Stockholm Syndrome

Chapter 4

Instead, I kept very still and prayed Bastard wouldn’t notice the song.

Fat chance. I might as well wish on a star for him to shoot himself.

I heard the rustle of Bastard’s clothes as he shifted behind me, just before he jabbed the gun again into the base of my skull, but it slipped an inch and caught me on the neck instead.

I bit back a cry as my neck arched involuntarily, jerking my chin toward the ceiling before Bastard swore and re-took his first position. Namely, his body close enough behind me to rub the skin off my back, the gun repositioned at my right temple, with the extra-special addition of his left arm hooked around my throat.

The whistling grew louder.

Was Bastard smart enough to understand that Tucker was offering the aural equivalent of a white flag?

“Let’s go,” I managed to whisper through the arm lock. My hair felt like it was standing straight out from my scalp, under the pull of the world’s best Van der Graaf Generator. I didn’t know where to go. I just had to get us away from here.

Forget rocks and hard places. I was smushed between a closed door and a killer.

“Shut. Up,” said Bastard.

Since the gun in my temple was already delivering me a Mach 1 headache, and Tucker was in imminent danger, I decided to obey. Maybe if I were very, very quiet, Bastard could control his trigger finger. Tucker would just keep whistling his way on by.

That whistling paused, probably as Tucker encountered Stan’s body, but then it picked up again, growing more intense in my right ear.

I could feel Bastard’s breathing speeding up as he exhaled beer fumes on me. He didn’t know what to do. He probably didn’t have a Plan A, let alone B or C. I was practically pressed against the wood grain, with Tucker oncoming, yet no sign of the cavalry. Where was the fucking cavalry? I know we’re in Montreal, but come on.

“That’s my friend,” I said, so that Bastard wouldn’t freak out and start spraying bullets.

“I don’t give a fuck who that is. It’s not Casey,” he said.

Fair point. I had to try again. Bastard might execute me, Tucker, or both, but I couldn’t just stand here. “Yes. If you let me get at the phone—”

“Shut. Up,” said Bastard, grinding the muzzle close enough to my right eyeball that I closed my eyelid, as if a thin patch of skin could protect me from potential blindness.

Tucker’s whistle, as well as his steps on the tile floor, faded into silence. I couldn’t see his body out of my peripheral vision, which was blocked by a firearm and a madman’s arm, but from the sound, I would guess he stood about five feet to our right.

Way too close.

“I’m here to help,” he said, in that baritone I’d recognize in my sleep.

Hearing Tucker’s voice confirmed that one of the major loves of my life was stupid enough to run toward this madman.

Not that I should point fingers. My own “May I help you?” retardedness had probably killed Stan and would now probably take out me and Tucker.

For the first time in my life, I wanted to faint. Just black out and let someone else take care of this mess.

Instead, I ordered, “Get out of here, T—”

The gunman slid his left hand over my mouth, silencing me, but also squashing my nose so that I could hardly breathe anything except his dirty flesh.