Red, White & Dead

12

My eyes shot around the place. There had been at least six other people in the room when we entered. Now it was just Lucy and me and the kids, who were bending over a fern in the corner, pointing at hovering butterflies.

“Lucy,” I said, my voice low.

Her eyes narrowed. She looked at the man by the entrance. She called quietly for her kids to come to her.

“Lucy,” I said again, pointing as surreptitiously as possible to Dez Romano, who stood, blocking the exit, giving a hostile, cold stare that scared the hell out of me.

She stood. “Dez, what are you doing here?”

He took a few steps toward us, arms still crossed. He wore soft-looking camel pants and a houndstooth jacket. “I came to say hello to Suzanne. Or is it Isabel? Or should I say ‘Izzy’?” He gave me a cool, level stare. “Or wait. Should I say Izzy McNeil? That’s right, isn’t it?”

I stood alongside Lucy. We looked at each other; her eyes were pained.

“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice still low.

“Did you know this was going to happen?” I whispered.

“No!” Her eyes went big, scared. “God, no.”

“Then how?”

“Michael must be taping my phone conversations. Or maybe everything in my house.” Her voice was anguished.

“Lucy, you should get the kids out of here.”

She glanced around, and raising her voice said, “Noah. Belle. Come here.”

The humidity in the room seemed to be pushing downward, making it hard to breathe.

Dez smiled at me. A triumphant smile. “You and I have some talking to do, little girl.”

The kids ran up to Lucy. They were quiet, eyes big, as if they’d just noticed the heavy, frightening weight in the room. Lucy wrapped her arms around them. “Where’s Michael?” she said.

Dez shrugged, didn’t take his eyes off me. “No idea. We don’t work together anymore. Why don’t you take off, Lucy?”

“I’m not leaving my friend.”

“Oh, you’re friends, are you?”

I turned to her. “Just go. If something happened to the kids I’d feel terrible.”

Lucy looked conflicted.

“It’s okay,” I said. I leaned toward her and whispered, “Call Mayburn when you’re outside.” My whisper sounded calm, even authoritative, but panic was thumping in my chest.

Dez glanced at the guy in black and nodded. The guy took a few steps into the room. He looked about my age, maybe thirty, but his face was twisted somehow, as if he’d seen centuries of wars and strife. His neck was tattooed with a multitude of what looked like grotesque images—bloody knives, disembodied heads and a large circle with a capital A inside it.

“Mommy?” Belle said, her voice a scared whimper.

“Lucy, go,” I said.

The guy in black took another step into the room. So did Dez. He waved a hand behind him at the exit. “See ya later, Lucy. We’ve got everything we need here.”

It was said in such a demeaning tone that I could feel Lucy bristle. She threw her shoulders back, then hugged her kids closer, hesitating.

“Mom?” Noah asked.

“We’re going home,” she said. “And Izzy is coming with us.” She started to move forward. She put a hand on my arm, tugging me with her.

“Oh, no,” Dez said, laughing. “Izzy is not going anywhere.” Beyond one of his shoulders, two black butterflies circled lazily, like tiny vultures around a corpse.

What did he want? What was he going to do?

“We’re leaving,” Lucy said, “and you’re going to leave all of us alone.”

Another chuckle, then the smile dropped. “Get the fuck out of here, Lucy, and take those kids, or I’m going to stop being nice about it.”

A deafening siren pierced the room. The kids threw their hands over their ears.

Dez pulled a cell phone from his breast pocket, opened it, typed something in as if he was texting. The siren stopped in the room, although we could still hear it outside.

“The whole place is being evacuated,” Dez said. “Small fire apparently.”

Lucy and I looked at each other.

“Go.” I nodded. “I’ll be right behind you.” I didn’t know if I believed it, but she had to get the kids away from these guys.

She took the kids, walked toward the exit. She shot a scared look over her shoulder.

“Thatta girl, Lucy,” Dez said in the same demeaning tone. He tried to pat her on the shoulder, but she flinched and glared at him.

She kept the kids moving and pushed through the exit doors.

Dez looked at the guy in black. “Make sure she gets all the way outside.”

The guy left. Dez flashed that cold smile again. “Finally. We’re alone. Just where I wanted you the other night.”

His tone slithered. It seemed to wind through the heat to reach me. Why had I thought him fairly harmless on Sunday?

I coughed and forced my mind into the mode I used when I was nervous about a case and had to step up in front of a judge. “What can I do for you?”

“Oh, you’re going to do a lot for me. A lot. You’re going to start out by telling me who you work for.”

“What makes you think I work for someone?”

“A girl like you isn’t smart enough to try and fleece me on your own.”

It was my turn to bristle. I’d rather be called anything other than stupid.

Dez saw it. He smiled, then looked me up and down slowly, lecherously.

I glanced at the exit door. The sirens outside kept screaming.

“You know what?” I started to walk right toward him. “Let’s just cut the shit. I wasn’t trying to fleece you. I work for the federal government. You’re under surveillance.” I had no idea what I was talking about, but the words had the effect I wanted. An uncertain look crossed Dez’s face.

“You don’t want to harm a federal agent,” I continued. I thought of all the times Maggie had talked to me about sentencing hearings. “That’ll get you another eighty-six months in prison.” My heart was banging in my chest now, but still I kept walking toward him. “Leave me alone and you’ll be fine. I’ve got nothing on you anyway.”

Again, for a moment, he looked unsure. But he was still blocking the path to the exit. I seized the moment and veered to the right, toward the entrance doors.

Apparently, Dez wasn’t as unsure as I’d thought. He moved fast, grabbing me by the arm, twisting it behind my back. “Don’t walk away from me,” he said. “Don’t ever walk away from me.”

I started shaking. I couldn’t help it.

“Yeah, baby,” Dez said in my ear, twisting my arm tighter behind me so that it felt it would pop out of the socket. “That’s how I like it. I like you scared. I like you trembling. That’s going to make this so much more fun.”

I’d taken a self-defense class once in college. My mind scuttled about, trying to remember what I learned, what you were supposed to do. “No!” I yelled. That was the main thing I remembered from the class. “No!” I yelled again. It wasn’t super helpful given that the fire alarm was still shrieking outside the room.

Yank. Dez twisted my arm tighter. I tried not to whimper, but a grimaced moan escaped from my throat.

“Yeah, that’s it.” Dez pulled my arm up and even tighter. “Feels nice, doesn’t it? You’re into pain, aren’t you? That’s good.” His breath was hot, moist in my ear. “I don’t care who you work for. I really don’t. You stepped into the wrong pile of shit here, because I make an example of people who mess with me. I am going to fuck you up, girl. Bad.” He chuckled. “I mean really bad. But you’ll love it.” His wet breath was whispering in my ear now. Yank again with my arm.

I turned my face away from his, then decided to try and use the momentum to my advantage. I swung my face back, and before he could react, Crack! I hit my forehead hard against his nose.

“Goddamn it!” he said. One arm still clenched mine, but he raised his other hand to his face as if searching for swelling or blood. Suddenly, I remembered another tactic from that self-defense class. I raised my foot and brought it down hard on the top of his.

“You cunt!” The blow to the foot seemed only to anger him, not to slow him down. The arm he’d raised to his face shot to me now, but in that second, I ducked fast and managed to squirm out of his grasp. A huge urn with an exotic tree was just to my left. It was about as tall as me. I grasped it at the top and heaved it. I couldn’t lift it, but I managed to get it rolling on its base, right at Dez.

It hit him, but he deflected it and the urn crashed to the floor, breaking into hundreds of shards of pottery, water pooling around our feet. I turned to run toward the entrance doors, but right then they opened. The guy dressed in black stepped inside. He looked over my shoulder for a second at Dez, then lunged toward me, pulling both arms behind my back, and facing me toward Dez.

Dez grinned coolly. “Isabel McNeil, meet Ransom. Ransom likes redheads, don’t you?”

The guy behind me murmured something I couldn’t exactly understand, a garbled, guttural string of words.

“After I get you, he gets you,” Dez said. “And he likes pain as much as you.”

I started trembling again. What in the hell should I do?

Dez took one step toward me, then another. I kept shaking, and Ransom kept gripping his meaty hands tighter around my arms, pulling me back against him.

Just then I saw something above Dez—one of the massive moths that had been on the glass ceiling. It fluttered behind Dez’s head, almost as if it were dazzled by the sheen of his overapplied hair gel.

“Dude,” Ransom said, followed by more guttural-sounding words. I could only make out, “You got some—”

“I got some what?” Dez said, his voice coy but menacing. He stared at my breasts. Took a step toward me. But then the moth decided to land. Right on Dez’s head.

“What the fuck?” Dez screamed, batting at his hair. “What the fuck?”

But the moth wouldn’t leave. In fact, it fluttered up for a second, then landed again, this time on his face.

“Fucking bug!” He squashed the thing with his hands, but it was as if he’d angered the moth’s posse, because suddenly there were four of them, all flapping around Dez’s face, while he swore and smacked at himself.

Ransom tried to drag me over to Dez, I guess to help him, but the minute his grip lessened the tiniest bit, I surged out of his clutches and dashed to the doors. I pushed through them and started running, yelling for help. But there was no one in the museum, just the screams of the fire alarm. I heard another sound behind me, though, and I looked over my shoulder. Dez and Ransom, sans the moths, were running after me and fast. I turned and kept hauling.

“Help!” I yelled once or twice, but I knew it was pointless. I ran downstairs, past an exhibit about rainwater. I could hear the footfalls of Dez and Ransom at the top of the stairs. I had to find somewhere to conceal myself before they got to the first floor. My eyes careened wildly around the place. But the floor plan was open—made so children could enjoy themselves and their parents could keep an eye on them. There were no nooks or crannies.

I kept running. I had to get outside before they did. I turned a corner and just then an arm shot out from a photo booth and pulled me hard. Shit! Was it another one of Dez’s guys? Then I thought, Dad?

Still, my instincts made me struggle against it, until I heard a fierce whisper. “Jesus Christ, McNeil. Relax.”

“Mayburn?”

He clamped his hand over my mouth and pulled me into the booth, one of those old-fashioned ones that print little strips of photos. Over the sirens, we heard footsteps pounding down the hallway.

“Quiet,” Mayburn whispered.

I held my breath, froze my body.

The footsteps stopped. Where were they? What were they doing? With the sirens still ringing, we couldn’t hear them now that they weren’t running.

I held my breath so that I wouldn’t move. With Mayburn’s hand still over my mouth, I felt I was going to pass out. I shook his hand away from my face. Sucked in quiet lungfuls of breath.

“Hey, Ransom,” I heard Dez say loudly. He must have been fifteen feet from us. “Ever get your picture taken in one of those booths?”

Ransom gurgled a response, which sounded like a sickening laugh.

“Yeah, let’s get a picture.” Dez’s voice was closer now. “We’ve never had our picture taken together.”

Ransom gurgled again, sounding closer, too.

I tried to turn to see Mayburn, so we could figure out what in the hell we were going to do, but then we heard a crash of glass, followed by shouting.

“It’s the Chicago Fire Department!” someone yelled. “Is there anyone in the building?”

We heard the banging of boots on the floor.

“Sir! Sirs!” It must have been one of the firefighters yelling at Dez and Ransom. “Sirs, we have to evacuate the building. This way.”

“We’re okay,” Dez shouted.

“Exit this way, sirs.”

“Yeah, just a minute.”

“Now!” yelled the firefighter. “We need you out of here.” Boots pounded closer.

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