The Hostage Bargain (20 page)

Okay
, I thought.
Free
.

Or was I? I eyed the window high on the wall. What if I climbed out of it? But then I might look more guilty.

I heard women come in and out. I used the toilet and flushed it, then went out and washed my hands. Nothing weird, though I imagined the entrance might be staked out. Or would it? Thor had said they wouldn’t care about me. After five more minutes of dawdling, I steeled myself and walked casually out onto the event center floor.

Nothing happened.

I wandered around, looking at the old cars, feeling naked without a purse, and just really alone—more alone than I’d ever felt—I suppose because nobody in the world knew where I was. I could so easily disappear. I wondered how my guys were faring, and I closed my eyes, sent them each a good thought.

It was near the 1950s trucks area that I saw the knot of people. Something happening. I wandered over and pushed in a ways—just enough to see Zeus, lying motionless on the concrete floor.

I tried to keep myself composed like I was just another person. “What happened? Was he shot?” I asked the woman next to me.

“Shot? No.” She looked at me funny, like, why would I think that? “He collapsed, looks like.”

Three men in street clothes were hoisting him up onto a stretcher, and I was pretty sure they weren’t doctors. Two EMTs stood on the sidelines, looking bewildered and angry. “Why aren’t the EMTs helping him?”

She shrugged.

I felt frantic. Had the bad guys had forced the EMTs to relinquish their stretcher? I turned to the woman. “The EMTs brought that stretcher?”

She nodded, brows knit.

I had to act fast; they were preparing to carry Zeus off to God knows where.

I pushed in without thinking. “I’m a nurse. Let me help.”

“It’s under control.” A man with pale pinkish skin and a crew cut lifted the front end. A pudgy one had the back and another—gray hair, dark skin—stood by.

“Did you get his vitals?” I asked.

“It’s under control.” They began to carry him toward the back.

I followed. “Where are you transporting him to? What medical center?” My lines were coming completely from TV at this point.

They ignored me as they passed into the kitchen and I just followed them, right out through and to the back, the way we’d come in. What could they do to me around all these people? Though there weren’t so many once we were outside.

Our trashed van was still out there, nose smashed into a parked truck. The men set down the stretcher next to a large black Lincoln Navigator and hoisted Zeus up by the arms.

“You can’t do that!” I said. “He might have a spinal injury! I demand to see your credentials.”

They ignored me, stuffing him into the back seat.

“You can’t just transport a man like this!” I protested.

Right then I felt a hand grab my hair, and something hard poked into my back. A gun. “Get in.”

“Leave her,” the pudgy man said.

“What do the two numbers on a blood pressure reading signify?” the man with the gun asked me.

I didn’t know the answer. But did they? “Baseline and highpoint,” I bluffed.

“Wrong. In.” Rough hands shoved me into the back seat next to Zeus. The pudgy guy squeezed in next to me and we were off.

“What is this?” I demanded.

“You fucking up, that’s what it is,” the pale man said from the front. “You showing us you’re with him.”

“You can’t do this!”

And then the pudgy one punched me in the face. My head snapped back with the blow, my ears rang. I tasted blood in my mouth. “One more word and you die in here,” he said.

The punch stunned me so much, I felt a little off balance in my thinking. I looked over at Zeus—I could see from the rise and fall of his chest that he was still breathing. Had he been hurt? Drugged?

The pudgy guy made me empty my pockets and clean out Zeus’s. I pretended not to find his cell phone.

“Your friend’s trail of ripped flowers wasn’t so hard to follow,” he said triumphantly.

I pretended not to hear or care, but I hated that they might’ve used what I’d come to regard as Zeus’s expression of grief to find him and Thor and Odin.

We rode in silence, except for my heart pounding in my ears. My mind raced in circles—what to do, how to get out. Maybe twenty minutes later we stopped in some kind of shipping yard. The pale guy with the crew cut pulled Zeus out and found the cell phone.

For that, the pudgy guy hit me again. It was more stunning the second time, and I began to cry.

I backed up and the older guy grabbed me by the hair and started forcing me toward a gray metal boxcar, the sort you’d see on a freight train, except it was on the ground. More box than boxcar, then.

The blond man unlocked a padlock and swung open the door. The guys shoved the two of us in. Then they shut it back up and locked it.

And it was completely and totally dark inside.

I crawled across the metal floor, feeling for Zeus, finding his leg, feeling up to his face. I cupped his cheek. “Zeus,” I whispered. “Zeus!”

He didn’t answer. I shook him gently. From what I could feel, he was in a twisted position. Was something broken? I laid him out straight, on his back, wishing I could see him, see if he had injuries.

I crawled to the door and put my ear to it. I could hear nothing. I felt around until I found a handle, and I yanked and pushed and rattled, but there was no budging it.

It was like an inky-black sensory deprivation chamber in there, and terribly hot, too. It came to me that it might be airtight. Though it had looked rusty on the outside. Where there was rust, there were holes, right? Just no light, I told myself.

Just don’t breathe a lot
, I told myself.

I went back to Zeus and stretched out beside him. The sound of his breathing comforted me. “Zeus,” I whispered now and then, but he never stirred. I sometimes put my fingers to his neck to feel his pulse. I also took off his shoes and socks, and I put his socks under his head as a kind of pathetic little cushion. I wanted to take off more just so he’d stay cool, but I didn’t want to bang his body around in case he was injured.

I don’t know how much time passed, though I know the sun was beating down on us, because the air got hotter and thinner in our container—like a sauna, really. I was starting to feel like I couldn’t breathe.

That’s nothing but panic
, I told myself.

I heard rumbling nearby at one point and I banged on the wall and yelled, but nobody came to investigate. Afterwards, I collapsed on my knees, faint from the effort. I wasn’t entirely sure my mind was working right.

Well, they hadn’t killed us. Did that mean they had a use for us? Would they come back when Zeus awoke? And what then?

Again I stretched out next to Zeus, monitoring his breathing, like if I didn’t pay attention, he might stop. I don’t know how many hours had passed when he finally grunted.

“Zeus!” I kneeled, put a hand on his forehead. “Zeus! Wake up!”

Nothing.

I shook him and lightly slapped his cheeks. “Zeus!”

He defended himself drunkenly, pushing weakly at my arms. “What’reyadoing?” he mumbled, running the words together.

“Zeus,” I said. “It’s me! Wake up!”

He said nothing more. I massaged his hands. “Come on!” Then I massaged his shoulders, his arms, getting the blood flowing. Clearly he’d been drugged—I figured blood flow would be good. Maybe.

“Whererewe?” he said.

“I don’t know. Some sort of sealed container, like a locked metal box. I think this is the railroad yard, but maybe not. It’s so hot, I feel like there’s no air! Sorry, I don’t mean to alarm you, though.” That wasn’t constructive. I forced myself to concentrate through the heat and the dizziness, to describe everything I knew in complete detail. We could put our heads together.

He was silent for a long time more, then, “Whererewe?”

Okay, he probably hadn’t gotten any of that. I rested my forehead on his chest, feeling dizzy. The sweat poured out of me. I wanted to cry.

Deep down, I knew our predicament wasn’t like on Batman or something where Batman and Robin would be tied on some contraption that they could escape from. We were in real trouble. The men who’d put us here were dangerous enough to strike fear into the hearts of my very capable criminals.

And it was hard to breathe. The too-hot air felt painful inside my throat and lungs…that couldn’t be good. In fact, it seemed dangerous. The more I thought about it, the more freaked I got.

We could boil to death. Our insides would be jelly
!

I shook Zeus some more—violently. I was officially freaking out. “You
have
to wake up!”

Nothing.

I put my head to his chest and began to sob. Suddenly I felt his arms come around me. He held me tightly. “You’re here…can’t believe you’re here!” His voice sounded thick, words slurred. Then, “I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry, baby. I can’t believe you’re here.”

“I couldn’t just leave,” I said. “I couldn’t leave you like that.”

“Why?” he grated out. “Why’d you leave?”

I pressed my face to his chest, confused. He’d
instructed
me to leave. Walk left and get lost, he’d said.

“Why?” he grumbled out in the darkness. “Did you give one thought…one thought…to those you left behind?”

I felt drugged by the heat, by the pitch-black darkness. All I could hear were my sisters.
What about us? Why did you leave us
?

“Did you even think of that?” he asked.

Was he talking about my sisters?

“Did you?” he pressed.

“Of course I did!” I said. “You think I don’t care? I know that’s what you think and you couldn’t be more wrong.” I began to cry. I wouldn’t see my sisters again. “Fuck!” I said.

“Shh, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” He smoothed a hand over my hair, which amounted to matting it down because it was so utterly wet with sweat. “God, I’ve been so lonely without you,” he said. “I couldn’t believe you were gone.”

With a start I realized what was happening:
He thinks I’m Venus
. He was talking to Venus.

“I’m sorry,” he continued. “I controlled you. Suffocated you. It’s my fault.”

Naturally his words made me think about the message on the site.
We miss you, we suffocated you. Things will be different
. I’d left my poor sisters behind to suffer, to blame themselves. I’d never get a chance to tell them it wasn’t their fault, that I’d found some real happiness.

“I’m so sorry,” he continued.

He was saying the part of my sisters.

Tears tickled my cheeks. I said, “I wanted what I wanted.”

Things were so surreal there in the extreme heat and darkness, the physics of it felt dreamlike, as though in some weird way I really was talking to Vanessa and Kaitlin and Candy.

I said, “It wasn’t about you controlling me or suffocating me—I just needed to leave. I wish I could’ve told you. Made you understand. I needed to be free!”

“Not like this!” he said.

“Yes, like this,” I said hazily. “You need to get that! You have to forgive yourself!” It was everything I’d wished I could’ve typed on that blog post comment. My need to say it felt urgent, like the only thing that mattered.

“I was selfish,” he said. “I pushed you.”

“Nobody was pushing anybody.”

He shifted around there on the hot metal floor in the darkness. I couldn’t see him, but I felt his breath heave out, felt his big body in front of mine. I reached out and touched his face, and realized that he was lying on his side in front of me. He grabbed my shoulders and pressed his forehead to my chest, between my breasts. The heat seemed to intensify as I laid my hand onto the back of his head, holding him, pulling him fully to me.

“I didn’t want you to go,” he said.

“You had no choice. We were all just surviving the best we could,” I said. “But it’s all okay now. You have to get that in your head.”

A harsh sob jolted his powerful body, then another, and another—it was as if a floodgate opened in him—one so monumental that this man was weeping.

Everything was wet—our sweat, tears, the air—reality itself seemed drenched. I felt as if I were breathing in his relief, taking it in great gulps.

“It’s all okay. You can let it go.”

My sisters would never hear what I had to say, but I was saying the words nevertheless, and it shifted something in me. As though saying my part to the universe counted for something.

And Zeus hearing it counted for something. His being relieved counted for something.

“I would do it again,” I said, holding him. “You needed what you needed. It wasn’t your fault to need what you needed. We were all victims. I just needed to be free. And there’s nothing to forgive. Do you understand?”

He seemed quiet. Peaceful. I knew that he understood.

The world inside our hot metal box seemed to be spinning, shifting. Zeus straightened, touched my hair. Then he touched my hair differently, patting it. Not that gentle touch. “Isis?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Jesus! What the fuck?” He pulled away from me. “What the fuck? Where are we? Why are you pretending to be Venus?”

“I didn’t mean…I didn’t…”

“Where the fuck are we?” His voice reverberated loudly in the darkness.

I tried to explain where we were—it was an easier question than why I was pretending to be Venus; even I couldn’t quite articulate that one, but he was already up, exploring the walls from what I could hear. Pounding on them. Maybe kicking them.

“Son of a bitch,” he said after one loud bang. “Son of a fucking bitch!” I wondered if he’d hurt himself. “And you’re in here like you’re Venus? Let me tell you something—you’re not Venus.”

“Yeah, I know I’m not Venus!” I said. “I think I got that.”

“Then why the fuck were you pretending to be her? You come into our gang and you try to take her place, running all over and trying to erase her tracks—”

“I wasn’t trying to erase her tracks—”

“And now you’re in here talking like you’re her from the dead? You think it’s funny to mess with me like that?”

“I wasn’t trying to mess with you! Christ! Excuse me if I’ve been locked in a pitch-black sauna with you for five or ten hours and a little freaked. Excuse me if you’re completely checked out except when you’re saying the stuff my sisters would say, who I’ll probably never see again, who I feel totally fucking guilty about leaving, contrary to your assessment of it. Excuse me if I have some weepy thing to say back, sitting in this hellhole with you.” I sounded totally incoherent, even to myself.