Page 117 of Blow Me Down
I held up my hand to stop him, holding my breath to listen. The house seemed to be quiet, but it felt different from Corbin’s house. This house was not empty. I tiptoed to the opening to the hall, peeking quickly around it, then gesturing with the scimi for Holder to follow. The doors nearest me on either side of the hall were shut, but at the far end, one was tantalizingly half-open. I walked as silently as I could on the wood floor, taking a good, firm grip of my scimitar as I gently eased the door open.
The room had clearly been intended to be a master bedroom, but like Corbin’s atrium, this one was filled with computer equipment, the table directly across from the door holding an impressive array of computers. An empty computer chair sat pushed aside. On one of the computer monitors, a familiar financial screen was blinking slowly.
“Gotcha,” I said softly as I stepped into the room.
“Mmarfm?”
I spun around at the muffled voice, gasping at the sight of the bloodied man who lay bound and gagged, propped up against a metal filing cabinet. I ran to squat next to him, tossing down my sword in order to run my hands over him in an attempt to assess how badly he was injured. Holder was right behind me, doing a protective sweep with his scimi.
“Corbin! Don’t move, my darling. We’ll have you out of here in a second.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t count on that,” a familiar voice drawled from the doorway. I glanced over my shoulder to see a man who bore a faint resemblance to Bart leaning against the door frame. In his hand he held a gun. “You see, this time, Iwillwin. And that means bye-bye Corbin.”
Chapter 29
Away to the cheating world go you,
Where pirates all are well-to-do;
But I’ll be true to the song I sing,
And live and die a Pirate King.
—Ibid, Act I
I am the first person to admit that there are times when my common sense takes a leap out the nearest window. This was one of those times. Rather than be concerned with the fact that Paul, a man who had absolutely no qualms about kidnapping, embezzling, and attacking people, stood before me handling a very deadly looking gun, I was furious over the fact that he had hurt Corbin.
“Just what the hell have you done to him?” I demanded to know, getting to my feet so I could stand in front of Paul, my hands on my hips, my jaw set in an aggressive manner. I prayed that Holder would realize that I was blocking Paul’s vision, and get Corbin’s hands untied. “What did you do, you bastard?
Sneak up behind him like the dog you are and attack him when he was at his computer?”
Paul’s eyes lit with a fury that had me rethinking the wisdom of taunting a man with a gun, but I stuck to it, wanting to keep all of his attention focused on me rather than what Holder was doing. “Still the brash, foolish little spitfire, I see,”
Paul drawled in a fashion that left my palm itching to slap the smug look right off his face. “We’ll see how feisty you are after I’ve put a few holes in Corbin.
As for your guess, it’s not quite accurate. I didn’t have to sneak up behind Corbin to crack him on the head. I arrived in his house a short while before he logged out of the game. If you two had stayed there a few minutes longer while I reinstalled my modifications, I wouldn’t have had to take such drastic actions, but I believe this will work out well after all.”
I deliberately closed my mind to the faint rustling noises behind me that indicated that Holder was removing Corbin’s bonds. It was vital that I keep Paul’s attention on me, keep him talking, until we could overpower him and beat the crap out of him. Or call the police, whichever came first (and I knew which one I wanted to come first). “So, this whole thing, your big elaborate plan with Bart and Renata—it was all about stealing Corbin’s money, not getting revenge by messing up his game?”
Paul laughed, an evil, nasty laugh like villains in the movies indulge in shortly before they order someone into a tankful of hungry sharks. “Don’t be stupid, Amy. Hasn’t dear Corbin told you how many years of my blood I’ve put into this game? Didn’t he tell you that I was the one who suggested bringing a simple Java script into virtual reality? Did he leave out the fact that I redefined VR in order to make it possible so that anyone running a home computer could access it? Did he neglect to tell you how many years of my life I spent making this dream, my dream, a reality, only to have it stolen from me by a man who saw only what he wanted to see? If no one told you this, then let me be the first—Corbin Monroe owes me. I’m notstealinganything. He owes me for all of his success. I’m only taking what is mine!”
He was yelling by the time he ended, making me take a step back despite my need to block his view of Corbin. A low grunt behind me, and a beloved voice put that need to an end, however.
“You were paid for your work on the VR environment, Paul. You seem to have conveniently forgotten that fact, as well as a few others including the very generous settlement that was made when you agreed to license the VR
environment to us for the next ten years. You have been paid. We owe you nothing.”
I turned slightly to give Corbin a quick assessing glance, my mind taking a moment to adjust to the familiar image of the face that I had only before seen digitalized. He looked almost exactly the same as the Corbin I knew and loved— his face was a bit more gaunt, his jaw and chin covered in dark stubble, but his eyes were the same. Warm and bright despite his injuries, his gray-eyed gaze held mine for a moment before he moved to stand next to me. Blood streaked down his face from a stiff, matted section on the side of his head, but other than that, he seemed to be fine. Certainly the hand that took mine was strong and reassuring, his thumb stroking over the back of my hand in a manner that all but had me melting. He was Corbin, my Corbin, just the same as he had been as a pirate, and I wanted nothing more than to throw myself on him and cover his dear, adorable face with kisses.
“What do you think you’re going to do, Paul?” Holder asked, moving to my other side, neatly tossing a bit of cord that had been used to bind Corbin into a waiting trash can. “There are three of us and only one of you. You’re outnumbered, mate.”
“Oh, but this evens things up a bit, wouldn’t you say?” Paul answered, gesturing toward him with the gun. “As for what I’m going to do… I believe there will be a tragic three-way murder-suicide. Dear Corbin here is going to be distraught to the point of insanity when he finds out his lover here preferred Holder to him, and shoots both of them before blowing his own head off. I as mediator will have sadly failed in my attempt to reason with him, but I will serve as a sad witness to the tragedy that I could not stop.”
A chill ran down my spine at the sadistic light of enjoyment that glowed in his eyes. My fingers tightened around Corbin’s. He gave them an answering squeeze of reassurance. Just being in physical contact gave me a confidence that had been lacking the last few minutes.
“Sounds like something out of a movie of the week, but we’ll let that go. There is a major flaw in your reasoning, however,” I said.
“Oh?” Paul tipped his head to the side in a parody of curiosity. “And that would be what, Amy?”
