The Hostage Bargain (16 page)

Zeus grunted.

“Say what you want,” I said to Zeus. “Those three, they love the farm. They need me to help support it, and yeah, we’re sisters, we love each other. But I’ve only ever wanted to leave. They know that.” For the first time, I felt a little anger toward my sisters.

Or maybe it was more that I accessed anger I didn’t know I felt. Why did I have to stay all those years? Why did I have to feel shitty for a couple days of freedom? It was totally irrational to be angry with
them
, I knew that. Still.

“What?” Thor came behind me and massaged my shoulders. “What is it?”

“It’s just that, when my folks died, I didn’t just lose the two most important people in my life. It put an end to all my dreams. I was the only adult and I
had
to stay, you know? I had to keep things going. For five years I put everything on hold. But the three of them are adults now. And they have twenty grand. There’re people they can hire.” I stared straight at Zeus. “You don’t want me along with you, Zeus? I get that. But after everything that has happened? I need to be free. When our gig is up, yeah, I’ll go back to Baylortown and do whatever you want me to do to make it look good. You know I can pull it off. But after that, I’m off. I’ll find a way to get them money, but it’s not going to be stitching quilts or feeding sheep or working as a teller in a goddamn bank back there.”

“All righty, then,” Zeus said.

“So don’t tell me if they need me or not, or how they need me, that’s all. I get that they miss me. But I’m doing some good for the farm right now, and I'll be home soon enough. We’re getting publicity and we can’t be foreclosed. I don’t see why I can’t enjoy that, and why you have to make me the bad guy.”

Snicks and clacks from the couch. Odin shoved a clip into a gun. He stood. Like Zeus, he was dressed in mercenary casual. He strolled over and pointed a giant gun at the picture on the wall, one I particularly hated. It had a cabin with a candle in the window. A flowered trellis. “Pow!” Odin said.

“It’s inappropriate to shoot the bad art,” I said.

Odin squinted. “We’re criminals, baby. Everything we do is inappropriate.”

I grinned. If I were writing an adventure essay about this experience I would totally use that line. But of course, I wouldn’t be writing this up. Even as a temporary member of the god pack, I was determined to play by their rules, to follow their code. It made me feel more like an insider.

Zeus wandered over to the coffee table and picked out a gun, then he went and stood by Odin and aimed at the picture. “Daddy wants to go to the range.”

“Let’s hit it before we sit on the bank.” Odin was still aiming, squinting. Maybe he was checking the sights or something. They made quite the picture. Still life with outlaws.

Zeus shoved his gun into a holster under his sweater. “You two stay here. Got it? Stay out of trouble.”

“Don’t worry,” Thor said.

Zeus and Odin left soon after. I poured more coffee. “No shooting range for you?”

Thor stared into his coffee. “I’m not much for it.”

“But you carry a gun,” I observed.

“We
are
criminals.” The bitter edge in Thor’s voice told me he didn’t find the term as amusing as Odin did. It struck me that
criminals
was a name that was
applied
to them, not one they’d chosen.

At the bank, we tellers had once heard Hank Vernon call us
ignorant hoes
and thereafter, we’d use it on one another, like,
Come on, share your cookies with the rest of us ignorant hoes.
Using the phrase on ourselves gave us power. Showed we were more. With a little bit of anger and hate in the mix.

That’s the way Thor used the word criminal. It made me wonder who he hated.

“Did you ever have to shoot one at a person?” I asked. “A gun?”

He crumbled a scone, looking ponderous, one chunk of hair over his eyes. “Once,” he said, softly. It weighed on him—grief, guilt—I couldn’t tell how it weighed, only
that
it weighed. I got up and went behind where he sat, put my hands on his shoulders and rubbed gently.

Thor sighed when I touched him like that. The sigh sounded like relief, like he needed this empathy. Thor was a doctor, and he clearly loved people, yet he’d shot, maybe killed a person. I stayed there, consoling him, wanting to rub the hurt away, knowing I couldn’t.

Suddenly he pushed away his plate. “Get dressed, we have errands to run.”

“But Zeus and Odin took the van.”

He looked up with a devilish smile. “You think we need the van to run an errand? Put on that sundress again.”

I narrowed my eyes. Odin and Zeus had told us to stay put. What errands did Thor suddenly want to run? I went to put on my sundress. When I came out, he was nowhere. I poured another cup of coffee and went online to www.SunnySistersSheepFarm.com.

There was the home page with its photo of the four of us girls holding hands surrounded by sheep. I’d worked hard on that site; building it turned out to be 80% tutorial watching and 20% site building. There was a page where I described the artisan blue cheese we make. Small-batch cheese making is a long, multi-staged process; one of my sisters would be taking over my parts. Probably Vanessa. When I clicked the to page for the natural wool comforters we make, I saw, that Vanessa had raised the price of our double from $280 to $420, and that they were delivering in seven to ten weeks, whereas it used to be three to five. Were they getting a ton of orders? That had to be why! I clicked to the blog and saw a new entry, dated this morning, entitled “Update on our sister,” with a photo of me with my formerly long red hair.

Thank you to everyone for the outpouring of support, prayers and well wishes. Thanks to the kindness of people, so many that we do not even know, our sister will have a farm to come back to. Please continue to pray and to keep an eye out for her.

We are also grateful for the comforter orders pouring in, but of course, most of all, we need our sister.

Melinda, if you’re reading this, we miss you so much! We love you. We know, also, how hard you worked and how much we were suffocating you. When you come back, we’ll make it up to you, and this will include tater tots with every meal, Candy doing the dishes, a way to send you around the world to make connections with retail outlets, and of course, no more working at a bank ever again! We will give you the Paris Hilton treatment! Please, bank robbers, let our sister come home!

I knew how Vanessa’s mind worked—the fact that she’d mentioned Paris Hilton was significant; it was like a secret code, telling me she’d gotten my message, and understood that I was happy being away. She wouldn’t have apologized like that otherwise. It made me feel so terrible to know she felt this guilty. I wished I could leave a comment on the post—
It’s not about you
! I would say.
Don’t feel guilty! Be happy for me and let me do this
!

Way too risky.

We suffocated you…

I scrolled to the older entries, but it was all my writing, posts about different sheep in the dairy flock and shearing and all that. Our Friesago was up for an award. Evilly, I wondered if the judges might give it to us for pity.

Twenty minutes later, Thor and I were slipping out the back of the hotel. We strolled through the pool area and out to the far section of the parking lot.

Thor stopped in front of a silver Camaro. “Hello.” He pulled a long, flat piece of metal from his sports coat and shoved it roughly against the window and down into the door housing.

I gasped. “What are you doing?”

“Opening the door.”

“What the fuck?”

“Relax.”

“I thought you were the doctor,” I said.

“I’m the doctor with the mostest.” He jerked out the strip and pulled open the door. The horn began to honk and he dove under the dash and did something I couldn’t see to stop it. A minute later, the car roared to life. He got out and smiled at me, all mischievous and gorgeous.

“I can’t believe you just did that.”

He leaned back on the car and motioned for me to get in the driver’s seat. “You’re driving.”

“A stolen car?”

“You can drive stick, can’t you?”

“Hello, it’s
stolen
.” Playfully, I grabbed the front of his shirt and jerked it back and forth.

He put his hands on my hips and pulled me to him. “And? You want to be the driver on a job and you can’t drive a stolen car?”

“It’s not an issue of
can
. I can drive it.” I leaned fully into him, pressing him against the car, letting him take my weight, enjoying the feel of his cock at my pelvis.

He kissed my neck. “Driving in a crime situation is different from driving in a normal situation. We’re going across town to get some catfish sandwiches for the guys for lunch. Let’s see if you have the nerve.”

“Did you just think of this? Is this something Odin and Zeus are on board with?”

“You want to stand here arguing? Can you drive it or not?”

“Of course I can.” I was proud of being a girl who was good at driving stick. I swung in.

“Out,” he said.

Aha, so he was just seeing if I
would
, I thought. I got out of the car again.

He lowered his voice. “Remove your panties.”

“Excuse me?”

“Don’t argue.”

My blood raced. I had this dim thought that maybe it was a test. That other girl, Venus, had driven for them. “You’ll see I can drive under any and all conditions.” I took off my panties, handed them over, and got in. He stuffed them in his pocket and got in the passenger side.

I put it into gear and slammed out of there.

“Right here and your first left.” His instructions took me across a pretty crowded few lanes and then left. “Left again. You drive a Camaro before?”

“No.”

He looked at me suspiciously.

“I’m from a farm, dude,” I said. “You start young on a farm, and you handle a lot of different vehicles in a lot of different circumstances. With sheep running all around.”

He pointed left. Taking me back across two lanes. So. Circles.

“You think I might be able to stay,” I said. “You think there’s a chance. Or you wouldn’t want to see me drive. Right?”

“Nothing’s changed, but we need you to sit with the car tomorrow.”

“I’d be a great driver. And I know how banks work, don’t I? I am a total asset. Not to mention a fellow god.” I smiled calmly at him but really, driving a stolen car freaked me out. I wished we were back at the hotel having sex.

“You wouldn’t actually drive, like a getaway driver. You would just keep the car running for us. Running and available to blast out. And call us if there’s any heat, and move it if it got blocked. For the getaway part, you’d move over as soon as we came out and Zeus would drive.”

He reached over and tugged at the string holding my dress bodice, loosening the tie.

I laughed. “What are you doing?”

“Keep driving.” His fingertips brushed my nipples, which were instantly hard.

“I’m trying to drive in traffic!” I slapped away his hands, stunned at his recklessness.

“You’d better concentrate, then.” He unlaced my bodice some more, so that my boobs were almost hanging out. It was kind of a rush because I was driving a stolen car and trying to drive well; in this way, I was as immobilized as if I were tied up.

“You are so crazy.” At a stoplight I tightened my dress top back up and made a double bow. “God!” Then the light turned green.

“Left lane,” he said.

I put on the blinker and changed lanes. Suddenly his fingers were on my bodice, loosening the ties again. “You are to leave them like this. This is part of the test.”

I laughed. “Are you crazy?”

“A little,” he said. My pulse raced as he pushed his hand into my dress front and fingered my nipple. I gasped when he squeezed it—my nipple was, by now, a rock-hard bundle of screaming nerves, and the excitement shot clear through me. When he finally took back his exquisitely teasing fingers, the edges of my bodice continued to rub my nipples, driving me a little crazy.

He directed me around town. Was he looking for something? The catfish place? We hit a four lane road. A thoroughfare with lots of lights and traffic. I felt I was doing pretty well, considering the distractions.

Then he put his hand on my thigh, slid it up under my dress. “Fuck!” I pushed his hand away, downshifted. “Seriously? Do you want to get us into an accident?”

“Is that a Mississippi?”

“No,” I whispered.

Again I felt his fingers on my thigh. “Then don’t push me away again,” he said in his rough silky voice. “You will get more than a spanking. Don’t think we can’t escalate.”

“I’m trying to drive a stolen car!”

“You can multi-task, can’t you, Ice?”

Clearly we were about to find out. Up, up, up went his fingers, up to my moist heat, pressing lengthwise into my cleft. He drew them up, then down, then up, in long, those characteristically long, slow strokes of his, like a violin player might stroke a violin with a bow. Warmth washed over me as he rubbed me. I pushed my pelvis into his hand at a stoplight, craving more pressure.

“You are so wet.” He withdrew his fingers, and I didn’t have to look to know that he was right. He pressed them into his mouth. “God, this is fun. I want to fuck you every way to Sunday right now.”

“We could pull over,” I said.

He pushed up my dress so that my pussy was totally exposed. “You want me to fuck you in a stolen car?”

“Yes.” I breathed. And I wanted the fingers back. He obliged as the light turned green. I shifted, arm over his. “Jesus,” I said as he thrust two fingers in, rubbing me with his thumb all the while. “We should park,” I said.

“I think I like you like this. Strapped in. Driving. A little bit helpless.”

I swallowed, shifted. I
was
helpless—in a way I’d never been before. It was as if my body were his, completely separated from my mind, from the attention I needed for the road. This was a dangerous, crazy game.

And it thrilled me to pieces.

I gyrated a little.

“And you will stay like this until I’m finished with you,” he said.