole."

The dirt was very tightly packed and my hands were in sorry shape for digging, but the handcuff bracelets finally provided a useful service. We used them to dig a small hole next to the dirt wall, and though it was dark we politely turned around while Theresa relieved herself.

* * *

Another hour later we were still down in the pit.

Even though there was no conceivable way that the pit wasn't being monitored, it was seeming more and more ridiculous that we didn't try to climb out. What if somebody had escaped? Roger could be up there right now, causing a major distraction, and we were just sitting in this pit, waiting for something to happen.

"I vote we try to get out of here," I said. "There's probably a night vision camera on us or somebody waiting up there, but we don't know that for sure, and if they've put this much effort into whatever their plan is, they aren't going to kill us for trying to escape."

"What effort? Digging a hole?"

"I think we can safely assume that there's more to it than this. Maybe he's going to leave us down here until we do something."

"I'm not climbing out," said Shirley.

"Why not? What if it's our only chance?"

"You know that he's not going to kill you right away. I don't have that same luxury. Unless he is the single stupidest person alive, and so far it doesn't look like he is, there's no way he hasn't considered the idea that we might do something mind blowing and unexpected like try to escape."

"Again, just like my nakedness idea, it's not a foolproof plan. But I need to at least try."

Shirley rattled the handcuffs. "Well, good luck climbing out of here by yourself."

I wanted to call her the b-word, but not in front of my daughter. "So we sit and wait, then?"

"A little while longer, anyway," said Shirley.

* * *

I think another hour passed. It was becoming difficult to keep track of time.

"Hey!" I shouted. "Burke! What's going on up there? Did you forget about us?"

No answer.

"Let us out of here!" Shirley shouted. "Somebody, help! Help us!"

Still nothing.

"Maybe he's dead," I said.

"We could never be so lucky."

"Here, we'll turn this into a democracy. I vote we try to get out. Theresa, what's your vote?"

"A nine-year-old girl doesn't get a vote," said Shirley.

"She's ten. Theresa...?"

"You could put me up there, and I could try to find Mommy and Kyle."

"Not a chance. But your vote is to get out of here, right?"

"I guess."

"Do a real vote. Aye or nay?"

"Aye," she said.

"The ayes have it."

"I never said I was going along with the vote," said Shirley.

"Too bad. You're still outvoted. When it's time to finally pass that key, don't you want the chance to do it in comfort?"

"It'll be less comfortable to do that if I'm dead."

"That doesn't even make sense. Weren't you saying that you were fine with dying? You keep flip-flopping between 'I deserve to die' and 'I don't want to help you guys get out of here because of the chance that I might die' and it's making me absolutely nuts! You're like a politician! Not the partisan ones who won't change their mind on an issue no matter how ridiculous their stance is, which I guess is most of them, so that was a bad comparison, but we need to get out of this pit. I'm not going to be passive anymore. The time for action is now. There's no gain without risk. And you were outvoted."

"Okay," said Shirley.

"Okay?"

"Okay. We'll climb out. If you think we should try to get out of here, we'll do it. If I am killed because of this, your daughter will be a witness that it was all your fault."

I stiffened. "That's not funny."

"It wasn't supposed to be."

"Don't say something like that again."

"Or else what?"

"Or else nothing. Just leave Theresa out of this, okay?"

"No. Clearly there are some messed-up issues between you two, and I'm not going to pretend they don't exist. If you ask me to climb out of here, you're putting my life at risk, and if I die because of it, Theresa knows that I died because of you. Just throwing that out there."

"I would rather she know that I got you killed than know that I just sat here and let us—" I started to say "starve to death" but that would have conjured up images of Joe the Pug so I did an immediate course-correction. "—rot in this hole."

"Stop fighting," said Theresa, sounding as if she was going to start crying again.

"I'm sorry," I told her. "The mean lady and I won't fight any more. We won't try to get out."

We sat there in the darkness for a while.

"All right," said Shirley, "we'll do it."

"Are you effing kidding me?" I asked.

"What? I had a change of heart."

"You won't be satisfied until I twist a corkscrew into my brain to make the agony stop."

"I could change my mind back at any time."

"Then let's go. We'll climb out first, and then we'll reach down for Theresa. Theresa, I promise we won't leave you down here alone. We'll pull you up the second we get up there, okay?"

"Okay."

I worked my handcuffed wrist against the dirt wall. "I'm going to carve out a couple of small footholds," I told Shirley. "When you get up there, if you can just help pull me up, this shouldn't be too difficult."

"So I'm going up first, huh?"

"Unless you want me to climb up your back."

"I would like you to go first."

"Okay." I didn't mind being the first one up there; it would just be a lot easier if she was already up there to help ease the strain on my hands. But I wasn't going to keep arguing with the crazy lady.

I finished digging the grooves. "This is probably going to really hurt me," I informed Shirley and Theresa. "So if I scream, don't be alarmed."

I wedged the toe of my right shoe into the first groove, then reached up and grabbed the edge of the pit with the hand that had been less recently been mangled. As Shirley sort of helped, I pulled myself out of the hole.

I got to the top, turned myself around while Shirley held her arm in the air (I think the important lesson to take from this is: handcuffs make everything more difficult), then reached down and helped pull her out of the hole.

Nobody shot us. Always a nice thing.

"Daddy...?"

"Don't worry, honey, we'll get you right out."

"I still can't see a thing," said Shirley, wandering off.

I don't mean that she wandered off a couple of miles or anything like that. She crawled a couple of feet away...which was enough for her to fall. And since I was in the middle of crouching and adjusting my position so I could reach down for Theresa, my center of balance wasn't all it could be, and after a sharp tug on the handcuffs I stumbled back and fell with her.

We fell about eight feet and struck the bottom of a dirt floor.

I was in a lot of pain. Fortunately, the source of this pain didn't seem to be protruding bones or a cracked skull. I rolled off of Shirley and onto my back, where I stared up into the darkness for a moment.

"Are we in another fucking pit?" I asked.

"Yes, I think so."

"Of course we are." I raised my voice. "Theresa, are you okay?"

"I'm scared!"

"I'm sorry, honey. Daddy had a glitch. We'll get you out right away."

I crawled to the other side, careful not to fall into an even deeper pit, until I reached the other dirt wall. I stood up, and a quick walk around the perimeter showed that it was basically the same kind of pit we'd just escaped.

"I apologize," said Shirley. "It was dark."

"Did you break anything?"

"I don't think so. I hurt my leg but I don't think it's broken."

"If we need to run, will you be able to?"

"I should be okay."

"No, no, no. I need to know the truth. If we have to make a break for it, are you going to be able to run or am I going to have to drag you like a sled?"

"It hurts pretty bad."

"Dammit."

"But I really don't think it's broken. Might be sprained. I can run on it, though, if we get chased or anything."

"Daddy!"

"We're coming! We just have to climb out of another hole."

"Aunt Shirley made a boo-boo!" Shirley called out.

I lowered my voice to an angry hiss. "First, ten-year-olds have outgrown the term 'boo-boo.' Second, do not under any circumstances ever call yourself Aunt Shirley again, not even to be cute. Got it?"

"If we're going to spend this much time together, she should start to think of me as family."

"Don't do it again. I mean it."

"Touchy."

I called out various soothing and reassuring things as Shirley and I scraped grooves into the wall of the second pit. I wondered if Helen, Kyle, Roger, or Samantha were in pits like these? They hadn't made any noise, but maybe they were gagged with duct tape like Kyle had been. Helen could be pressed up against a wall three feet away.

After only two or three minor mishaps, we climbed out of the second pit, and I reached down into the first. "Give me your hand," I told Theresa. "If you can, grab my wrist instead. I've got a bandage on my hand—it's soft and it's a little wet, and if you can not grab that, Daddy will be thrilled. He'll give you a great big kiss. Do you think you can do that?"

"Yes," said Theresa, grabbing my bandaged hand and squeezing it in panic.

I very slowly, very carefully, and very politely urged my daughter to squeeze my wrist instead, which she eventually did. Shirley and I pulled her out of the pit, and then I gave her a hug.

"It feels like your hand is bleeding," said Theresa.

"Yeah, Daddy does a lot of that. I'll be okay."

I gave Theresa a piggyback ride as Shirley and I walked side by side in the darkness, one tiny step at a time, taking every possible precaution to avoid falling into another pit.

We walked about ten feet, the most cautious ten feet I'd ever walked, before we reached another edge. I stood there and listened carefully. No sound down below.

"Is anybody down there?" I asked.

Nobody answered. There was no sound at all.

"If you're down there, and you're gagged or something, make some kind of noise."

Normally, this would be the time that my imagination would start messing with me, and I'd think that maybe I heard something in the pit, but I couldn't be sure if I'd really heard it or if I'd just imagined it. Then I'd have to go down into the pit, knowing that the sound was probably only my imagination yet not being willing to take the risk that it wasn't and that my wife could be down there with duct tape over her mouth.

Not this time. It was completely silent.

I might have voted in favor of searching the pit anyway, just in case, except that instead of my wife, the pit could just as easily be filled with bear traps.

We resumed walking. We made it about another ten feet before we reached a concrete wall.

We moved along the wall until we found a door.

I carefully turned the doorknob. It was locked.

The entire room lit up.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

We all winced, recoiled, and squeezed our eyes shut to block out the blinding light.

After it became safe to open them again without the sensation of my retinas sizzling, I opened my eyes into a squint and looked around.

There wasn't much of anything. It was about the size of a racquetball court, with bare concrete walls and four pits.

A tinny voice, not Mr. Burke, spoke over an intercom. "Please step away from the door."

I decided that obeying the voice was probably a good idea, so we stepped away from the door.

"Further, please. Go to the other corner."

We walked to the other corner. Shirley was limping a bit, which was simply wonderful news. I was able to peek down into two of the pits as we walked past, and they were both empty.

We reached the far corner and stopped.

"Thank you," said the voice.

The door opened.

Mr. Burke stepped through the doorway, accompanied by a man in a white dress shirt and a tie. This man wasn't wearing a jack-o-lantern mask. He had a lean build, short blond hair, and green eyes that even a heterosexual such as myself could have appreciated had he not been a bad guy. Instead of a sub-machine gun, rifle, or axe, he kept it simple: just a pistol.

"I see you took some initiative," said Mr. Burke.

"Is that good or bad?" I asked.

"Good. I would have let you starve down there. I'd like to introduce you to my assistant Vic. You'll be seeing a lot of him."

Vic nodded politely.

"Send your daughter over here. I have something to give her."

"No," I said.

"Vic, kill his daughter."

Vic immediately raised the pistol and pointed it at Theresa.

"No, wait, she'll do it!" I gave Theresa a gentle shove. "Go over to them. I promise they won't hurt you."

"That's a strange thing to promise," said Mr. Burke, "since you have no idea what I'm going to give her."

"If you hurt her, I'll kill you."

"Does that mean I should kill you for hurting her? Good thing you didn't have a knife down there with you. There's no telling what you might have done."

My mind flashed on the image of squishing his head into a blender and making myself a blood smoothie.

"Why isn't she moving yet? I didn't withdraw the order to kill her."

"Go, Theresa," I said, pushing her a bit more firmly. Crying, she ran over to Mr. Burke and Vic. Vic kept the pistol pointed at her the entire time.

"Good girl," said Mr. Burke. He handed her a white letter-sized envelope. "Go take this back to your father."

She ran back, buried her face in my shirt, and gave me the envelope. Whatever was inside was soft and flimsy.

"Go ahead and open it," said Mr. Burke. "I promise it won't explode."

I tore open the envelope. Inside, each bound by a rubber band, were four locks of hair. Two of them were several inches long, while the other two were only about an inch.

"Recognize them?"

I did. Helen. Kyle. Roger. Samantha.

"This doesn't prove anything," I told him.

"Really? I think it proves that we cut off pieces of your loved ones' hair. Smell Helen's hair. A good husband would recognize her brand of shampoo."

"Why don't you just take me to them?"

"Because, Andrew, I like watching you squirm. Are they alive? Are they dead? Do I have anybody else? You don't know. Are there any of them you don't like as much as the others? If you had to rank them, how would it go? Kyle, Helen, Roger, and Samantha, right? Child before spouse, buddy before buddy's girlfriend. That's the way it should be. Do you want to swap any of them?"

I didn't respond.

Mr. Burke shrugged. "You can rearrange them later."

"Why don't you just kill us and get it over with?" asked Shirley.

"Now I know that you are at the bottom of the list, so if I were you, I'd keep my mouth shut and not do anything to call attention to myself. Just a suggestion. Anyway, we're wasting time. Let me show you to your new home for the next three months."

He walked out of the room. Vic gestured at us with his gun to follow.

What else were we supposed to do? We walked across the pit room and through the doorway.

We stepped into a short hallway with wood paneling. Mr. Burke opened a door and walked into a room. With Vic's not-so-subtle encouragement, we followed.

And entered Roger's apartment.

Not his real apartment, but a pretty good approximation. The same wallpaper, the same couch, the same TV. Not all of the details were right (there was no picture of Samantha on the wall) but it was at least seventy-five percent accurate.

"Look familiar?" asked Mr. Burke.

"What the hell is this?"

"I wanted you to feel at home. This is your home, isn't it? Sleeping on Roger's couch?"

The shade of the couch wasn't quite right. They hadn't taken Roger's furniture out of his apartment; they'd just bought items that were close to the originals. I hoped that stupid cat wasn't here.

"Congratulations," I told Mr. Burke. "If your goal was to completely baffle me, you've succeeded. I'm baffled. I don't have the slightest freaking clue what any of this means."

"Have a seat on the couch. We'll chat."

Shirley, Theresa, and I sat on the couch, which I don't mind saying was wonderfully comfortable after our hours in the pit. Mr. Burke remained standing.

"Ask your question again," Mr. Burke told Shirley.

"What question?"

"About killing you."

"I changed my mind about that."

"Ask the question."

Shirley shifted nervously on the cushion. "Why don't you kill us and get it over with?"

"Because I'm not going to kill you. If nobody makes any waves that force our hand otherwise, all of you will walk out of here three months from now and return to your lives."

"Why three months?" asked Shirley.

My stomach sank as the significance of that timeline hit me. "You're keeping us here until the triplets are born?"

"Very good," said Mr. Burke. "You've been extremely patient, so it's time for me to explain everything to you. After you ruined my pet project and killed several good employees, I spent a lot of time thinking about the best way to get revenge. I came up with plenty of ways to torture you to death. Hundreds. I even put them in a spreadsheet, which I'll show you at some point. The problem with torturing somebody to death is that even if it takes hours, even if it takes days, even if it takes weeks, hell, even if I'm so good at it that I can drag it out for months, it eventually ends, and you're off the hook. I already knew Helen was pregnant, of course, but imagine my delight when I discovered that there were going to be three new Mayhem babies in the world."

"You'll have to—"

"If you're going to tell me that I'll have to kill you before you let me hurt the babies, don't bother. You won't have the opportunity. You are going to live here for the next three months. Helen, who you will not see during that time, will receive excellent prenatal care. Those babies will be born healthy, I promise you. Roger and Samantha will live here as well, but they'll mostly serve as incentive not to make me angry. Try to escape, Roger loses a leg. Try to escape again, Roger becomes a torso. Try to escape once more, Samantha has all of her skin scraped off. Their role is simple enough, do you agree?"

"When do I get to see them?" I asked.

"Are you really interrupting me while I'm explaining what the next three months have in store? Don't you want to know? Do you want me to throw you back in the pit until Helen gives birth?"

"No."

"Then save your pointless questions until the end. Anyway, Helen will give birth to three beautiful children. She will be allowed to kiss each one tenderly on the forehead. Then they will be removed from her room and taken into a different room, where you, Theresa, and Kyle will each be waiting in front of a pot of boiling water. You will be given a son or daughter, Theresa and Kyle will each be given a sister or brother, and then you will drop these babies into the water like lobsters. When they are sufficiently cooked, you will scoop them out of the water, place them onto a serving dish, and then you will each eat your assigned child down to the bones." Mr. Burke smiled. "And then, your debt repaid, you will all be set free and will never hear from me again."

It doesn't matter how much evidence you have that somebody is sadistic, evil, and criminally insane; when you hear a plan like that, the only possible response is to stare at them in a state of absolute bewilderment.

"I stabbed armadillos to death and stored them in a cooler," said Shirley, "and even I think that's truly fucked up."

I kept staring at him. Was he serious? Even for somebody like Mr. Burke, who had...well, no, actually, it wasn't all that surprising that his mental process went in the direction of baby-eating.

"I will never do that," I told him.

"Yes, you will," he said. "And you'll use silverware and proper table manners."

I shook my head. "No. It's not gonna happen. Not a chance in hell."

"It's easy for you to take a pro-life attitude now," said Mr. Burke, "because you haven't spent the past three months being given just enough food to keep you alive. When the blessed occasion arrives, and you drag your emaciated bodies into the kitchen, the meat will look quite tasty."

"There is no possible way."

"I disagree."

"You're beyond sick."

"To people Theresa's age, 'sick' means 'good.' Watch what you say. She might think you're giving me a compliment and that you're on board with the idea."

"I'll kill you."

"Of course you will. Tell me that I'll never get away with this."

"You'll never get away with this."

"Tell me that somebody will find you. Tell me that I can't keep you locked away for three months without somebody coming to your rescue."

"You can't."

"Wrong! I can keep you and your family here for years if I want to. I can do exactly as I please. Do you know what we did with your dead cop friend's body? It's scattered in chunks across the front lawn of Theresa's school, just to show the world that I'm one psychotic guy. And no matter how much you tell yourself that you'll beat me in this battle, I promise you that in three months you will walk out of here with a belly full of your own offspring."

"Okay," I said. "You win. We'll see what happens."

We had three months to figure out a way out of this. Even if I made the dozens of mistakes that I always do, Mr. Burke would have to screw up sometime in the next three months, right?

"I'll give you a sneak preview," said Mr. Burke. "Theresa, do you like chicken?"

She didn't answer.

"Theresa, when I speak to you I expect an answer, or else I will hurt your mother. Do you like chicken?"

"Yes."

"Fried chicken?"

"Yes."

"What if I handed you a whole dead chicken, raw, with the feathers still on it? Would you want to eat that?"

"No."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"Well, you're all going into a much deeper, colder pit, and you're not coming out for three days. Then we'll see how hungry you are for chicken."

CHAPTER NINETEEN

If Shirley and I had taken a comical spill into the new pit, there would have been shattered bones for sure. It was about twenty-five feet deep, with stone walls, and Vic forced us down the ladder at gunpoint. When all three of us reached the bottom, he pulled up the ladder and shut off the lights.

And then he left us there for three days.

Lest you think that Mr. Burke was an entirely unpleasant gentleman, I should point out that once a day Vic lowered a care package bucket with bottled water, fresh bandages, and glow sticks.

Much of our time was spent trying to get out of the handcuffs. We didn't have anything to pick the lock except for Shirley's fingernails. You'd think that with three days to work on it, you'd eventually be able to pick handcuff locks with fingernails like that, but, nope, we had no luck. Nor were we able to break the chain by repeatedly stomping on it, and it also didn't do any good to vigorously scrape the chain against the rock wall, moving it back and forth until our arms ached, hoping to wear it down enough that we could snap it.

Shirley did pass the key she'd swallowed, in a moment that does not rank high on my list of best memories, but of course it was the key to the other pair, and they were not interchangeable.

She confessed to a small level of regret that she'd snapped Bruce's handcuffs onto me without my permission.

I spent a lot of time assuring Theresa that we'd be fine. The horrible man would be punished just like all of the other horrible men who'd tried to hurt us. (I excluded myself as an example in the conversation, though I certainly hadn't lacked for punishment.) Mommy was fine, Kyle was fine, Uncle Roger was fine, and Aunt Samantha was fine.

And I told her stories. All of her favorites. We hadn't done actual bedtime stories in a couple of years, not since she informed me in a very serious voice that she was too old for such a thing and that bedtime stories were for little kids, like Kyle. But now, the eighteen quadrillion readings of such books as Hector Glues His House, wherein Hector uses too much glue on a school project and accidentally glues his house to the neighbors' house, and then to all of the nearby houses, until the entire neighborhood is one big pile of glued-together houses, served me well. A lobotomy couldn't have gotten that book out of my head.

I also made up some stories. Happy stories. Sappy-sweet girly stories. And tales of fantasy in which super-hawt elves went on quests to save fair maidens (who could kick plenty of ass themselves, so be warned, orcs!) from evil wizards.

Shirley offered to tell a story, and I explained that stories were a precious bond between father and daughter, and that if she started to tell a story I would be forced to tickle her to death. "Tickle" was code for "bludgeon," and I think Shirley got the point.

We also talked about food a lot.

The fact is, you're not going to starve if you go without eating for three days. In my case, the pain of my shot-off finger sort of overwhelmed the hunger element. When you're being chased by psychos with machine guns, it's not that difficult to focus on other things besides missing appendages, but when you're stuck in a dark pit with nothing to keep you occupied, a lot of time is spent thinking about how much it hurts.

Though I didn't want to fall asleep, the exhaustion was simply something I couldn't overcome. I held Theresa tight, comforting myself with the knowledge that Shirley didn't have a weapon, and if she switched over to a "Gotta kill a little girl!" personality, I didn't think she could actually do anything without waking me up, in which case I would make use of the rock walls and the fact that they were more durable than her skull.

By the third day, we weren't doing much besides just sitting there. I tried to keep the conversation going, but I know I faded a few times, and certain picture books from Theresa's childhood were combined into an incoherent medley.

I only knew it was the third day because that's when Mr. Burke looked down into the pit, holding a clear plastic bag with a dead chicken in it.

"Everybody still alive down there?" he called down.

"Alive and well," I shouted. Or wanted to shout. My throat was too dry to actually project my voice, so I said it in a soft croak that I don't think he heard.

"I bet you're hungry. I just had a lovely meal of Ribeye steak; a baked potato loaded with butter, bacon, sour cream, and chives; cinnamon apples; and a bowl of vanilla ice cream with whipped cream and hot fudge for dessert. I can't even describe how delicious it was. That's the nice thing about being rich: you eat well."

I said something shockingly obscene in my mind.

"I promised that you'd be fed after your fasting period was over, and it's over. Watch your head."

He dropped the plastic bag. There wasn't much room to dodge and our reflexes were weak, so the chicken landed on my foot and the plastic burst open, sending a couple of feathers flying into the air.

It hurt like hell, but I wasn't about to let Mr. Burke see me reacting to the pain of having a chicken fall on my foot, so I gritted my teeth and didn't make a sound.

"Eat up," said Mr. Burke.

Hunger does dark things to a person. When you're ravenous enough, the human body will do whatever it takes to survive. Food that would normally churn your stomach looks positively mouth-watering when you've gone so long without so much as a grain of rice.

But screw that. It had only been three days. No way was I eating Burke's chicken. This nasty raw chicken was about to fly right back up at his ugly face.

Shirley pulled away some plastic and then tore out a handful of feathers.

"Are you really going to do that?"

"I'm starving," she said.

"So you want to go through all of this to die of salmonella?"

She jabbed her fingernails into the side of the bird.

"We could be making a statement here, you know."

"You make a statement. I need to eat."

And she did, scooping out several big chunks and popping them into her mouth. At least she looked queasy as she did it.

After a few bites, she slid it toward me.

"Sorry," I said. "I don't eat chicken that's been on the ground."

"Theresa?"

"She's not eating it, either. How did you enjoy the flavor? Get any maggots stuck in your teeth?"

"They tasted great. Extra protein."

I looked away from Shirley, mostly so I didn't have to see the blood around her mouth, and turned my attention to Theresa. "Do you want to help me throw this disgusting chicken back up at that creep?"

"Yes," said Theresa, nodding enthusiastically.

We stood up. I picked up the chicken by its leg. "I don't want you to have to touch this, so your job is to help push my arm when I throw it, okay?"

"Okay."

I threw the chicken as hard as I could. (Theresa's assistance was really more about moral support.) It was a pretty damn good throw for an injured guy who'd been left starving in a pit for three days...although my distance was better than my aim. The chicken struck the wall about two feet from the top, bounced off, then plummeted back toward us.

Fortunately, it didn't hit me, which would have forced me to stand there looking sheepish as I wiped chicken gunk out of my hair. Instead, it hit Shirley. Nobody laughed, but it was quite clearly the single funniest incident in the entire history of humankind.

She didn't even flinch when it hit her in the head. It fell to the ground, landing on one of the discarded glow sticks, and she gave me a look that said "I am calmly accepting this moment of humiliation, but when you fall asleep tonight, you will not wake up."

"I guess you've proven your point," said Mr. Burke. "I'm certainly not going to force feed you the chicken. You win. Are you ready to come up?"

"Yeah," I said.

"Then I'll lower the ladder."

As I glanced down at the chicken, it suddenly occurred to me that I'd had some success in the past using a bone as a weapon. More success than the average person for sure. Granted, it had been a human bone that saved my life and not a tiny chicken bone, but still...

I crouched over the carcass, hiding it from Mr. Burke's view, then dug around until I found a bone, which I snapped off. Of course, I now had to explain why I was digging around in the dead chicken, so I tore off a small piece and stood back up, keeping the two-inch rib bone concealed in my bandaged hand.

"Hey, Burke! Thanks for the present." I tossed the chunk into the air and caught it in my mouth. I gave it a couple of quick chews so I wouldn't choke on it, gagged, then swallowed it.

"I hope you proved whatever it was you were trying to prove," said Mr. Burke.

"Just showing that you aren't the boss of me."

"How did it taste?"

"Not as good as your spleen will."

"Amusing. There's still plenty of time to break your spirit, but for now, go ahead and keep the threats coming. I'm always looking for new ideas."

Mr. Burke's associate (Vic must have had a personal day) lowered the ladder down to us. This guy was no longer wearing his jack-o-lantern mask, but from his muscular build I was pretty sure I was looking up at the man who murdered Bruce.

"Did you kill Lieutenant Bruce Frenkle?" I called up to him.

The guy, an ugly fucker, smiled. "Yeah."

I had nothing else to say.

My strength was a fraction of what it had been before our days in the pit, and climbing a ladder while handcuffed to a psycho and protecting a little girl was difficult enough without the lack of nourishment, but we managed to do it.

There wasn't much else to this room but the pit.

The henchman who'd killed Bruce didn't have a gun. Why didn't he have a gun? Was it because he was so freaking strong and we were so weak that a weapon was unnecessary? That was almost certainly accurate, but still, did this mean Mr. Burke was getting slightly overconfident?

"Drop the chicken bone, please," Mr. Burke told me.

"What bone?"

"The bone in your hand. Drop it."

I thought about lunging at the muscle guy with it, but that was too pathetic even for me. I dropped the bone.

"What were you going to do with that, anyway?" Mr. Burke asked. "Stab somebody to death?"

"No, I thought I might pick the lock of the handcuffs with it."

"Oh. That's more reasonable. But, no, I think you two look good that way. You make an attractive couple, all beat up and bloody. Shall I take you to your new home?"

The reproduction of Roger's apartment was right across the hallway. We stepped inside, and once again Mr. Burke invited us to sit on the couch. The cop killer folded his arms across his chest and gave us a menacing stare.

"This is where you will be staying," Mr. Burke said. "Feel free to rearrange the furniture any way you'd like. It's your home, so do whatever is most comfortable for you. However, do not try to get free. You're welcome to pound on the door or try to break through the walls as much as you want—you won't get through them. But when my associates stop by to bring you food or to check on your medical condition, please do not waste my time trying to kill them or get past them, because you won't be able to escape."

"If you say so," I said, not sure what I hoped to accomplish by saying that.

"During your long stay here, you may also come up with the idea of using one of my men as a bargaining chip. I would like to discourage that." He walked over to the counter and picked up a small remote control. He held it up to show us, then pushed the red button.

The muscle man twitched as if he'd received an electric shock to the stomach. Then he doubled over and threw up all over the carpet.

He stood back up straight and looked over at Mr. Burke, who pointed a gun at him. "Don't move. Just let it happen."

For a second the man looked as if he might charge at Mr. Burke anyway, but he decided against it. For five minutes we just sat there, confused and horrified, watching the man clutch at his stomach and whimper in pain.

I held Theresa close, shielding her eyes. In a rare show of mercy, Mr. Burke did not order me to make her watch.

The man apparently decided, the hell with it, he was going to attack. He only made it two steps before Mr. Burke shot him in the leg. He howled and fell to the floor, clutching his bleeding wound.

We watched him for another five minutes as he crawled across the floor. When he got too close, Mr. Burke casually walked to the other side of the room.

Then he began to cough.

After a couple minutes of that, he began to cough up blood.

Twenty minutes after Mr. Burke pressed the button—and Shirley and I watched every second of it—blood was streaming from his mouth and nostrils. And when he threw up again, this time it wasn't his lunch that spilled out onto the carpet.

We watched in complete revulsion as the man vomited up partially liquefied internal organs. Not long after that, he stopped moving.

"Unpleasant, isn't it?" asked Mr. Burke. "And I liked him."

If the message he was trying to send was "I am not one to be trifled with, because I will sit here and watch one of my own men die an agonizing death just to send a message about how I am not one to be trifled with," then the message was clearly received.

"I'll leave you to settle in," said Mr. Burke, heading for the door. "Sorry about the mess."

CHAPTER TWENTY

The first thing we did was take a very quick tour of the apartment. The refrigerator and all of the kitchen cabinets were empty. No knives or forks to use in picking handcuff locks or jamming into psychopath's eyes. The TV in the living room was not a real TV, just a non-working plastic facsimile that Mr. Burke probably thought was hilarious.

The bedroom hadn't been decorated with the same attention to detail. It was basically just a mattress on the floor, though in my current state of exhaustion it looked like it could provide the comfiest, fluffiest, most exquisite night's sleep of all time.

The bathroom had a shower. My first thought was that the water probably didn't work, as a cruel joke, but when I turned it on to test it not only did the shower work, it had hot water.

I wondered if Helen had a shower with hot water.

She was fine. She had to be. Mr. Burke's whole sinister plan relied on her being in good health. And Kyle was probably with her, the duct tape over his mouth having been carefully removed. Roger and Samantha were probably in their own room, fornicating to ease the stress.

Before a shower and sleep, though, we needed to get these wretched handcuffs off. We carefully searched the apartment, looking for some sort of blade, paperclip, or professional-grade lock picking kit like the one we'd left in Roger's car ages ago that could help. Nothing.

The bookshelf was glued together, not nailed. Same with the drawers and every piece of furniture. The cabinet doors were screwed on, but Shirley's attempt to use her fingernail to unscrew it just gave her a cracked nail.

However, there was a lamp next to the couch.

I unscrewed the light bulb, carefully smashed it with my foot, and, presto, thanks to the coil inside I now had a very feeble tool with which to pick the lock.

We sat on the couch, and I went to work.

After about thirty minutes, I quit in frustration. The stupid coil wasn't sturdy enough to do anything to the lock mechanism.

Shirley took over. After about twenty minutes, she quit in frustration.

"Can I try?" asked Theresa.

I handed her the coil and she inserted it into the lock. She bit her lip as she wiggled it around in intense concentration.

After about five minutes, she quit in frustration. Believe me, I would have been totally cool with the embarrassment of having a terrified ten-year-old girl accomplish what I could not.

We searched the apartment some more. I looked through the bookshelf (the contents of which seemed to have been purposely selected for their crappiness) hoping that they might have overlooked a spiral-bound notebook, but, alas, no.

There had to be something. It wasn't as if we were in an empty padded room in an asylum. All we needed was...

A carpet staple?

I pulled Shirley over to a corner of the living room carpet and crouched down. Yes! It had been stapled down!

I broke two fingernails and Shirley broke four trying to pry it out, but we eventually got it. We returned to the couch and I went back to work.

Approximately one minute before I was ready to give up in frustration again, there was a click. I pulled the bracelet open. I managed not to be overcome with emotion, though I felt the urge to fan the air in front of my eyes and say "I promised myself I wouldn't do this!" like a beauty pageant winner.

I got in a couple of minutes of happy free arm flexing before the door opened. Vic entered, holding a gun and a shiny new pair of handcuffs.

"Congratulations," he said. "Sadly, Mr. Burke fell in love with the idea of you two being handcuffed for the next three months, so you'll need to put these on."

* * *

Theresa got to take the first shower. Shirley took the second one, with me standing outside, my hand stretched just inside the shower curtain. It was a transparent curtain, so her blurred naked body was visible, and I politely looked the other way, because if I was going to be a perv, it certainly wasn't going to be over a homicidal maniac.

I didn't want to rip off my shirt, so I showered with it on. I could tell that Shirley was staring at me through the curtain, though fortunately I couldn't see her expression, which I assumed was kind of creepy. I almost told her to look creepily at something else, but if we really were going to be stuck here for the next three months we'd have to get over the idea of it being improper for her to see me without pants, so I focused on the refreshing spray instead.

It didn't last long. Theresa and Shirley had used up most of the hot water, dammit.

After I'd dried myself and gotten dressed back into my stinky, bloody pants, the three of us lay down on the mattress and went to sleep.

* * *

The next morning—if it was actually morning—Vic brought us one strawberry Pop-Tart each for breakfast. And Roger.

I'd seen my friend looking bad before, but never like this.

He looked as if somebody had been beating on him for the past three days, which was an entirely feasible scenario. I'm not saying that he was unrecognizable as Roger or now looked like a misshapen creature, but he wore only a pair of boxer shorts and was covered head to toe with bruises, welts, burns, and small cuts.

Vic shoved him to the floor then left us.

The three of us all immediately crouched down next to him. "Roger, are you okay?" I asked.

He rolled onto his back, wincing in pain with the effort. His severely bloodshot eyes lit up as he saw my daughter. "Theresa! Oh, thank God. I didn't know what they did with you. Give your Uncle Roger a very gentle hug."

Theresa gave him a hug that wasn't as gentle as it could have been, but Roger didn't protest.

"What did they do to you?" I asked.

"Hit me a lot. A few kicks. Some cigarettes. Other stuff. I don't really want to talk about it."

"That's totally fine," I said. "Can we get you anything? A new body?"

"Couch would be nice."

We very carefully helped Roger up, walked him across the living room, and eased him onto the couch. It was already badly stained from Shirley and I sitting on it, so we didn't bother to put out a towel.

"Have you heard anything about Samantha?" he asked.

"Nothing. I was hoping you had."

Roger shook his head. "For all I knew, I was the only one of us still alive. These people are out of their freaking minds. I don't think they even care if they get caught. They murdered four cops—at least four cops—when they kidnapped me."

"Did Mr. Burke tell you about his plan?"

"I haven't seen that asshole yet."

I hesitated, trying to decide if I should send Theresa out of the room. But she'd already heard Mr. Burke's plan, and what could I possibly be shielding her from at this point? If anything, I needed to emphasize that it was Mr. Burke, and not her dad, who was the evil one.

I told him the entire story of Mr. Burke's revenge. He just stared at me for a while, then hung his head. "I need a shower."

"We've got one."

"Good to see you're living the high life." He looked around the apartment and then did a double take. "Is this supposed to be my place?"

* * *

We pretty much just spent the day hanging around the apartment, desperately hoping that Kyle and Samantha would also be brought to join us. Neither of them were.

The idea that Vic probably couldn't kill all four of us if we were to suddenly charge at him did cross my mind several times, but of course I wasn't going to make any moves that involved "acceptable losses." All four of us were going to live through this.

All seven.

All ten.

Two days earlier, while a couple of the men were punching Roger, one of them had made an offhand comment to the other that made Roger think we were in Costa Rica. I'd always wanted to visit there, although the whole kidnapping/torturing element made this a less than ideal holiday experience.

That night, Vic delivered a tray of TV dinners for everybody. They were pretty nasty, but we gobbled them up as if they were the most delicious pizzas ever made.

We gave Roger and Theresa the mattress. Shirley slept on the couch. I slept on the floor next to the couch, cursing at Shirley every time she rolled over and yanked me awake.

The bathroom situation is best left without detailed description.

Vic arrived the next morning with another box of Pop-Tarts. Blueberry this time, because it's important to maintain variety in your diet.

He stood there at the door, arms folded, watching us eat.

When we'd finished, he pointed at me. "You're coming with me," he said. He pointed at Shirley. "And you too, obviously."

"Where are we going?" I asked.

"Come here and ask me that again."

"Okay, no questions. I get it."

"I said, come here and ask me that again."

I reluctantly walked over to Vic. He looked me in the eyes, smiled just a bit, then punched me in the face, knocking me to the floor. Theresa screamed.

"Don't ask questions," Vic said.

Shirley helped me up, and I wiped some fresh new blood off the corner of my mouth. "I thought I felt some saliva on your fist," I said. "Are you sure you're not a thumb-sucker?" I sort of wished I hadn't said that, but I've always found it difficult not to be a smartass to people who punch me.

"Are you asking for another one?"

"No. Just wanted to let you know that I'm cool with the whole thumb sucking thing." I sort of wished I hadn't said that, either.

"Let's go."

* * *

Vic led us back to the room with the six pits. "Walk," he said.

"Where?"

"Around. Get some exercise. I'm supposed to make sure your muscles don't atrophy."

"That's very considerate."

"Don't fall in to any of those. I don't feel like dragging the ladder over."

Shirley and I walked around the perimeter of the room, keeping up a good pace. Vic stood by the door, holding his gun and watching us closely yet looking somewhat troubled.

After we'd taken six or seven laps, Vic began to walk right behind us, which made me kind of nervous. Had there been a change of plans? It felt like he was ready to put a bullet into the back of my head.

"Mayhem, you a decent actor?" he asked.

"I guess."

"I'd like you to not react to what I'm going to say. Can you handle that?"

"Sure."

"I want to help you get out of here."

It was difficult not to react to that, but I kept a poker face. "Are you serious?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because he's going to make you eat babies. I didn't know about that when I signed on for this. I found out about it a few minutes before you did. I am one cold-blooded killer, but I can't get behind the idea of making a man eat his own babies."

"I'm very happy to hear that," I said.

"If I could, I'd shoot Mr. Burke between the eyes and be done with it. But he's got relatives, powerful relatives, and I can't let myself be on their shit list."

"Are you saying that if we get rid of Mr. Burke, I'm going to be pursued by even worse people? Are you kidding me? And if I beat them, do those relatives have even worse relatives than them? When does this all—?"

"Worry about that later. Stop reacting."

"Sorry."

"The only way you're going to get out of here is with a hostage. And if by some bizarre twist of fate you captured me or anybody else who works for him, Mr. Burke would let us die without a second thought. You could have a knife up to his wife's neck and he wouldn't deviate from the plan."

"He's married?"

"Yeah. She's not here. It was just an example."

"So you're saying that the hostage needs to be Mr. Burke."

"Exactly. But he's not going to put himself in a position where that can happen."

"And I take it you're not offering to deliver him to us?"

"Nope."

"Then what do we do?"

"Here is what you have going for you: Mr. Burke has his heart set on the baby-eating plan. And I get the impression that he's completely sincere. If you eat the triplets, you get to go home, and he'll never bother you again. If you can live with yourself afterward, then that's the easiest option for everybody."

"I'll take the harder option."

"Mr. Burke doesn't want you to die. If you did, the backup plan is that Roger takes your place at the dinner table, but that's a distant second place. However, if you did have to die, if there was no way around it, at the absolute minimum Mr. Burke would want to make absolutely sure that he got to kill you himself."

"Okay, so, I need to create a situation where he thinks he needs to kill me, and take advantage of it. Sounds cinchy."

"You try to escape, somebody shoots you with tranquilizers. You fake a stroke, somebody shoots you in the leg to test it. You slash your wrists, you bleed to death before you get much accomplished."

"Are you basically saying that you'd love to help me out, but escape is impossible?"

"Nope. That's not what I'm saying."

As we continued walking, I tried to figure out what he was trying to say.

When I did figure it out, I didn't like it.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

After we got back, Theresa was taken out for exercise. When I protested, Vic punched me in the face. When I continued to protest, he threatened to throw her into the pit by herself for another three days. I relented.

He brought her back, so there was no need for me to attack him in a murderous rage.

After Vic left, the four of us sat on the couch.

"Do you think Samantha would marry me?" Roger asked, rubbing at his left eye, which was badly swollen.

"Stop rubbing your eye."

"It itches."

"Don't touch it. Yes, I do think she'll marry you."

"I don't think she will."

"Why would you say that?"

"Because look at what keeps happening to us! Under these circumstances, I wouldn't blame her if she didn't even want to be a friend with benefits. Marrying me would be like saying 'Hey, I'm cool with disembowelment!'"

"That's not true," I said, though quite honestly I thought his logic was sound. I certainly wouldn't blame Helen if she packed her things and said "You know what, Andrew? This life of constant danger isn't working out for me anymore. Seeya."

Should I tell him that Samantha had been planning to ask him? It might lift his spirits. Give him a reason to quit rubbing his eye and risking permanent blindness.

On the other hand, it would truly suck to get out of this mess only to get in trouble because I ruined Samantha's surprise. I'd just settle for reassuring him.

"I think you should do it," I said. "If Vic brings her in here, don't even hesitate, just pop the question."

"Wait for Vic to leave first," Shirley suggested. "Otherwise it would spoil the moment."

"I don't mean this in a rude way," Roger told her, "but you would kind of spoil the moment, too."

"Why?"

"I dunno. Never mind."

"I take back what I said," I said. "Don't pop the question right away. If Vic brings her here, we'll wait for him to leave, then the rest of us will go into another room and leave you and Samantha alone except for the security cameras. Then you can propose."

"That sounds like a lot of pressure," said Roger.

"You should give her a flower," said Theresa.

"Do you have one?"

"Make one out of paper. I'll help you."

"How about we do the paper flower for sure, and feel out the whole marriage proposal idea. The timing is probably bad. I'm looking pretty grotesque right now."

"You look fine," said Shirley.

"Andrew, do I look fine?"

"You look like roadkill."

"Maybe a proposal this close to when we could be killed would come off as insincere, like finding religion on your deathbed."

"Hmmm," I said, because I really wasn't sure if the gesture would come off as the true romance of two hearts longing to become one, or just a guy who didn't want to die single.

"I'll play it by ear," said Roger. "If her first reaction is to puke, I'll postpone."

* * *

Vic did not bring Samantha to us.

* * *

The next morning's breakfast, cherry Pop-Tarts, also included a pill.

It was white, made of plastic, and about the size of a marble. Inside was a small electrical device that, if activated with a remote control, would cause the shell to break apart, spilling the contents into the unfortunate stomach. Those contents would then proceed to turn your guts into mush.

There was an antidote, for those never-occurring cases where Mr. Burke decided at the last minute that he didn't want his associate to die a gruesome agonizing death. I did not, however, have this particular antidote yet. If I followed through with the plan and Vic let me down, there was the very real possibility that I'd be wiping my esophagus off my lips.

This is when your mind starts saying things like "You know, people are out there searching for you. They don't let a bunch of cops die without trying to catch the guys who did it. You've got three months before the babies are born. And Theresa and Kyle were both born late, so you've got that wiggle room, too. Maybe the whole dissolving-your-internal-organs scheme isn't the best way to go."

I'd taken some extreme measures in the past, but they'd always involved external injuries.

That said, even if I left this world as a foaming pile of bowels, it would be worth it if my sacrifice allowed my family and friends to escape from this place.

Though if I died and they didn't escape, it would be the suckiest thing ever.

I had to do this. I couldn't sit around and wait for Mr. Burke to choose my destiny as a cannibal. I didn't have any clever metaphors for the risk I was about to take, but sometimes in your life you have to do really stupid stuff that you desperately hope turns out to have been really smart stuff.

I'd rather have waited a few hours/days/weeks to work up the courage, but I couldn't live with myself if I waited five minutes and then Vic said "Oh, yeah, we were ordered to kill Kyle five minutes ago."

Even though they were supposed to act casual, everybody was looking at me.

Vic left the apartment without a reassuring wink.

The pill, which was surgically imbedded in the stomachs of all of Mr. Burke's employees and which they thought was a tracking device in case of emergencies, did not need to be activated with a remote control. You could just chew and swallow.

I popped the pill into my mouth and bit down on the plastic. My mouth was instantly filled with the foulest taste imaginable, the way I imagined a rotting corpse would taste if I ever had to lick one, and my gag reflexes kicked in. I successfully swallowed most of it and it burned all the way down like moonshine mixed with battery acid. I swallowed the rest and grimaced like I'd never grimaced before.

And then, much like a drunk after a weekend bender, there was the feeling of regret. Was it really in my best interest to risk hollowing myself out?

Oh well. Too late now.

"How do you feel?" asked Roger.

"I can't even make a joke about it."

"You don't have to joke. Just tell me how it feels."

I clutched my stomach and nearly lost my balance. No matter how much I'd braced myself for the pain, I hadn't expected it to be so intense that I just wanted to die.

I maintained my focus. This would be a spectacularly stupid way to expire if I gave up now.

"Everybody get away from me," I said, waving Roger and Theresa over to the couch. They didn't look happy to be leaving me, even if it was only across the room.

I'd planned to exaggerate the impact of the poison for the security cameras, but it was unnecessary. I couldn't have downplayed it if I'd tried.

After one of the most miserable minutes of my life, the door burst open and Vic came in, accompanied by two other men, both of whom had those delightful sub-machine guns. "What's wrong with him?" Vic asked Shirley.

"I don't know!"

Vic and the men stood there and watched me.

I had lines here, but it required my most intense concentration to remember them. "Tell your boss that I've won!" I said in what was supposed to be a victorious shout but was instead a gasp.

"What are you talking about?" Vic asked. I wished he'd quit trying to play thespian and just contact Mr. Burke.

"I'm going to—" I was hit by a burst of stomach pain that doubled me over and cost me yesterday's Pop-Tarts.

Vic removed a small walkie-talkie from his belt. It was approximately eight trillion hours before he pressed the button on the side and spoke. "Mr. Burke? I think we need you in Mayhem's room."

He thought we needed him?

"I'm not completely sure," Vic said into the walkie-talkie. "I think he's trying to opt out. Yes, sir. We'll wait here." He clipped the walkie-talkie back onto his belt and resumed watching me.

My tombstone: Andrew Mayhem. He survived knives, chainsaws, guns, and being buried alive. Then the dumbass drank poison.

Fortunately, it only took another minute of sheer agony before Mr. Burke walked in the door. He was wearing a neatly pressed gray suit, and it did not surprise me that he was holding a gun.

"What's going on?" he demanded.

As if on cue, I coughed up a thin mist of blood. I wished I'd been able to plan that as an actual theatrical cue, instead of legitimately coughing up blood at that moment.

"I don't know," said Vic. Would it really have killed him to say "I think Andrew swallowed one of your death pills"?

"Are you faking?" Mr. Burke asked me.

"Do I look like I'm faking?" I asked back. I stuck out my tongue to show him the blood on it. "Did you click your remote or something?"

"Vic, go get the antidote, just in case," said Mr. Burke.

Vic nodded and left the room. I almost hoped that he would deviate from the plan and actually bring the antidote. It was a dumb plan. We still had three months to find an opportunity to bash a guard over the head with a lunch tray.

I'm sure there are plenty of things in this world that might cause greater physical pain than the stuff I drank, but I couldn't think of any of them. Getting a third-degree sunburn and then rolling around on a bed of fishhooks sounded like more fun.

"So what's going on?" asked Mr. Burke.

"You tell me."

"It looks to me as if you're experiencing some physical discomfort."

"Yeah."

"Did you swallow one of the tracker pills?"

"Maybe."

"Why would you do that? You did see what happened to Treck, right? Did that look enjoyable?"

It's hard to grin when you're wracked with pain, but I did my best. "Sort of messes up your master plan, doesn't it?" I said through my grin, which had quickly transformed into an even more intense grimace than the one I'd worn right after drinking the stuff.

"How so? Vic will give you an injection. You will be severely beaten and thrown into the pit for a week. Theresa's fingers will be cut off to match yours. And then everything will proceed as planned."

I spat out some blood. "I guess you win, then."

"I guess so."

"Unless I refuse the injection."

Mr. Burke chuckled. "So that's your brilliant scheme? Kill yourself in the worst way possible just to annoy me? How many nights of sleep do you think I'll lose if I don't get to see you drop your baby in the boiling water? Roger can do that just as well."

"I'll never do that," said Roger.

"You won't need to. Your friend, your stupid, brain-dead, mentally deficient, borderline retarded friend thinks he's going to somehow refuse to accept the antidote. Except that it's delivered through a tranquilizer gun. You should have just slit your wrists."

Vic walked back into the room. "It's gone."

"What are you talking about?"

"It's not in the drawer. Somebody took it."

"Are you sure you looked in the right place?"

"Yes, sir."

Mr. Burke clenched his jaw in anger. "All right. Then something has gone very wrong, there's a possible traitor in our midst, and we'll have to do a full investigation. No time to salvage Mayhem now. I guess we watch him die."

He just stood there. I couldn't help but be extremely disappointed by this.

"Gonna let somebody else do your dirty work?" I asked.

"You seem to think that I wouldn't consider driving you to suicide to be a victory. You understand what's happening, right? Most of what's inside of you is going to come out for everyone to see. It's not the ideal revenge, but it's a very good one."

I shrugged. "All right. But it's not your revenge. It's mine."

"Believe whatever you want. You won't even get to discover my extra little surprise. I'm going to enjoy the show."

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

I'll admit it. What I did next was kind of a dick move.

That said, remember that Vic's moral compass only wavered at the idea of eating newborn babies. He was okay with all of the other stuff. And he liked to punch me. So it's not like I was selling out a dear friend who'd shown me nothing but loyalty during our lifetime of companionship.

"Vic's your traitor," I blurted out. "He set up everything. He knows where the antidote is."

For a split second Vic looked hurt, almost sad, as if he were a stray puppy who'd been shooed away from a warm house on a cold winter night. But it was just a flash, and he quickly recovered. He let out a very convincing derisive laugh. "Bullshit."

"Andrew's telling the truth," said Shirley. "I was there."

"So," said Mr. Burke, thoughtfully, "do I trust my victims, or my second in command? Would Andrew have any reason to tell a wee little fib? I don't know. Except for being minutes away from death and trying every possible way to save his life, I can't think of a single reason he might not tell the truth."

"Can I punch the lying sack of shit?" asked Vic.

"If you wait a few minutes, your fist will go right through him. That will be more entertaining."

Okay, if I had to die today, and it appeared that I did, I wasn't going to go out like this. Let them shoot me down to protect their boss—I was going to make a grab for Mr. Burke.

I charged at him.

Shirley, who I'd thought would follow my lead, did not. As the handcuff chains went taut I was jerked off my feet and onto my ass. I spat up some more blood as I hit the floor.

I hate to send a cynical message, but sometimes life sucks.

"By the way," said Mr. Burke, "Don't die thinking that you almost pulled one over on me. I know exactly what was going on, and I know exactly where Vic thinks the antidote is. I'm not a big fan of internet lingo, but imagine this with the hashtag Mayhemfail."

I believe Mr. Burke meant for there to be a dramatic pause as the totality of my defeat sunk in. However, Vic seemed to be thinking ahead to the next step, where he would be joining me on the floor to die a painful gooey death.

He fired a shot that hit the unnamed guard in the forehead. Well, I'm sure he had a name, but I didn't know it. Before the guard who wasn't yet dead could react, Vic shot him through the nose.

"Shoot Mr. Burke!" I urged.

Instead, Vic pointed his gun at me. "Tell him that you lied!"

"What?"

"Tell him! I had nothing to do with this!"

"Then why the hell did you shoot those two guys?"

"Tell him!"

Clearly Mr. Burke had enough information about Vic's backstabbing scheme that nothing I could say would absolve him from any guilt, but since Vic was clearly a bit unhinged at the moment, I did as he asked.

"I made it up," I said. I pointed to the body of the guy who'd been shot through the nose, who was still a little alive but not much. "It was him. He gave me the pill."

"Only my most trusted associate, my confidant, my number two guy, knows about the pills," said Mr. Burke. "Because I am not a trusting boss, some of my underlings may have been led to believe that the surveillance in some rooms in this house only picks up video and not sound, which might have led them to believe that they could help you escape. That was incorrect."

Mr. Burke didn't seem very concerned that Vic might shoot him next. To me, it was exactly the kind of thing you would worry about in this situation.

"I'm sorry," said Vic.

"I'm sure you are. Now please kill yourself."

Vic shook his head. "No."

"Put the gun in your mouth and pull the trigger."

"No!"

"You don't have a choice. Do as I say."

Violently shaking his head and almost weeping, Vic put the barrel of the gun into his mouth.

"Go on," said Mr. Burke in a soothing voice. "Kill yourself like you're supposed to. I'd prefer not to have to use the trigger word, but if you're not going to be mature about this I'll do it."

I watched this in a state of shock that was momentarily interrupted as I realized that a thin trickle of blood was pouring out of each of my nostrils.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that Roger had gotten up off the couch. Mr. Burke noticed this as well, and pointed his gun at him. "Sit down or I'll shoot the little girl."

Roger sat back down.

Mr. Burke returned his attention to Vic. "Well? Are you going to do it?" When Vic didn't promptly shoot himself, Mr. Burke shrugged. "All right. Cyborg."

Upon hearing what I assume was the trigger word, Vic squeezed his eyes shut, let out a soft whimper...then pulled the gun out of his mouth and ran out of the room.

I suspect that, had he been given the opportunity, Mr. Burke would have rolled his eyes, pointed the gun back at us, and said something like "Oh well, that's why it's called experimental brainwashing." Or maybe he wouldn't have. I don't know. Either way, the distraction provided by not having his second-in-command blow his brains out gave me the chance to lunge at him again.

Now, this time I was lying on the floor with blood trickling out of my mouth and nose, so the most notable problem with my lunge was that it did not actually reach Mr. Burke. It's difficult to tackle somebody and wrestle their gun away from them when your attack comes up two feet short.

However, though Shirley hadn't been great at following my lead in similar situations in the past, this time she did, and before Mr. Burke could shoot any of us she'd knocked him to the floor.

Roger jumped up off the couch.

So did Theresa.

I called out for her to stay where she was, and a great big blood bubble formed on my lips.

With one quick move, Shirley and I got our arms around Mr. Burke's neck, and pulled the chain of the handcuffs tight across his throat. It wasn't a very long chain, so we couldn't wrap it around his neck or anything, but we got the chain and bracelets into a good strangulation position.

Roger stomped on Mr. Burke's hand and grabbed his gun. Then he tossed that gun aside and picked up one of the sub-machine guns instead. He pointed it at Mr. Burke. "Do I kill him?"

"Yes!" Shirley said.

"No!" I said. "We need him!"

"Kill him!" Shirley shouted. "Who are you going to listen to, me or Andrew?"

Roger lowered his weapon. "Should I give Theresa a gun?"

"Yes!" said Shirley.

"No!" I said. "Are you crazy?"

"I wouldn't give one to her normally, but...never mind. You're right."

I coughed, spraying some blood on Mr. Burke's nice gray suit. I was sure I hadn't really felt my lungs slide up into my trachea, but it was a disturbing sensation nevertheless.

Shirley pulled harder against Mr. Burke's throat. His face had turned red and though he was trying to say something (probably unkind) he couldn't get the words out.

"Don't kill him!" I said.

"Are you sticking up for him?" Shirley asked.

"No! We still need him! You can kill him later!"

Roger pressed the barrel of his gun against the back of Shirley's head. "Stop choking him!"

Shirley reluctantly loosened the chain.

Roger pulled the gun away and then peeked out into the hallway. He said "Shit!" and quickly slammed the door shut.

"Two of 'em," he said. "Get away from the door in case they shoot through it!"

Shirley and I dragged Mr. Burke a few feet to the left, while Roger stood next to the door, ready to pump several bullets into anybody who opened it and entered the apartment.

I hurriedly patted Mr. Burke's pockets. "Where's the antidote?" I demanded.

"There is no antidote."

"Where is it? If you knew what I was planning, you'd have brought it. Where is it?"

"Tell us or I'll scalp you," said Shirley.

"Don't scalp him," I said, throwing open Mr. Burke's suit jacket and taking the tranquilizer gun out of his inside pocket. "Where do I shoot myself?"

"In the throat!" said Mr. Burke. "Right in the middle of your throat!"

I felt that he was being insincere. I pointed the gun at my stomach. The pain was so intense that it overwhelmed any concerns I might traditionally have had about shooting a tranquilizer dart point-blank into my chest.

Somebody kicked the door open.

Roger held his position, ready to fire.

I squeezed the trigger, but it wouldn't budge.

"Don't do anything stupid!" shouted a man from the hallway.

"Don't make us!" Roger shouted back.

"Roger! It's me!"

Samantha!

I continued trying to squeeze the trigger. The gun wouldn't fire. What was I doing wrong? What did a guy have to do to be able to shoot himself in the stomach?

"Don't make us kill her!" said the man we couldn't see.

Drops of blood pattered onto the floor as I struggled with the damn gun. Why wouldn't it work?

"Don't hurt her!" said Roger. "We'll do whatever you want!"

Mr. Burke tried to say something, but we squeezed the cuffs into strangulation mode again, just in case he was going to say something like "Kill her."

Ah. The safety was on. Of course.

I flipped off the safety and squeezed the trigger. The dart shot right into my gut, and after a loud gasp I found myself unable to breathe.

"Let Mr. Burke go!" shouted the man in the hallway.

Roger looked over at us, desperation in his eyes.

I tried to say something, but I couldn't speak. Though I'd hoped the pain would simply disappear all at once and make me feel like I was snuggling in a blanket hot out of the dryer, that turned out to not be the case. I wanted to pluck the dart out of my stomach, and yet I also wanted to make sure I got all of the antidote out of it, so I left it there.

"Let the girl go or we'll slash his throat!" shouted Shirley. I truly didn't want her to be in charge of the negotiations, but there wasn't much I could do while I couldn't speak or breathe.

What if the "antidote" was really an accelerant? What if my lungs were shriveling up? That's the kind of crap Mr. Burke would pull.

"If Mr. Burke is not out here in ten seconds, Samantha will die! If we kill her, we still have the rest of your family! Who else do you have?"

"What do I do?" Roger asked me. "I can't outshoot these guys!"

"I'm going to kill him," said Shirley, tugging on the handcuffs. "I'm going to turn his face turquoise. Think you can keep me in a pit? Is that what you think? Huh? You think you can do that to me? How tough do you feel now?"

Roger looked unsure whether he should leave his spot by the doorway, or hurry over to prevent Shirley from strangling our potential ticket out of here.

"Shirley!" I said, finally finding my voice. But that was all I could get out. Not very helpful. God, having that dart sticking out of my stomach was upsetting.

"Ten!" shouted the man in the hallway. "Nine! Eight!"

"Don't give yourself up!" Samantha said. "They'll kill you anyway!"

"Shut the fuck up!" the man told her.

Samantha let out a scream of pain.

Mr. Burke's face was now turning purple. The antidote seemed to be working, since blood was no longer trickling out of my orifices, and I could probably give Shirley a halfway decent punch, but I also didn't want Mr. Burke to get away.

"Seven! Six!"

Roger looked utterly frantic.

"Shirley, stop it!" I managed to say. "We need him!"

"He left us down in the dark!"

"Stop it!"

And then Theresa, who I hadn't really been watching, picked up the gun Mr. Burke had dropped and pointed it at Shirley. "Do what my Daddy says!" she shouted. It would have been more intimidating if she hadn't burst into tears before she finished the sentence, but Shirley stopped tugging on the handcuffs.

Though I wasn't happy at all that my daughter now had even more psychological trauma to work through, I was glad she'd made Shirley quit it.

"Stop counting!" Roger shouted. "We can work this out! We're not going to kill your boss, I promise, but we've got a complex situation happening here and we need some extra time to work it out!"

"Bring him out or she dies!"

"We're bringing him right out."

"You have six more seconds."

I realized that Mr. Burke was not moving, nor did he seem to be breathing.

I pressed my index finger to his neck and searched for a pulse. I couldn't find one. But my whole body was wracked with pain and warm blood had dripped on my fingers and I wasn't sure I was doing it right.

Roger set the sub-machine gun down on the floor. "I'm going to show our good faith and come out with no weapons so we can talk this out," he called out. "There's no reason for anybody to get hurt."

"Roger, don't!" I said.

"I have to. You don't think they'll really kill her?"

"They'll kill you, too!"

"No, they won't." He put his hands in the air, palms out to show they were empty, and then stepped out into the hallway.

I wiped some blood off my face and continued prodding at Mr. Burke's neck. C'mon, there had to be a pulse somewhere! Shirley hadn't been choking him long enough to kill him! He had to be faking or—

His fist slammed into my stomach an instant before my brain processed the idea that he might have been faking. Considering how often I got out of scrapes by feigning unconsciousness, I really should have seen that coming. The dart popped out.

Theresa pointed the barrel of the gun away from Shirley and toward Mr. Burke.

"Don't shoot anybody!" I told her. "Keep your finger off the trigger!"

Mr. Burke grabbed a large handful of Shirley's hair and slammed her head against the floor.

He was surprisingly strong for a middle-aged white guy in a business suit, and I wasn't exactly in top-notch physical shape at this moment. But Shirley went into complete wild animal mode, clawing at him with her fingernails and raking them across his face.

"Honey, throw me the gun!" I said to Theresa. "Carefully throw me the gun!"

She tossed me the gun. I didn't catch it, thanks to being maimed, but I did snatch it up before Mr. Burke or Shirley was able to grab it. I pressed it against the side of Mr. Burke's head and he stopped struggling.

"Tell them that you're not dead," I told him.

Mr. Burke gave me a bloody grin and said nothing. I smacked him in the face, making him a bit bloodier.

"Tell them!"

"I'm all right," Mr. Burke called out.

"If you hurt..." I'd tried to shout this, but my lungs weren't quite working right, so I spoke to Shirley instead. "Tell them that if they hurt Roger or Samantha or anybody else, he dies."

Shirley raised her voice. "If you hurt Roger or Samantha or anybody else, Burke dies!"

"Or at least gets badly disfigured," I said.

"Or at least gets badly disfigured!"

"Do not harm Roger and Samantha," Mr. Burke ordered. "Enact Scenario 14."

I pushed the gun more tightly against Mr. Burke's head. "What's Scenario 14?"

"It's on a need-to-know basis."

"What's Scenario 14? I'll shoot you. I mean it."

"You're not going to shoot me over that. Just because you have no intelligence doesn't mean you shouldn't respect other people's. I'll admit it—you have the advantage right now, but do you really want to squander it over this?"

"If you hurt my wife and son, I'll make sure Shirley gets to spend as much time with you as she wants. You'll be her plaything. When she gets done messing you up, you'll wish that somebody like you had done it instead."

Mr. Burke nodded. "You know, I have to respect that."

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

"Scenario 14 has nothing to do with Helen or Kyle. Does that make you feel better?"

I didn't feel that much better, since I was relatively certain that Scenario 14 was not "Set out fresh daisies for the houseguests." But I couldn't worry about that now.

"Tell your men not to kill anybody," I said.

"But I want them to kill somebody."

I wanted to wrap my remaining fingers around his pinky and pull it back until the bone snapped, both to make him do as I said and because it would be enjoyable. But with Theresa standing there watching her father in action, I decided to give Mr. Burke a few more seconds to comply.

"Tell them! I'm one step away from complete whack-job bonkers insanity right now so you'd better do whatever the hell I say!"

"Don't harm them yet!" Mr. Burke called out.

"Tell them to send Roger and Samantha back in here."

"I'll compromise," Mr. Burke told me. "Send Roger back in here!"

Roger stepped back into the doorway, though he didn't come all the way back into the apartment. His hands were still in the air.

"We're all walking out of here," I said to Mr. Burke. "We're going to gather up Helen and Kyle, and your men are not going to try anything that would get you killed. Do you understand?"

"Sure, why not?"

Carefully, with me keeping the gun pressed tightly against Mr. Burke's head, the three of us stood up. I felt more than a little woozy but refused to succumb to the desire to drop back down to the floor.

Mr. Burke did appear to be somewhat concerned about his personal safety, which made me feel better.

Shirley looked over at me. "If you steal my chance to kill him, I'll kill you in his place."

"Sure. Fine. However you want to handle it."

Suddenly Shirley looked positively horrified and sick to her stomach. "I can't believe I said that. I...I...I'm not that kind of person. I'm not a killer. I remember now."

I took a step toward the doorway, but Shirley didn't follow.

"When I had those blackouts on the business trips, I'd go out hunting for animals. But I never caught them. Except when I was home. I had a trap. I caught lots of animals. Squirrels. Possums. I'd catch them, and I'd kill them, and I'd keep them in a cooler."

"Can we do this later?" I requested.

"That house...I used to play there when I was a girl. My friend Jessica and I would hide under the floorboards. But I never killed a person. I pretended that the animals were people, but I never killed a person. I didn't kill anybody until I stabbed that man in the house." She looked at me with an accusatory rage in her eyes. "You turned me into a killer!"

"I tried to stop you from stabbing him!"

She considered that, then gave the same look of accusatory rage to Mr. Burke. "He worked for you! You sent him there! You turned me into a killer!"

"That's right," said Mr. Burke. "Join me. Kill Andrew right now and I'll give you the opportunity to kill more people than you can imagine! Embrace it! This is what you were meant to be!"

"Blow me! You threw me in a pit!"

"To give you a chance to blossom!"

"Blow me! I'm not going to forget about the pit! If I'm going to kill, I'm only going to kill assholes! And you're an asshole!"

"Okay, okay," I said, trying to keep my voice calm and reasonable. "So we're back to the idea that you're going to kill Mr. Burke after this is over. That totally works. Let's just get my family back first."

"All right."

"We're coming out with your boss!" I shouted, thankful that my voice was working better.

Roger picked up the sub-machine gun he'd set down earlier. There was still another gun left, but I didn't want Shirley or Theresa to have it.

I didn't feel entirely comfortable stepping out into the hallway, since Mr. Burke wasn't nearly large enough to hide both Shirley and I if they decided to take a shot. But with a handgun to their boss's head, I hoped they wouldn't try anything too risky.

"What kind of guns do they have?" I whispered to Roger.

He gestured with the sub-machine gun he was holding.

Good. If they had a sniper rifle they might try to kill us out from behind Mr. Burke, but they wouldn't do it with unwieldy weapons like those.

Granted, I was trying to analyze the tactical process of people I had never met who were trying to protect an insane mass-murdering millionaire. Still, it seemed reasonable.

We moved toward the doorway. Being a chivalrous individual, I did not try to arrange it so that Mr. Burke was covering more of me than he was of Shirley.

"We're coming out!" I said.

"All right," said the man in the hallway. "We won't shoot."

I looked over at Theresa. "Do not come out of this room for anything, okay?"

She nodded. God, I hoped I hadn't broken my daughter.

We couldn't delay any more. Shirley, Mr. Burke, and I walked out into the hallway.

Samantha was right there, facing us. She'd definitely been slapped around, but at least she hadn't been severely beaten like Roger.

Two men were behind her, about ten feet away, both of them pointing guns in our direction.

One of them fired.

The back of Shirley's head practically exploded as two or three bullets pounded into her forehead and made a gaping exit wound on their way out.

A couple more bullets whizzed past my own head.

Samantha dove to the floor.

I pulled Mr. Burke back into the apartment as Shirley dropped next to us.

Roger poked his gun out and opened fire. He did not let out an intensely masculine Rambo-like roar as he did so, but I could see that it was happening in his mind.

Then he lowered the gun and rushed out into the hallway.

I gave the barrel of my gun a little twist to remind Mr. Burke that it was still there. I quickly glanced at Shirley. She was definitely dead. And, of course, still handcuffed to me. That was going to be mighty inconvenient.

I looked out into the hallway. Two men lay on their backs, lots of bullet holes in their bodies. Roger helped Samantha to her feet. They embraced.

Though I hated to spoil their reunion with my own concerns, I spoke up: "Helen and Kyle are still in danger! We have to find them!"

"I know where Kyle is," said Samantha. "He was with me." She noticed Shirley's corpse lying next to me and gasped. "Who was she?"

"Our second client."

Roger let go of Samantha and pointed the sub-machine gun at Mr. Burke. "Where's Helen?"

Mr. Burke didn't flinch. "You won't shoot me. You still need me."

"Apparently not," said Roger. "It sounds like you've told them not to negotiate. From my point of view, that makes you kind of worthless."

"They saw an opportunity and took it."

"Andrew, unless you tell me not to, I'm going to empty a few rounds into his kneecaps."

"Go for it."

"I'll take you to her," said Mr. Burke. "She's to the left."

Roger picked up the other sub-machine gun and gave it to Samantha. He kissed her on the lips.

"Kyle is the other way," Samantha said. "I'll go get him. I'll be okay, I promise."

"I'm not leaving you," Roger told her.

"You have to. We don't know who else is left. Find Helen, then we'll all get out of here."

"Okay," said Roger, though he definitely did not sound happy about it.

"Roger, will you marry me?"

Roger looked as shocked as if he'd...well, been given an electric shock. His eyes widened and his mouth dropped open and after a moment of dead silence he said: "I...I...I don't...I can't...uh, no, not right now."

"I'll go get your son," Samantha told me, with no visible reaction to what Roger had said. She hurried off with the gun.

"You can't keep a gun to his head and drag Shirley along at the same time," Roger said. "I'm going to stick with you."

"Stay right next to me," I told Theresa. "We're going to get Mommy."

We stepped out into the hallway and moved to the right. Keeping a gun pressed against Mr. Burke's head while handcuffed to a dead body that Roger was helping me drag with one hand while holding a heavy sub-machine gun in the other was going to be tricky.

"You said no?"

"I..."

"What the hell, dude?"

"I'm stressed out right now! I can't think!"

"You really should have said yes."

"Why did she ask me? That's not the way it's supposed to work!"

"You were going to ask her!"

"That doesn't mean she was supposed to ask me! How do I know she just doesn't want to die single?"

"You're an idiot!"

"I'm sorry! It was a weird time to ask! She messed with my mind! I can't be expected to give the right answer when she just throws the question at me like that!"

We'd return to this issue later. We continued to drag Shirley's corpse behind us, and it was slowing us down in a big way, as dead bodies tend to do.

How could she weigh so much? We'd barely eaten in the past few days!

"This isn't going to work," I said. "You go on ahead."

Roger let go of Shirley's arm. It flopped to the floor. "Where's Helen?" he asked Mr. Burke.

"Do you really believe there's still time to save her?"

Roger did the finger-breaking move that I'd wanted to do earlier. Mr. Burke screamed. "Where's Helen?" Roger repeated.

"She's dead."

"Want me to break another one?"

"If you wish."

Roger broke another one.

Mr. Burke screamed again, but his scream quickly transformed into a laugh. "I'm not taking you to her," he said. "You're going to have to kill me, right in front of young impressionable Theresa."

He pulled away from me and began to run down the hallway.

Roger and I both shot him.

Mr. Burke tumbled forward, blood spurting from several places in his legs.

"We don't have to kill you, moron," I told him.

Mr. Burke rolled onto his side, bellowing in a great deal of (but not enough) pain.

I wasn't thrilled that we couldn't keep Mr. Burke with us anymore, but nobody had come out after us since Roger killed the other two guys. Maybe Mr. Burke had run out of associates.

A man in one of the jack-o-lantern masks came through a door at the end of the hall, toting a shotgun. Roger immediately fired off about three dozen rounds, most of which went wild and bounced off the walls, but two of which punctured the man's mask. The man stood motionless for a moment, as if his body was trying to decide if it had been mortally wounded, and then he fell.

"It's not good news when your men are worried about protecting their identity in your own place," I told Mr. Burke. He was too busy rolling around and getting blood on his hallway carpet to respond.

Roger went up ahead as I dragged Shirley's corpse over to the closest door and tested the knob. Locked. Of course.

I pounded on the door. I thought I heard some sort of noise from inside, but couldn't tell what it was. Voices? Sounded like it could be.

I dragged Shirley back over to Mr. Burke. "Where are the keys?" I asked him.

"Shirley swallowed them."

I shot him in the leg again.

"In my pocket!"

I kept the gun pointed at his chin as I crouched down and patted him. There was a ring of six or seven keys in his left pants pocket. Come to think of it, I'd felt them when I was searching for the antidote. It was probably unnecessary to have shot him again. Oh well.

Roger tested two other doors at the end of the hall. "Both locked," he said.

I dragged Shirley's dead body back to the first door. "Cover me," I told Roger as I tried the first key. It slid right into the lock. Lucky break.

"Don't open that!" Mr. Burke shouted. "You won't like what you see!"

I opened the door and looked into the room. Just as our living quarters had been a semi-accurate replica of Roger's apartment, this room looked very close to my living room at home.

Helen was inside.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

A young Mexican woman stood in front of Helen as if protecting her. She waved her arms and shouted something at me in Spanish.

"Andrew!" Helen, who looked scared and sleep-deprived but physically unharmed, moved out from behind the woman. "It's okay, she's my nurse, she's a prisoner, too!"

She started to rush toward me, then stopped as she saw that I was handcuffed to a woman whose brains had been blown out.

"It's fine," I assured Helen, wanting to sob with relief. "I mean, it's not fine, she's dead, and she wasn't evil or anything, but she wasn't good, either, and I lost my other pinky, but it's all fine now, I love you, how are you?"

"Mommy!" Theresa rushed into the room and gave Helen a big hug.

"Daddy!"

I spun around. Kyle stood in the doorway, holding Samantha's hand.

I couldn't believe it! Everybody was safe!

I hugged my son. He had a bruise on his face that wasn't there in the video, but otherwise, he looked fine. Roger and I had sustained the worst injuries of everybody by far. Well, if you didn't count Shirley.

"Do you know how to get out of here?" I asked Samantha.

"No. But we'll find our way out; I don't think the place is that big."

The seven of us walked out of the room. Roger, Samantha, and I kept our guns up, ready to fire, so we were pretty well covered.

"Where's the exit?" I asked Mr. Burke.

"There is no exit."

"I'd like you to stop that," I said. "You've gone from an intimidating monster to an annoying bleeding little helpless loser, and it's time to quit the games. I don't know why you think we won't kill you."

"Because you think you're better than that."

"I've killed other bad guys, and I like you way less than some of them. So give me a straight answer."

"There is no exit."

"You're going to make Roger break another finger, aren't you? What the hell is the matter with you? Did your mind just completely shut down when you realized that we won?"

"What makes you think you've won?"

"Look at yourself. Do you think you've won? That's a pretty crappy victory."

Mr. Burke wiped some blood off his pants leg. "I'm not saying that I hoped this was the way things would work out. Clearly it isn't. But think about your losses."

"You cost me another finger, but you know what, I got used to having nine fingers and I'll get used to having eight. I've been hurt worse than this, and I'll heal. Roger will heal. Our babies are going to be fine. You murdered a lot of innocent people, and Bruce was a friend, but my family is safe. You lose."

I left my children's psychological trauma out of my speech. Hell, maybe this whole ordeal would bring Theresa and I closer together than ever before. Wishful delusional thinking, but...

"I suppose you're right," said Mr. Burke. "You've won. I concede victory." He pointed to one of the doors Roger had checked. "That's how you get out."

Now I was unsure how to proceed. Since Mr. Burke had said that was the door to freedom, did that mean we should use any other door?

"Cover me," said Roger, taking the key ring from me. He walked over to the door and unlocked it, standing off to the side just in case somebody behind the door decided to shoot.

He turned the knob and carefully pushed the door open.

We all waited. Nobody breathed.

He peeked inside.

Then he recoiled.

"What is it?" I asked.

"Vic. He ended up blowing out his brains after all. It's all over. You don't want to see...oh, shit. Oh, no. Please, no."

I stepped forward, dragging Shirley along the carpet again.

"Andrew, stop!" Roger said. "Don't come over here. Helen, don't let him come over here."

I kept moving toward the door. "What's wrong?"

Roger had tears in his eyes and I'd never seen him looking so frantic. "Goddamn it, Andrew, stay where you are, give me a second, okay?"

Helen put her hand on my chest to encourage me to stop. "Just wait. Roger, what's going on?" She walked over to the doorway, looked inside, and immediately burst into tears.

Mr. Burke chuckled.

No way in hell was I going to wait. I yanked the handcuffs so hard that I thought I might rip Shirley's dead arm off, went to the doorway, and looked inside the room.

Vic was indeed dead. But he'd killed two other people before himself.

"Mom...? Dad...?"

EPILOGUE

Nobody killed Mr. Burke in a fit of fury.

As I wept for my dead parents and Helen consoled me, Roger decided that Mr. Burke needed to be kept somewhere safe until we could get help. The monster cackled with psychotic glee as Roger dragged him to the deep pit where Shirley, Theresa and I had spent three days. He stopped cackling after he struck the bottom.

Samantha found a knife in what we assumed was Mr. Burke's private office. She threw a sheet over Shirley's corpse and went to work on the lock. I cried the entire time. Even when the bracelet popped open and I pulled my hand free, I just couldn't stop crying.

Eventually I did. And I hugged my kids and my wife and I promised them that from now on, everything would be better. I wasn't completely sure what I even meant by that, but it felt good to say it.

* * *

We walked alongside a long Costa Rican (we thought) dirt road. Nobody had been able to find a cell phone, and the huge white house we'd been in was apparently way the hell out in the middle of nowhere.

Helen's caregiver had gone up ahead. The rest of us walked together. Slowly.

"We never really have great victories, do we?" asked Roger.

"Nope."

"The weather's nice, though. Sunny. We could be walking out here in the pouring rain and that would really suck."

"You're right," I said. "The weather is very nice."

"And you could still be handcuffed. Can you imagine having to drag Shirley through the mud?"

"I would have stayed behind if that were the case."

"So, it's nice that you didn't have to stay behind."

"Yep."

"I'm sorry," said Roger, "but could everybody do me a huge favor and stop walking for a minute? I don't know if this is even remotely the right time to do this kind of thing, and it probably isn't, but..." He dropped down to one knee in front of Samantha. "Samantha, I know I don't have a ring or anything, but will you marry me?"

She gazed into his eyes for a long moment.

Then she blinked and looked away.

"I don't think I can. I can't go through this again. I'm sorry."

"But it's all okay now, right? Mr. Burke probably broke his neck when he fell in the pit. I heard a snap. It might have been his legs, but it might have been his neck, too. Either way, he's not coming after us again. It's all okay."

"It's not just him. I...I need to think about it."

Roger stared up at her, looking positively heartbroken.

"No," he said. "That's not the answer I want. You asked me to marry you, and it wasn't a great time for me, but as far as I'm concerned the offer is still on the table. So, yes, Samantha Tracer, I accept your proposal."

"It doesn't work that way."

"It's not traditional, no, but we don't do much that is. Yes, I'll marry you. Thank you for asking."

Samantha knelt down as well and gave him a gentle kiss on the lips. "Roger?"

"Yes?"

"I love you dearly, but let's work this out another time."

"Yeah, I guess you're right."

They both got up and we resumed walking. Roger was going to have to do something big and bold, something out of a wacky romantic comedy, to win her back. Maybe I'd help him brainstorm ideas.

After Mom and Dad's funeral.

I almost hoped that Mr. Burke hadn't broken his neck in the pit, because if he was still alive when he was delivered to justice, it was going to be very bad for him. I wondered if Tony Frenkle knew yet what had happened to his twin brother, and what he would do if he had the opportunity to confront Mr. Burke.

Probably nothing. He couldn't just murder him or anything. Still, it was nice to think about.

But Mr. Burke hadn't won. He'd taken a hell of a lot from me, but if you put our encounters onto a great big flashy scoreboard, it would still say Mr. Burke 0, Andrew Mayhem 2.

I was in a lot of pain and the poison had probably done some damage to my insides and I didn't expect the next few weeks to be the finest of my life. But as I held Helen's hand and walked along the dirt road with Theresa and Kyle next to me, I had to agree with Roger, the weather was pretty nice.

The End

AFTERWORD

I didn't want to spoil the Harry McGlade cameo before you read the book, so this is where I'll thank Joe Konrath for letting me use his beloved character. In case you missed it, Andrew Mayhem and Harry McGlade's paths first crossed in the novella Suckers, which you can snatch from...

http://tinyurl.com/cuwu7dc

And you can visit Joe's very, very, very robust website at http://www.joekonrath.com

Remember: Readers who leave reviews deserve great big hugs!

Subscribe to Jeff Strand's free monthly newsletter (which includes a brand-new original short story in every issue) at

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Books By Jeff Strand

Bring Her Back. A tale of revenge and madness.

Sick House. A home invasion from beyond the grave.

How You Ruined My Life (Young Adult). Sixteen-year-old Rod has a pretty cool life until his cousin Blake moves in and slowly destroys everything he holds dear.

Everything Has Teeth. A third collection of short tales of horror and macabre comedy.

An Apocalypse of Our Own. Can the Friend Zone survive the end of the world?

Stranger Things Have Happened (Young Adult). Teenager Marcus Millian III is determined to be one of the greatest magicians who ever lived. Can he make a live shark disappear from a tank?

Cyclops Road. When newly widowed Evan Portin gives a woman named Harriett a ride out of town, she says she's on a cross-country journey to slay a Cyclops. Is she crazy, or...?

Blister. While on vacation, cartoonist Jason Tray meets the town legend, a hideously disfigured woman who lives in a shed.

The Greatest Zombie Movie Ever (Young Adult). Three best friends with more passion than talent try to make the ultimate zombie epic.

Kumquat. A road trip comedy about TV, hot dogs, death, and obscure fruit.

I Have a Bad Feeling About This (Young Adult). Geeky, non-athletic Henry Lambert is sent to survival camp, which is bad enough before the trio of murderous thugs show up.

Pressure. What if your best friend was a killer...and he wanted you to be just like him? Bram Stoker Award nominee for Best Novel.

Dweller. The lifetime story of a boy and his monster. Bram Stoker Award nominee for Best Novel.

A Bad Day For Voodoo. A young adult horror/comedy about why sticking pins in a voodoo doll of your history teacher isn't always the best idea. Bram Stoker Award nominee for Best Young Adult Novel.

Dead Clown Barbecue. A collection of demented stories about severed noses, ventriloquist dummies, giant-sized vampires, sibling stabbings, and lots of other messed-up stuff.

Dead Clown Barbecue Expansion Pack. A few more stories for those who couldn't get enough.

Wolf Hunt. Two thugs for hire. One beautiful woman. And one vicious frickin' werewolf.

Wolf Hunt 2. New wolf. Same George and Lou.

The Sinister Mr. Corpse. The feel-good zombie novel of the year.

Benjamin's Parasite. A rather disgusting action/horror/comedy about why getting infected with a ghastly parasite is unpleasant.

Fangboy. A dark and demented fairy tale for adults.

Kutter. A serial killer finds a Boston terrier, and it might just make him into a better person.

Faint of Heart. To get her kidnapped husband back, Melody has to relive her husband's nightmarish weekend, step-by-step...and survive.

Mandibles. Giant killer ants wreaking havoc in the big city!

Stalking You Now. A twisty-turny thriller soon to be the feature film Mindy Has To Die.

Graverobbers Wanted (No Experience Necessary). First in the Andrew Mayhem series.

Single White Psychopath Seeks Same. Second in the Andrew Mayhem series.

Casket For Sale (Only Used Once). Third in the Andrew Mayhem series.

Lost Homicidal Maniac (Answers to "Shirley"). Fourth in the Andrew Mayhem series.

The Andrew Mayhem Collection. All four novels for one low price!

Suckers (with JA Konrath). Andrew Mayhem meets Harry McGlade. Which one will prove to be more incompetent?

Gleefully Macabre Tales. A collection of thirty-two demented tales. Bram Stoker Award nominee for Best Collection.

Elrod McBugle on the Loose. A comedy for kids (and adults who were warped as kids).

The Haunted Forest Tour (with James A. Moore). The greatest theme park attraction in the world! Take a completely safe ride through an actual haunted forest! Just hope that your tram doesn't break down, because this forest is PACKED with monsters...

Draculas (with JA Konrath, Blake Crouch, and F. Paul Wilson). An outbreak of feral vampires in a secluded hospital. This one isn't much like Twilight.

For information on all of these books, visit Jeff Strand's more-or-less official website at http://www.jeffstrand.com