"See, I'm going to cut her in about three minutes, that chopper don't show up. I'd kill her I had more hostages. But I can't afford to lose another one. Least not yet."
Emily stood, hands still clasped together, staring out at the window, shaking as she sobbed.
"See" – Brutus closed his fiercely strong fingers around Melanie's arm – "if you were a good person, you were really good, you'd say, 'Take me, not her.' "
Stop it!
He slapped her. "No, keep your eyes open. So if you're not like totally good you must have some bad inside you. Somewhere. To let this little one get cut instead of you. It's not like you'd die. I ain't gonna kill her. Just a little pain. Make sure those assholes out… know I mean business. You won't put up with a little pain for your friend, huh? You…bad. Just like me?"
She shook her head.
His head swiveled. Stoat's too. She guessed the phone was ringing.
"Don't answer it," he said to Stoat. "Too much talking. I'm sick and tired…" He thumbed the blade. Melanie was frozen. "You? You for her?" He moved the blade of the knife one way then the other. Figure eights.
What would Susan have done?
Melanie hesitated though she knew the answer clearly. Finally she nodded.
"Yeah," he said, eyebrows raised. "You mean it?"
"Two minutes," Stoat called.
Melanie nodded then embraced sobbing Emily, lowered her head to the girl's cheek, directed her gently away from the window.
Handy leaned close, his head inches from Melanie's, his nose beside her ear. She couldn't hear his breath, of course, but she had the impression he was inhaling something – the scent of her fear. Her eyes were fixed on the knife. Which hovered over her skin: her cheek, her nose, then her lips, her throat. She felt it caress a breast and slide down her belly.
She felt the vibration of his voice, turned to look at his lips. "… should I cut you? Your tit? No loss there – you don't have no boyfriend to feel you up, do you? Your ear? Hey, that wouldn't matter either… You see that flick, Reservoir Dogs?"
The blade lifted, slipped over her cheek. "How 'bout your eye? Deaf and blind. You'd be a real freak then."
Finally she could take it no longer and she closed her eyes. She tried to think of the tune of "Amazing Grace" but it was nowhere in her memory.
A Maiden's Grave…
Nothing, nothing, all silence. Music can be vibrations or sound, but not both.
And for me, neither.
Well, she thought, do whatever the fuck you're going to do and get it over with.
But then the hands pushed her brutally away and she opened her eyes, staggering across the floor. Brutus was laughing. She understood that this little sacrifice scene had been just a game. He'd been playing with her once again. He said, "Naw, naw, I've got other plans for you, little mouse. You're a present for my Pris."
He handed her off to Stoat, who held her firmly. She struggled but he gripped her like a vise. Brutus pulled Emily back into the window. The girl's eyes met Melanie's momentarily, and Emily pushed her hands together, praying, crying.
Brutus caught Emily's head in the crook of his left arm and lifted the tip of the knife to her eyes.
Melanie struggled futilely against Stoat's iron grip.
Brutus looked at his watch. "Time."
Emily sobbed; her joined fingers twitched as they uttered fervent prayers.
Brutus tightened his grip on Emily's head. He drew back a few inches with the knife, aimed right for the center of her closed right eye.
Stoat looked away.
Then suddenly his arms jerked in surprise. He looked straight up at the murky ceiling.
Brutus did too.
And finally Melanie felt it.
A huge thudding overhead, like the roll of a timpani. Then it grew closer and became the continuous sound of a bowed upright bass. An indiscernible pitch that Melanie felt on her face and arms and throat and chest.
Music is sound or vibration. But not both.
Their helicopter was overhead.
Brutus leaned out the window and looked up at the sky. With his bony fingers he dramatically unlocked the blade of his knife and closed it with what Melanie supposed was a loud snap. He laughed and said something to Stoat, words that Melanie was, for some reason, furious to realize she could not understand at all.
9:31 P.M.
"You're looking a little green around the gills there, Charlie."
"That pilot," Budd said to Potter, climbing into the van unsteadily. "Brother, I thought I'd bought the farm. He missed the field altogether, set her down in the middle of Route 346, almost on top of a fire truck. Now, there's an experience for you. Then he puked out the window and fell asleep. I kept shutting stuff off till the engine stopped. This smell in here isn't helping my stomach any." The captain's exemplary posture was shot to hell; he slumped into a chair.
"Well, you did good, Charlie," Potter told him. "Handy's agreed to give us a little more time. HRT11 be here any minute."
"Then what?"
"We shall see what we shall see," Potter mused.
"When I was driving up," Budd said, his eyes firmly on Potter's, "I heard a transmission. There was a shot inside?"
LeBow stopped typing. "Handy shot Bonner," the intelligence officer said. "We think."
"I think Handy and Wilcox," Potter continued, "took our strategy a little more seriously than I'd expected – about Bonner cutting a separate deal. They figured him for a snitch."
"Wasn't anything we could do about it," LeBow said offhandedly. "You can't second-guess stuff like that."
"Couldn't have been foreseen," Tobe recited like a cyborg in one of the science fiction novels he was always reading.
Charlie Budd – the faux U.S. attorney, a naif in the state police – was the only honest one in the group, for he was silent. He continued to look at Potter and their eyes met. The young man's gaze said he understood that Potter had known what would happen when he gave Budd the script; it'd been Potter's intent all along for Budd to plant the seed of distrust that would set Handy against Bonner.
But in Budd's glance was another message. His eyes said, Oh, I get it, Potter. You used me to kill a man. Well, fair's fair; after all, I spied on you. But now our sins have canceled each other out. Mutual betrayals, and what's happened? Well, we're one hostage taker down, all to the good. But listen here: I don't owe you anything anymore.
A phone buzzed – Budd's own cellular phone. He took the call. He listened, punctuating the conversation with several significant "urns," and then clamped a hand over the mouthpiece.
"Well, how 'bout this? It's my division commander, Ted Franklin. He says there's a trooper in McPherson, not too far from here. A woman. She negotiated Handy's surrender five years ago in a convenience store holdup that went bad. He wants to know if he should ask her to come down here and help."
"Handy surrendered to her?"
Budd posed the question and listened for a moment. Then he said, "He did, yes. Seems there were no hostages. They'd all escaped and HRU was about to go in. A lot different from this, sounds like."
Potter and LeBow exchanged glances. "Have her come anyway," the negotiator said. "Whether she can help us directly or not, I can see Henry's licking his chops at the thought of more info on the bad guys."
"Yes indeed."
Budd relayed this to his commander and Potter was momentarily heartened at the thought of having an ally. He sat back in the chair and mused out loud, "Any way we can get another one or two out before HRT gets here?"
Angie asked, "What can we give him that he hasn't asked for? Anything?"
LeBow scrolled through the screen. "He's asked for transportation, food, liquor, guns, vests, electricity…"