Page 104 of Loverboy
And then he tapes Aaron’s.
My nephew whimpers, and big fat tears gather in my eyes, and I blink them away. I can’t cry. I can’t.
“Listen up,” the bald man says, his gun still staring at me with its dark sinister eye. “You don’t move. You don’t scream. Nobody can hear you anyway, with all these windows closed, and a whole floor between you and the neighbors on three.”
I nod, to show I understand how right he is.
“Don’t move off that couch until morning. You don’t show up in the pie shop tomorrow, and someone will come lookin,’ right? You stay silent until then. You understand?”
I nod one more time. I need him to leave before Ginny shows up.
They recede toward the door. “Hurry,” the bald man grunts at the other. “He needs you in the basement.”
Thebasement. I gag behind the tape.Gunnar.
The door closes with a click, and I start moving my mouth right away, fighting the tape. I free my top lip, at least. “Aaron,” I whisper. “You can get your mouth open if you try really hard. But we have to help Gunnar. We’re going to head for my bedroom.”
That’s where the panic button is.
“He said not to move!” Aaron says, his mouth already free.
“We’re doing this for Gunnar. He needs us.”
And so will Ginny, if she happens to come home at just the wrong time.
I inch my butt toward the end of the couch. I’m afraid to lose my balance and fall onto Aaron. I use my knee to force the coffee table a few inches away from us, and it makes a horribly loud creak.
But I don’t care. Those men will be halfway to the basement already.
Aiming my torso toward the open rug, I lean forward and rise to my feet. My thighs are screaming because the tape keeps me from straightening up. I start inching along, limping toward the bedroom, Aaron a heavy, destabilizing weight.
“You’re strong, Aunt Posy,” he says.
I am strong, damn it. Strong enough to get to that panic button. “Work on your hands,” I grunt. “Can you get them free?” I wriggle one hand against the other one. I’m not sure there’s enough room to get free.
But the panic button is only twenty feet away. Dragging us into the bedroom seems to take forever, but it’s probably less than a minute. I can’t think about the basement or Gunnar or those men. Just the button. It’s on the bedside table. When I get there, I lean heavily against the table and try to figure out how to push it.
“See that button?” I wheeze, still trying to get my hand out of the zip tie. “Let’s see who can press it first.”
“I can!” Aaron says. “The tape doesn’t cover my fingers. Get me closer.”
That’s when I finally manage to wrench my hand out of the restraints.
Aaron’s finger and mine pile onto the button at exactly the same moment.
“It’s a tie!” he says happily.
Suddenly, there’s a soft red glow in the darkness as the button does its thing. For two seconds, I’m filled with relief.
Then I hear a gunshot. And Aaron bursts into tears.
31
Gunnar
It'spitch dark in the hundred-year-old staircase of Posy’s building, so I’m using the flashlight function on my watch to illuminate the shadowy stairs. I ease past the apartments on the third and second floors, listening. But all is quiet.
Meanwhile, my watch is pinging with error messages from the security equipment we installed in the pie shop.Loss of power Camera One.Loss of power Camera Two, and so on. If the power is out in the bakery, that means it wasn't just a circuit breaker or two that was flipped.
